Hard Boiled Hangover

About author / Josh Gunn

Bachelor chef; southern cooking; mixologist; university professor. Josh's recipes will delight (and sometimes terrify) you.

The Easter holiday is over, and now all those pretty eggs you dyed with your nieces and nephews are sitting around the house. What do you do with these things?

I remember growing up, the week before Easter, we'd have fun dying eggs, which would then be displayed on the kitchen counter. On Easter day there would be a "hunt" in the house or the yard of a family member for hidden eggs, some hard-boiled, others of this candy-coated marshmallow variety. If you were fortunate enough to be one of the egg hunters (there were age limits), nothing was more disappointing than finding a colored, hard-boiled egg instead of candy! So anyway, what did we do with the hard-boiled ones? We just threw them away. Even worse, sometimes a hidden hard-boiled hangover would stay hidden for weeks until its glorious smell would lead us to it behind the couch.

Why are we so wasteful with these eggs? Where did they come from? Well, like a lot of holidays and traditions, we don't know for sure. Easter takes its name from an Anglo-Saxy spring goddess, Eastre, who helped folks celebrate fertility and new beginnings during the vernal equinox. The two things associated with Easter---eggs and bunnies---also connote fertility: bunnies reproduce like, well . . . like rabbits; and eggs have long been a symbol of fertility to many cultures. It's probably most likely some not-yet-in-the-know tots imagined bunnies laid eggs on Easter and gradually these two became associated over the centuries. I mean, that childhood variation of "Jingle Bells" has Batman's sidekick Robin laying eggs, so bunnies producing them obviously makes logical sense to a six year old.

Some Christians are wondering, "well, what about Christ?" The Easter holiday, like the Christmas holiday, preceded all Christian faiths. It makes sense, however, that Christians would choose to celebrate the birth and rebirth of Jesus on Christmas and Easter because both are holidays that symbolize fertility and new beginnings.

Okay, Dr. Bachelor, so we know a little more about bunnies and eggs on Easter, but where the heck did decorating eggs come from? Again, we're not quite sure. We know that for centuries---in ancient Egypt, Persia, Rome, and Greece---eggs were decorated for spring house parties, barbecues, and what not. There is, in other words, a very old precedent for the practice.

Why it hangs on in today's world, when Easter has become predominately a religious holiday on the one hand, and Christmas-lite for kids on the other, is anyone's guess. I was looking at a major general store chain circular last week and noticed the first ten glossy pages were dedicated to toys; apparently folks are buying their kids presents for Easter these days. It's no longer about the chocolate bunny and hard-boiled eggs: it's about Johnny getting a new bike!

Well, regardless of your opinion on the commercialization of holidays, there's still a persistent fact: what do we do with these hard-boiled eggs? I say if they've been sitting out for more than a few days, you outta toss them. But if you've got some relatively fresh ones, make some sandwiches! Try this:

Serves/Makes: 12

• 6 hard boiled eggs, peeled
• 3 teaspoons Creole mustard
• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise, or as needed
• 2 tablespoons diced pimientos, drained
• 1 tablespoon hot sauce
• 1 tablespoon chopped dill pickles, or use pickle relish
• 1 dash Cajun seasoning, or to taste