Amelia vs. Gracie (round one, hard-cooked eggs)

Getting things started with an easy but important ‘recipe’.  My daughter, Gracie, loves hard-boiled eggs (when she is in the mood for them).  Amelia hates them, of course, which is par for the course.  They are both very opinionated, and rarely agree on much as far as food goes.  Basically the only things they both with eat without one of them whining about it are ice cream, chocolate anything, pepperoni pizza with banana peppers, and bleu cheese crumbles (weird, right).  Gracie will eat mashed potatoes, Amelia will gag at the thought of them.  As mentioned above, Gracie & Eggs work, Amelia won’t even entertain the idea of eating them.  Tacos: Soft-shell vs. Crunchy (dorito flavor). Doughnuts: Boston Creme vs. Pink Frosted. OJ: Pulp vs. No Pulp. Yogurt: Drinkable vs. Regular (with M&Ms or other junk in it, maybe that one doesn’t count!) You get the idea, total pain in the ass.  From meats to vegetables, starches, etc etc etc, the list goes on and on.  That being said, we sometimes have to make multiple items to please their irritating developing palates.  This ‘recipe’ is more of a basic technique.  The two most important aspects of cooking to me are simple, get the best ingredients, and use proper technique, that’s it! Cooking should be an enjoyable experience and does not need to be overly complicated.  The perfect hard-cooked eggs, will work out everytime if you follow these steps:

1. Get some eggs (simple, right!) Find a great local farm, or a neighbor with chickens, or go to Giant Eagle or Stop & Shop because we all want to make time to source eggs from Bud down the way, but we need to be realistic here too!

2. Put the eggs in a small sauce pot, fill with COLD, SALTED water

3. Bring water to a simmer (notice I didn’t call them hard-boiled eggs, not looking for a hard rolling boil, but a fairly aggressive simmer).  When the water comes up to temp., set a timer for 9 minutes.

4. When your timer goes off, the eggs are done.  Remove from heat and place them in the sink, run cold water over them for a solid 2 minutes or so, you can add ice to the pot as well to speed up time for peeling.  Bang the cooked eggs on the table and roll to crack up the shell (if you want to mess with your kids, throw a raw egg in there and wait and see!)

PEEL & EAT (or store in an airtight container for 4-5 days after Gracie changes her mind and throw them away once you realize she didn’t eat any of them, which was the case here for sure)