I don't know which came first but the egg will certainly outlast

So, it's been more than two weeks since Thanksgiving, and I'm still working on all the leftovers.

No, I don't mean turkey, sweet potatoes, or any of the main course dishes - those I finished early into the first week. What I am still working on and feeling guilty about neglecting are the odds and ends like carrots and celery stalks, four types of both cheese and crackers, and a seemingly bottomless supply of eggs.

Since my mom was flying in late the night before Thanksgiving, I had to do the food shopping ahead of time. She gave me a list, checked it twice, and on it were two dozen eggs. "Seriously?" you may ask. I did. We were only hosting four people.

"Sure," she said. "Whatever we don't use, you can hardboil." Okay.

We used four. Four eggs out of 24.

Now I like hardboiled eggs well enough. I typically only eat the whites, with a little yolk thrown in for good measure. But no one, other than perhaps the Easter Bunny, ever needs 20 hardboiled eggs on-hand.

I boiled eight of them two Sundays ago, and ate egg salad every day for lunch that week. Then last Sunday, I boiled the remaining 12, and ate spinach salad every day for lunch that week. Except Friday, which was our office holiday party, where we get taken out to lunch. No matter. I included three eggs per salad, so by Thursday, I was officially finished with my marathon egg-eating anyway. Or so I thought.

This year, instead of our annual white elephant gift exchange, my company thought it would be festive to hold a cookie contest. The entries didn't have to be cookies - they could be any dessert - and they didn't have to be homemade to win. But you know that nothing store-bought would. So after pouting and shouting and generally sulking about having to bake during my busy week, I got in the spirit and decided to just pick up a box mix. Which, you know, meant buying more eggs. (This time, at least, I purchased only half a dozen.)

Since I knew my box mix wouldn't win on originality, I thought maybe I could at least make mine look the most festive. I found this recipe for M&M's Gingerbread Picture Cookies, and it seemed simple enough. Except that when I got home and started baking, I didn't realize until after I poured in 1 and 1/4 cups of water that I was following the recipe for gingerbread cake and not soft gingerbread cookies. Crap.

I contemplated running out and buying another mix, but truthfully, I just didn't care that much. I figured I would cut the cake into squares and decorate them anyway. Not to mention that once I took a closer look at the two recipes, I realized that the cookies didn't even NEED eggs, and then I would have bought them for no reason.

What I should have gone back for was "Mini" M&M's. I somehow missed that word when reading the recipe, and just bought the original-sized M&M's. And this is how you know I am bad at math since it never occurred to me that they might be too large to effectively decorate a 2-inch cookie. But because of my poor reading comprehension skills, I wasn't making 2-inch cookies anymore, so I managed to pull a Tim Gunn and make them (kind of) work:

Cute as they were, it probably won't surprise you that they didn't win. That prize went to a red and green jello mold that, in fairness, tasted better than it looked. The good news is that I did win $100 in a belly-dancing contest, which was probably one of the last things I would ever want to do in front of co-workers, but at least I was compensated for my loss of dignity.

What? Your company doesn't bring in a half-naked dancer to your holiday party and expect everyone to get up and take a lesson? You mean that might be considered awkward or inappropriate? Oh, that's just par for the course around here. Though nothing could compare to the money machine.

So that was a nice, unexpected end to the week, but I'm ending my weekend exactly as I have for the past few Sundays - hardboiling this week's lunch. I'm letting you all know now - I'm officially skipping Easter this year.