Don't Try This at Home

On Monday I was making Crab and Corn Bake for our supper.  I wanted to have it ready for Duck when he got home from work, but Monday was not a stellar day for me as far as getting things done. I had a sinus headache when I woke up in the morning and so I didn't accomplish much before noon.  I can't say I actually accomplished much after noon either, but I made an attempt.

The first thing I attempted was to clean-up the kitchen sink and empty the dishwasher.  While I was putting the dishes away I knocked over a glass as I was putting one into the cupboard.  It was only a small juice glass, but it fell off the shelf, hitting another glass that I had in my other hand and then fell into the open dishwasher, wounding 2 fingers in the process.  There was glass everywhere.  There actually seemed to be more pieces than there should have been.  While I was cleaning up the broken juice glass, I knocked a jar of hot peppers off the counter and that jar broke.

Eventually I got the pepper juice and the broken glass cleaned up, and applied band-aids to the injured fingers.  I ran the sweeper to make sure that I got the bi-zillion tiny shreds of glass that had flown everywhere, and had my kitchen counter straightened out.  I was ready to prepare the crab and corn bake.

Looking over my recipe I discovered that I needed two hard-boiled eggs. Now I've already wasted an hour-and-a-half cleaning up the mess I had made and I wanted to have dinner ready when Duck got home. In my mind I weighed my options: 1) I could hardboil the eggs in a small pot on the stove, which is the normal way to hardboil eggs; however, my only small pot already has white sauce in it and I am pressed for time.  Hardboiling two eggs the normal way would take too long; 2) I could just skip the eggs.  Really, how much difference are two lousy hardboiled eggs going to make anyway.  This is probably the choice that a normal, rational, sane person would have made; or, 3) I could try to hardboil my two eggs in the microwave. I've never done this before, and I didn't know if it could be done, but in my debilitated state of my this seemed like the most logical choice.

I put water into my expensive Pampered Chef measuring bowl, added the two eggs and set the microwave for 3 minutes.  I used 3 minutes because I knew that the water would not yet be boiling at 3 minutes and I could look in and check on things before continuing.  At 3 minutes the water was getting tiny bubbles and my eggs were sitting quietly on the bottom of the measuring bowl. All seemed to be going well. I was elated and I felt like a scientific genius.  I added another 2 minutes cooking time and restarted the microwave.

Suddenly there was a loud rattling sound coming from inside the microwave and water came streaming out from under the door and all over the stovetop.  I was sure that my expensive Pampered Chef measuring bowl had probably exploded, and why not.  I had already broken two other glass objects and things happen in threes.  I trepidly opened the microwave and to my surprise the measuring bowl appeared to be just fine, except for the fact that there was very little water in it and only one egg.  The other egg had apparently exploded and bits and pieces of it were plastered all over the inside of the microwave.

I cracked open the "good" egg and it looked like a hardboiled egg is supposed to look, so I chopped it up and added it to the crab and corn and then I cleaned up the exploded egg.  We've had a microwave for many years and Duck still sometimes asks me what he can put in it.  We only had this microwave a couple of days and he microwaved a metal cup and blew out some of the elements. I get on his case about not knowing how to use the microwave.  He thoroughly enjoyed his crab and corn bake and so I didn't feel it was necessary to mention the exploded egg fiasco.