In which Maggie finally learns how to make boiled eggs the right way.

It took about 29 years, bad insomnia, a show on PBS Create, and a book called The Kitchen Survival Guide by Lora Brody, but I finally did it.

I used to boil eggs with no clue what I was doing. The shell would stick to the white so badly that I'd lose an inexcusable amount of egg flesh just by peeling them.

Then one night, I was stuck awake, watching cooking shows into the wee hours of the morning on the PBS sub-channel Create. For once, I actually payed attention to an entire cooking show, and took notes. The show was Joanne Weir's Cooking Class. Unlike all those cooking shows with one person talking to nobody in particular, the format was engaging because it has human interaction on screen. I was watching Joanne Weir teaching another person how to do something. And it was hard-boiling eggs.

I had missed the couple minutes of the show, so I didn't have all the details. So I turned to the book. I had bought my copy of The Kitchen Survival Guide at a library book sale. The subtitle is A Hand-Holding Kitchen Primer with 130 Recipes to Get You Started. Lora Brody wrote it as her children were coming of age, leaving the nest, and needed all this knowledge. It includes glossaries, meat temperature charts, how to pick the best produce, how to fix culinary disasters, and lots more.

Between my two sources, I learned how to make hard boiled eggs perfectly.

Fill pan 2/3 full with water, put on stove, add eggs (single layer).

Turn heat on High (or whatever setting you need to use if you have special pans), bring to rolling boil. Cover pan, turn off the heat, and let the eggs sit in the hot water for 15 minutes.

Drain off the hot water.

Put the eggs in a bowl with cold water and ice. Keep them there until the ice cubes melt.

Smack each egg around a little to crack them. Put back into the water for a couple minutes. The water will get under the shells and make it easier to peel the eggs.

Peel the eggs immediately, since it will be harder if you wait. The eggs will keep up to 4 days in the refrigerator.