Egg salad

Well, my brother's writing about egg salad so I have to, too - especially to take up the notion of sweet pickles in the egg salad, and also the use of the egg slicer.

I like sweet pickles in the egg salad, in fact my favorite egg salad is a kind of Danish one we made at a restaurant where I used to work, that had minced sweet pickles, celery, scallions, and dill in it, (along with the boiled eggs and mayonaise and Dijon mustard) and then was served on buttered rye bread. (I have also been known to eat peanut butter and egg salad - on toasted whole wheat bread, very thin layer of peanut butter, and then the egg salad - but it's an indulgence only for when you are feeling very thin, like after you have biked or skiied a great distance.)

And, I agree with my brother that the egg slicer is a magical tool, but from a cook's perspective, the cubes of egg yolk it produces somehow are not as receptive to the mayonaise as they should be. The best way to get the yolks to really soak up the mayo is to mash them with a fork, and then add the whites cubed by the slicer. And, the true alternative to the egg slicer is a grater - if you grate the eggs on a box grater, you can get a really good consistency egg salad.