Quiz About Eggs And Additional Discussion

• Firstly you can join in the quiz and take the poll.
• Then there is a bit of information about bad eggs.
• After that, when you have read my poem about making soldiers out of strips of bread, and dunking them in runny boiled egg, you might be reminded of your childhood.

But I remember that when I was young, every now and then we would find a bad egg.

I was taught that you should break eggs into a cup separately when cooking, to avoid the nasty situation of having the good eggs tainted by the final bad egg and then having to throw the whole lot away.

Being by temperament a bit of a risk taker, I discovered later through my own experience that this was wise advice.

I hadn't actually seen a bad egg for years, until after I started writing this webpage

Whilst thinking about bad eggs I recalled another piece of advice I received, that if an egg floats when you boil it, this could mean it's bad.

I did have a floating egg recently so I quarantined it - I still opened it, but kept it away from the toast, sniffing and inspecting it carefully with each tap, then tasting it suspiciously.........Perfect!

So you can't always go by whether or not an egg floats.

But a few days ago, lo and behold, I cracked my boiled breakfast egg, and took a mouthful without looking. It tasted disgusting but I had swallowed it before realization dawned on me that it must be bad. I inspected it, and sure enough, on the inside of the egg, there was a greeny blotchy area. I rushed for my camera and in the shot below, you can clearly see the discoloration at the bottom of the egg.

Knowing that elderly people can get seriously ill, or even die from salmonella in eggs, I was freaking out, and couldn't decide whether to make myself sick. I have a pretty strong constitution, from years of eating slightly out of date food, so I decided against that, but quickly swallowed two little bio drinks, so that at least I would have some good bacteria inside me to fight the baddies.

I lived to tell the tale, and didn't have even the slightest illness.

Follow this link to find out how to tell whether your expired eggs are good enough to eat.

EGGS AND SOLDIERS

Eggs and Soldiers,

Eggs and Soldiers,

Munchy-munch they go.

Tap-tap-tap

And crack-crack-crack

To open eggy neatly.

Spread your bread

And sprinkle salt

Then eat your food politely.

Little fellow

Dipped in yellow,

Dunky-dunk I go.

Now his head is bitten off,

His jacket coated gold

And crystal white his salty legs -

Don't let your egg get cold!

© Diana Grant

Speaking of eggs, have you noticed that you hardly ever find any bad eggs these days? I remember being taught in my youth that you should always break eggs into separate conainers, to avoid contaminating all your good eggs with one rotten egg. And yet I haven't come across a bad egg for years - I suppose that is because of better quality control before distribution.

And boy do bad eggs stink - sulphurated hydrogen is a smell which clings to your mind forever. But, as I said, I haven't found one for years - I always take a risk and break all the eggs over one container, pouring them all in together.

This recent absence of bad eggs must be something to do with the modern methods of feeding and farming chickens, or the speed with which eggs travel from the farm to reach our breakfast table.

However, having said that, my experience is that eggs do actually last a whole lot longer than their "sell-by date". I used to travel by liner on a two-week journey to visit my parents who lived abroad, and even on the return journey, all the eggs fed to passengers were British, which infers that they must have lasted somewhat more than four weeks.

Nonetheless, imagine my disgust, then, when I went into my shed the other day and smelt that smell. Ugh! I thought there must be a dead rat in there. But I traced it to a tied up plastic bag – and what was in that bag? I opened it gingerly to discover.....what?

Have you guessed? Yes, eggshells which I had saved all over Winter, to put on the garden in Spring. The smell almost bowled me over.

Did you know that eggshells leach a chemical, calcium, which is nourishing to plants?

And, furthermore, eggshells are reputed to deter slugs, as slugs don’t like sharp things like sand and broken eggshells, which scratch their delicate little bodies. Maybe it works, but I can’t say I have noticed an appreciable difference when I sprinkled egg shells in my garden.

Breathe deeply -

I bet the smell will be clinging to your imagination for a few minutes after you have completed this!