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Well, we don’t know much, but we do know that chickens have been around for a very long time, hard-boiled eggs for less time. Where the real kitchen controversy lies is how to hard-boil an egg. Considering that chickens have been domesticated for what may be as long as four or five thousand years, you would think we’d have egg-boiling down to a science. ‘Tain’t necessarily so.
No less august an organization than the American Egg Board (www.aeb.org) gives this advice about hard-boiling (they call it hard-cooking) an egg. "Place eggs in a single layer in the saucepan. Add enough tap water to come at least 1 inch above the eggs. Cover and quickly bring just to boiling. Turn off heat. Let eggs stand, covered, in the hot water about 15 minutes for large eggs. (Adjust time up or down by about 3 minues for each size larger or smaller.) Immediately run cold water over eggs or place them in ice water until completely cooled."
Sounds easy. But Howard Hillman, in his excellent book Kitchen Science (Houghton Mifflin, 1989), disagrees with the idea of letting the eggs sit in the hot water. He believes there are too many variables (temperature of tap water to start, shape of pan, volume of water). He advocates first pricking the fat end of the eggs with a pin to prevent later cracking, then easing the cold eggs into a waiting pot of boiling water and simmering them for 12 to 15 minutes for hard-boiled eggs. If you do not have a pin or other device handy for puncturing the broad end of the eggs, let them come to room temperature before cooking. He believes his method is more reliable.
One thing both the Egg Board and Mr. Hillman agree about is that cooking an egg for too long (more than 15 minutes with either process) makes the whites tough and rubbery and often causes the lining of the yolks to turn an unappetizing gray-green color. So take it easy on those eggs.
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Once the holidays are over and we’ve made it safely to January 2, I start watching the mailbox for the arrival of seed catalogs. Even though the worst part of the winter is still ahead, the colorful catalogs from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Burpee’s, Park Seed, White Flower Farm, and others are an unfailing sign that we are moving in the right direction. We are moving toward the light.
The pictures are so enticing, the descriptions so appealing. I dance back and forth between the sensible vegetables, the traditional herbs, the fragrant and graceful flowers. After years of gardening together, my husband and I seem to have found a balance between all those elements. What we call our vegetable garden is probably about 60 percent vegetables, 30 percent flowers, 10 percent herbs, all mixed together and never the same from year to year. You can go out there in July or August with two big baskets — one for flowers, one for edibles — and fill them both.
Last summer, our ‘Wanda’ shelling peas were devoured by a woodchuck, along with our ‘Kentucky Wonder’ beans and the first planting of basil. We replanted, but it was too hot and dry for the peas and we never had more than a handful.
Just beyond the beans, though, a sturdy fence was covered with the most beautiful and intensely perfumed sweet peas we’ve ever grown. They lingered into the fall, and every time I thought I’d picked my last bouquet, I’d find a few more purple, rose, white, and lavender beauties to put into a small vase with the last calendulas and a rogue pansy that revived in October.
What will next year bring in the garden? In January, we can start to imagine our summer feasts of ripe tomatoes, rampant zucchini, crisp cucumbers. The sweet peas will be just as beautiful as last year, the zinnias as colorful as a paintbox, the ‘Lemon Gem’ and ‘Tangerine Gem’ single marigolds a hedge of citrus color and smell. We’ll cook tasty meals and the table will always have fresh flowers on it. And that’s how we get through the winter here in New Hampshire.
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