Hard-Boiled Advice

Sink or swim? Flunking the freshness test

Whilst foraging for edible vegetation amidst the petrified forest in my refrigerator, I came upon a carton of eggs dated July 20.

Not knowing whether the date pertained to the current year, I decided to play it safe by conducting a freshness test.

A fastidious person would reasonably consider a freshness test moot regardless; at best, the eggs are three months past date.

Being unfastidious, I have no compunction about consuming food out of code; I proceeded with the test.

I was pleasantly surprised that of the dozen, only two flunked out; when I placed them in a bowl of water, they sank.

After discarding the sinkers, I proceeded to prepare the remaining ten eggs after extrapolating instructions from YouTube tutorials that explain how to make easy-to-peel hard-boiled eggs. The consensus was as follows:

1) Bring a pot of water to a boil 2) Place eggs in the water; turn down heat 3) Simmer for 13 minutes 4) Place eggs in an ice bath for five minutes 5) Tap-tap-tap cooled eggs on countertop 6) Peel

Voila!

Voila didn’t happen.

I gouged out hunks of egg, which clung to the sundry shards of shell, which stabbed the underside of my fingernails.

It was after I’d painstakingly divested, piecemeal, the ten eggs of their coats that I remembered: FRESH eggs sink.