Wednesday, April 5, 2017

#AtoZChallenge 2017 E for Egg

M continues to surprise me. I was expecting E for elephant as that is what she always says. I think she suspects Amma's daily questioning her with just one letter has some sinister purpose. She said e for egg.

I come from a family of vegetarians and eggs were also a strict no-no at home. But as a kid, and in my teens, I have tasted eggs in different forms outside of our home. These were rare occurrences though but I did like the taste.

When I went to the US on a deployment from my company, I was pretty excited. It was the first time I was visiting a foreign country. I was going to be staying on my own, in an apartment, with my own kitchen.Strictly speaking I was not on my own, I was moving into an apartment one of my colleagues had been staying alone in. I was looking forward to becoming a queen in culinary art. The fact that I had never had to cook on my own before, seemed quite trivial. My mom had taught me quite a bit and so my cooking skills were quite beyond boiling water and making instant noodles.

With eggs though I had zero experience. Zero experience with microwave too. Here was a machine that had transformed lives with its capabilities and it could do wonders for me.

It was day two after i set my foot on American soil.My flatmate was sleeping. In fact, it being a Sunday, except for the jet lagged me , the whole city was sleeping. I decided to make breakfast for myself and wanted to boil an egg.

My dumb head told me - You had boiled carrots the day before on the microwave and it could boil your egg too! I happily placed my egg inside, set the timer and waited - plate , cutlery , salt , pepper all awaiting the neat oval boiled end result. 

Bang! My roommate was jolted out of a peaceful slumber in the wee hours of a weekend morning.(It was still dark if I remember correctly) 

The egg burst and you can imagine what a mess it would have caused. The fragments were all over the insides of the oven - gooey, sticky, smelly! The cleaning that I had to do, the smell, the wrath of the poor girl who had to wake up before the best thing happened in an early morning dream...Phew!!! 

Now I don't take eggs except for the unavoidable piece of cake at a birthday party. Hence me and my microwave oven are safe :D

25 comments:

  1. HeHe, I think we have all done something similar in the kitchen. As a student told me at school, if you boil eggs and forget about the, they blow up. So you don't need a microwave. lol
    Letter E, here I come.
    Hey, It's Ann visiting from A to Z So Much to Choose From and
    Science Ladybug

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh yes, kitchen chronicles can make a whole library by themselves :)

      Delete
  2. Oh dear, what a mess. And the smell. Haha....But you can laugh in hindsight.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh oh oh! I did this very recently! I was reheating boiled eggs in my micro. They weren't even in their jackets. One of them exploded inside the micro. And well... you know what it's like! But the other one exploded right in my hand! I was holding it in my left palm, to cut into half with a knife in my right hand. The moment the knife touched that egg, it exploded. I got bits of egg in my hair, on my face (thankfully, I wear glasses), on the kitchen slab, even on the kitchen ceiling!
    Happy AtoZing!
    Chicky @ www.mysteriouskaddu.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. LOL :D I have done this too and have written a 55 fiction on it. Boiling eggs and Microwaves dont see eye to eye :D

    ReplyDelete
  5. What a well told memory!
    There are ways to boil an egg in the microwave (http://amzn.to/2ndOxBn) but that isn't one of them. I can imagine the mess! Yikes. Well, trial and error is the scientific way to learn, right?
    operationawesome6.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yikes! Must have been a terrible ordeal. It resulted in a very hilarious post though :)
    ~Shweta from
    My Random Ramblings

    ReplyDelete
  7. woah!! That was quite an experience you had :D I too come from a vegetarian family where even egg is a strict NO at home. But now that I am staying in PG, i cook egg sometimes. Thankfully I don't have an oven or maybe I would have experimented the same, as I have never used oven before!

    Exams

    ReplyDelete
  8. Uh oh! That was a close encounter! I can totally imagine the unending cleaning you had to do. Wondering, though, about the expression on your friends face when she saw the disaster .

    I could relate to the " microwave and it's marvels" novelty of your experience :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. i can imagine your predicament at that moment, though now it is very fun read. Loved your style of narration.
    Best wishes
    Moon
    https://aslifehappens60.wordpress.com

    ReplyDelete
  10. I'm a pure vegetarian too..and the only time I had to eat eggs was during my pregnancy because I was hopelessly underweight. But just one day into the experiment and I couldn't tolerate the smell. So that was the end! I can't imagine the smell you must have had to bear when the egg burst! yikes!

    Shubhangi @ The Little Princess

    ReplyDelete
  11. What a hilarious story! I totally sympathize. I spent the last year trying to prefect the technique for perfectly cooking hard boiled eggs -- and after 12 months I finally have it. Good luck with A to Z.

    ReplyDelete
  12. That was a funny story! Enjoyed it and love the idea of getting your daughter to pick your word of the day. Happy AtoZ
    Celebrating 'Women & their work' all April: E for An Education for all

    ReplyDelete
  13. Great story!
    With high cholesterol levels running in the family I don't eat many eggs, and I do prefer them in a cake anyway!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Oh that was so funny! Love your writing. Someone I know had the microwave door blow off while he was trying to cook several eggs at once.

    Emily | My Life In Ecuador

    ReplyDelete
  15. Ha ha ha I laughed so hard picturing that exploding egg! Thank Goodness nothing happened to the microwave ;)

    ReplyDelete
  16. I thought vegetarians ate eggs. Oh well...your story made me smile. The things I take for granted can be eggsplosive for another. Hee-Hee! You got a crash course in Egg Cooking 101 and you'll not soon forget the experience that eggs + microwave = bomb! Thanks for visiting my Art Sketching Through the Alphabet with the letter "E" (elephant, eagle, elk)! Have an electric day a2zing!

    ReplyDelete
  17. I rarely use the microwave. Once in awhile I heat up something liquid. The picture you paint of the result of boiling an egg in the microwave is sort of funny, but I imagine it was not funny when it happened.

    Finding Eliza

    ReplyDelete
  18. Lol
    What an eggstordinary eggsperience
    I would have tried this too if in case my mom didn't warn me before hand about not boiling eggs in oven :)
    Can imagine ur plight

    ReplyDelete
  19. Haha. I tried to warm a boiled egg once in the microwave. It was a disator! :D

    ReplyDelete
  20. Hehe. That must have been quite a shock for you and your roommate. Nothing is more garaunteed to wake up somebody than the bang from an electrical appliance. :)

    ReplyDelete