Eddie’s food gripes: eating a boiled egg in public

Adeline (nickname: Eddie) loves food, a lot and often, both at home and elsewhere. Usually, that goes well, but sometimes it doesn’t. In the series Eddie’s food gripes you can read about the latter. This time: people who eat a boiled egg in public (and actually a whole lot of other egg-related things).

My relationship with eggs is complicated, or so I would call it if I had to put it on Facebook. I love them and at the same time I find them disgusting. You could say that this problem becomes just a little more pronounced around Easter than usual.

I come from a family where Easter is mostly about hearing about the suffering of Jesus. So don’t think we ever painted or hunted for an egg. The result: the only eggs I eat at Easter are chocolate ones. You can also tell by looking at me that I prefer eating them to painting them. Nothing to be ashamed of, of course.

A little gagging

The funny thing about my difficult relationship with eggs is that I do like eating them. The requirement is that I eat them myself and don’t suddenly smell or see them being eaten unexpectedly. Eggs that you smell unexpectedly are extra disgusting, you see. That little whiff of egg suddenly comes drifting through the air. Dis-gus-ting. Old egg is another thing. Sometimes I suspect my dishwasher of absorbing the egg smell and spreading it over all the dishes. Disgusting.

I also find watching eggs being eaten a delicate matter. If someone neatly cuts it into wedges and puts it on a sandwich, you won’t hear me complain. But if I innocently glance to the side and see someone take a bite out of a whole egg, I always have to gag a little. I find that disgusting too, yes. This is specifically about a whole egg; a civilised half egg is something else entirely.

Tap, tap, tap

Then there’s the peeling, which can be pure torture. I once sat at a table in a hotel where a man next to me tapped the entire shell to pieces with his knife. And I mean the wholllllle shell. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap-a-tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. He did it with lightning-fast little taps, the man clearly did it often, and it went on forever. When he had cracked his egg, his wife started. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. For a moment I felt like applying the same technique to both their heads, but it was during the coronavirus pandemic, so I had to keep a distance of one and a half metres.

Also disgusting

Peeling your own egg is often annoying too. When a little piece of shell remains, which you then eat in an unguarded moment. I always try to remember that it contains a lot of protein. But really, the only thought that flashes through my mind is: a chicken pooped this out. And that brings us full circle, because then that story about an egg being the chicken’s fertilisation suddenly pops into my head, and that too is terribly disgusting.

Well, happy Easter, I suppose.

Also read:

• Eddie’s food gripes: that layer of water at the bottom of the fridge
• Eddie’s food gripes: restaurant turn-offs (that I’m almost starting to crave now)
• Eddie’s food gripes: the supermarket spot check