With Easter 2016 right around the corner, parents everywhere are getting ready to color some eggs. Often times with the kids help. A fun activity for the family, sure, but a little messy as well.
Eggs are fun for the hunt. I loved it when we colored the eggs and I loved it when mother hid them all around the house and or outside in the yard. I loved looking for them. Great times!
One of things I hated though, was trying to peel those suckers. It took like five minutes and in the process, I would rip away half the outer egg.
It would seem, in hindsight, mother didn't know how to properly cook an egg. However, by the time little Ami came along, she figured it out.
For me having grown into quite the cook, I too figured it out. There appears to be a secret to boiling an egg in so that when you go to peel it, it comes right off, almost naturally.
Some would say there is no secret, you just boil and let cool.
NO! Bad cooks. There is a secret! So allow me to reveal to you how to boil the perfect egg.
It's simple, right? Well, not quite. I like to place no more than a dozen eggs in my pan. (Mostly because that is all it can hold unless I stack them, which is a big no-no. If you stack them, there is a bigger risk for breakage / leakage. You don't want that. Noboody wants that. Unless that's what you want in which case, knock yourself out.)
Once the eggs are in the pan, I then add water. Now, some people believe you need to completely cover the eggs, but this is a myth. I like to only cover 3/4ths of the egg, leaving a little white belly showing.
Now that we got that part resolved, we then place it on the stove burner. Hopefully, you don't have it on high. For stoves that have numbers, 8 will do fine. Either way, gas or electric, or in some cases, out here where I live, wood burning stoves, you just want to boil the eggs on a medium boil. That's it. Nothing more fancier than that. lol
I never time my eggs for boil. I use the sense of smell. For me, I let the water boil at least 95 percent away into evaporation, or 99 percent. But I know when my eggs are done because for a brief few moments, I can smell them all over the house. It smells like someone is cooking up some scrambled eggs or maybe, eggs over easy, or sunny side up.
The point is, you really let eggs boil. But when you finally take them off the stove, you must quickly place them in the sink and under the faucet and begin pouring cold water over them. The objective is to cool the egg-shells as quickly as possible.
I run cool water over them for about 30 seconds to a minute. One way to tell if you cooled them correctly is to take one out of the pan and hold it for about ten to fifteen seconds. If they feel about mild to luke warm in your hand, then they are cooled. You can start placing them back in the carton to be placed in the refrigerator. And yes, I recommend you put them back in the fridge and cool them for another hour at least before coloring them. It is very important to cool them properly as it is to cook them properly. (Which is thoroughly)
You could peel one or two right after cooking them to eat, but you have to be careful because while the outer part of the egg is medium warm when you take a bite, the inner portion of the egg, most notably, the yoke, will be extremely hot, so be careful. Keep something cold close by to wash it down with.
But before I wrap this post up, please let me say that there is a proper way to peel the egg also. I like to crack one of the ends on the counter, then with it in my left hand, I gently spin the egg around and with my right hand, I gently squeeze the top where I cracked it. I squeeze it all around and slowly work my way down the egg, about halfway. The egg shell begins to break apart on its own and before you know it, it breaks apart in big sections and slides right off. Do this for the entire egg and once you get good at it, you can peel an egg in a matter of seconds and without tearing off any chuncks from the egg.
You see, there's a film inside the egg that forms when you boil it and if you don't boil it correctly, it will stick to the egg and or to the egg and shell. What you want it to do is stick to the shell only. The only way to achieve this is to cool it down immediately after boiling them.
Hopefully I have saved to from another hard boiled egg peeling disaster. Now, go out there and show Easter what you're made of. lol
Oh, the power of songs. We cannot deny that some of them hold such strong memories and no matter how much time rolls by, when you hear that song, those old feelings come back again to haunt your heart. Well, the same applies to me too.
There are plenty of songs that when I hear them, I reflect to a person, place or thing. Some memories hit harder than others. One song that hits me harder than most is "Jessie's Girl" by Rick Springfield.
Every time I hear it, I think of her. Tiffany. Or was it Stephanie? Crap! I can't remember. Oh well, for the sake of old times, I'll call her Stephanie.
Anyhow, whenever I hear that song, I think of Stephanie. A 15 year old girl about to turn sweet sixteen. I was 17 and was in the Army reserves already and was just a few weeks away from going on our two week active duty at Fort Bragg.
Stephanie and I had been messing around for several weeks leading up to this particular weekend. She lived with her parents and a brother right across the street from my oldest sister. I would go stay with her when I used to go up to Columbus for my weekend out of the month duty and that's when I met her.
I eventually transferred to a unit in Chillicothe, which was with whom I was about to do my two weeks of active duty with. Even though I no longer had to go to Columbus, didn't mean I would stop going up there. I almost always wanted to go hang out with Stephanie. We would take off together to this outdoor movie theater and watch movies from my car. We also took advantage of what the back seat offered. This particular weekend was no exception.
There was one small problem though. At least, at the time, I considered it a small problem, and that was, she also had a little thing going on with this other guy who was a few years older than me. I was determined to win her over. That's how crazy I was for her. Man, she was hot, hot, hot. That face, that hair, that sweet body. She was everything physically I ever wanted in a girl and she was really fun to be with. She was a very happy-go-lucky girl.
We went to the movies this particular Saturday night like was always did ever other weekend and we romped around in the backseat - just like we always did, when she finally broke the news to me after we climbed back into the front seat.
We had discussed the situation before many times so it did not surprise me that she would suddenly bring it up out of the blue in the manner that she did. What was surprising was what she decided. "I'm making it serious with John so this will be the last weekend for us."
KERPLUNK
"Say what? Really? But ...."
"I'm sorry Carroll. I really am. I like you. I like you a lot. But I've really fallen for John. I really want to try and make it work with him."
I tried my best to talk her out of it, including, "What are you going to tell your mom? You know she prefers me over him."
"Then you can date my mom. I choose him." She fired back quickly.
"When did you decide this?" I asked her. She turned to me and practically scooted onto my lap. "A few days ago. Carroll," she continued, "I care about you so much. Other than the sex part, you're like a brother to me."
I wanted to throw up.
"Carroll, you're going on your two week active duty soon, and then you said you were going to join the Navy when you got back. The active Navy."
"That's the plan." I stated. "But I wanted to, or maybe, I mean, I thought that maybe you and I ...."
"No." She softly spoke. "I don't want that."
The silence would have been deafening had it not been for the speaker in the car window and the movie coming over it. "I see." I whispered.
And just like that, it was time for me to move on. I quickly learned that love was a bitch. In fact, she was more than just a bitch, she is a super-bitch!
I wanted to poke my eyes out. But I took a deep breath and accepted it for what it was. I knew she had a tough choice to make and I only had a fifty-fifty shot. That's how I thought about it back then .... flash forward to about fifteen years later.
I was sitting at the kitchen table in my sisters house when a dark blue van pulled up next to the curb. My sister stood up and looked out the window at the vans direction. "Who is that?" I asked her.
My sister walked to the door and opened it up. I saw a blonde girl get out and open the yard gate, making her way towards the house. "You don't recognize her?" My sister questioned me in return. No sooner did she say that when, it all came back to me.
Stephanie walked in and said hello and handed her some money. "It's all there." She told her. "You can count it if you like."
"I trust you." My sister assured her. "Do you remember him?" She rounded out.
Stephanie took a look at me and smiled. "Yes, I remember him." Then she addressed me. "You haven't changed a bit." She told me.
"Hello, Stephanie. How you been?"
"Pretty good. I'm still with John." She informed me. I figured as much. "Really? That's so wonderful."
"I better get going." She announced, turning around and walking out saying her goodbye's.
My sister turned to me. "Now are you glad she didn't pick you?"
I slightly gasped. "Why? Just because she put on a few pounds, and cut her hair, and her face has turned into an old catcher's mitt?"
"She and John also live in that van."
"What? No shit?"
My sister shook her head. "No shit. They park at friends houses, and driveways, alleys, and even rest areas."
"All year round?" I asked.
"All year round." She answered. "Pretty much."
And just like that I breathed a huge sigh of relief. "No wonder she picked him, she wanted to be the wife of a bum."
And while I was happy all these years later that she picked him, back in the day it was devastating. But it was another lesson in 'be careful for what you wish for' kind of thing, I suppose, seeing how much she let herself go, but I also thought that maybe she wouldn't have turned out the same way if she had picked me. I mean, would we have lasted? .... Who knows? But I guess I can say that she stuck by the guy to this point so maybe she made the right choice - for her.
It turned out that shortly after she dropped out of school the following year, she lived with him in an apartment until he got fired shortly after her 18th birthday and ever since, they been living in that van and he has been going from odd job to odd job. But man, the years were not kind to her. I also heard she did a lot of dope and pills and stuff, and really, really drank a lot. So yeah, that was what she turned into, but she was with her guy and I can only hope she was still happy.
But man, back in the day, she was a beauty queen. She was awesome. She was .... Jessie's Girl!
