White Headed Wisdom

1. Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster. 

2. Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and won't mold.

3. Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating. Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking. 

4. To really make scrambled eggs or omelets rich, add a couple of spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream before beating. 

5. Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste of garlic and at the end of the recipe if your want a stronger taste of garlic. 

6. Reheat leftover Pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. Or warm it in the oven on a cookie sheet or pizza pan at 350 degrees for 8 min. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. 

7. Easy Deviled Eggs - Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag, seal and mash until they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing  and mixing thoroughly, cut off the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done for easy clean up. 

8. When you buy a container of ready made Cake Frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You will double it in size. You can then frost more cake or cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and calories per serving. 

9. To warm left-over biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster. 

10. Use wet newspapers in your garden or flower beds, put layers around the plants overlapping as you go. Cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic but they will not get through wet newspapers. 

11. Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards of broken glass that you can't see easily. 

12. Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away. 

13. To keep rabbits or other animals from eating your plants, sprinkle them with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn't hurt the plant and animals don't like it. 

 14. To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings. 

15. Reduce static cling by pinning a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress.

16. Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don't dry the cup. Add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out. Or spray the measuring cup or spoon with Pam before using.

17. If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two and it will unseal easily. 

 18. Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It's cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It's also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn't like when you tried it on your hair. 

 19. To get rid of pesky fruit flies or gnats, take a small glass, fill partway with Apple Cider Vinegar and a little squirt of dish washing liquid; mix well. Those gnats will be drawn into a watery grave.

 20. Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They will eat it or take it home to eat later but can't digest it, so it kills them. It may take a week or so, but it works and you don't have the worry about pets or small children being harmed. This only works for certain types of ants.

Deviled Eggs

Leaving nothing to chance, this was my final experiment. I brought the water to a full boil in a small pan with 1/2 tsp. of salt and a splash of vinegar added. Then I placed all of the room temperature, old and new, extra large eggs in the boiling water with tongs. I boiled them for 5 minutes then removed them from the heat and covered them with a lid. I let them set for 20 minutes before removing them from the water with tongs and placing them in ice water for 10 minutes. Next I placed them in the freezer for 10 minutes, then peeled them under cold tap water.

The results were these; some of the eggs were overdone, some of them peeled perfectly, some of them wouldn't peel at all and the older eggs were no different from the fresh eggs. I give up!

Experiment #2

I tried bringing the eggs to a boil in salt and vinegar water, then removing from heat, covering with a lid and letting set 20 minutes, then rinsing in cold water and placing in the freezer for 5 minutes method this morning. The first egg that I tried to peel was impossible. So I left the other egg in the freezer for 20 minutes and it wouldn't peel either.

But all was not lost, I tried peeling them under cold running tap water with a strainer underneath to keep the shells from going down the drain and that really helped.

I am going now to try something different.

Boiled Eggs

I haven't had the time to blog for a couple of days, my dear neighbor bought a new computer and I had to spent several hours at their house yesterday setting it up and installing things. Today I made pear jam, I canned 10 pints. The pears were wonderful this year, very abundant, healthy, worm free and sweet.

I finally got around to trying my fresh boiled egg experiment tonight. I read over my notes and tried a mixture of several methods. The eggs were very fresh, I boiled a pan of water with a splash of vinegar and a pinch of salt added. Then I added two large eggs to the already boiling water with a pair of tongs. I boiled them for 12 minutes, then removed them to a bath of ice cold water with the tongs. After several minutes I removed them from the cold water and attempted to peel them.

The first egg was picture perfect, except for the fact that it needed another couple of minutes in the boiling water. It peeled very easily and looked nice, no discoloration and the shell had not cracked. I was thrilled that it had worked until I tried to peel the second egg. The shell did not want to let go this time. This was a great disappointment for me.

I am too tired to try it again tonight, so tomorrow I will try bringing the eggs to a boil and then removing them from the heat, covering them with a lid and let them set for 20 minutes. Then putting them in the freezer for 5 minutes.

Golden Egg

Well actually it is a dark brown egg. We are currently getting only extra large, large and small eggs. But the other day we got an extra, extra large egg, the size of a duck egg. I was very curious about which hen was laying this distinctive extra large, dark brown egg, it is the only dark brown egg that we get. I don't have one hen that is different from all of the rest, so I had to do some detective work.

The egg in question is usually already in the nest when I wake up in the mornings, so for me to catch this hen would mean that I would have to get up with the chickens and I am not an early riser. However, this morning I caught a break, my super sleuthing cat decided to sleep in front of the nest boxes in the barn/house last night and he is a late sleeper also. The hens were not happy when I went out and removed him. They were all gathered in a disgruntled group.

The first one to jump in the box was one of the new red hens. I had suspected that it might be her, she is no bigger than some of my other hens but she is the biggest of the three new red hens. Sure enough, without so much as a cackle, she left the nest a few minutes later and there was the big dark brown egg. Case closed, thanks to my partner, Garfield.

We are getting 7 to 11 eggs per day now. Which means that our refrigerator is full of eggs most of the time. I still need some faithful buyers, but I did sign up to bring deviled eggs for the Church pitch-in. So I have been reading about how to make perfect hard boiled eggs from fresh eggs, that peel easily. So far here is a list of tips that I have found:

• Put Vinegar in the water
• Put Salt in the water
• Put Vinegar and Salt in the water
• Put Baking Soda in the water
• Put room temperature eggs in already boiling water
• Don't boil at all, just place in boiled water and cover with a lid
• Tap rounded side of egg on hard surface to slightly crack then boil
• Cool immediately in ice water
• Cool eggs quickly in cold tap water then put in freezer for 5 minutes
  

I am confused and don't know which method to use. I am thinking that what I could do is take all of the eggs that I gather today, super fresh, and try a different method on each egg to find which method is the easiest and quickest.