notes from the kelp

…click to listen:

…about the music

Another eggcerpt from an eggcellent duet.

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If you ever wondered about my mental state as a nature-loving worker-bee new-music composer (I’m sure you haven’t), you may find the following post to be illuminating. In a, “gee, maybe it’s better that I don’t know her in person” kinda way.

Perhaps I chose a solitude-intensive career because from early childhood onward I’ve always been adept at amusing myself. As you will now witness, this task demands very little of the world around me.

I am neither a creative, nor a good cook. I suppose I could say that I’m a creative bad cook, because in blazes of random artistic inspiration, I often throw ingredients together in bizarre combinations just because… well, because they’re sitting in the fridge or pantry, and if they taste pretty good by themselves, then surely they’re gonna be awesome together.
Um, not necessarily.
Somehow, the principles of reckless abandon that make my music popular, utterly fail me the kitchen.

The need to keep my brain functioning (or whatever one would call what it does, which is open for debate) means I fill my house with fresh, non-processed, organic-when-possible foodstuffs. I often make a decent lunch for myself in between tearing my hair out at the composing desk. Sometimes I even use the stove.

Which brings us to eggs. They are among the very few food thingys I know how to cook. As with music, I can even come up with many engaging variations on the theme. Fried. Omelet. Fried omelet. Scrambled. Frittata. Hard boiled. Freeform. Onions. Cheese. Avocado. Spinach. Salmon. Pineapple (oh-oh, random artistic inspiration trouble ahead). You name it. Almost anything goes well in an egg dish, except maybe chunky peanut butter (which, when paired with an island-grown apple, is another favorite that I can manage if the jar lid isn’t too tight).

So there I was, standing in my kitchen, making my lunch.
Step 1: melt a big pad of organic butter into the frying pan.
Step 2: crack open an egg.
No problem; I got this.

Well looky here: Siamese twins!
This doesn’t happen often. As in, virtually never. I know, because I crack open a lot of eggs; as I said, that feat is on the very short list of “things I know how to do in a kitchen (involving food)”.
I couldn’t recall ever seeing this phenomenon before. Being the investigative person I am (aka, nerd), I looked it up.

My suspicions were confirmed:

“Roughly one in every thousand eggs (about .1%) is double-yolked. Since commercially-sold eggs in the United States are sold by weight and also candled prior to packaging, any double-yolkers are discarded… and you could go an entire lifetime eating store bought eggs and never encounter one.”

Frankly, I’m hoping that I’ve only gone roughly half a lifetime so far. It would be painfully unfortunate if the dumb luck of having cracked open one of these gems signals the end of the game. Just to be on the safe side, I’m getting my will in order.

Gazing in amazement at my frying pan (which, stupefied by the mysterious effect of heat beneath food, I’m often found doing regardless of what’s in there), I grabbed my camera and snapped a picture (mental state clue #1: what kind of weirdo takes a picture of an egg?).

I’m a three-egg kinda gal, so having quickly done the math, I thought to myself, “well, this carton will last a little longer, since now I only need to crack one more egg.”
I may be weird, but I’m also pragmatic and budget-minded.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you: Egg Number Two:

Whoa! Another twin. Oh my. What are the chances of this?
100 percent, apparently.
Good thing I got my camera out.

The resulting meal tasted fine. I was not poisoned by any noxious egg-twin bacterial goo (I had briefly considered the possibility. Hunger won out). My lunch was identical to that made from normal, single eggs, just… more yellow on the plate. Much more.

The next day, being entirely unimaginative about my dining choices, I opted for eggs once again.

The first egg (#3 on our scorecard):

Wow! Twins again! My mother is an identical twin. Maybe this is genetic.

And, the next:

Aha! A normal, single egg! I broke the streak!
Still, I fetched my camera.
I also fetched my Sharpie, and began a tally on the end of the egg carton.
Because this is the way a weirdo-nerd nature-loving worker-bee new-music composer gets her thrills.
I mean, really: who knows what the next crack will bring?
Suddenly, lunchtime became very eggciting.

And so it went, for the rest of the carton, lunch after lunch over a ten-day period (I did eat salads and other moron-proof things in between egg days).

I never entered the kitchen without my camera, imagining that maybe I’d halve a pistachio and find two nuts inside. Or that upon splitting open a peach from a neighbor’s tree, 50 earwigs would cascade wildly from the now-eaten pit, their shiny, wriggly, pincer-armed black thoraxes streaming outward in all directions.

The pistachio thing has never happened.
The peach thing DID, this past summer.
And damn, I didn’t have my camera handy. I was just relieved that I happened to slice the peach open over the sink. Bye bye nasty earwigs. But seriously, EWWWW. I was lucky I didn’t happen to bite into that fruit. Oh, the horror. EwwwwwwwWW!

So, back in my kitchen, another lunchtime that week:

Egg 5:

Soon accompanied by egg 6:

Ok, someone’s messing with me. This is unbelievable.

Egg 7:

But surprise! Behold egg 8, in its monk-like solitude:

By this point, my mind is going all Stephen King on me and I’m envisioning some lone, demented egg-packer whose job is to “candle” the eggs (see link above) and toss out the twins. In a spiteful fit of renegade insubordination to a cruel supervisor, or possibly an enraged response to an unrequited crush, s/he goes rogue and crouched in a dark corner of the warehouse, quietly fills a carton with these ovo-dyads. For added effect, s/he carefully places a single-yolked egg where the buyer, now stunned by the bevy of yolks, will least expect it. The worker’s sole regret is that s/he won’t get the pleasure of seeing the astonished look on the unsuspecting consumer’s face.

Steve Buscemi stars as the disgruntled and devious egg-packer, doncha think?

Egg 9 was yet another twin, marred only by my own pitiful failure in shell cracking technique (I told you I’m incompetent in the kitchen):

And egg 10 did not disappoint:

I realize that at this point in the blog post, you’re questioning the sanity of a weirdo-nerd nature-loving worker-bee new-music composer who obtains her highest moment of joy for the day from a carton of eggs.

I also realize that at this point in the blog post, you’re questioning your own sanity for having even scrolled this far, egg photo after egg photo (and yes, since you were wondering, that’s a 10″ Circulon pan. Great for eggs, whether twins or only children).

At the same time, you’re admitting to yourself that you are nearly on the edge of your seat with suspense as to how this all turns out. So I know that you’re going to keep reading. I dare you not to keep scrolling.

Egg 11:

See? I told you you couldn’t look away. It’s like a train wreck, but with more protein.

And, drumroll, puh-leeze:
Egg 12:

Ta-DAH!
Twelve eggs. Ten of which were twins. As per the 1-in-a-thousand statistic above, it’s remarkable enough for anyone to end up with a carton like this. But I have to add, with apologies to Humphrey Bogart: of all the markets, in all the towns, in all the world, this carton arrives into mine.

And of all the egg shoppers on all of San Juan Island, I’m the one who buys it. Miraculously, I may be the only person weird and nerdy enough to have immediately grabbed my camera from the start, to document the entire damn carton’s worth of Siamese eggs.
And to add to the cosmic perfeggtion of it all:
I have a blog and can share my amazement with The World.

I think the disgruntled (or at least mischievous) egg-packer would be proud.
Through my appreciation and scribing, that quirky employee has created a personal… leggacy… from an eggspression of defiance.
I hope s/he is having a better time at work these days.
I hope s/he has found true love.
I also hope that s/he continues to fill random cartons with all the Siamese twin rejects from the warehouse,

if only to give weirdo nerds like me a reason to look forward to an eggceptional lunch.