Hard Boiled Eggs

By G. E. Shuman

I love hard boiled eggs.  I guess I always have.  I recall that back when I was a child my mother would often make soft and hard boiled eggs, and I always liked the hard boiled ones.  I don’t think I ever figured out how she knew some were soft and some hard, and which were which.  They all looked the same to me.
My fondest memory of hard boiled eggs, (Doesn’t everyone have memories of hard boiled eggs?)  is of something we used to call deviled eggs and/or picnic eggs.   I remember that my aunt Mary used to make them every Memorial Day, for our big family picnic.  She would boil them, slice them in half, remove the yolks and mix things like mustard, mayonnaise, and who knows what else with those yolks. Then, somehow, she got the yolks back in the eggs, sprinkled them with paprika, and wrapped each one in saran wrap. How she knew which yolk went with which egg was another thing that I never figured out as a child. The last thing she would do is place those eggs back in the egg carton, and bring them to the picnic that way.  I thought it was pretty ingenious, that Aunt Mary brought those picnic eggs to the picnic every year, all wrapped up and back in their egg carton. (It takes very little to amuse some small boys.  At least it did in my day.)  Also, I loved eating those things.
Ever since the first of the year I’ve been on a diet, or at least have been eating a different diet than I used to.  Now that I am ’slightly’ diabetic (Which is, I think, similar to a person being ‘slightly’ pregnant,) doing things like eliminating sugar, reducing carbs and eating salads has not only kept my numbers in line, but has also allowed me to lose twenty or so pounds, so far.  One hint my diabetes counselor gave me was to, within reason, eat more eggs.  So, being the obedient, borderline obese patient I am, I now eat more eggs.  They provide a lot of protein and not much sugar, and I eat them for neither of those reasons.  I eat them because I love them.
The strange thing is that I devised a totally unnecessary method of handling my eggs after I boil them.  In hind sight, it reminds me of a story I once read about Abraham Lincoln.  It seems that young Abe once made two cat doors in the door of his house.  He made a small door for the small cat, and a large door for his larger cat, not realizing until he was finished that both cats could have used the larger door.  I guess if doing dumb things is good enough for Mr. Lincoln, it’s certainly good enough for me.
What I did was this.  I boil my wonderful eggs a dozen at a time, and had to have a way of distinguishing those eggs from the raw ones still in the fridge.  Cracking open a raw egg at the table would not be a welcome surprise.  So, with a marker, I carefully labeled an egg carton “Hard Boiled” and have kept delicately putting my cooled, hard boiled eggs back into that one.  Then, a few days ago, we happened to be at our daughter’s home, and I noticed a bowl of eggs in her fridge.  “How ingenious!”  I thought.  “I can just toss the cooked ones into a bowl.”  So, now, if you happen to open my refrigerator, the cooked eggs are the one in the bowl.  Such small revelations into how stupid I can be probably delight my wife, but I take no responsibility for this one.  It’s all your fault, Aunt Mary.