It's So Hard To Be Good

Lately I've been trying really hard not to waste food, not to eat so much junk food, and not to eat out so often. So far, I've been pretty pleased with myself. I've been going to the grocery store often enough that I don't have to subsist off crackers and cereal, and I've been saving money by not eating out as often and also by coming up with creative ways to make sure I use all of the groceries I buy.

For instance: Awhile back I had to buy eggs for something, and I ended up with 4 eggs just sitting in my refrigerator for weeks on end. Now that I'm trying to be more conscientious about food and groceries, I was determined to put them to good use before they went bad. I had already resigned myself to an unorthodox meal of scrambled eggs some disappointing Tuesday evening, so I felt like a genius when I came up with the idea of hard-boiling them and putting them on a salad instead.

So it was that today, I hard-boiled eggs for the first time. Since I don't work on Fridays this summer, the extent of my plans for the day were to sleep in, boil some eggs, and run 3 miles. I was a little apprehensive about the eggs because technically they're a week past their official expiration date, but I was emboldened by the results of a recent experiment with slightly expired yogurt. At any rate, I googled "how to boil eggs" and followed the instructions faithfully. While they cooked, I prepared the rest of my salad (which was sexy as hell, I wish I'd taken pictures), and then I very carefully selected a test egg to peel.

I have to pause here for a tangent. When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was Charlotte's Web. There's a scene in Charlotte's Web where Templeton, the sketchy rat, takes one of the unhatched goose eggs down into his lair, because he's weird, and also possibly wanted to do sexual things with it. Anyway, all the farm animals forget about Templeton and the egg for a really long time until one day some kind of barnyard mayhem goes down and the egg - now WAY past its expiration date - gets broken and stinks up the place. As a child, I knew it must smell truly awful if even barnyard animals were offended by it, thus for as long as I can remember I've been extremely wary of potentially rotten eggs.

With all of this in mind, I delicately peeled and cut up my egg, fully prepared at any moment for it to explode like a foul grenade and totally ruin my day. Luckily it looked (and smelled) just like any other hard-boiled egg, so I went ahead and put it on my salad and ate it, and it was delicious, and all was right with the world.

A few hours later, it was time to head out and run. I was a little hungry, salad notwithstanding, but I decided to just wait until I got back to eat anything. After schlepping for 3 miles in the 80-degree weather, I came back and drank 8 gallons of water and had an apple to hold me over until I cooked dinner. As I sat on the couch cooling off, however, something not good started to happen. I had a confusing feeling that I might pass out or vomit or die, or all three at once. And then suddenly, with only just enough warning to get myself to the appropriate location, I violently ejected my salad (along with my carefully-prepared egg) back out the way it came.

I tell you all this not to disgust you (hope you weren't eating anything, by the way), but to ask you this question... Does this mean that I should throw out the rest of those eggs, just in case?