Hard Boiled (or Steamed) Fresh Eggs
You’ve probably heard hundreds of times how fresh eggs are difficult to peel when hard boiled. The key to easy peel fresh eggs is to steam the eggs instead of boiling. I’ve tried pretty much every method out there like salt and/or baking soda in the water and Julia Child’s method, which is quite involved. Then I read about steaming eggs, I tried it and it worked perfectly.
All you need to do it set up your steamer, get the water boiling, add eggs, and cook for 8-12 minutes depending on the size of the eggs and how you want the yolks cooked. Remove from the steamer and plunge into ice water. They eggs should peel like a dream. These eggs were only two days old when I cooked them.
Now the the only difficulty you’ll find after boiling eggs is trying to figure out what to stuff them with. On this occasion I used avocado and lime juice and sprinkled the tops with chipotle powder. Curried deviled eggs are also fabulous. There’s a jar of pickled beet juice in the fridge just waiting for hard boiled eggs as well. I love having deviled eggs in the fridge for quick healthy breakfast or snacks. Nothing beats the incredible edible egg!!!
What’s your favorite deviled egg recipe?
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Earning their Keep
We’ve been hearing lots of mice in the house, in the walls, in the ceilings. We were wondering if the cats were doing their job, but then on two different occasions in the past month we have found evidence that they have.
In case you can’t quite tell what’s in the photo above, here’s a cropped version. Typically they leave what we call “mouse pants” which is just the back legs. I’m not sure why this time it was just the face.
It’s nice to know their doing their job, but I’d be happy if they ate 100% of their catch. Oh well, I guess as long as I don’t have mice getting into the pantry I don’t mind picking up mouse parts every once and again. Two of our cats are not mousers at all, the other three are great. Having working animals is so nice, it’s so much easier than setting and monitoring traps! At least in the house it’s just mice that they leave, when they’re all outdoors they’ll leave squirrels and various other rodents on my front step.
Do your pets ever leave you gifts?
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Friday Favorite: Wear it Out!
We’ve reached that point in our marriage where many of the things we received as wedding gifts or inexpensive items we purchased have started to wear out. I’m a big fan of wearing things out, I HATE getting rid of things before their useful life is over, it makes me feel like I’m wasting money. My clothes are usually completely indecent before I finally turn them into quilts or rags. The jeans below were worn for 5 more years after this photo was taken. They eventually made it into my travel patch quilt.
This year we’re going to have to replace a few major household items, like our living room furniture. When we first got married we had a hand-me-down sofa that was in rough shape. After we’d been married a year we finally purchased this couch. It wasn’t a pricey couch, so it was never going to last 30 years.
It did well enough, but we’ve been talking about replacing it for the past 3-4 years. It’s full of holes and the worst part is that the foam is breaking down. I vacuum up a little ring of foam dust around the sofa each week. That’s horrible for your lungs, so we finally settled on what we wanted and ordered a new sofa.
Our new sofa is a classic shape (English roll arm) and we chose natural colored textured linen for the fabric. We knew we wanted to get something that would last much longer than our previous sofa. The linen is really tough and we can order new cushions if needed, when it wears out it can be reupholstered. Of course there’s no instant gratification when you purchase furniture like this, it will be 10-12 weeks until it arrives. That’s actually a good thing considering our only 36″ door is in the back of the house and there are 6 foot snowdrifts all around the house. No doubt it will be scheduled for delivery during mud season, stay tuned, no doubt there will be some kind of excitement that happens.
It feels great to wear things out before replacing them. It’s been a good sofa, we’ve watched many movies on it and Mr Chiots has used it for many naps. It’s moved with us three times and has almost always been a part of our lives. I’m debating on whether or not the sofa should be donated to Goodwill when we get our new one, it’s in such bad shape and so uncomfortable I’m almost embarrassed to pass it along to someone else.
Are you a use it up, wear it out kind of person?
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Stress Less – Puzzle More!
One of the things we like to do around here is puzzles. We find them to the perfect stress reducing activity. Last night we finished up Escort to Oshkosh puzzle, which was a great puzzle.
Now we’re moving on to a Piatnik puzzle, a brand we haven’t tried before. We found this Starry Night puzzle at a local art museum. I’m always happy to find a puzzle featuring classic art, I have the Japanese Bridge by Monet Ravensburger Puzzle and it’s fantastic. One of my favorite, we do it every
Our collection of puzzles is growing quite nicely. Perhaps next we’ll pull out an old favorite. So far I think we’ve tried just about every brand of puzzle, some are better than others. It’s always nice to spend a few minutes in the morning working on the puzzle while I enjoy my coffee. It’s great to start the day with a stress reducing activity.
Do you have any great puzzles to recommend?
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Cat Bomb
Here at Chiot’s Run this is known as a “cat bomb”. It cracks me up every time.
It’s not often that all the cats are in one place at the same time, but they all retreat to the safety of the bed when the vacuum cleaner comes out. Safety in numbers I guess!
Do you have any funny phrases you use to describe things that happen at your place?
