It's All About the Membrane

I don't have that much experience with boiled eggs but I've come to realize no matter how much you claim to know the perfect method for boiling eggs so the shells peel nice, it's all crap unless you can get the membrane.  Who else agrees?  My brother has a spot-on method for boiling eggs.  This comes from months of practice and trying different methods.  After a few month span of me not boiling eggs, I was in the mood to boil some over the weekend so I could eat the whites for my mid-morning snack at work.  I don't eat the yolks because they are just plain chalky and disgusting.  I am surprised my cubicle doesn't smell of stinky farts because I have two yolks in the garbage can as I speak and one of them is from yesterday.
Anyway, I texted Jeff on Sunday and said "what is your preferred method for boiling eggs?".  He called and told me his precise method, down to the second.  He ended the call with "let me know how they turn out".
Who knew boiling eggs could be so exciting that we now need to know how they turn out?!?  I found it quite funny coming from my 28 year old brother.
I brought an egg to work on Tuesday and the thing peeled like a charm.  I swear the shell came off in two large chunks.  I texted Jeff and told him "the eggs turned out perfect!".  Wednesday was a different story, however.  I cracked the egg like normal and proceeded to peel.  "What's this?", I wondered as the shell of the egg was sticking and coming off in mosaic tile style chunks.  This can't be the egg that came from the perfect boiling method of Jeff's!  Say it isn't so!
 About 1/4 of the way through the frustrating peeling process, I noticed that I didn't have the membrane.  The membrane didn't come off with the first chunk of shell so I was therefore screwed.  I would spend the next four minutes chipping away at this egg, trying to get the tiny pieces of shell unstuck from the plastic-like, sticky substance that is the outer membrane of the egg.  Once it was finally time to eat the egg white, it didn't taste nearly as good, either.  Call me crazy, but I swear the membrane latched to the roof of my mouth and made it difficult to chew.
I brought another egg to work today and gave it another go.  I gave it a good whack on my desk and hoped for the best.  As I peeled the first bit of the shell back, I was happy to see that the egg had it's shiny, slippery surface exposed instead of the clouded over, gray look. And with that I knew I had the membrane in hand.  Just like that, the egg was peeled in a few large chunks and I was free to enjoy my perfectly boiled egg like planned!  I tell ya, it's all about the membrane.

An Open Door Policy

Hi there!

A lot has been going on around here.  Why I haven't written about it, I have no idea.  I keep telling myself I need to get better about blogging but I apparently don't listen very well.
Anyway, I am extremely excited because I am finally starting to redo my kitchen.  Last month when I wrote I mentioned that the new/used cabinets didn't work out too well.  Well it turns out that what did work out well was removing the cheesy laminate woodgrain stuff that covered my cabinets.  I had a couple hours last weekend before I had to be somewhere so i decided to take a stab at removing the laminate.  Two hours and one slice in my hand later, all the laminate on the ends of the cabinets and the bottoms were off, as well as all of the crown molding and scalloped piece of wood that  sits above the sink, between the two cabinets.  The cabinets will definitely need a good nail hole filling, sanding and scrubbing before I can even think about painting them, but besides that, i was pleasantly surprised as to how they looked.
Monday night I took off all the doors and as it sits right now, my kitchen has an open door policy.  It took me a day or so to get used to everything being right in my face.  I would see an "open cabinet" out of he corner of my eye and immediately go to shut the cupboard door, thinking it was open.  Anyway, I needed to take the doors off to get the rest of the laminate off the front of the cabinets.  I did the rest of that today.  So now is onto the messy part: the filling of holes and sanding.  I'll keep you posted on the progress and knock-on-wood that I'll get better at writing more posts in between!