TEMPUS VOLVO: (TIME ROLLS ON) AND THE QUEST FOR THE PERFECT POACHED EGG

Geek alert! This whole post, with its emphasis on Latin, Brookstoney devices and the rhapsody on poached eggs is a geeky smorgasbord.

"Tempus Volvo" translates to: "Time Rolls"--but more accurately, it is the Latin phrase: "Time to Meditate Upon," for "Volvo" means to not only to roll onward, but also, fittingly, to meditate.

I meditate on this: in a hundred year-old house undergoing renovations, with toddlers and a small business, time doesn't march or fly, it rolls. It's not linear, it's not a perfect circle. Time is ovoid.

Wobbly, haphazard, Weeble-like. There's a lot of, ahem, "potential"--which is a clever and possibly self-delusional way of framing the excruciating act of simple waiting.

Waiting for someone to finish napping, waiting for someone to call back, for something to dry, something to cool, something to give. Nothing will happen for the longest time--life just goes along wonka-wonka-wonka, then in a so-far-beyond-Emeril's kind of BAM! it would make his furry head spin, it takes off down the driveway. I run feverishly after it, heels hitting hard against the pavement--slap! restrain! slap restrain!--desperate to catch up, but also to keep from going headlong down the concrete, and then, ZAG! there it goes skitter-slide to the other side of the driveway. Guaranteed. So I have to bank hard left to rescue it. The more I try to predict, the more I try to make it conform, the more elusive it is, the more unpredictable the results.

I don't know why I've got that child whose favorite present in months was this kitchen timer from Brookstone, a four year-old who justified her maniacal glee and looked at me like a dullard: "Don't you get it Mommy?, it's an egg timer." A girl who has always gotten down eye-level with bugs, who I recently found scribbling furiously in Sharpie with the back unscrewed from her CD player, creating a diagram for the new battery placement--but I do. And I embrace her curiousness. Today it's an egg timer, tomorrow it'll be something else, but I cannot contain her and I will roll with it, because this is not a cookbook-raised kid.

Look, every cookbook has a recipe for poached eggs. So why don't more people actually serve them--worse, why don't more people do them well? I adore poached eggs with a passion bordering psychosis, but but order them at a diner and you will be served at best a shrunken, stringy glob in a watery dish reminiscent of Eraserhead, at worst, your own head on a plate for asking too much of the vicious waitress who snarls: "We don't DO poached eggs." For myself, I've never figured them out at home. It should work, but my results are unpredictable--I wouldn't poach an egg in public. And that clever little Williams Sonoma gadget?--only makes matters worse for me. I don't want a perfectly round poached egg. I want it to be firm and solid, hang together, but delightfully non-conform to its pan-mates.

You've heard the egg described as the perfect symbol of life, but I believe the poached egg is the perfect symbol of time, events and our individual trajectories.

Today I came upon this recipe, accidentally I might add:
"For the perfect poached egg on toast: Take one very fresh egg. Set a pan of water to boil with a dash of vinegar. When boiling, turn down the heat and swirl with a spoon to create a vortex. Crack the egg into the middle of the vortex. Put on the lid and leave to simmer for eggactly (sic) 3 minutes. Meanwhile toast your favourite bread. At 3 minutes precisely take out the egg and place carefully on toast. Add freshly ground black pepper and sea salt...
recipe & above photo by John Evans of THE TIPPING POINT

THUD: "When boiling, turn down the heat and swirl with a spoon to create a vortex. Crack the egg into the middle of the vortex."

I have never seen a recipe espousing this method! Conventional recipedom has always advised sliding that egg into the water as close to undisturbed as possible. In addition to following a recipe, stifling disruption, attempting to squelch the free-form nature of things, keeping my arms inside the car and waiting for it to come to a complete stop...is against my own basic inclinations. So why have I been trying to do just that lately, and then wondering why I'm not happy with the results?

Maybe this is what I've been missing. I've been trying to keep it all together, fight my nature, eliminate the eddy. At some point, you not only have to stop fearing the vortex, you have to welcome it, and stir the pot.