The Egg and I
Eggs make me gag and I finally think I know why
It took meeting and marrying my husband over 25 years ago to finally try eggplant. Even though I have a legendary love for nearly every vegetable, I had avoided eggplant my entire life because of my distaste for eggs. Distaste is the wrong word. I absolutely loathe eggs — the smell, the flavor, the texture, the very thought of them — and I’ve felt this way since as long as I can remember. Brioche, custard, crème brulée, challah French toast, egg bagels, anything with the word “egg” in it — all are off limits because the very essence of egg makes me gag. I grew up thinking eggplant would taste like an egg. It never occurred to me that the egg shape is how this purple vegetable got its name.
I don’t know how old we need to be for our consciousness to form memories, but there’s a vivid scene I can recall of me as a very small child, sitting in a white plastic highchair, clothed only in a loose cloth diaper secured with two-inch ducky pins, unhappily spitting scrambled eggs out of my mouth as fast as my mother could spoon them in. I recall the pine cabinets with the western style hardware, the yellow wallpaper, and the round dining table nearby, covered in a flowery vinyl tablecloth. My mother has always been dismayed that a I could retain such a clear recollection, down to the hardware on the kitchen cabinets. This is because at the time I was just a toddler, and not long after we moved out of our Carmichael, California home.
Since then, I’ve avoided eggs no matter how they are prepared or served — fried, scrambled, hard boiled, chopped in tiny bits in a Cobb salad or tossed into Pad Thai noodles — I shudder at the very thought of one getting in my mouth.
Once, at a business lunch in my early 20s, I took a bite of a tuna salad and was forced to spit my food into my napkin because unbeknownst to me, the chef had stealthily included chopped egg in the dish. Who puts chopped egg in tuna salad? Episodes like this have made me cautious about almost any prepared food. I have to carefully dissect and inspect it for any signs of egg yolk or egg white, and, routinely ask whoever happens to be with me at the time to do a taste test to detect egg before I put an unfamiliar food in my mouth.
When I was approaching 30, I met my husband. A few months into the relationship we made the pilgrimage to his childhood home in New York to meet his relatives for the first time. His large and lively Italian family considered food the antidote to every event or circumstance — they used food to congregate and share stories, to celebrate every occasion, and to sooth whatever ailed each other. On my first visit, my mother-in-law, Olga, taught me how to make pizzelles, the 4" waffle-like cookies flavored with vanilla, anise, or lemon. Even though I considered the pizzelle the Ritz Cracker of Italian cookies, I told her I loved them and on our second wedding anniversary, I received a pizzelle machine in the mail.
At my in-laws,’ one of the hallmark Italian dishes they were eager to prepare and serve on our visits was eggplant parmesan. This is one of my husband’s all-time favorite home cooked dishes. Since we began dating, Paul had raved and raved about his mother and Aunt Til’s eggplant “parm,” clearly forgetting about my egg challenge. When I took my first bite of the layered eggplant, under the watchful gaze of Olga and the rest of the family, I immediately detected the egg coating that bound the breadcrumb and parmesan crust and had to choke down my bite, politely telling them I couldn’t finish the rest. On this occasion, I attributed my avoidance of eggs and egg-laced foods to an allergy just to be sure I would never again be assaulted with egg forward-foods when visiting 117 Fales Court.
As I’ve grown older and my palate has matured, I’ve learned to love avocados, asparagus, cauliflower and even eggplant, prepared any way but with an egg-based coating. But for some reason, never eggs.
Not long ago, my own mother was visiting and suggested we make a quiche, somehow overlooking the egg problem I’ve never outgrown. When I reminded my mom that I could not, would not eat eggs, even in a quiche loaded with cheese and vegetables, I brought up the highchair incident to amplify my point. She then revealed something I never knew: my father was allergic to eggs. He avoided them at all costs. No egg bread, no omelettes, no egg salad, or hardboiled eggs at Easter.
This was news to me. I had never known this before because I did not have the opportunity to get to know my father. You see, he died in a motorcycle accident when I was about 18 months old. This happened right around the time of the early highchair memory, when our family lived in the house in Carmichael and my mother tried to feed me eggs.
And just like that, it all made sense.
