Hungry Hippo

Those who have dined with me know that I have a proclivity for egg-containing dishes. In this department, I’m all equal opportunist; chicken eggs, duck eggs, quail eggs, fish eggs, shrimp and lobster roe—the list could go on and on. Fried, boiled, baked, savory or sweet. If it has a yolk, I’m not picky about preparation.
Recently, however, an ungodly clash of my two worlds has occurred. My lab life has encroached upon my egg haven, and I’ve been purifying antibodies from chicken egg yolks, one of the more horrifying things I’ve had to do in the name of science (there are a few other things I’ve done that make this list, but they’re not appropriate to discuss now, trust me). I’ve been dwelling in self-pity for the last few yolk-filled weeks. On one hand, I have harmless egg yolks, the epitome of creamy comfort food. On the other hand, in stark contrast, is lab life. Nothing that resides in the lab has ever passed my lips. Now I’m centrifuging yolk solutions like there’s no tomorrow, and washing the chunky remnants of stale egg yolks down the industrial sized lab sink. I have moments in which I think I should be eating these eggs, but at the same time, I’m wholly repulsed by the fact that the yolks are sitting in a beaker. I wish I could say that this purification process produces lovely custardy smells in the lab, but really I have only been able to catch the fishy notes of the eggs—blech. Perhaps it’s not wise, but I’ve been forcing myself to eat eggs on a regular basis through all this. The idea being that I’ll be able to keep reminding myself of my love of eggs, and, therefore, I’ll never shy away from them after this purification is done. So far, this tactic seems to have worked and I only have four more weeks of this to go. FOUR MORE WEEKS. No, I wasn’t yelling. Maybe just screaming. After all this settles down, maybe I’ll get a chance to try this out.