We use ours all the time; I don't know how anyone gets by without one of these egg cookers! A hard-boiled egg out of an egg cooker peels
very easily. It sort-of changed my life, actually. Every now and then if there's a small crack in the egg, there will be an "egg-splosion" - egg white sort of bleeds out of the egg, and covers everything (it gets cooked and just peels away). Not a huge deal.
Yes, the lid is what you use to measure the water, depending on how you want the eggs cooked. We also found a glass poacher tray at a sale. It gets a healthy shot of PAM, and perfectly poached eggs are delivered, and can be thrown in the dishwasher. It can be a bit tricky getting the eggs out of the poacher attachment, it's quite hot when the cooker turns off, I usually grab the "handle" with a folded up paper towel, and pop the poached eggs out with a spoon.
I took ours apart, when we first got it and gave it a good cleaning and polish. I'll have to try the cream of tartar though, to shine up the inside.
Congrats! If you like eggs, I think you're going to love it!
Side note -- Terry had come up to Minneapolis for a visit, also to help Robert and I prepare for our 2010 wash-in... we decided to serve devlied eggs at the party. So we went to Costco and got what seemed like a bazillion eggs (at least 4 dozen). Terry always got up pretty early, and by the time Robert and I woke up the morning of the wash-in, he had hard boiled damn near every egg we bought in our egg cooker... he sure did love using small appliances. I have such a wonderful memory of mixing the yolks with Terry in our KitchenAid - working to get the "filling" perfectly seasoned, then putting it in a piping bag and filling the eggs. Seriously labor intensive, but well worth it. The deviled eggs did not last very long!
