My wife is off on a 2- week vacation with her cousin, and I am staying home alone taking care of the cats, our 2.5 acre yard with all it's spring chores, and other tasks...some fun, some not. Anyway, one task I don't enjoy that much is cooking.
I invited my daughter over for supper last Saturday and planned to make homemade potato salad as part of the meal. I could not locate my wife's recipe so I did a quick internet search and got one which contained the ingredients I had on hand. Had they NOT been on hand, I would have found another recipe, or else had canned baked beans instead. All went well with my preparations that afternoon, until I got to the "egg" part.
I know boiling eggs does not seem like a tough cooking challenge, but for me it turned out so. First, I got a pot of water boiling and then dropped three eggs into the water...one, two, three...and each broke...one, two, three...when they hit the bottom of the pot. Boiling mess resulted. So, I decided to start over, but first I took the mess way back in the woods behind our house and dumped it all for the critters to find.
Fortunately, I still had eggs left in the carton, so after the water came to a boil the second time, I carefully lowered each egg and all seemed well. Except, for some reason my mind told me that cooking hard boiled eggs was essentially a three-minute job. But, to be safe I added another minute. Taking the eggs out of the hot water, I cooled them in the sink faucet and then removed the shells. Still good, except I noticed the eggs seemed a bit "soft" inside. Hummm...my mind wondered...why not "nuke" them in the microwave to make sure they get a bit more cooking. 45 seconds, all's well. Why not another 15 seconds just for drill? "POP" went one egg inside the microwave and I had another mess. But, the mess was in fact a fully cooked egg and involved only one of the three. So, I cleaned the inside of the microwave, and dumped the egg pieces in the potato salad mixing bowl, then set the other two aside to cut them up to add to the mixing bowl.
Given the nuked eggs were pretty hot to handle, I should have put them under cold water, but that seemed a waste of time. Imagine my surprise when I cut into the second egg and it exploded like a popped balloon, tossing egg pieces all over the table, the floor, and even the ceiling. Our startled cat Boots jumped off the table where she was watching my work, while I cussed my stupidity. But, then I compounded the problem by doing exactly the same thing with egg number three. Same result, but now Boots was better prepared, hiding under the table.
Another internet search determined that three-minute eggs are for the soft boiled version, and to get hard-boiled I needed twelve minutes. So, taking the last of the eggs left in the carton, I did exactly that, but went 15 minutes just to be safe. No way were those babies going to explode on me.
End of story...the potato salad was actually pretty good with the eggs, but I decided when I get a notion to serve potato salad when my wife is not here, to go to Food Lion and buy a container of the store-made variety rather than making my own. Lesson learned...don't mess with eggs, they can be dangerous.
