After their graduation from the 17th Annual Egg Quality School in Park City, Utah, some students will be buying eggs for supermarket chains, and some will be buying for the military. Some will be processing eggs after they’re laid, and some will be tending the flocks that will lay the eggs. Some will enforce laws laid down by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and some will even be promoting eggs to consumers. Regardless of what they do next, all of the 100 or so students attending the National Egg Quality School will graduate knowing absolutely everything there is to know about eggs. After all, they’re taught by the most knowledgeable and experienced people in the business.  

Conducted over the course of four comprehensive days, the school’s curriculum is designed for serious-minded people – most of them new to many aspects of the egg business – who want to learn as much as possible about egg quality. Four days worth of lectures, combined with individualized instruction and hands-on laboratory experience, prepare students to be egg emissaries. In one of the hands-on lessons, they learn how to make a proper omelet. Of course, that’s where I fit in.

One of the things I bring to the curriculum is some levity. The school delivers so much scientific, technical and regulatory information in such a concentrated format that students feel the pressure from day one. When the students step into my “classroom,” the pressure is off and the fun begins.

After I demonstrate how to make an omelet in a minute, all of the students step up to a frying pan and cook the omelet of their dreams, filling them with all of their favorite ingredients. This “omelet workshop” gets everyone on their feet and actively involved in fixing their own lunch, and it’s great fun. During the workshop, you can hear a “p-s-s-s-s-s-s,” in the room, which must be the palpable release of academic pressure from the group. Or is that actually the sound of butter hitting the hot frypan surfaces?

I’ve been giving omelet workshops at the school for as many years as it has been in existence, each year in a different part of the country, and with retirement looming for me, I suppose this year’s was my last. I’m glad this year’s school was in Park City, UT.  What a spectacularly beautiful setting for me to sign-off in!