For this warm weather, I open up the house in the morning to let the cool night air in. I open windows and the door to the patio. This morning, the quiet of a Saturday morning at home was interrupted with chirping and tweeting and thumping from the living room. I ran out there to find one frightened and frantic bird flying around the living room with a cat in close pursuit.

There is a happy ending to this story. The bird flew behind the stereo speaker in the corner of the room and I grabbed the cat and got her out of the way. A dish towel thrown over the bird allowed me to pick it up and take it outside where it flew off into the trees.

Now, a few hours after the excitement, all of the cats in the house are still looking around the living room for the bird. They can smell it.

After my research on making peelable hard boiled eggs, I did a few experiments.

First I tried the salt theory. One dozen eggs separated it into two groups of 6 and, in two pots, I performed the standard method with one pot having added salt. Nearly two tablespoons for the 6 eggs. I can report that there was absolutely no difference in their peelability.

The second experiment was to take 6 eggs with the store pull date of March 2 and 6 eggs with the pull date of March 20th. This experiment I performed on March 18th. I boiled them using the standard method (a Sharpie(tm) writes on eggs and it doesn’t come off through boiling, by the way). Here, I notice a difference. The older eggs were easier to peel than the newer eggs. Not a lot easier, but it was noticeable.

One data point.

One the north side of my house is an old limb from a cherry tree. No sun, only damp and ,yes, you can tell which side faces north.

Saturday night I was invited to a game of the Portland Lumberjacks — our local. professional lacrosse team. Not a winning team by any measure (they did lose this game) but thye manage to fill a stadium. Someone said they attracted more than the hockey games.

One reason for the invite was to watch someone I know as the team mascot. Someone is actually in those costumes. And he loves his job.

More pictures in the album.

This last weekend I went to the recycling center to remove a large accumulated collection of cardboard from my house. Across from the dumpster for cardboard, sitting out in the rain were computer monitors. Big monitors. Once people dreamed of having a monitor like this. Now they are sitting out in the rain. Technology marches on.

From inside my sealed building, I can see a little bit of Mother Nature.

One animal in the house figured out how to combine computers and warm tummies.

The moon is back. The end of the world has been averted.

One of the Great Questions of our time is: how do I hard cook and egg so I don’t end up cursing while I remove the shell. I canvased a few friends and they all had strong opinions on how to accomplish this but they also had different opinions. The answer to the Great Question was not any closer.

The almighty Google led me to the knowledge repository that is the Internet. What’s Cooking America has an article on boiling eggs which suggests the procedure of 3 to 5 day old eggs, at room temperature, placed in cold water to cover, bring just to a rapid boil, remove from heat and cover for 17 to 20 minutes, then replace water with ice water for 10 minutes before putting the eggs in the frig. This is close to the procedure most of my friends gave but I know from experience (and especially the mangled egg I ate this morning) that this procedure is not the whole story.

WikiHow gives several techniques for hard boiling an egg (standard, Pin Hole, Vinegar, Electric Kettle) but they also suggest adding lots of salt to the boiling water to make peeling easier. I’ve heard this tip also but I haven’t tried it yet.

This YouTube video suggests placing an egg in simmering water for 10 minutes then holding the hot egg in a spoon under cold water for 10 seconds. The egg is then rolled to crack the whole shell and then peeled under running water. The comments on the video attests to the wonderfulness of this technique. I have not tried this yet but it would take a little organization when doing a dozen eggs.

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