Smashed eggs

I did a supermarket shop today. Supermarket shops are never, ever an inspiring chore, particularly after two weeks of enthusiastic foraging for berries and plums in my street and local woods. There is something irresistibly Lara Croft Tomb Raider about plunging into brambles with a tupperware box in pursuit of the perfect blackberry, which gives you some idea of how often I experience adventure in my life. But supermarket shops have to be done, principally because tins of baked beans are not to be found in my local brambles, and as I am more than usually bored, I pick a cart that is just a bit too small for my mound of shopping and on the way out, my box of 12 organic large free range eggs tips sideways and falls out, on to the concreted road, right in the middle of a zebra crossing, so that the whole thing happens under the amused stare of waiting car drivers. Hum. What to do. Well, the average shopper would probably leave them there. But then the average shopper also throws half smoked cigarette butts out on to the street without stubbing them out, never mind finding a bin to put them in. The average shopper throws recipts out of the car and tickets out of bus doors just before they close. The average shopper reads the Standard or Metro and then stuffs them behind their heads or throws them on to an empty seat before leaving the train. I am not the average shopper, so I stoop and pick up the box. The top looks pristine. The bottom feels damp. I have a dodgy cart, one with a malfunctioning wheel (aren't they all) and the idea of trying to about turn the contraption with my oozing box of eggs so I can return them to the shop and plead extenuating circumstances in the hope of securing a replacement box, is just too much for me. I'd have relished the argument actually (if you WILL make your carts too small for my purchases!! - I really should have become a lawyer...) but the car drivers are getting restless. So I push the cart on with my damp egg box perched on top, I take it home, pull it out, put it in the sink and examine the damage. Twelve eggs. Only two have survived. I make myself a cup of tea and think about the other ten. I go to my cupboards and haul out round cake tins and my usual baking paraphernalia. I have had an idea. Which cakes use loads and loads of eggs? Cheesecakes. Who is the queen of cheesecakes? Nigella. I pull out her cookbook (I don't own many - why bother, with a billion food recipes at your disposal with the tap of a finger on the IPad?) but I have always treasured How To Be A Domestic Goddess. In it I find a recipe for a New York cheesecake that I have somehow missed. This recipe calls for 6 eggs. Perfect. I make it. Cheese, sour cream, cornflour, sugar, vanilla, loads of whipped up egg whites, and egg yolks and a biscuit base, and it bakes in the oven for an hour, and then it sits in the oven for a further two hours, and then it sits outside the oven for yet another hour. In fact, it takes half a day from start to finish. But it is so light and fluffy and brilliant, and I still have 4 smashed eggs to use up. So I deliver this one to my neighbour over the road who has recently had an operation and is at home recuperating, and I pad back to my kitchen, and I start all over again. Two cheesecakes. You see? Smashed eggs are not a disaster. They are merely cakes, waiting to be born.