'How to Suck an Egg (Yolk):' An instructional bit from the publishers of the Birdsong County Whistler in Birdsong, America, county seat of Birdsong County, birthplace of the best Sweet Tea anywhere

By Jay C. Grelen, Moniteur de l’Arkansas

Legislators never really leave Little Rock. Even when the legislature isn’t in session, there’s always a committee meeting here that doesn’t make the headlines or an arm to twist there that the TV reporters don’t report. So we are blissful in our unawareness.

But this annual en masse thing is frightening, and we want to ensure that you are aware that the legislators are coming. They convene at noon today, and after a hard day of work, likely will adjourn by 1:30 p.m. If you aren’t already nervous, read Mike Wickline’s 3,800-word doctoral thesis in Sunday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: Bevy of issues await state’s 95th. (You have to pay to read.) Y’all, that’s enough words to fill an entire newspaper page and two full columns on the next page, and that’s without pictures or headlines.

We’re here to mitigate the misery, to stand in the breach between sanity and law-making, between civilization and the legislators. Now that you know, the two months will be less traumatic. “Praemonitus, praemunitus.”*

* That’s “forewarned is forearmed” for those of you who, as did I, managed to avoid even a hint of Latin and Shakespeare in all my years of “learning.”

So here we go, diverting your attention from the pain to come.

Who needs an egg separator when you’ve got plastic water bottles spilling out of recycling bins? This is an old trick my kid sister learned somewhere years ago and passed it on. Our relationship is like that.

Now Moniteur de l’Arkansas, in collaboration with our fellow journalists at the Birdsong County Whistler in Birdsong, America, are passing it down to you. (We pass this down well aware that you may already be aware of this. In that case, consider it a refresher.)

We were inspired to provide this information as we prepared to separate five yolks from the five whites of five eggs in order to make meringue for a coconut pie. We own a regulation egg-separator, but this is far more entertaining.

• Crack the egg into a bowl.

• Slightly squeeze a pre-emptied plastic 16-ounce water bottle.

• Stick the snout into the bowl near the yolk.

• Unsqueeze the bottle.

• Let it suck it up.

We had five successes in a row, by which we mean, not a speck of yolk sneaked into the whites. (Every meringue maker knows that even a speck of yolk will ruin a meringue.)

The finished meringue on a coconut pie baked from scratch (if you don’t count the crust). (The typewriter has nothing to do with the pie, except that I use the typewriter once in a while to write about meringue and sweet tea.)

The recipe for meringue is ubiquitous, from your mother’s recipes on index car to the label on the cream of tartar bottle. Find a recipe, and go suck egg yolks. Or if you prefer, tell a legislator to.

The Seal of the Great City of Maumelle.

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