Zippy Egg Salad

This zippy egg salad is a spring to summer favorite. It always surfaces when the chives in my garden appear. A popular lunch for the young ones.

This egg salad fitted into sandwiches was lunch for the two young ones and me. I am pretty excited. I plan on treating myself to potato chips. With everything else going on, I feel like I have sort of earned that one. This recipe for zippy egg salad is from the archives. I make it quite often. The little people seem to have taken a fancy to it, so here it is.  It is a staple when the chives show up. The zip in the zippy egg salad comes from a few Indianish ingredients. A little chat masala and red pepper flakes to be specific. So, here is another springtime and chives to celebrate.

I am generally filled with a touch of sadness and nostalgia as I write this post. It reminds me of a time when blogging was less complicated. I had more time to interact with others and there were more events around. But, oh well. The rest of the post is a short story that is fiction, woven around this salad.

Fiction Story Around the Salad

It was a group party event – one of the several that dominated her life as the mother of 2 elementary school children. Events such as birthdays, school pot lucks, general gatherings and of course just lunch at home with friends. This recipe works really well for all of that. It retains a touch of novelty and managed to  get done in a hurry.  It does not bother the little palates too much and actually met all the allergy restriction. The recipe being her tested and tried egg salad with zip! Usually she toned up or down ingredients, like the onions, green chilies depending on her crowd, but overall stuck to the same formula.

Today was no different, she boiled her dozen eggs, cooled and shelled them, carefully reserving the shells for the compost when her daughter Maya rushed in and hugged her. With her hands on her hips, she demanded -,”Lana told me your egg salad is different, is that true?”

She looked at the child and smiled.

Well, anything I make for you is different, since you are special…” Mentally, she thought, “Please, do not create troubles with this one…”

Maya happily informed her, “Lana told me they all love it, but that its different. She looked up and asked, “Did your mother teach you how to make it?”

This question caught her by surprise and threw her back to a time almost a decade and a half ago, a time she had forgotten, a time when life was different.

She remember the little graduate apartment, in Cambridge, the one unknown to anyone she knew today. The one she shared with Nick – her first love, the one who got away.  It was her first year away from home, away from that sheltered quite life in Calcutta. Her hometown, where everything seemed so secure, predictable and without trouble. She came to college for graduate studies and in the two years also grew up and learned more about life that she had ever expected.

 

Two months, into college, she was paired with Nick for a class assignment with Nick. For reasons she still cannot explain, they fell in love. Theirs was a deep and passionate love, and yet full of laughter, intense and heady. It stayed that away for 2 years until it was time for them to make serious decisions. Then somehow, she just could not just follow her heart, she left. Amidst tears, without too many words carrying the image of his shocked pained expression with her in the deep recesses of her secret self.
She allowed herself few regrets – life just did not allow that. That time in life, with its unfulfilled promise left her, taking some of herself with it.

Over time, she went to work in NYC, in time through appropriate connections and introductions met Anil – an amiable and suitable boy. Life is not unhappy, just different. Anil travels a lot. They both worked hard and still do. Particularly after Maya, their life is now a predictable pace. It was very rarely, on late nights when the house settled down after everyone went to sleep, she could not help wondering about what might have been had she been braver – would life have been different?

Maya’s question reminded her of the origins of this infamous salad. A summer picnic at Nick’s sisters house, when they wanted something Indian. Her sparse pantry had very few “Indian” ingredients. The salad she conjures is still an an “Indian” egg salad. It has stayed that way even now. Long after “they” have been done.

“Ma, you look sad?” the girl asked quietly… She looked at her daughter and quietly hugged her and proceeded to chop the eggs.

I release this post from its shadows from my drafts, with some trepidation, for an interest event called Chalks and chopsticks, started by Aqua, making a second edition appearance at Sandeepa’s blog.

Well, the story might not be good, the salad is actually pretty tasty…