Who are we? We are two wacky artists from either side of the country who have discovered that we are kindred spirits- in fact, elf sisters. We both like to be outdoors and exploring, so we've created the blog to share our adventures!
Note: Here be spoilers. Well, sometimes, but you may find photos or info about the location or description of a cache. You've been warned!

Cooking Adventures

My dear elf-sister and I started this blog primarily to write about our geocaching adventures. We've both agreed though that we can use this blog to talk about any and all adventures! Which is fantastic, because I have had adventures lately, but none of them have been in the beautiful out doors. I've been too sick for that. (Darn those migraine monsters!) So here's my most recent non-outdoorsy adventure...

I've been experimenting with cooking a little bit again. Now normally that's a bit of an adventure just because we have no idea how it will turn out, or if we'll like it even if it does, but this time I managed to have even more of an adventure than normal! Small disclaimer, I was trying to cook while watching Serenity and with a migraine. I'm sure the distractions didn't help any. The hubby was being really good though and letting me pause the movie when I needed to get up and work on the food, so that was something! And I've only seen it about 5 times now, so it's not like I was desperate to see every second because I didn't know what was going to happen!
Now the first step in this recipe was to hard boil 6 eggs. I thought that was pretty straight forward. After all, I've boiled eggs many, many times! Apparently not. Normally when I hard boil eggs I boil them about 10 minutes after they start boiling (I like to be SURE they're done). Well, I somehow switched that around in my head (I blame the migraine) and I only cooked them for 10 minutes from when I turned the stove on. So I go to start shelling them, and I ended up with yoke ALL over my hand. Which was even more entertaining because I was shelling them in the living room while watching the movie. (Is shelling them even the right term? Ah well, good enough for me.)

So I tried putting the rest of the eggs back in some water and boiling them longer. I KNOW I've done that before successfully. Not this time. I ended up with exploding eggs. Which looked entertaining, but wasn't extremely helpful. I got frustrated and tossed the batch. My friend Cara told me later I should have saved them and mixed them in with scrambled eggs, she's smart, so I'm saving that tip for next time!

Ok, next batch of eggs and I follow boiling protocol perfectly. Now its time to cool the eggs off so that I can shell them. One of the other things Cara had told me (this was her recipe) was that the best way to cool eggs so the shell comes off easily is to let the water run over the eggs until their cool. This sounded much more efficient to me than my usual method of filling a bowl with cold water, dumping it, filling it again, and so on until the eggs were cool enough. With the first batch of eggs (the botched one) I had just tried doing this in my big spaghetti strainer. Well the top egg was pretty cold, but some of the others weren't because the water was just escaping. So with this second batch of eggs I put them in a bowl thinking the water could just over flow out the sides.

Well overflow it did! Make sure if you use this method to cool eggs that you DON'T let the bowl plug the sink. You'll end up with a lake in your kitchen, just like I did.

On the plus side, the eggs shelled easier than any I can ever remember making.

Oh, and the end recipe was pretty good too :)

2 Comments to "Cooking Adventures"

Meri Greenleaf Says:
June 26, 2010 at 8:55 AM

LOL! Oh, Ruthie, that is definitely an adventure!

And it's also the reason I hate to cook- I've never boiled eggs, so I'd probably screw them up, too. ;)

Carapace Says:
June 26, 2010 at 1:02 PM

Ha! Oh, Ruthie, that's just great! I think the lesson here is to never attempt home science when Nathan Fillion is on the screen.

Hmm, cooling the eggs- I usually leave mine in a shallow bowl juuuuust big enough to hold them and walk away for a couple minutes. You're right, make sure the bowl doesn't cover the drain, yipes!

I'm amazed (and relieved) the recipe still came off for you!