Artery cloggers

[Earl]

Did you buy some?

[Ben]

Damn right I did.

[Ben]

$8 a slice apparently.

[Earl]

[Ben]

[Earl]

Would you like a wafer-thin mint?

[Ben]

Would you like a wafer-thin mint?

[Ben]

[Ben]

Virgin boy eggs.

Urine-soaked eggs a spring taste treat in China city | Reuters

It's the end of a school day in the eastern Chinese city of Dongyang, and eager parents collect their children after a hectic day of primary school.

But that's just the start of busy times for dozens of egg vendors across the city, deep in coastal Zhejiang province, who ready themselves to cook up a unique springtime snack favoured by local residents.

Basins and buckets of boys' urine are collected from primary school toilets. It is the key ingredient in "virgin boy eggs", a local tradition of soaking and cooking eggs in the urine of young boys, preferably below the age of 10.

There is no good explanation for why it has to be boys' urine, just that it has been so for centuries.

The scent of these eggs being cooked in pots of urine is unmistakable as people pass the many street vendors in Dongyang who sell it, claiming it has remarkable health properties.

"If you eat this, you will not get heat stroke. These eggs cooked in urine are fragrant," said Ge Yaohua, 51, who owns one of the more popular "virgin boy eggs" stalls.

"They are good for your health. Our family has them for every meal. In Dongyang, every family likes eating them."

It takes nearly an entire day to make these unique eggs, starting off by soaking and then boiling raw eggs in a pot of urine. After that, the shells of the hard-boiled eggs are cracked and they continue to simmer in urine for hours.

Vendors have to keep pouring urine into the pot and controlling the fire to keep the eggs from being overheated and overcooked.

[Earl]

Would you try one? I don't even like the idea of pickled eggs.