By Patrick F. Cannon
No sooner had last week’s Cannonnade hit the streets (metaphorically) than I got a call from my daughter Beth calling me to account for failing to mention the annual egg toss in my article about the Donnelly family reunion.
“What in God’s name is an egg toss?” you might reasonably ask. Well, I can tell you that it’s the annual capstone to the reunion. Run for many years by the Eggsalted High Rooster, my cousin Bill Sutman, it consists of couples standing across from each other in a large empty parking lot and tossing a raw egg back and forth until one of them drops the egg. After each toss, the survivors take a step back until the gap is egg-defying. This year, it started with about 30 couples. The last couple standing then must toss the egg one more time to claim the Golden Egg trophy. I may have neglected to mention the event last week because I dropped the egg on the first toss.
Last Saturday, I had breakfast at a new place with Beth and her husband Boyd. I ordered the house hash topped with poached eggs. There are various methods of poaching eggs. The classic is to drop the eggs in simmering water, laced with a tiny bit of vinegar, scooping them out when done to your satisfaction. Purists will strain some of the watery part of the white out before dropping in the water, but that may be too fussy for you. Poached eggs are a feature of fancy dishes like Eggs Benedict and Eggs Florentine. I prefer them just plopped on a piece of buttered toast.
There are a bewildering number of ways to cook eggs. Sunnyside up is when you simply break an egg into a frying pan (with some butter, one hopes) and wait until it seems cooked enough. The “sunny” describes the round yellow yolk. Over easy is when you get the willies from even the suggestion that the egg white may be runny, so the egg is turned over to cook the other side a bit. Over medium is when you’re gripped by fright and want to make doubly sure.
If you’re French and prissy, you can make shirred eggs, which are baked. Coddled eggs are cooked in a container submerged partly in a water bath. Then, of course, there are boiled eggs, where you submerge the whole egg in boiling water until soft or hard boiled. When we were kids, we were often given soft-boiled eggs, served in an egg cup. You lopped the top off and scooped the egg out with a spoon. Everyone has their own method of boiling eggs, which you can find on the internet. A hard-boiled egg goes well with some salt and cold beer. Then, of course, there are the omelets and frittatas, but I can see you’re getting bored.
Eggs have had an up and down reputation. At one point, they were said to be killers, because they were high in something that zoomed your cholesterol. Sales plummeted. Later, other experts (who are these people?) said, “wait a minute!” they’re high in protein and other nutrients and a couple a day would keep the doctor away (or at least not lurking at your door). A few months ago, egg prices spiked because of the bird flu or some other dread plague. Since I live alone and only eat eggs a couple of times a week, the increase didn’t break my bank. Anyway, the prices seem to be falling.
One way to beat price spikes is to keep chickens. This has become fashionable in liberal circles, along with planting corn in your front yard. Although I now live a block west in an adjacent community, I lived in Oak Park for 40 odd years. The birthplace of Ernest Hemingway and home for 20 years of Frank Lloyd Wright has been fondly called “the Socialist Republic of Oak Park.” It was an early adopter of backyard chickens, mostly in south Oak Park, which is largely inhabited by the bearded Birkenstock crowd.
Imagine my surprise when a friend who lives in a tonier (richer) area of the legendary village reported that his next-door neighbors had added chickens to their backyard landscaping. He said you get used to the gentle cackling, and they don’t have a crowing rooster in the brood. Besides, he gets an occasional egg or two.
Here’s a couple of eggstras. I think it doesn’t matter what comes first, the chicken or the egg. I also wonder who the first human was who broke an egg and decided to take a chance on eating it. He or she should be in the same culinary hall of fame as the human who took a chance on the oyster. Here’s egg in your beer!
Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon
cannonnadedotcom 
The incredible, edible egg! (So there’s a credible, inedible egg?)
And the eternal question, which came first, egg or chicken?
Since birds, presumably chickens too, evolved from dinosaurs or some pre-historic reptile, I hold with the egg.
Imagine the surprise on papa pterodactyl’s face when he saw his clucking feathered offspring hatch! And imagine the blushing expression of mama p.
Little could they have foreseen how, and in what multifarious forms, their distant progeny would end up on someone’s breakfast table.
Ain’t Nature grand?
As a young lad in Bushwick, I never played egg toss. My mother would have killed me for wasting good food.
I would have ended up with an egg-sized lump on my head!
Besides, we played a lot of stick ball and knew how to catch.
Who cleaned up the parking lot when you were finished?
We did, however, play a similar game with water balloons. And to celebrate the Fourth of July, firecrackers.
These games could get quickly out of hand and often ended in fights.
My father ate eggs raw, straight from the shell.
He’d poke a hole on one end, and one on the other, then suck out the contents. Presumably he did this for healthful, nutritional reasons.
(The origins of this practice are obscure, but they may involve grandmothers.)
I’ve never been one for fancy egg dishes, like Benedicts (I like to think that someone, somewhere serves them with Arnold bread).
I prefer eggs in omelettes or over medium, not out of fear but to allow the yolk to thicken for dipping with pieces of toast.
Eggs a couple of times a week is about right, and I agree that their nutritional value far outweighs any cholesterol risks.
It’s common to find folks in Hoosierland who raise chickens. The local hardware store even sells live chicks in the spring for that purpose.
And you can’t drive very far without seeing an “Eggs for Sale” sign.
Since they produced their own eggs locally, their prices never went up during the nationwide shortage. You could always get a dozen for about three bucks.
In liberal Mayberry we have a few Mother Earth News subscribers who raise chickens. You can easily spot them in their wide-brimmed hats and denim overalls. Maybe they do it for educational purposes or as part of their anti-capitalist lifestyle. They don’t sell the eggs.
But it’s all good, and we all need to find ways to make life better. Eggs are good for you, and you can eat the chickens too!
The important thing is never to get labeled as an egghead.
Adlai Stevenson lost an election because of that.
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We do clean up the parking lot, or rather, the young folks do! I am now exempt due to age or seniority. The egg is a marvelous thing. I’m told that people even eat fish eggs!
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Never saw the appeal of caviar. Too salty. But did appreciate the irony of Roe vs Wade!
And irony of ironies, we’re currently in Egg Harbor, WI! Contrary to legend it didn’t get its name from an egg fight between fur traders. It’s just its ovoid shape.
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I envy you. Hope the weather’s good up yonder. Don’t like caviar either.
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