who invented egg cartons? because whoever he/she is, he/she needs an award.
lately, i've been strapped for funds, so i've had to be a little wiser in my shopping choices. traditionally, i would go grocery shopping every 2 to 3 days... usually at different stores. that would partly be due to the available sales, and partly out of shame that i was grocery shopping every other day and i didn't want to endure the puzzled stares of the salespeople, who were surely asking themselves if i had a twin, or was realllly reallllly bored.
so i'd buy a plethora of frozen meals for lunch at work and dinner at home, and individually wrapped snacks that i could grab for breakfast. as far as convenience, this worked very well, except that individually packaged/wrapped things are expensive and run out too fast. because spending more than $20 in at a time always awakened some sort of cheapskate disdain in me, i rarely bought enough to get me through the week, let alone a few days.
currently, however, i do not have the funds for an ephemeral, yet convenient, food supply, nor can i afford the gas that it takes to get to a new grocery store almost every day.
so i've been cooking. i scour the grocery adds to find out what's on sale, then i scour the recipe sites to find out what i can make with those sale items... that won't take forever to make, won't won't be offensive to the olfactory sensors of my coworkers, won't require a degree from a culinary institute, and won't taste gross. it's been working very well, and is costing me much less. typically one shopping trip will get me food enough to last one week and usually costs me around 20 to 30 bucks.
anyway, to continue with the oodles of information that nobody really cares about... for dinner and lunch, i'll make a dish like stew, pasta, or meat and veggies. for snack, i buy a bunch of fruit to have whenever. for breakfast, i have some turkey bacon, toast, and a boiled egg. i'll usually boil 3 or 4 at a time (in case i decide that i really neeeeeed some scrambled eggs one day.
so i'd run out of eggs and had gone to the store and gotten some, along with all the fixins for this coming week, and since i hate taking double trips to and from my car, i jammed all 6 bags onto my strained fingers, threw my giant purse over my shoulder, grabbed my water bottle, and my boiled egg that i hadn't gotten around to eating that day, stuffed them all into one hand and, with great difficulty and concentration, shut and locked my car door. having surpassed the greatest hurdle, i figured that i was home free when (of course!) a bag slipped from my fingers... yes... just one... of the 6. and which bag would it happen to be? why, none other than the bag with the eggs in it. the eggs that i so dutifully checked in the store for cracks and other weirdness. so after all that effort, i was gonna end up with cracked eggs. rather than take that as a lesson to just expend the extra energy and take more trips to transport things from my car, i decided to just get pissy, and satisfy my rage and frustration by trying to open the house door without first putting any bags down. so as a burst through the door, with the most precarious grasp on my bags, i dropped them all to the ground, in relief... until i realized that i probably did dual damage to my eggs.
so i opened my carton, expecting to find a dozen albumin-oozing orbs, and mentally preparing myself for the scrambled eggs dinner that i would surely have to have that night... and what did i find? 12 in tact large grade a eggs... and i couldn't have been happier.
except that i might be a little happier if my stories were a little more interesting.
