Why do I have so many eggs?

Eggs are really tasty and versatile, and every kitchen probably has a good amount unless you're vegan. I am not vegan, so I enjoy a crisply fried egg on top of some curry rice or poaching an egg in my instant ramen.

I was not in danger of running out of eggs before the shelter-in-place notice went out to all 6 major counties in the Bay Area. I have never, in fact, been in danger of running out of eggs, even at work - the school I teach at houses a chicken coop and they produce some pretty superb eggs for our school lunches. At any rate, I had already purchased a dozen eggs before shelter-in-place, so it was all good.

When I got to Berkeley Bowl West in...uh, Berkeley on Monday morning, I was still relatively calm about sheltering-in-place. I can cook! I'll be fine. Then I saw the crowds and just let the panic take me. I was no longer in control of my mind or hands, and when I got in line - about 40 carts deep, stretching from the front of the store all the way to the ends of the earth (in this case, the carrots and celery section in produce), I started leaving my spot to get more things. Should I get a whole chicken? Probably! I can roast it! I can make a lot of things with it! Stock with the carcass!

During one of these excursions out of line, a time during which I saw Berkeley local Samin Nosrat serenely picking through some greens in the distance, I walked by the egg case. Berkeley Bowl actually had everything pretty well stocked for the day, but they probably weren't expecting our Governor to announce that just about everything would be closing and also we should probably not leave the house too much. So eggs started to fly off the shelves. In the far recesses of my fragile, mushy brain, some neural pathway held the memory of a new carton of eggs in my refrigerator, but I had neither the will nor capability to access it. So, I looked down and saw a carton of 30 and thought, I should definitely get this, get the eggs, grab the eggs, idiot. And because I am indeed an idiot, I grabbed them.

During the hour it took to get from the back of the produce stand to the checkout stand, I made several new friends, many of whom left to get eggs of their own after seeing me return from my ovo-triumphant journey to the egg aisle. After the produce area, the next area that I s l o w l y moved through was the "Latin foods" aisle, and as I talked to the new family I had formed in checkout perdition, I started just randomly grabbing things, sometimes breaking off mid sentence to reach for flour tortillas or chipotles in adobo (they go great with eggs).

After finally making it to the stand and checking out I started walking to my car, only to see that Soleil Ho, San Francisco Chronicle food critic and all around good person, had started posting restaurants that were selling food from their pantries ahead of closing down. One of these restaurants was Sister in Oakland, near where I live. I like the restaurant and the folks that run it, so I thought I'd swing by. They had a great deal on produce, especially some gorgeous maitake mushrooms that were going for dirt cheap. I grabbed a bunch of those. As I walked into a new checkout line, I spied a giant box of farm-fresh eggs, the kind that you know when you crack open will have a radioactive orange yolk, the kind you want to dip raw beef into at a sukiyaki place. I willed myself to forget the eggs I had just purchased, and even more aggressively abandoned the memory I had of the eggs in my fridge. The eggs were too good looking and I really should be helping a local business, so I bought fifteen more.

When I got home and stuffed all of my proud new prolate spheroids into the fridge the pure folly of my purchase washed over me. What was I going to do with all of these eggs? I suppose I could make ten frittatas a day and then freeze them, or I could just make a shitload of custard, or maybe I could make eggnog and just drink myself into oblivion, which has been a tempting thought since this all started.

There's a great Italian dish called uovo piccante in purgatorio which is usually translated as "Eggs in Purgatory," and since we all are eggs in purgatory now, really, I feel like maybe I'll just make a lot of that.