I am the pot...

Here are the deviled eggs I made to share with Marie and Paul:

I plead the 5th as to how many are available for their consumption 12 hours from now.

A long while ago, I posted a photo of yet another attempt to boil eggs:

You can see that this photo was back when I lived in Alexandria (the counter is different) and before I decided I was worth a real cutting board (mine is now hardwood from a sustainable forest).  That puts it some time in 2008.  This was the result each time I tried to boil eggs.  Pictured here were the only barely salvageable eggs from three dozen that I had cooked in order to make Pennsylvania Dutch pickled eggs.

I tried old eggs and fresh eggs. I tried adding the eggs after the water came to a boil and before I even filled the pan with water.  I read many recipes about boiling eggs, all to no avail.  I simply could not manage to boil eggs in such a way that they would be much use after they were finished cooking.

It didn't make sense to me.  I mean, I had boiled eggs in years past with little problem.  I couldn't figure out what changed.  I blamed the MS, since this was before I was diagnosed with Dysautonomia. I blamed my general ineptitude, since I had come to realize just how often I have failed in life.  I blamed the eggs, yes.  But I never thought of the pot.

All my adult life, I have been using my grandmother's pots and pans.  Almost all of my baking pans are still hers.  But last fall I bought the set of new cookware, after debating long and hard whether or not I was worth new cookware at what most likely is the end of my life ... not even mid-point.

I had forgotten—a so often is now the case—how much I love deviled eggs until Mary reminded me.  And so, a month or so ago (time is becoming ever so fluid for me), I made up some deviled eggs for the first time in far, far too long.  And I also admitted a truth about me.  I do not share deviled eggs.  I resent every single person at any gathering where deviled eggs were served who dares put a single egg on their plate.  I sneak deviled eggs before the eating commences at such gatherings and I work hard to take home any remaining deviled eggs, not bothered in the least that I didn't make them ... that they were not mine.

What I didn't really note with that first batch of eggs in the new cookware was the wonder of peeling them.  I had absolutely no problems.  All the shells slid off just as they should.  Since then, I have boiled eggs that were old and were fresh and were all manner of in between.  Each and every time, I have had absolutely no problem peeling them.  It was never the eggs.  Or even my technique.  It was the pot.

The same thing happened with rice. I could never cook rice in my grandmother's pot without at least a  third of it sticking to the pan.  No matter how I cooked it, the rice was barely edible.  For a while, this was not a problem since Becky's merciful mother bought me a microwave rice cooker.  However, the rice cooker was the only thing that was broken in the move here.

I marveled at my first attempt to cook rice in the new cookware.  It was perfect. I made effortless, perfect rice.  Me!  Of course, all that gloating to Becky over my newfound rice skills was made moot during her visit because, whilst making rice for her and her mother, I forgot to turn down the temperature after the water came to a boil.  No matter the magnificence of your pot, boiling rice on high for 25 minutes is going to result in a blackened, inedible mess.

Nevertheless, both of these examples prove that the problem was my grandmother's pot.  Even though it was a non-stick pot that looked perfectly fine, not a scratch or peel in sight, it was not.  That pot had reached its end use.  It was no longer able to function in the manner for which it was created. Something about it had become broken.  Broken beyond repair.  For, visually, there was nothing wrong with it.  The handle was secure.  The coating was smooth.  The metal not warped in the least.  It held liquids without leaking.  You could use it to heat up food.  Yet something at its core, in its substance, had become irreversibly flawed.  The pot simply could no longer function as it should.  Anything placed within it would become tainted ... or damaged ... and certainly would not come back out whole.

As I was boiling the eggs tonight, it struck me:  I have become the pot.