Eggies

I admit I have not seen these advertised, but we received Eggies "As Seen on TV" as a holiday gift and thought it would be fun to test them out and report on how it went.

The idea behind Eggies is you can make hard boiled eggs without the shell. It's not quite as fast and easy as the packaging would have you believe. First you wash all the pieces-parts. Each Eggie has 4 pieces times 6 Eggies equals 24 pieces-parts. Next dry and then coat the inside of 2 big pieces-parts with oil. Last you assemble the parts, leaving off the cap. 

Finally you're ready to put the eggs in the Eggies. It takes a little skill to get the whole egg inside the hole without breaking the yolk. After putting on the caps, you put the filled Eggies in a pot of water, deep enough to float them, and turn on the heat. There are specific instructions on how long to cook them (the count down starts when the water starts to simmer). 

The interesting thing is the Eggies are pretty big so there is a lot of air space. That means the yolk can float to the top - which means it has less contact with the heat - which means it takes longer than you expect it will to completely cook through. It also means they look interesting when they're cooked!

Like half a giant egg, right?

We had some egg whites leftover after making custard the day before so we tried making hard boiled egg whites. They were supposed to take less time to cook through (whites cook faster than yolks?) but we had the same trouble - where the top center of each one could have been cooked longer. We also had a small leak that sealed itself once the egg started to set up. It looked pretty cool though:

Overall it was a pretty interesting experiment - and the no-peel eggs tasted fine. If you really hate peeling eggs, give them a try. Otherwise, they are probably more work than they're worth!

Tender at the Bone - Review

Jennifer sent me Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone: Growing up at the Table recently. I was predisposed to like it as I had read another of the author's books, Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, after Dawn recommended it to me.

Reichl takes you on a journey - her story of the people and experiences that shaped her love of food and all things food related (cooking, baking, restaurants, wine, food writing, and of course eating and entertaining). Each chapter includes a recipe that is at the heart of what she's sharing - so not only can you travel along with her, you can cook and eat your way along as well! Let me tell you (without giving away anything) that her life growing up was a bit more exciting than most - her extended family being a bit eccentric (some of them in fact mentally ill) with a good deal of travel and time spent abroad.

This would be a great book to read while traveling (or during another activity where you are frequently interrupted) because each chapter can stand alone. I definitely recommend it and look forward to trying some of the recipes! (I'll let you know how they turn out.)

Recapping T's Birthday/Schotz's Big Bite Take 3

For T's birthday, July 24th, we did Schotz's Big Bite Take 3 (Schotz's Big Bite here, SBB Take 2 here) with the Guy's Big Bite episode "Boardwalk Wieners." We made hot dogs (wieners Rhode Island style), onion rings, peach cobbler, and T got a special present from Heather, his babysitter.

We started by slicing two onions (Texas Sweets) in buttermilk for an hour:

Next we made the chili...

... made the peach cobbler filling...

... and got ready to fry the onions. Seasoned flour is in the big pan, beer batter in the smaller one (we used Sweetwater 420 for the batter). 

Making the onion rings:

We boiled the hot dogs, steamed the buns and assembled the Boardwalk Weiners. Final product:

Baking the cobbler:

The whole dinner was a big success. T especially liked the onion rings (so much so that we didn't get a photo of the finished product!). The icing on the cake was this adorable "cookie T" that Heather made him:

Happy birthday T!

Cooking Party Recap

After school on Tuesday we had two of T's fifth-grade classmates and his speech therapist over for a cooking party. Credit for the idea goes to Mrs. N, T's brilliant speech therapist. She has been working with him on getting ready for middle school, and part of being ready is being able to have real (aka non-scripted) conversations with his peers. This activity was an opportunity to do that in a relaxed situation, and to have some fun together. I was really impressed at how well the boys worked together. Mrs. N. worked with them beforehand to pick the menu and she was nice enough to provide the ingredients as well. How nice is that? We are so lucky.

We made Not-Spicy Tangerine Beef (see previous post for the recipe), rice, steamed broccoli, and lava cake for dessert. Everything tasted great, though we probably need to follow the cake recipe a little more closely next time (some of the chocolate didn't make it into the batter, and we might have baked them a little too long). But overall the party was a success!

 D measuring hoisin sauce.

Hoisin sauce plus sherry in the bowl.

H adds the honey.

T shows the guys how to use the citrus press to juice tangerines.

Meat goes in to the very hot pan to cook. T keeps it moving around.

D measures the rice.

D posing. Mrs. N. in the background.

Everyone sitting down to dinner.

The finished product!

Dessert! Chocolate lava cake, which turned out gooey but not like lava. We need to perfect our technique! It was tasty even though it didn't come out perfectly.