Boil Water

At the risk of sounding like I'm just the best cook around, there are a couple of things I do very well.  I can bake a cheesecake that people actually pay me for.  I can bake Oatmeal cookies that are to die for.  I make a mean spaghetti and have been known to be called an ace with Hamburger Helper. 

I can't though - boil water.  That's not completely true.  I can boil water and turn it into Mrs. Grass Chicken Noodle Soup.  I can boil water to cook pasta in.  I can boil water for the sake of cooking anything BUT eggs. 

Speaking of eggs, I've mastered the over-easy - look no spatula flip.  I can make a mean omelette,  I even taught my daughter how to scramble an egg.  Imagine my surprise when I flunked Hard Cooked eggs 101.

In the past month, I've been hard cooking my eggs so the kids can have a good snack when they get home.  Those egg yolks were bright yellow, but not quite done, so the yolk wasn't completely solid.  But also of note, there wasn't green ick all around the yolk either. 

Figuring that I was so close to perfect once, I'll be able to do it again, I read over my Emeril recipe for Fail-Proof hard cooked eggs.  Yes Virginia, there is such a document, and yes, I have more than one copy of it.  So I got out my pan, put the eggs in the bottom, filled it with cool tap water, placed it on the stove and turned the heat to medium as directed.

Once the boil starts, I was to let the eggs cook for 11 minutes, remove from heat and place eggs in a cold water bath to stop the cooking process.  I have a college degree, my chosen field is in IT.  One would think that I would be able to set a kitchen timer to 11 minutes and then stop the cooking process with cold water. 

However, this whole process depends on my hearing that the water is boiling.  I never heard it boil.  In fact, I never heard anything except my exclamation of Oh Shit when I remembered that a watched pot never boils but an unwatched one boils very quietly.  I was able to get to my eggs in time.  In time for what - who knows, but under the faucet they went. 

I'm somewhat proud of myself at this point, providing a nutritious snack for my children.  I take two of my achievements to work for lunch.  I peel the first one around lunch time.  I get a good look at the green ick.  The yolk has no flavor and lots of ick.  Heck, I thought, the egg white is the only part that's good for you anyway...trashed the yolks, ate the white.  It was a struggle to get through all my eggs (six I think) but I made it. 

Then last night saw my attempt to do this again.  Again I forgot one important part, the whole watched pot again.  This time I didn't have time for the casual Oh Shit.  This time I went running into the kitchen to find my eggs lying in the sauce pot, essentially frying. If one can have oysters on the half shell, can we not have eggs in the whole shell? 

I brought my camera into the kitchen to capture my masterpiece for the blog, but there really wasn't anything catastrophic to see besides some green ick and egg whites that are so dense one wonders if this is how they discovered super balls.  I did try it one more time last night.  The dogs had a great dinner, Green Eggs & Dog Kibble.  They were in heaven though, so who am I to tell them I wouldn't even feed these eggs to the dogs, but wait....I DID