Sunday, April 5, 2015

More A-Peeling Does Not Make Them Any Less Appealing

So, you know how the five passengers of the SS Minnow set out on that three-hour tour? And were stuck on a tropical island for what seems like eternity?

That's how my deviled-egg-making went yesterday.

I know the deviling of the eggs takes a long time. Don't I do it every holiday? But the task was interminable on this morning. That's because in all of my store-tripping, I neglected to buy eggs. "But Val," you might ask, "why do you need to buy eggs when your very own yard chickens, the ones who haven't been devoured by the neighbor dogs, of course, supply you with fresh eggs daily?"


Ah, yes. You're thinking of my lovely pastel eggs laid by our Ameraucana mongrels. The ones who started out so precious, with their blue and green eggs, only to interbreed with some black pantalooned chickens with feathery legs and feet. Not that there's anything wrong with that. We're not running a chick hatchery where we sell purebreds. No, the eggs are still pretty, with the greens of the Ameraucanas, and the browns of the blacks. But they are STILL fresh eggs. Hick stuffs them into cartons and jams up the whole bottom shelf of Frig II with them. Then every Saturday, he takes them to the auction for his buddy. I'm sure some money changes hands. Not that I ever see any.

The problem with fresh eggs is that they don't boil well. Okay. They boil just fine. They don't PEEL well. No matter how I try to follow advice that I glean from the internet, like adding salt to the water, or leaving them in an ice bath after boiling, or letting them spend a night in the refrigerator, just chillin'. They don't have that air bubble at the top, so you can tap tap tap that end and crack the shell and roll it all around, then peel it off in almost one piece. Nope. The shells of boiled fresh eggs must be fans of James Frey, because they crack into a million little pieces. A million little pieces that don't cling to the skin and peel off in large sections, but rather stay in a million little pieces and stick to your hands and must be pried off one by one by one by one by one by...well, I think you get my point.


Those shells of boiled fresh eggs cling to the whites tighter than midwesterners bitterly clinging to their guns and bibles. Tighter than Newt clung to Ripley in the final minutes of the ultimate showdown in Aliens. Tighter than Val clings to a piece of gas station chicken. Sometimes, you may think you've beat them, with the end of a piece of egg skin between your thumb and forefinger...and then a flesh-like layer of the white several millimeters thick comes off in your hand. Uh huh. That fresh boiled egg is like a jawbreaker, coming apart until only the yolk is left at the center.

And what a yolk it is! So orangey. So tasty when fried. So robust. It makes the yellow yolk of its city cousins pale in comparison. Huge yolk! Like an October full moon on the horizon.


Lucky for me, I found some store-bought eggs on the bottom of Hick's egg cartons, with some eggs left over from when I made The Pony's birthday cake. They were still good. They didn't float to the top of the cauldron when I set them on to boil. So I had eight store eggs and eight fresh eggs. The store eggs took 10 minutes to peel. The fresh eggs took 40 minutes.

But at least we got some delicious deviled eggs from the sweat of Val's brow.


The fresh ones are on the left. You can barely see their pock marks. Val is the school picture photo re-toucher of the deviled egg crowd. The eggs on the right are the store-bought ones, obvious from the blunt ends that made for such easy peeling, yet give the appearance that Val sampled them during deviling. The yolks were combined with some mustard and mayo and sea salt and fresh-ground black pepper and the secret ingredient, dill pickle juice.

A round of deviled eggs for all my blog friends! This is only half the batch, the other half having been set upon a Chinet plate to be mostly devoured yesterday by Thevictorians.

Yum.

7 comments:

  1. Val--I made deviled eggs--only my second time, since I hatehatehate them. My eggs looked like they had been in a battle. Like your fresh eggs.

    Everyone said they were delicious, but they looked atrocious.

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  2. I love deviled eggs. especially with a bit of chopped celery and paprika sprinkled on top. Yum! Interesting about the shell sticking to the fresh eggs. There must be a solution for that but I don't know what it is. Fresh eggs are hard to come by where I live.

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  3. Those little devils look awesome and yummy. Wish I was your neighbor so we could trade things like fresh eggs for roses or something.

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  4. Deviled eggs only at barbeques, egg salad sandwiches never!

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  5. Sioux,
    I cannot believe, Madam, that you don't find deviled eggs tasty. Next thing I know, you will be singing the praises of creamed corn casserole.

    *****
    Stephen,
    Another unbelievable commenter fact has been revealed! You can't find fresh eggs out there? I was sure some Oregon folks would have backyard chickens, just because it's a hipster kind of thing. Perhaps in the yard behind their TINY HOUSE.

    We here in Backroads do not do the chopped celery and paprika. We like the mustard and olive. Maybe the city people like them. Sioux? Linda? Oh. I guess first you have to LIKE deviled eggs in order to like them with chopped celery and paprika.

    *****
    Leenie,
    I have a rosebush. Two. Red and yellow. I think. Because since we got goats, I pretty much just have thorny stems.

    *****
    Linda,
    Mmm....egg salad sandwiches! That will be my next egg project. Can't take them in my lunch, though, because my lunch time companions will turn up their dainty noses.

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  6. I made some boiled eggs on Sunday, too. I did 2 dozen, took out 4 for the potato salad and deviled the rest. I am a GRIT (girl raised in the south) and we tend top slather everything with mayo. The real stuff, no Miracle Whip for us. Sweet pickle relish and paprika sprinkled on top. I had a total of 7 for our little dinner and those eggs were all gone when it was over. Brown sugar glazed spiral cut ham, fresh asparagus spears wrapped in bacon and roasted, potato salad and dinner rolls. That is just what I made! Kampers like to eat, you know, and the ladies like to try to out-do each other. The wine did flow and one guys came with Jello shots. I am guessing we got a little loud, but it was fun to get together after my solitary winter.

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  7. Kathy,
    I was a slacker this year. No potato salad. Those eggs took up too much time, since I had to make every dish, and not just take a select few to my mom's house. We also had the brown sugar glazed spiral cut ham. I imagine yours was better. I didn't have much patience for the glaze.

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