Sunday, March 14, 2010

the man eats raw eggs

Me: Lee --
Lee: Yes --
Me: Tell us about eggs.
Lee: What would you like to know about eggs?
Me: What prompted you to begin eating raw eggs?
Lee: I believe we have established that I am mildly insane.
Me: Were there any other contributing factors -- health benefits, taste, etc.?
Lee: Yes.
Me: Please elaborate.
Lee: I'd heard about eating them before and that they're really good for building muscle and they are supposedly a perfectly balanced food. For years, I believed all the propoganda PR hype from the anti- raw egg people -- that they were really bad for your cholesterol. But after further research, just out of curiosity, I found that there are quite a number of sources that espouse the health benefits of raw eggs and that explain that detrimental effects only come from cooked eggs, because cooked eggs change the structure of several different elements within the egg. I had also believed the hype about salmonella until I did further research and found that the percentage of eggs that are infected with salmonella is somewhere in the neighborhood of one in thirty thousand eggs, but those eggs are factory hatchery eggs, where the chickens live in unhealthy conditions and are fed unhealthy foods.
Me: So it's a darn good thing our chickens starting laying again recently.
Lee: Si. Yes.
Me: How many raw eggs are you eating each day?
Lee: No more than two.
Me: Do you season them, or do you just crack them into a glass and drink them like Rocky?
Lee: Well, that's an interesting question, Meg. Not really that interesting, but worth answering at least. (Insert loving look from me to Lee here.) Until today, my process was to take eggs that are no older than six days, thoroughly wash my hands, and then wash the shell of the egg with hot water and one drop of soap, crack it into an egg-drinking glass (has to be the right size), and then drink it. At first I thought it would be icky, but in actuality, since I've begun to consume raw eggs, the thought of cooked eggs has become more icky.
Leah: You eat raw eggs, Daddy?
Lee: Yes, yes.
Leah: Ewwww!!!!
Lee: They really have no flavor -- barely perceptible flavor. But, as to your question, do I season them: for the first time today, as an experiment, I put a dash of hot sauce on the egg (Leah: Eww, gross!) before I drank it (Leah: Eww, double gross!), and it therefore tasted like hot sauce.
Me: Are the anti- raw egg people, like, militant?
Lee: Insidious. It's a worldwide conspiracy.
Me: Why doesn't the egg industry address this issue and promote the consumption of raw eggs?
Lee: The egg industry represents egg factories, which produce nasty eggs. I would never eat a raw egg from an unknown source.
Me: Are you going to start eating all of our backyard eggs? Because I still like them scrambled.
Lee: Then we need more chickens.