“The borders of simplicity are shaped by restraint.” The Minimalists
This countertop, Dash Rapid Egg Cooker was the subject of a “Letter of Recommendation” column in the NYTimes Magazine. Tongue in cheek, self-deprecating humor rode along side the writer’s honest enthusiasm; it really was a letter of recommendation. But this appliance struck me as the poster child for the tyranny of convenience, an idea the legal scholar, Tim Wu wrote about in 2018. I missed it then, but enjoyed finding it now.
From Wu’s essay: "Easy is better, easiest is best. Convenience has the ability to make other options unthinkable. It trumps our true preferences. After you have experienced streaming television, waiting to see a show at a prescribed hour seems silly, even a little undignified. To make a latte at home seems absurd when you can round the corner and be at Starbucks. To resist convenience has come to require a special kind of dedication that is often taken for eccentricity, if not fanaticism.”
Back to the Letter of Recommendation… “I found it while walking through the home-goods section of T.J. Maxx, the American retail equialent of the Garden of Earthly Delights. In Hieronymus Bosch land of shopping anarchy, I spotted a carelessly abandonned gadget calling itself Dash Rapid Egg Cooker. The cashier who rang me up did not share my enthusiasm for the cheery cockiness of its packaging which proclaimed that it ‘Perfectly Cooks 6 Eggs at a Time!’ Baffled, she asked me a quesiton, the answer to which would have embarassed anyone but me. ‘Don’t you know how to boil water?’
I might have had a few more questions. Don’t you have a pot? Don’t you know how to turn on the stove? Do you have room on your counter or cabinets to store this thing when you’re not in egg-cooking mode? In the shopper's defense, she lived in a tiny NYC apartment that had only a mini-fridge, hot plate and microwave. And were she a huge egg lover, I guess this impulse buy could be justified. And if I’m honest, even if you’re not a big egg lover but want a countertop egg cooker, have a space for it and $20 to spend, buying the DREC isn’t a crime.
The perfect egg is an aesthetic challenge. A few nicks and tears in the white are hard to avoid when peeling. I imagine Julia Child wouldn’t have gotten too worked up over a perfect looking egg as long as it was perfectly cooked, Bon Appetit!
And an excellent counterpoint from a good friend … Despite all the hemming and hawing, “the column tells us that the egg cooker is great. I love mine.”
Maybe I’m too hardboiled on tyrannical conveniences but I’m sticking to my pot of gently boiling water.