Jim Hammond is an elite athlete. He works out two hours a day with a trainer, pushing himself through sprints, runs, and strength-building exercises. His resting heart rate is below 50. He’s won three gold medals and one silver in amateur competitions this year alone, running races from 100 to 800 meters. In his division, he’s broken four national racing records. But perhaps the most elite thing about Hammond is his age.

He is 93.

And really, there’s nothing much wrong with him, aside from the fact that he doesn’t see very well. He takes no drugs and has no complaints, although his hair long ago turned white and his skin is no longer taut.

His secret? He doesn’t have one. Hammond never took exceptional measures during his long life to preserve his health. He did not exercise regularly until his fifties and didn’t get serious about it until his eighties, when he began training for the Georgia Golden Olympics. “I love nothing better than winning,” he says. “It’s been a wonderful thing for me.” Hammond is aging, certainly, but somehow he isn’t getting old—at least, not in the way we usually think about it.

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The perfect Poached Eggs

After many a poached egg disaster, I decided to scour the web and see how the pro's do it. I was surprised by how much variety there was out there. I decided to experiment, and here, below I present to you the most effective method I have discovered.

you will need:

• eggs [i use two]
• medium sized saucepan
• vinegar [i use rice vinegar, but i think any low flavour will do - probably don't use brown vinegar]
• a spoon
• one of those ladle things with holes in it [not shown]
  
• bread and margarine
• salt & pepper

Bring a little more than half a saucepan of water to the boil, adding about four dessert spoons of white vinegar. It's the acidic vinegar that stops your eggs from separating and turning into a boiling egg and water soup.



Remove your boiling water and vinegar from the hot stove top so it stops bubbling, and stir it. Now stir it as fast as you dare without splashing boiling water on yourself.



With the water spinning around in the saucepan, crack your eggs into the centre of the water.
The water should quite quickly lose momentum at this point, so gently use your spoon to keep it in motion. This stops the eggs from sitting in one spot in the pan and sticking there.




Turn the heat down on the nearby stove top [our saucepan should still be sitting to the side at this point].




Now add your bread to the toaster and get it on it's way. The toast is our timer here. Keep those eggs spinning, then slowly add them back to our hot stove top. The trick here is that we want our water to stay very hot, but we don't want the bubbles associated with boiling, as they will rip through our perfect eggs spheres like an iceberg through the Titanic.

When our toast inevitably pops, remove the eggs from the heat again, turn off the stove, and butter your toast. What part of the loaf you use for your toast is entirely up to you, but I save my crusts for my regular poached egg adventures, it just seems to suit the soft eggs with the brittle crust of toast.

Now the most important step, remove the eggs with the ladle with drainage thing, pop them onto your toast, garnish with a pinch of salt and pepper and a sprig of parsley & voila!

Perfect poached eggs. Enjoy.