Conventional ostrich eggs.

One would think that out of a day spent being pulled and stretched and kneaded and unkinked on a massage table, and then being rubbed and clipped and trimmed and polished in a pedicure throne, and eating beautiful sandwiches with my excellent friend, and sipping spiced tea with my flaming-sworded friend while our excellent friend was massaged--one would think that one piece of all of this excellence would take the cake as most notable of the day. And yet: when we decided to stop in at Columbus's majestic Whole Foods store at the end of the day, since we were within ten minutes' drive of it and could instantly conjure up twenty things we either needed or wanted (or both) there, I was in for a surprise.

To be sure, the fact that a massage and pedicure had undone much of my shoulder tension and pretty thoroughly blissed me out had something to do with my appreciation of said surprise.

Whole Foods sells its eggs in the produce section, in a display wherein they're arranged not in styrofoam cartons labeled by size but rather in straw-lined wicker baskets organized by type of bird. (All of this Whole Foods store's eggs come from a farm in Mt. Gilead, Ohio.) One chooses one's eggs one by one from the wicker baskets, placing them into a wire basket to carry them through the store to checkout. Presumably, at checkout they get placed in some sort of protective container for the ride home, but I didn't find that out.

Above the egg display, I noticed much larger egg-shaped objects. Assuming they were, oh, white eggplant or something, I said to my excellent friend, "What are those?" "They're ostrich eggs," she replied. I refused to believe it. But when I approached, I saw that they were indeed ostrich eggs, for sale in the grocery store. Having decided that if people are going to walk around the grocery store talking on their phones, I'm going to walk around taking pictures, I pulled out my little camera.


Ostrich eggs are, apparently, the equivalent of roughly 20-24 regular chicken eggs. Whole Foods claims that they're generally purchased as novelty items but can be cooked up into enormous egg dishes. Mt. Gilead does not supply the ostrich eggs; they come from California.

I'm not saying that seeing (and touching) the ostrich eggs was the best part of the day. It might not even be the most noteworthy. But given that most of what was best and most beautiful about my day isn't the kind of thing I'm up for writing down now, at this moment I'll give most notable to those massive eggs.

Icelandic chocolate? Also very, very fine.