Rookie Mama: Are eggs all they’re cracked up to be? Substitutions keep your budget sunny-side up

By Michelle Cote
The Rookie Mama

There’s much to be said about eggs and bird flu at the moment; an Avian atrocity that’s put the nation on eggshells as we navigate an industry once considered unflappable.

The severe impact of rising egg costs on just about everyone is nothing to squawk at – and it doesn’t look to be resolved any time soon.

Between runny breakfast sandwiches and floury baked goods and four growing boys, my family consumes 18-36 eggs weekly on average. Well, ‘consumed’; past tense.

We’re adapting to ways around this, migrating to egg substitutions, because we’ve really no other choice for now.

Fortunately, I’ve recently learned great news about these swap-portunities – As it turns out, there are many alternatives. But as with any cooking or baking experiments, results may vary – sometimes laughably so.

My family and I kicked off the year with a resolution to start celebrating each other’s half birthdays.

We figured that there’s a lot going on in the world; let’s grow more veggies and eat more cake.

No sooner had we made this decision that we realized cakes – even the simplest of Betty Crocker box varieties – require eggs.

Oof.

Or, as the French word for ‘egg’ goes: ‘Oeuf.’

Whereas I’d originally thought avoiding eggs was easily doable by skipping our favorite over-easy variety fried up each week, I hadn’t quite wrapped my head around just how many eggs I use for baking weekly.

I dug out my well-loved, heavily creased Substitution Bible, to which I often turn in a frenzy when in a pinch to substitute a pinch of whatever a recipe calls for and I just don’t have.

A quick web search brought up easy solutions as well.

As it turns out, there are several affordable alternatives for eggs to keep your budget on the sunny side. To name a few:

• Unsweetened applesauce or mashed bananas – Use for waffles, quick breads, muffins where moisture is key. Swap ¼ cup for each egg.

• Ground flax or chia seed – Use for baked goods; results may be denser. Measure 1 tbsp of either one in a cup, add 3 tbsp water, wait five minutes prior to use.

• Vinegar and baking soda – Use for baking items in which the outcome needs to be light and fluffy. Substitute 1 tsp baking soda mixed with 1 tbsp vinegar.

• Plain yogurt or buttermilk – Use for cakes, muffins, quick breads. The acidity will add lift and moisture. Substitute ¼ cup for each egg.

• Carbonated water and beer – The carbonation will add moisture and make for a fluffy rise. Substitute ¼ cup of either one.

• Gelatin – Measure 1 tbsp mixed with 3 tbsp cold water to replace 1 egg.

• Nut butter – This substitution brings more flavor and works well in a quick bread where nuts are used. Substitute 3 tbsp of any nut butter to replace 1 egg.

• Soy lecithin – Use in place of recipes that call for egg yolks. Use 1 tbsp to replace 1 egg yolk.

• Aquafaba – Use in place of whipped egg whites, in recipes such as meringues and macaroons. The chemical bonds create a scaffold that keeps shape when baked. Use 3 tbsp for each egg or egg white.

• Liquid commercial egg substitute – Use for savory dishes, particularly for quiches, omelets, frittatas. Use ¼ cup per egg.

• Tofu – Use silken tofu for baking dense items such as brownies or cookies. Crumble extra firm tofu for a scramble or egg salad. Use ¼ cup silken tofu.

The beauty of using any of these over easy-peasy substitutions is several are inexpensive possibilities, so allow yourself a bit of grace should the recipe fail you.

Have fun with it.

Worst case scenario– Raise a toast with a can of soda, combine it with a box cake mix, and you’ve got yourself a fantastic dessert. Go ahead and do a happy dance, like Duncan Hines met Gregory Hines.

Earlier I mentioned laughable baking results.

Last week, I was whipping up a “half birthday” cake for one of my kiddos.

I dutifully subbed in a quarter cup applesauce for an egg in the mix.

After a straightforward baking, cooling, and frosting experience of the chocolate goodness, I noticed a large crack forming down the center of my “7 ½” designed in chocolate chips upon the vanilla frosting, an epic failing of sugary proportions before my eyes.

The cake was literally becoming a “half” birthday cake as it split.

I sprinted to action, placing toothpicks at various base points of the cake in desperation to keep it upright, as my witnessing kiddos tried their darnedest to stifle all the laughs and look away.

But lo and behold, the entire masterpiece became pieces indeed, falling delicately apart like a crumbly lava cake. The binding agent of the applesauce just hadn’t quite – bound.

What devolved became a Vesuvian science fair experiment and that, my friends, was the icing on the cake.

We were able to laugh about the dirt cake later – My family joked we should have placed gummy worms inside to complete the look – and fortunately it tasted just fine.

Next week, I’m trying the can of soda, and we’ll let the experimenting continue.

So let’s keep calm and scramble on, by whisking up egg alternatives as we weather these times.

Remember to bring the gummy worms.

And don’t forget your happy dance.

­­– Michelle Cote lives in southern Maine with her husband and four sons, and enjoys camping, distance running, biking, gardening, road trips to new regions, arts and crafts, soccer, and singing to musical showtunes – often several or more at the same time! <

Insight: Two Weeks on Death’s Doorstep

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

It began innocently enough with a cough as we approached mid-February and ended up being two of the worst weeks of my life from a health perspective.

This shows a sampling of some of the medications that were
used by Ed Pierce to overcome pneumonia in both lungs
during the last two weeks of February.
PHOTO BY ED PIERCE   

Back around Thanksgiving last fall, I was suffering from some sort of viral infection that persisted for days and was eventually conquered by my doctor prescribing an effective five-day antibiotic treatment. I felt good afterward and got through Christmas and New Year’s and on into January without further illness.

But around Feb. 10, I started to develop a cough and treated it with cough syrup and taking a Nyquil pill at bedtime. Within three or four days I seemed better and was on the mend when I had my annual physical with my doctor on Valentine’s Day.

He listened with a stethoscope to my lungs and said whatever I had been experiencing earlier that week had cleared up because he couldn’t hear anything in there.

That evening my wife and I went out to a restaurant for a meal and the following day we attended a funeral at a local church for a friend who had passed away. I noticed that I had the sniffles at the church, but they didn’t seem excessive or anything out of the ordinary.

The next morning, Sunday, Feb. 16, it began to snow heavily, and both my wife and I worked outside clearing the driveway of ice and snow. I was using my snowblower and the snow was so fine as it scattered around, I could barely see a few feet in front of my face.

Then it began to rain lightly, and the moisture appeared to be frozen before it reached the ground. My coat, hat and gloves were soaked, but I had cleared the driveway of the snow.

My wife and I decided to return indoors but before we did that, as I was putting away the snowblower in the garage, I felt this weird type of chill travel from one end of my body to the other. When that has happened to me before, it’s a signal that I’m coming down with something.

By later that evening, I was in poor shape. My nose was running like a raging river, I had an uncontrollable cough, a sudden loss of appetite, and was experiencing a terrible headache. I took an extra Nyquil pill to try and regain some control of my health while I slept that night, but it didn’t work.

When I woke up on Monday, Feb. 17, I was sicker than a dog. I was still coughing, my nose was still running, and the headache was still there. But two new symptoms suddenly appeared. The first one was severe diarrhea and the second was that I could now hear the fluid building up in both of my lungs.

The pronounced wheezing was troublesome because it occurred every time that I took a breath in and then exhaled. It sounded like hitting a low note on an accordion or a moose in distress and was deeply concerning.

During all this time it was difficult to sleep through the night. I would doze off at some point but then wake myself up with a loud wheeze. I recall waking myself up one evening at 1, 2, 3 and 4 a.m. with my wheezing.

After realizing that my over-the-counter cold medicine wasn’t helping me, I called the doctor on Tuesday, Feb. 18. He was booked solid for the rest of the week, so my healthcare provider asked if I would be willing to see another doctor in the practice who had an appointment available that Thursday.

I agreed to make an appointment to see her. She examined me and after listening to my lungs with her stethoscope, she diagnosed me with Community Acquired Pneumonia. That means someone at one of the places I visited, either the restaurant or the funeral at the church, had been suffering from pneumonia and then spread it to me.

She prescribed a five-day course of antibiotics, the exact same medication that I had been prescribed over Thanksgiving, and she told me that if my pneumonia didn’t clear up by the end of the antibiotic treatment, she would prescribe another medication.

Throughout this entire ordeal, my wife wouldn’t let me go outdoors to work on the driveway when it snowed several times again and I wasn’t even allowed to take the dog outside. I felt absolutely useless.

By Day Five of the antibiotic treatment, my runny nose had stopped, my headache had subsided, and my diarrhea had gone away. But I was still coughing a great deal, and I could still hear pronounced wheezing coming from my lungs.

My doctor then prescribed a treatment for the next five days of taking two prednisone pills daily.

Those were aimed at clearing my lungs of the fluid and by the time that medication was finished, I felt better and began to think that I was on the road to recovery.

In looking back at the last two weeks of February, some irrefutable facts are hard to overlook.

When you’re old, it’s hard to ward off sickness, no matter how healthy you are. And you can’t fully appreciate good health until you become sick. <

Andy Young: Time for a rebranding?

By Andy Young

I’m a little out of sorts because this weekend is an hour shorter than usual. Daylight Saving Time begins this Sunday morning when the clocks “spring forward” one hour. That reminds me: is any month associated with more tired adages, vapid platitudes, and outright inaccuracies than March?

A crazy person is labeled “Madder than a March hare,” but the reality is hare behavior in the spring is attributable to the animal’s mating ritual and has nothing to do with anger or insanity.

“Beware the Ides of March,” a cautionary phrase immortalized by William Shakespeare, is nothing more than silly superstition. There’s no inherent danger in any particular calendar date. That established, if a group of toga-wearing Roman senators comes at me on the 15th, I’ll probably turn tail and start sprinting.

And even though The Old Farmer’s Almanac annually forecasts that the third month’s weather will “Come in like a lion, and go out like a lamb,” that doesn’t always turn out to be the case.

March has much to recommend it. It contains more letters than its two one-syllable sisters, May and June. It’s the only month that can legitimately call itself a true verb; sorry May, but auxiliary ones don’t count. It’s also the only month that can be used as a non-proper noun. Archaic nouns don’t count, so get over yourself, May.

March has spawned numerous significant individuals, including inventors Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, and Rene Descartes; literary titans Robert Frost, Flannery O’Connor, and Dr. Seuss; Hall of Fame athletes Cy Young, Gordie Howe, and Shaquille O’Neal; high-profile entertainers Elton John, Chuck Norris, and Lady Gaga; and harder-to-categorize movers and shakers like Harriet Tubman, Vincent Van Gogh, and Michelangelo. And since Sir Isaac Newton, Taylor Swift, and LeBron James were all born in December, it’s obvious each member of this accomplished trio was conceived in March!

Even more impressive, consider this: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Emperor Caligula, Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Jeffrey Dahmer, Saddam Hussein, Benito Mussolini, Ayatollah Khomeini and the Reverend Jim Jones all weren’t born in March! And there’s a 91.7% chance Jack the Ripper wasn’t either.

March has numerous assets, but also some very real liabilities. Drawback number one: it’s one of only two months without a three-day weekend.

New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Day, Presidents Day, Patriots Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Columbus/Indigenous Peoples’ Day all provide their respective months with a built-in leisure Monday. The only other federal holiday-less month is August, but since much of the country is on vacation during that time anyway, the void is less noticeable.

Being three-day-weekend-free is bad enough, but adding insult to injury, March is an hour shorter than the other six 31-day months. Blame the Energy Policy Act of 2005 for that and it was what changed the start of DST from the last Sunday in April to the second Sunday in March.

At least March is still as long as January, May, July, August, October, and December are in Arizona, Hawaii, and the five populated US territories (Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands) that don’t observe DST.

March clearly needs an image makeover, so I’m spending this weekend trying to invent a catchy new motto for it. Possible slogans I’ve come up with so far:

“Happier than a March hare,” “Eagerly anticipate the Ides of March,” and “In like Manson, out like Tubman.”

Okay; I know these all sound pretty weak. But you try being creative when you’ve only got 47 hours to work with! <

Tim Nangle: My bills to increase transparency and protect consumer rights

By State Senator Tim Nangle

As your state senator, one of my top priorities is ensuring Maine consumers are treated fairly and transparently in the marketplace. Too often, people are caught off guard by hidden fees, unfair policies and unexpected financial hits.

State Senator Tim Nangle

That’s why I’m introducing several consumer-protection bills this session to tackle deceptive pricing, simplify subscription cancellations and bring fairness to how parking violations are issued. At their core, these bills are about keeping more money in your pocket and preventing corporations from taking advantage of Mainers.

If you’ve ever bought a ticket to a concert or booked a hotel room, you’ve probably experienced the frustration of hidden fees. The initial price you see rarely matches what you actually pay.

Service charges, resort fees and convenience fees can quickly inflate costs, turning what seemed like a good deal into a much more expensive purchase.

My bill would require businesses to disclose the full price upfront – including all mandatory fees – whenever they advertise prices. This would prevent deceptive pricing tactics from misleading you and help maintain fair competition in the marketplace. When you buy something, you deserve to know exactly what it will cost – no surprises, no gimmicks.

Just like hidden fees, subscription traps are another way companies make it easy to start paying them, but hard to make it stop. Many of us have signed up for a free trial or subscription only to find that canceling is a confusing, frustrating process. Some businesses make it so complicated that people give up, continuing to pay for services they no longer want or need.

That’s why I’ve introduced a bill to simplify subscription cancellations by requiring companies to offer a clear, easy way to cancel online – just like they do when you sign up. If you don’t have to mail in a letter or go to a physical office to subscribe for a service, you shouldn’t have to jump through those hoops to cancel.

These bills are about making sure Mainers aren’t losing money due to deceptive practices. This includes parking violations. I’ve heard from constituents in my district who were blindsided by tickets they didn’t even know they had – some of them only finding out when the fine was sent to collections. That’s not right.

My bill would require that drivers be notified of parking violations at the time of the offense, eliminating delayed notifications that arrive weeks later with additional penalties. It also prevents parking fines from being reported to credit agencies, protecting Mainers from long-term financial harm.

These are common-sense protections that put consumers first. Whether it’s making pricing more transparent, ensuring subscriptions are easy to cancel or stopping predatory parking fines, these bills are about fairness. If you want to make your voice heard, learn how you can submit testimony by going to mainesenate.org/testify.

Contact me directly at Timothy.Nangle@legislature.maine.gov or call the Senate Majority Office at 207-287-1515. For the latest updates, follow me on Facebook at facebook.com/SenatorTimNangle, and sign up for my e-newsletter at mainesenate.org. <