{"id":29800,"date":"2009-02-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-12T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/WP-IMPORT\/2009\/02\/12\/egg-salad\/"},"modified":"2009-02-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-12T02:00:00","slug":"egg-salad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/egg-salad\/","title":{"rendered":"Egg Salad"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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(egg salad)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

One thing I have found is that a couple work-around-the-clock sessions really takes it out of me these days. Proposal season means planning endlessly, and writing so hard that the fingers bleed.
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The fatigue that ensues means I am probably not ready for the post-attack phase of my survival plan.
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I should devise a plan for that, being a Joint Staff-trained officer, but I am too tired.
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I remember being able to work on a nuclear target list for thirty hours at a stretch, back at the dawn of the computer age, under the washed out florescent lights of the USS\u00a0Forrestal<\/em>, and be ready to party like crazy when we got done with the drill. Atomic Holocaust to Happy Hour, no problem.
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Now I discover that with the passing of decades I am just the other end of the spectrum from the earnest planner I was- a soft target.
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I fell asleep in my chair last night, rousing around two as the big-screen announced that my on-demand services had terminated. I went to bed about two, hearing the wind rise and scrub along the flank of Big Pink.
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I got back down in order to sleep until almost seven. The clock radio mixed Abe Lincoln and Charles Darwin and the issuance of new pennies all together in a stream; I know someone was born, someone had a great idea, and I don\u2019t have enough of them. All the ideas were scrambled like morning eggs.
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Now I am groggy and out of sorts- not at all the sturdy Program Manager you want to see over the breakfast bagel at the office.\u00a0
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On the upside, there was an epiphany late yesterday, and I cradled it mentally, waiting to pounce on the next opportunity. A pal down in Key West sent me some pictures of things more obscene than the Bacon Torpedo I cooked last week. In fact, one of them was a picture of a Torpedo done in a wrap of dinner pastires- a Torpedo Wellington, if you will.
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I was so shaken that I went to my rack of cookbooks to see if I could counteract the mental cholesterol that the image caused. I picked up Kenny Shopsin\u2019s \u201cEat Me,\u201d which I have been meaning to explore.
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Kenny is the quirky king of diner food up in New York City, and famously observed that he made a decent living out of selling a variety of flavored mayonnaise on bread. His style of comfort cooking is much the rage these days, since comfort now seems in jeopardy.
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That was one thing I wanted to check. I have vegetarian friends who eat that way for health and sanity reasons. When I am with them there are days at a time when things like bacon and a nice marbled steak are addressed only with a Cross and a fresh bulb of garlic to ward them off.
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Egg Salad is no common ground for the more hysterical Vegans, since that too is murder of a sort, but I have little truck with the ideologues of either end of the spectrum. One of the great disappointments of my life is that the egg salad I make often turns out like a yellow puree, a paste rather than a textured, nuanced meal on a fresh chunk of baguette with Bibb lettuce, a zesty pickle or two, and fresh ground pepper and sea-salt.
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I read about cooking hard-cooked eggs in a manner that permits the easy removal of the shell. Simple, really, and not dramatically different from the admonitions contained in the venerable Joy of Cooking.
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Kenny set me straight. Tiny bubbles around the white or brown orbs, then remove from heat and let stand for nine minutes. Then plunge under cold water.
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I can do the eggs, though it took a few dozen to master the technique and I always have one or two in the fridge to slice into a garden salad, or a singleton deviled egg as a snack, or tuck into the lunch sack to augment a sandwich. Lunch costs ten bucks, if you buy it from people in Kenny’s line of work near the office.<\/p>\n

Of course, I am supposed to be spending, these days, right? No way. That was $200 a month in walking-around money. Not responsible in these times, even if all the bus-boys and short order cooks are laid off.<\/p>\n

Any day you don\u2019t learn something you start to die a little, and I got my life-lesson with this. Separate the cooked yolks from the white egg flesh. Take your mayonnaise- Kenny says Hellman\u2019s would do, but imagine a garlic mayo or fresh basil- and mix it with the firm yellow yolks until you have a sauce of just the right consistency.
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Then, and only then, lightly fold in the egg whites in a manner that retains their texture and don\u2019t stir so damned hard.
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Did you ever consider placing a layer of decent potato ships on top just as you prepared the sandwich on really cool bread? A burst of salty crunch to go with the comfortable taste of a prosperous past?
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Revelations are hard to come by these days, at least good ones. Bon appetite.
\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com <\/p>\n

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\u00a0 (egg salad) One thing I have found is that a couple work-around-the-clock sessions really takes it out of me these days. Proposal season means planning endlessly, and writing so hard that the fingers bleed. \u00a0 The fatigue that ensues means I am probably not ready for the post-attack phase of my survival plan. \u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}