A friend lost... but hopefully not forever...

I woke up this morning thinking about boiling eggs for Easter... I was planning on writing a quick blog this morning about the folklore surrounding eggs and spring. Something all together different happened, however. I went to my trusty recipe box in search of the recipe card I pull out each Easter...the one titled "Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs," the one with the little lamb in the corner with the words "From Mom's Kitchen" penned in the middle... it's a little faded yes... but perfectly legible. I went to the tab labeled EGGS AND CHEESE... and couldn't find it. Perhaps I stuck it in MISCELLANEOUS... but sadly it wasn't there either. So I went through the whole box and looked at each card and newspaper clipping. It was, as always, a little trip down memory lane... but today it was a slightly panicked one. After I looked through the recipe box I tried all my desk drawers, and junk drawers and then I looked through the kitchen drawers... but alas I could not find it.

I know... I know... Do I really need a recipe for hard cooked eggs? After all I am a seasoned cook who can Iron Chef a meal out of a frat boys pantry... The answer is no... and yes. I can certainly make a hard boiled egg... but I can't make THE hard boiled eggs I've been making every year since my girls were born. My recipe box has been with me since I got my first apartment. My mother hand penned lots of recipes for me then... and over the years I've added things clipped from magazines... recipe cards sent to me by my late grandmother... and even recipes found in an old trunk that I had copied out of a teen magazine when I was 12. I don't really need these recipes... in fact I rarely use them... But what I do need is the memories that they represent.

Hopefully I will find it... Maybe it's tucked inside a recipe book... or perhaps it fell behind the fridge and I'll find it next time I am feeling industrious enough to sweep back there. I'm going to mom's house after I publish this. Perhaps she'll be good enough to make me a new one (but somehow at almost 40 years old I can't really picture myself asking her for a hard boiled egg recipe).... I wonder if she still has the rubber stamp with the lamb on it?