Covid Time

You would think Covid Time would go slowly, wouldn’t you? Doesn’t it seem like it would, days dragging on, “nothing to do?” It doesn’t. It isn’t. My morning went like this: I woke up at 8:00 am, which is typical for me. I wrote in my journal, also typical. I skipped meditation. Skipping meditation is routine and probably one of the reasons I have to take blood pressure medicine. Time passed. My husband woke up at 9:00, which is typical for him. We made breakfast, each of us making our own eggs, which is NOT typical for us. He felt like fried; I wanted soft boiled, so we branched out, navigating our small kitchen together. We ate breakfast. Now it’s 12:00, as in NOON. How did it go from 8:00 am to noon in more than an hour, I ask you? Even two would be believable…but four hours since I got up? Really? Four hours?

Even more confounding is that “three minute eggs,” are supposed to only take, um, three minutes. To be fair to myself, that is after the water boils, and that does take a while. Still, a four hour morning? Really?

I want to take a brief aside, by the way, to explore the notion of “three minute eggs.” THAT is definitely a mis-naming. Aside from the obvious time already mentioned to boil water, if you cook a three minute egg just for three minutes, it will NOT actually be cooked. I know, because I’ve tried it. That attempt was disgusting. I’m not that dumb, so next time I bumped it up to four minutes, just to see if that would be better. Um…not quite, so now when I cook my three minute eggs, I have to make sure I have plenty of time to boil the water and the “three minute eggs,” because they actually take 5 minutes (or better yet, 4:30) to get them perfect, if you like them still runny. You should like them runny, or else you might as well make them “hard boiled,” because then the yokes and the eggs get, um, hard boiled. (According to Martha Stewart a perfect hard boiled egg takes 9 minutes, so you might as well spend a few extra minutes in the kitchen to make your eggs hard boiled). I assume you would want run-less yoke since you don’t, in fact, like them runny. I know that because you said so, or at least implied it by not wanting your eggs runny. I dunno; I give up.

You might not know what a “three minute egg” is. (That is what they call it, or at least they used to). Maybe you’ve never heard of it. Or had it. If that’s true, I feel a little sad for you, because, like the people who have never had Lawry’s salt and mayonnaise on their turkey sandwiches the day after Thanksgiving, you, my friend, are missing out. Try it. They only take three (actually 5) minutes to make. I know that’s how long they take because, as I already told you, I’ve experimented to the point of perfection. “Serious Eats” webiste says six minutes for a soft boiled egg. They’re wrong; I looked at their picture. It doesn’t even look like a soft boiled egg; it looks like a badly cooked hard boiled egg. Whateves. I do, however, appreciate “Serious Eats” detail of the slotted spoon, because that is important so you don’t break the egg when you send it to its watery 5 minute grave. I have to do the kitchen timer thing, for sure, because as we’ve established at some point, my sense of time and timing are horrible. Fortunately, between the kitchen timer and the other parts, it can, indeed turn out to be perfect. Timer set: Eggs in. Toast in the toaster but not pushed down until timer has 3:00 minutes left, if you like your toast really hot, which I do. That allows a full minute to butter the toast, set the table, do your coffee and things (all of that which I can forget and then get frustrated with my self if my perfect eggs have to wait for my coffee, etc.) I’m probably trying to do too much. Toast pops, butter it, timer goes off. Eggs out with a spoon, preferably one with holes in it so you can pull it straight across to the kitchen sink. (At least that’s how I do it; I wouldn’t dare try carrying a pot (also called a sauce pan, go figure!) of hot water across to the sink. Rinse the eggs in cold water immediately so you don’t burn your fingers (you will anyway). Voila’…a perfect soft boiled egg. And now it’s noon.