An Easter Warning (eggs)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Some of you may hide hard-boiled colored eggs on Easter eve.

We do. We did it as a kid. Every year one of the tried but true hiding places was this old chair. The arm of the chair was broken, and if you lifted the top a little, there was just enough room for an egg.

It was so common in fact that one Easter morning, I didn’;t even bother looking there, assuming my brother would make a beeline for the chair. My brother must have assumed the same because neither of us collected the egg.

Flash forward now to Christmas Eve that same year. The house is filled with guests and all the prime seating real estate is taken. Young Scylla goes and sits in the old broken chair and idly starts playing with the broken arm.

Being curious I of course cracked the 8 month old egg open. Seeing as I was at ground zero, I died a merciful death, puking my guts out instantly as I gagged and ran for the door. All the grandparents and uncles and such all suffered much longer before succumbing. Open windows and industrial cleaner didn’t help much.

I gag just thinking about it.

So for goodness sake, let’s be careful out there. Count your eggs, and be sure you get them all.

2

I thought the warning was to NEVER count your eggs before they’re… ahhh nevermind. :slight_smile:

3

Okay, stupid question:

Why in the world would you open an 8 month old hard boiled egg anyway? Good God people, I wouldn’t even crack open a 3 week old egg in my fridge…it’s out, done and gone.

Silly Rabbit, Tricks are for kids, er wait…

Ding Dong, 8 month old eggs usually mean something that is very smelly, stinky and possibly life threatening or at least a wake up call at the least.

4

Techchick:

I was 9 Years old. Give me a break! I didn’t know! Don’t you think my family has given me enough grief over this on every subsequent Easter for the last 22 years?

Haven’t I suffered enough without you rubbing it in your heartless… something or other.

5

Ok…thanks. I just exhaled the coal of my cig through my nose. Thanks alot.

Your OP did remind me of something regarding Easter eggs, though.

When I was little, hunting eggs on Easter morning was huge, huge FUN. It was just my sister and me, but God, we really looked forward to this stuff. Our Easter Bunny hid our eggs outside, though (a tradition I have continued with my own kids) and we always had to lock our dog up or he’d find the eggs first. That would have spoiled the whole day, so we put him in the upper yard til we found the eggs, then let him out.

One year, we didn’t find all of them. We were missing just one. We searched for hours, and never COULD find that lousy egg. Finally, we both got frustrated, let Victor out of his yard, and went inside to bite the heads off our chocolate rabbits and pop malted milk eggs all day in a gluttenous frenzy.

Ok. Spring sprints past, and summer, then fall…and we’re up to about Thanksgiving. My uncle is out in the backyard doing some bulb planting or something, and suddenly hollers like somebody has hit him with a pickaxe.

Victor, our dog, had found that horrible egg. He brought it up to my uncle, wagging his tail as hard as he could, and just as my uncle was bending down to pat some dirt down, he chomped down on it. I thought my uncle was going to have a coronary. It’s a miracle our nosy neighbors didn’t call the cops as he was yelling so many cuss-words (and he never cussed) at our idiot dog. He was practically crying.

So were we, from laughter, as we watched safely from inside the house.

My uncle was heaving, the dog was complacently chewing up the egg and generally looking puzzled as to why Uncle Harry was having such a hissy fit. He ate it, shell and all, not even pausing. My mother was flipping out, thinking he’d get sick or even die from it, but he was fine.

That dog stunk like a paper mill til my uncle could find something (I can’t remember what; something the vet suggested) to clean him up. He didn’t do it right away, either. He waited for the stench to die down.

We didn’t go near either of them for about a week. I’m just glad it DIDN’T happen in the house.

6

Scylla,

Nine? Did you say as much in the OP??? I think not! :wink:

Anyhow, my best friend and I found an Easter Egg when we were about the same age, seriously it was an old sucker, not that long but it was pretty old. We didn’t dare try to break the sucker open. Maybe we were 9 and 11 (she is a year and 4 months younger than me.)

< snort >

7

In China & SF you can get thousand year old eggs…Yep.

8

When my grandmother moved out of her un-airconditioned house she was removing planters from the walls and found an egg that we had lost years before.
You could smell it on hot days, but not bad enough to find it.
My cousin does the big family egg hunts now and she usually draws a map.

BTW, I started an egg count thread. For those of us who can proudly say all were found, or for those of us who need to say that in a while they too will have a wonderful smelly egg story if said egg is not located.

9

Long ago I worked in the Biology Dept. at a university. My office was in the lab section. My boss (not someone I remember fondly) decided to clean out all the drawers and cabinets–and found an ancient ostrich egg.

Foolishly, I’d assumed the Rocket Scientist would have blown the insides from the egg a decade or so earlier. Nope. And ostrich eggs are BIG; there’s a lot to rot. And then he dropped it.

I can’t describe the stench; it rolled across the room, out into the hallway, down the stairs like an invisible, evil cloud. You could trace it’s path by the gagging, retching and chorus of “shit, what IS that?!”

Predictably, the Rocket Scientist (actually he was a geneticist) blew up at me because I was closest. Only the fact that I was head-down retching in a trash can saved his life. It’s possible to have homicidal thoughts while dry heaving but acting on 'em is tough. Of course I got to clean up the mess. Fortunately a sympathetic soul in a nearby lab loaned me a face mask.

The place still reeked for weeks and I sincerely hope that miserable SOB goes to a specific hell littered with rotten eggs.

Veb

10

No, no, it’s don’t count your chickens. A hard-boiled egg will not develop into a chicken, no matter how long you wait[sup]1[/sup]. Trust me on this one.

[sup]1[/sup][sub]Nor will a veal chop turn into a ribeye. Trust me on this one, too.[/sub]

11

Scylla, you must have never been exposed to the culinary treat, baloot. It is a fertile duck egg, allowed to mature about two weeks before removal from the nest. The egg is then aged in some manner for a time period. People bring the baloot into bars in the Phillipines and the bidding begins, the baloot goe to the “lucky” highest bidder.

The bidder cracks open the baloot and exposes a long since deceased duck embryo. The high bidder then feasts on their lucky acquisition.

I never had the guts to try one, they smell like a dozen dead vultures floating in a cesspool which is next to a festering gut pile and manure heap.

12

my mum’s side is russian, that means lots and lots of beautifully decorated eggs. some people are smart enough to blow out the shells before decorating them as special gifts. some people, for some unknown reason decorate raw eggs.

one year at pascha a decorated egg from 1970 was accidentally broken… in 1987… it was one of the raw ones. no one ate dinner that day.

13

I bet stuff like this is exactly why my parents hid jellybeans instead of eggs.

14

I expected this would be about the chocolate-covered plastic eggs (Milo Minderbinder lives!), but I’m hardly disappointed.

15

Rocking Chair said, while discussing Russian eggs:

some people are smart enough to blow out the shells before decorating them as special gifts. some people, for some unknown reason decorate raw eggs.
I took a class in making these once, and they told us we had two choices. We could blow out the eggs (which is a major pain) and coat the egg with acrylic floor polish for strength, or we could leave the egg raw. The innards would evaporate through the shell, leaving a residue on the inside which would strengthen the egg. After several years, we would be able to tell be shaking that the insides were dried, and we could then add acrylic if we wanted.

Then Rocking Chair said:

one year at pascha a decorated egg from 1970 was accidentally broken… in 1987… it was one of the raw ones. no one ate dinner that day.
This casts serious doubts on the accuracy of my class instructions! Now I’m worried…

16

I was once hired to clean up a condo that had been furnished but unoccupied for six months or so. There were eggs in the fridge, crisp and hollow like Punkyova described. However, maybe the egg in Rocking Chair’s anecdote was covered too thickly, or in a paint that didn’t allow the shell to “breathe”.

17

Our german shepeerd was my greatest ally in the egg hunts. A regular egg pointer.

18

Years ago, when we still did easter egg hunts at my grandparents’ house (father’s parents), my father put an easter egg down one of the telephone pole shafts . . . the ones that go diagonally into the ground. Just rolled it down.

It occurred to him later when one was missing that it might not be possible for a child to retrieve it.

It later became apparent that neither child nor adult could retrieve the egg. It was lost to the sands of time.

I still wonder what happened to that egg.

19

hhhmmm, i think i spotted the problem.

i didn’t know the eggs were supposed to breathe, and y’all didn’t know there wasn’t any paint involved.

the way the 1970 egg (and any egg i have ever see decorated russian style) was decorated was with beeswax and egg dyes. no paint involved. you light a pure beeswax candle and with a stylis thing you scrape a bit of wax hold it over the flame until it melts then draw on the egg with it. the first layer of wax covers anything you want to have white. then you dip the egg in the yellow dye, and let it dry. then using wax again you cover anything you want to keep yellow, then dip it in to the orange dye. you continue up the colour scale until you are done your design.

when the egg is dry you hold it closeish to the flame to melt all the wax that is hiding your design, you melt a bit and wipe, melt and wipe. until all the wax is gone from the egg. of course this leaves a thin layer of wax on the egg that gives it a nice shine. this may be where the breathing problem comes in at.

20

Rocking Chair, I am impressed. Have you yourself done this?