This post is part of the Blogging from  A to Z Challenge.

I once knew a co-worker who was allergic to eggs. I felt sorry for him. Every month we had a cake cutting for employees’ birthdays that month. He couldn’t partake, so they bought him his own small pint of ice cream.

I can’t imagine being allergic to eggs, though I can relate to having a food allergy. Shellfish is my kryptonite. It sucks not being able to enjoy shrimp or lobster, but I’d rather that than not being able to consume eggs or egg products.

It’s amazing what can be done with the wonderful egg. Fried, scrambled, soft-boiled, hard boiled, deviled, quiche. During my broke days and even now occasionally, eggs have been dinner after a long day and I don’t feel like cooking, or didn’t have anything to cook.

When I was a kid, my mother used to fry eggs with onions and American cheese for breakfast. I thought that was the only way to fry eggs, so when I got old enough to fry them myself I did the same. Growing up in my family, we didn’t buy breakfast, so it was years until I knew the taste of fried eggs without cheese. Even at restaurants when I ordered an omelet or scrambled eggs, I requested cheese. I still do. I can’t quite figure out how they’d add cheese to eggs Benedict, so I let it slide.

Sometimes as a snack, my mother would prepare a soft boiled egg that I would drink straight from the shell after she seasoned it with salt and stirred with a toothpick through a small opening she created in the narrower end of the eggshell. She never used a timer, but it was always just right. I am the only one of my cousins who enjoys eggs this way. My uncle, my mother’s older brother, does too. We’re the oddballs together.

I don’t use a timer when making soft-boiled eggs. I sometimes get distracted and let the water boil for too long, then I’m forced to eat a hard-boiled egg. A huge disappointment when I’m looking forward to the warm and smooth texture of a soft-boiled egg.

Hard-boiled eggs have a funky smell when unpeeled. The smell seems to slap you in the face with the pull-away of the first piece of shell. For that very reason, I un-peel them in my office kitchen whenever I have one as a snack before or after my afternoon workout at the nearby gym. I don’t want co-workers blaming me for a smelly workplace environment, though the same courtesy isn’t always extended with their pungent foods.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who had to suffer through egg conditioners. I don’t know which one of my mother’s friends or sisters shared this beauty tip, but I’m not sure if I’d curse or thank her. Every once in a while, on a Saturday morning, my mother would break one or two eggs into bowl, whip it up, then massage into my hair. The slimy egg felt cool against my scalp, which relieved the inflammation of dry scalp and dandruff, but as the egg dried around my hairline, my scalp tightened and the egg began to crack and flake, resembling the Elmer’s glue I sometimes spread in my palm just for the fun of letting it dry to peel like faux skin. Tightening of the scalp aside, my kinky hair did seem easier to detangle after an egg deep condition.

I never knew that eggs could be used as an ingredient in a cocktail until a book club brunch a few years ago. I barely listened as the waiter at “Please Don’t Tell” located in the East Village of NYC rambled off the day’s specials, but my ears perked when I caught the word “egg” as he relayed the ingredients of one particular drink (I can’t remember the name). I decided that would be my drink, just for the experience.

The other ladies turned up their noses in disgust when the frothy drink was placed in front of me. Had I not been told it contained a raw egg, I could not have guessed. It’s not as if the yellow yolk were just floating along, like a giant eyeball. The server explained the egg was added  and mixed for the purposes of thickening the consistency. It was like a less thick milkshake. It was good.

Another time, when reading the cocktail ingredients at Sweet Chick in Brooklyn, I made a  quick decision to get Purple Drank, whose ingredients were gin, lemon, lime, simple syrup, egg white and Welch’s grape soda. It was delicious.

My email is filled with egg recipes that I’ve sent to myself to sample. Unfortunately, the majority of them yield multiple servings so I’m waiting to have overnight guests (either a family member or a longed-for lover), so they can be my guinea pig in the morning. Bacon egg muffin cups look pretty cool, but first I have to buy a muffin tin.

I was able to sample a recipe found on Popsugar.com. Egg baked in avocado seemed simple enough, but my results could have easily qualified as a Pinterest fail. I didn’t scoop out enough avocado to make room for the single egg, so I tried to remedy the situation after the fact. The result was that I poked the yolk. I baked it anyway, not wanting to waste food. It tasted good, but I have yet to try it again. I just might this weekend, but of course that means I’d have to forfeit making  a delicious omelet.