I fell off the Egg Report because there was a heatwave, and then in the middle of that heatwave, an election, and then after the election but before the next bout of heat, a tornado swept through my Mental Palace, knocking all of my cerebral egg cartons off their shelves (they were poorly constructed to begin with) and resulting in a flood of broken yolks. Steady streams of orange goo were leaking out of the windows (eyes) and the decades-old pipes (nose) burst from the pressure, and, of course, at the same time, the one-woman sanitation team tasked with tending to the general groundskeeping at my Mental Palace decided to go on strike in solidarity with workers in Philadelphia — which would’ve been an admirable move if not for the obvious differences in Mental Palace caretaking and municipal sanitation work — so there wasn’t much movement on clean-up front until the worker had a good look around at the mess, went to the Queen, and said: look, get your shit together!!11!!! It took a while at the negotiating table, but after several hard conversations and three days without a proper toilet in her Mental Palace, the Queen agreed to a deal, and they got to tidying — sweeping the broken shells into dustpans and scrubbing dried whites off the floorboards.
And by that I mean: basically, there was just a lot going on and I stopped caring about how my eggs turned out. Sometimes conditions are just not suited for eggs, like when it’s too hot. Or when a tornado sweeps through your Mental Palace.
I did take some photos of my eggs, but now I’m suffering a sort of Great Egg Spill Amnesia, and I don’t really remember any mental commentary that arose as I made or ate them. C’est la vie!
JUNE 25: 7/10 ???
I had to look at the timestamp on the photo to remember this meal was consumed on June 25, 2025 — the day after Zohran Mamdani won the primary! It was around 96 degrees outside, and according to my thermostat, 93 degrees in my apartment. I was also incredibly hungover.
The circumstances under which I consumed this meal were not ideal, which is sad because these were probably the only good jammy eggs I made over the past two weeks. I put a little hot sauce on them, which was stupid because it was 93 degrees in my apartment. The eggs themselves were probably an 8/10, but the overall experience I’ll give a 7/10, on account of being sweaty.
JUNE 27 (eye of the tornado): 8/10
I have to once again thank modern technology for placing this photo at a moment in time. My phone says this was taken on the afternoon of June 27, shortly before the tornado. I would say the storm was precariously on the horizon at this point. Like, if someone had looked at the sky above my Mental Palace, they’d have been like: “Wait, is it supposed to rain today?” and the optimist with them would say: “Nah, it’s just a little overcast,” and the realist among them would look at the radar, see a great red mass migrating toward the gates, and instruct everyone to grab an umbrella! (Losing grip on the whole Mental Palace conceit at this point, but walk with me….)
You can’t really tell from this photo, but I’m still struggling to get soft yolks. The eggs I purchase are on the small side, so I boil them for six minutes and set them in an ice bath for 2 minutes and 30 seconds (roughly). I can never get both of them to develop the same consistency inside. Because peeling takes me at least a minute, one of them always ends up sitting longer in the ice bath. And now that I think about it, I don’t really know the point of the ice bath, because to me it just seems like you’re giving the yolks a few extra minutes to steam in the pressure of the shell. So maybe this week I’ll try boiling for 5 minutes and ice bathing for 3 minutes.
JULY 1 ??????
There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in :)))))) Okay, sure.
By this point, the one-woman sanitation department had returned to work, and my Mental Palace was starting to look like a palace again — in that the lights were back on, the toilets flushed, and some of the dried egg had been successfully scraped from the carpets.
This experience taught me the importance of bathing the eggs in warm water before boiling. I did not do that on July 1, so one of the eggs burst as soon as I set it in the pot. The white immediately billowed out of the egg in a way I’d never seen; it bubbled up almost like ceiling insulation and left this foamy cast over the top of the water.
I freaked out that I wouldn’t be able to eat this egg, but my roommate/Egg Report editor assured me everything was totally fine and that you can still eat an egg that cracks as it’s cooking.
I didn’t take a picture of how they turned out, but he was right. Sometimes your eggs and your Mental Palace end up back in order. And the tornado turned out to be like, a small gust in the grand scheme.
JULY 4: BONUS EGG 6/10
This is an egg pastry of sorts from a Georgian (?) vendor at Brighton Beach. It’s filled with scallions and maybe cheese? Not sure. I ate half of it with a warm beer on a beach at 12:45 p.m. And yeah, I did not feel so good after!! I don’t blame the egg pastry, but myself for choosing to eat an egg coated in fried dough after consuming a warm beer and also half a hot dog on an 86-degree day.
MORE EGGS IN LITERATURE
I am reading John Williams’ Stoner, which some say is the “Great Underappreciated American Novel,” and which others (me) say is “What Would Happen If You Put Every MJ Lenderman Lyric In A Blender And Somehow Made It Spit Out An Early 20th Century Character Beloved Seemingly Only By Literature Academics And Few Others.” Mr. Stoner is, pure and simple, kind of a loser. (There is that lyric from that MJ Lenderman/This is Lorelei song that’s like “But a loser never wins and I’m a loser, always been!” Soooo Mr. Stoner.) He’s a hardworking farm-boy turned middling university instructor with a wife who won’t fuck him. And that’s only what I’ve learned by page 80! More failures and painful mediocrity are to follow; the book starts after he’s already dead, with a pretty gruesome passage about how little his life meant. I am not … not enjoying it.
I can’t tell if in this passage, Masters is trying to imply that Finch himself is like the hard-boiled egg or that the University as an institution is like a hard-boiled egg — maybe both. Maybe literature! Probably life! You think there’s a lot going on inside something just because it’s invisible and intangible, but once you actually get to examine its core or live out its consequences, you’re like… Oh. It’s just that. Mr. Stoner’s whole life, at least as far as I’ve made it, is defined by a series of “Oh, it’s just that”s. And yet his Mental Palace seems extremely fortified despite this. He probably sees storms coming and is like “oh, it’s just that” and grabs an umbrella and a book! I am going to continue reading with an open mind.
okay, that’s all! bye! xxoxoxoxooxoxox