BY JOHN MCLOONE

I’m preparing myself to go on a culinary adventure, to a place I’ve never before been.
Our purchases of eggs these days are pretty sporadic. I think we went through one $5.99 dozen of them since the year turned. Supply seems much better than a month ago, as the bird flu apparently caused most of the cluckers to be dispatched.
The store had a large display of eggs at that same low, low price of $5.99. I decided to think about it while I filled my grocery list, which only probably consisted of two things. I had to weigh the fact that I did not grab a cart, and if one or two other things caught my eye, I didn’t want to be balancing an armful of product with eggs on the top.
As I meandered through the store, there was another section of apparently more organic eggs. They were just $2.99 per dozen. Closer examination revealed they were cage free eggs, which I guess means my omelet will be just a little more humane, though the pig had to die for the bacon that’s going in it, and I’m pretty sure that animal wasn’t raised in a cage free atmosphere.
I opened up a carton of the eggs, as if I was a USDA inspector. They were brown. Everything else looked pretty much like a standard egg. A sign was posted in front of the cooler that said something to the effect of these eggs being brown. It listed the difference between white eggs and brown eggs as just the color of the shell.
The adventurer in me told me to grab a dozen. I did, balancing it carefully atop my armload of groceries. I checked out, drove home and explained my egg choice to my wife, as if she had never heard of brown eggs.
So far, the brown eggs are still in the refrigerator. I’ve been at this point in my culinary past before. I just have to get over the hump and fry some of these, and everything will be fine. It took me 20 years until I braved eating a fish fry. However, I justified that by thinking the fried fillets were just going to taste like really big versions of the fish sticks that were placed before me every Friday during Lent as a kid. It took me way more years to figure out there are actually some vegetables I like. Green beans are good and better with bacon cut up with them.
Late Sunday morning, I had plans to break a couple of these brownies into a pan and fully embrace this organic food concept. I opened the refrigerator and my attention was diverted. There was an open pack of hot dogs. Less than a minute in the microwave and virtually no clean-up. My wife would appreciate that, I thought. Eating brown eggs at that time would be inconsiderate to her.
My brown egg adventure will have to wait.