When did having tough-boiled eggs at Gatwick Airport end up being a dependency? Four years ago? Two years in the past? I may want to probably work it out if I returned over the wads of boarding passes and the receipts of my pendulous life, but permits say it changed three years ago.
Every time I bypass the swishing electric doors into the arrivals corridor at Gatwick. In contrast, others step into the arms of loved ones, I step into the refrigerated hum of Marks and Spencer’s food corridor and buy two tough-boiled eggs. I can also get some water, a sandwich, a stick of cheddar, or three packs of Walnut Whips, but these are variables. The bath containing pearly-white eggs on a squeaky mattress of child spinach is not.
I don’t wait. Rather, I peel off the skinny cellophane and devour it as I stroll to price up my Oyster card. The eggs almost always give me heartburn: too cold, too difficult to boil, and eaten too quickly while on foot. I don’t care. I love my eggs, and in that second, they’re the most essential and satisfying aspect; my welcome committee is suitable for eating Talisman before catching the Thameslink to Farringdon.
Eggs meet me on the alternative side of the journey, too. It is regularly overdue or at an in-between hour when I get domestic to Rome, but no matter the time or what’s been eaten that day, taking walks through the door, dumping luggage, and hugging my kid makes me hungry. It is frequently hunger for the eggs that sit down in a bowl at the kitchen worktop: best, patient, entire, clear-cut, and equipped to be cracked into an omelet; boiled or fried for toast; blended with cubes of bread for egg in a cup, or scrambled right into a soft pile and sooted with black pepper.
If someone else desires to consume too, the egg answer is commonly frittata, the Italian version of an omelet without the charisma, as meals writer Gillian Riley notes. Beaten egg combined with pre-cooked veggies, cheese, ham, breadcrumbs, or leftover pasta – on a frittata, the opportunities and versions are limitless.
