Where Did You Get Laid

 Where  Did You Get Laid?

A question for the egg ...

My adventures in the kitchen began in the 1940’s.

Simple things, as befit a child — like making toast for jelly. And scrambling an egg. Or sometimes, frying the egg, and having fried eggs with toast.

Often, what began as an attempt to fry eggs became preparation of scrambled eggs. If I clumsily broke the yolk while turning the egg, I then stirred it to make scrambled egg.

With practice — and a proper spatula — I became adept at turning the flipping eggs.

I also enjoyed flipping pancakes, and reveled in tossing them higher than really necessary, just to watch them turning in the air. Me and the skillet and the egg turner became well acquainted, through the decades — the fifties through the  noughties saw me expanding my cooking techniques.

Then, in the second decade of the twenty-first century I hit a wall. Suddenly I absolutely could not turn an egg in the skillet without damaging it. The beautiful over easy fried eggs that I remembered simply were no more.

I sought thinner spatulas. I tried different skillets. Although I abhor them I even bought one of the coated non-stick griddles.

Still the eggs come apart when I try to turn them.

I studied the process … and observe that the egg, freed from the eggshell onto the eager pan does not pool, in a thick, viscous puddle of egg white surrounding the yolk, as I recalled them doing in years past. The egg white seems watery, and spreads out as if fleeing the company of the yolk. And the errant egg white cooks into a thin, transparent membrane that is suitable only for discarding.

I am reluctant to present the appearance of a conspiracy theorist. But I am stumped.

Bumfuzzled. Dismagaligumfricated.

And with a sad, resigned awareness I accept that much of the merchandise that we so eagerly consume is imported from far and distant lands  —  and is in many ways inferior to what we have enjoyed in the past. 

In an earlier essay I counted the number of eggs frying in my skillet — and concluded that nowadays chickens and eggs are smaller.

Today it is confirmed.

I put eggs from a new carton — the package marked Grade A Large — into the 3 quart stew pot, to boil them. Anticipating deviled eggs. Yum!

To my surprise, the pot that last month could hold only nine eggs, snuggled around the bottom, now has room for the entire DOZEN eggs!

I wonder  — are the eggs for my kitchen laid in China?