Eggsactly what were you thinking I would write about?

I'm not posting political solutions today. Mainly it's because I can't be bothered. Also, it's because I heard your sigh of relief. Don't think I didn't, and that I don't know you would have just clicked away had you seen something political. Still, I may, unexpectedly, solve the country's problems with little or no warning. I'm just saying...

A six month experiment I was running culminated today in a 67% success rate. That's pretty good for what I was doing. Six months ago I took 6 large eggs, covered them with a thin film of petroleum jelly, stored them large-end-up in their egg crate package, and put them in our basement food storage room to sit. Today, I horrified the children by getting them out to see how many were good and could be used for breakfast. Had I been thinking, I would have taken pictures. I'm not usually thinking in the morning, however.

The eggs looked pretty nasty. The petroleum jelly had molded a bit in places, and some of it had turned hard and yellow on two of the eggs. When I put the eggs in a bowl of water to see which ones were still good, the two with hard yellow jelly both floated and were subsequently tossed. The other four sank like troopers and were subsequently scrambled. On the good eggs, the whites were pretty soupy and the yolks were very flat, as one would expect from old eggs; but even though I opened them outside (just in case!), they smelled fine. Also, I washed the eggs with soap to get rid of the slimy petroleum jelly.

If we're ever in a situation where we can't get hold of fresh eggs, I will have some in my food storage for special occasions. Powdered eggs are great for baking, but not as fun to eat as you would a fresh scrambled or fried egg. Yech. And, lo and behold, Smith's is selling eggs today for 99 cents a dozen. I see a bunch of stored eggs in my near future.

Next experiment: preserving cheese with paraffin and cheesecloth. I'll let you know how that goes.