You’re Welcome, UEP

To understand this post completely, I need to start off with a confession from my childhood. Before doing this, I apologize in advance (mom) for any recipes I may have ruined…

It went something like this – I grew up in a home where we bought a dozen eggs a week. Each time we got eggs, I took one of the eggs out and hid it in a bowl at the back of the fridge. Once a month I would make scrambled eggs for myself with my 4 or 5 stolen treasures. This isn’t intended to advocate stealing food, but rather to make it clear that I’ve loved eggs since I was old enough to break the 8th commandment (and I would’ve broken the 9th if I’d ever been caught)!

This love of eggs has continued my entire life, and I was recently reminded of this when eggs came up in a discussion with a good friend regarding baking. It went something like this:

1. Friend tells me they couldn’t make something because they were out of eggs.
2. I wept for them. I recovered from weeping, thought about what they said and started weeping again.

Even now, the tears are close to flowing again when I think of a home without eggs. It’s just not right.

Hold on, I need to go weep some more for all the egg-less fridges out there…

 

…okay, I’m back.

 

Now, before anybody tries to tell me about the negative effects of eggs, I have to declare that any source for health information that begins with W-I-K-I doesn’t count as a credible source to counter this post. I would say that someone who eats 18-20 eggs per week (true story!), has a cholesterol score with HDLs as high as LDLs (and total under 180), and whose last blood pressure reading was 105/59 should be considered an eggs-pert (Get it? Ha!) on this. So, for this post, we’ll consider me as someone who knows what he’s talking about.

[Legal disclaimer: While the information contained herein is 100% true and should be considered doctrine by all who read it, I have to say that these are my sole opinions that come from my own experience and you should consult a doctor or some other health guru before applying this immense load of wisdom into your own diet.]

Back to the subject…

RECAP: I eat a lot of eggs, I’m pretty healthy and I’m about to explain why eggs are so wonderful.

1. Eggs don’t raise your blood sugar at all. For a diabetic, this is a HUGE deal.

2. Eggs are high in protein. Everybody points this out, so it must be important.

3. Eggs are cheap. To be able to feed a family of nine for under $5 is pretty cool (2 dozen eggs, + hash browns = $4.49).

4. Eggs are everywhere. You can get eggs at any grocery store, convenience store, roadside stand, or a clueless neighbor’s chicken coop. If you choose to get eggs from the latter source, practice acting shocked and interested when they start to talk about how their chickens haven’t been producing lately.

5. Eggs stay good for a long time (though in a proper home eggs will never reach the end of their shelf life because the eggs will be gone months before this happens). Seriously – in a refrigerator, eggs will last for 5-6 months! This benefit is included for when eggs go on sale for 59 cents a dozen and you need to buy ten or twelve dozen.

6. Eggs are versatile. Denny, the Easter bunny, the golden goose and decent people everywhere already know this. Think about it – they can be fried, scrambled, hard boiled, omeletized (not really a word, but it should be), mixed into cookies or brownies, cooked in bologna cups, poached, colored, dropped in soup, thrown at houses, put around bread and French toasted, etc., etc. A good breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack can use eggs in some form or another.

    

7. Getting kids to eat healthy foods is easier with eggs. For young people, just throw in the word ‘over-easy’ and it sounds trendy. Never mind that over-easy-anything is a textural abomination…it makes you sound sophisticated and gives a teenage girl all the protein she needs for the day. For teenage boys, eating an egg-salad sandwich with a glass of OJ will produce spectacular olfactory effects a couple of hours later – just in time to make the bus ride home PASS more quickly. No, really! They’ll STANK you for it later! Ouch. Moving on now… For elementary peeps, show them how to poke a hole in en egg and blow out the insides to make a hollow shell (and give yourself an aneurysm) and they’ll think eggs are the coolest food on the planet. For micro peeps, an egg dye kit and a disregard for all furniture will give them an excuse to crack open NON-hard-boiled eggs at an inconvenient time down the road (but they’ll love eggs after that!). For people of all ages, eggs are an easy sell over less-healthy alternatives.

So there you have it – a confession, a health sermon, an argument for the obvious, a fart joke and some really bad puns. I’d call that a good start to the week. Don’t you egg-ree? Ha! (There are countless of bad egg puns out there, but I ‘shell’ stop now, for the sake of everybody who made it this far.)

 

Have a great week, everybody (and by that, I mean ‘go out and buy a few dozen eggs to eat’)!