The Price of Eggs
Do You Want to Do Some Witchcraft?
The first time I saw blood in my eggs, I didn’t know what to do.
I’m not really a coven person, more building a witch street team where we all specialize in different things and roll our eyes before handling the world’s problems. So I texted the birth witch.
“There’s blood in the eggs.”
“So that’s bad,” she texted back.
I agreed, silently. But I texted, “Maybe we’re overreacting.”
We weren’t overreacting, turned out. I was on the brink of being furloughed from my job and a two week pandemic was about to swallow the lives of millions.
My daily egg has become a divination practice. How easy is the crack? How precise does the white fall from the shell before I scoop out the remainder? Does the yolk stay together or split, running all over the pan?
The egg sits on an altar of hash brown or toast, draped in the finery of a cloak of cheese. I choose the hot sauce like I’m selecting an anointing oil. Crystal’s for a good day. Tapatio for friendship. Cholula for wisdom. Tabasco for money.
The eggs at my local grocery store have gotten to ten dollars a carton. I can buy them cheaper at the markup at the corner store than in a Safeway. The price is its own divination on the state of the union. The headlines on bird flu and price gauging and incoming depression fill my brain like competing sports programming as I start searching for a new daily breakfast.
As a practitioner of the witchcraft of the working and middle classes, there has to be the magic of what happens when your modest magic suddenly becomes a luxury, and the ways you adapt. I find depression era cookbooks in a thrift store. The most common egg replacer is water, mixed in to make the eggs stretch. Sometimes bread crumbs.
I crack the last egg in my carton and three little spots of blood appear in the yolk. I watch it cook and put it on a chipped plate with my last slice of cheese for the month. I chew that motherfucker with a level of viciousness reserved for enemies. I soak it in a garlic hot sauce for protection and lick the plate clean.
If I’m going to get a bad omen, I’ll be one right back.
Wanna hang out with me? Upcoming Events:
May 14, Book Society for the Much Ado About Keanu event. Tickets.
May 18, Ancient Ways: Free drop in mini spell class
And if you want to support my work and learn more about witchcraft, check out Spells for Success.
Find me by sending a crow to the only streetlight in the smallest town you've ever heard of.
Or by checking out my website laureneparker.com