The Eggs and I

"Do you mind if I blow the eggs?" I asked The Spouse yesterday. We were in the kitchen, and he was making the Traditional Weekend Pancakes From Scratch for the children.

When he finished spluttering in his coffee, he said, one eyebrow raised, "Why, of course not. It makes the eggs so happy."

grumblegrumblegrumble

I had this brainstorm because the girls wanted to decorate Easter eggs, but, remembering vividly my own childhood, I was loathe to boil up dozens of eggs that we would then either

1. have to eat at every meal for the next week

or (and this was always worse)

2. discover, mummified but redolent of sulfur nonetheless, months after Easter.

I had never blown eggs before, but it wasn't that hard. I took a corn-on-the-cob holder, which has thin spikes, and used that to poke a hole in each end, making one slightly larger than the other. Then I just blew hard on the smaller hole while the contents of the egg squirted out into a bowl.

The girls put the wrappers on the eggs. I put them in a bowl, and then poured a kettle of boiling water over them.

The wrappers magically shrank right onto the egg shells. Et voilà.

The happiest eggs in town.