Does Your Food Have A Bad Case Of The Blahs? Put An Egg On It!

Wondering what to do with all those painted eggs, or the ones you never managed to paint for Easter? We're here to help.

Inspired by Portlandia's "Put a Bird on It" and Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)," we went in search of ways to be more assertive with eggs.

Why put an egg on it? To spruce up tired foods. Make them tasty. And sure, add some protein, too. (If you were worried about heart disease, you now can relax.)

The Instagram hashtag #putaneggonit, which has more than 17,600 submissions, was a goldmine.

As you'd expect, people put a lot of fried eggs on toast and scrambled eggs in tacos. There's an abundance of poached eggs floating in noodle soups and oozing out over root vegetables.

But if you do a deep dive into #putaneggonit, you'll discover some more profound appointments of eggs on things.

Here, in a twist on egg-adorned rice porridge, or congee, eggs top savory oats with soy sauce and gochujang (that addictive Korean condiment). Oh, yes, an egg does belong on there.

And these orphaned green vegetables, which could have easily been dismissed — and tossed — got a full-on reincarnation. All it took was an egg.

Like Picasso during his blue period, Lili Gu, the photographer and filmmaker behind @eggoftheday, has been invigorating dull food canvases with bright yellow yolks since October 2014.

She brilliantly elevated a portabello mushroom by baking an egg inside, and topped a bowl of Carolina gold rice pudding with a crown of caramelized yolk.

After visiting this exquisite land of #putaneggonit, we felt as if we'd donned a pair of yolk-colored glasses.

NPR's cafeteria, in the following days, seemed like a cold, barren landscape of grains, meats and salads tragically bereft of eggs.

Why not put an egg on more foods from there?

Like the sad plate of barley at the top of the page. Isn't it better with an egg on it?

We put an egg on this turkey burger. OK, it already had sautéed red onions and mushrooms, Swiss cheese and chipotle mayonnaise. But we thought, hey, maybe an egg would transform it into something dramatically better.

It is prettier. But is it tastier? Yep, with an egg, it is a marginally more delicious experience. That's what putting an egg on it is about sometimes.

But what about dessert, you ask? We went and put some hard-boiled egg slices on this gooey chocolate chip cookie. Because, well, it's good-looking, right?

Fantastic to eat? Um ... Sure!

And look at these boring beets. You totally wrote them off. But then — you know what we did. We put a hard-boiled egg on them.

Better, right? So much better.

We thought about putting an egg on an egg, but that was a little too meta, even for us. But if you go there, tell us about it in the comments.

And if you've got any other eggceptional egg-on-it exploits, share those, too, please.