The Egg the Rocks the Table Rules the Roost

I don't mean to brag, but I make a mean deviled egg. Seriously. My deviled eggs ROCK! One time, before I wised up and saw my colleagues bringing loaves of day-old bread, and bags of frozen corn, I even made them for our Thanksgiving potluck at school. They were all the rage. One of my lunch tablemates still speaks wistfully of them every November. They are a staple at our family holiday gatherings.

Yesterday, I boiled two dozen eggs so they would be ready to make fresh this morning. It's not like instant oatmeal or Stove Top Stuffing. They take some time. The egg white is merely the artist's canvas. A tippy canoe to be filled with mustardy nectar, and topped with two olive-slice life preservers.

The eggs were store-bought. Grade A Large. We get bigger ones from our chickens, and more colorful, too. But fresh eggs are very hard to peel after boiling. I'm sure there's a secret ingredient to add to the water, but I haven't been actively seeking the remedy. I used my big stainless steel copper-bottom pot. After boiling, the eggs were treated to a cold soak for about half an hour. Then they were placed in the sink drainer to air dry. Their final destination was back into their foam carton to rest on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator overnight.

This morning I put my other projects in motion and settled down a the kitchen table to peel the eggs. It's a tedious job, but eggs don't peel themselves. I tapped. I rapped. I rolled. I massaged the tip against the table. I did everything but give each egg a happy ending. I was sure those eggs were ready to disrobe in one continuous motion. Some eggs, however, had other ideas.

You would have thought they hailed from the Victorian Era. Those eggs put up quite a fight to keep their outerwear intact. Their skin would not come off. Jame Gumb would have been sorely disappointed. The only headway I made was in ripping away small chunks of shell and attached flesh. Those egg whites stuck to the shell like asphalt-parking-lot gum to the sole of a mid-July Croc. There was no separating them.

By the time I had finished, about one hour after starting, some eggs were not fit for the family table. Their fate lay in the testing arena. After all, some eggs must be sacrificed to taste the filling. The test subjects were not things of beauty. Had they been babies, I think we all can imagine our handsome pediatrician calling them "breathtaking." The were as pockmarked as Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver. A few looked as though Injun Joe had whittled them in McDougal's cave with a Bowie knife, after he had eaten the candles.

This photo does not do those bad eggs justice. But I think you can see the whittled one up front.

It was delicious.