As Easy as... Boiling an Egg??

Deviled eggs were one of my mom's favorite foods.  It became her designated job to fix them when we were having family get-togethers. She was very eager to help always, and after I had boiled the eggs, this was a task she could do while sitting. 

But, "as easy as boiling an egg" and "She can't even boil an egg!"???  I'm not so sure about those sayings....The boiling may be easy, but the peeling???? Yuk!  I've heard about and tried many fool-proof tricks over the years, but I guess I'm the fool.  (And besides, I have had trouble remembering the tricks.)

...but since we now have laying hens from which we daily collect eggs and "doubled" eggs are now a desired part of (at least some) our grandchildren's diet, I NEED to know and remember those tricks (and pass that information on to my progeny) .

So I conducted some research:
I first did some simple google research.  I saw some absolutely disgusting things on U-tube (like blowing the hard-boiled egg out the end of the eggshell--Really, who wants my slobber on their egg?? even if you ARE family!) and read some way-too-detailed ways to boil eggs and peel them perfectly.  Then I boiled and peeled eggs every chance I got trying different methods and taking note of the results to come up with what would work best for me.

This is what I've come up with (and the reason it works best so I can remember what I've discovered):

1.  Eggs should be 7-10 days old.  Fresh eggs' whites tend to stick to the membrane because of their low acidity.  As eggs get older, the shell becomes more porous; the egg is allowed to let off some carbon dioxide and the white becomes more acidic and won't cling to the membrane as much.   Also, the white shrinks a bit and there can be more air space between the shell and membrane.  Use fresher eggs if you must, but you will NOT get a prettily peeled boiled egg. Just know that up front!

2.  Place eggs in water right out of the faucet.  (Because eggs aren't noodles!  If you put eggs into water that's already boiling or too hot, the shell will crack because of the extreme temperature change.)

3.  Once the water boils, put the lid on the pan and remove it from the source of heat.  The guidelines say to leave the eggs in the hot water for 15 minutes if they're large, 18 minutes for extra large, but only 12 minutes for medium eggs.  But I've discovered that if you're boiling only a few eggs and using a small pan, it can take longer for them to be fully cooked--or the problem can be solved by just leaving the pan on the turned-off-but-hot heating element.  But if you leave a larger pot of eggs with a lot of eggs sitting on the element for the same amount of time, the yolk will turn gray-green. This is caused by a  chemical change that occurs in the sulfur in egg yolks. The eggs are still perfectly OK to eat; they're just not as pretty!  --and since I cook with electric heat, I'm not quite sure how that translates in gas heated cooking...

4.  Cool eggs down quickly.  Why is this step helpful? A quick temperature change will help the membrane separate from the egg white. This is the method I've come up with that works well for me: Pour off the hot water, then run tap water over the eggs. When the eggs are cool enough to handle, I crack both ends of the egg and run even more water over them.  Then I add a glass of ice to the water and let them sit in the ice water for a while.  

5.  Then, when you're ready to peel the egg, first roll the egg on the kitchen counter with the palm of your hand to sort of crush the shell.  (Do it with a light hand, though, or you'll mush the egg open.) Why?  The shell needs to be flexible to enable it to come off in one big piece with the membrane attached to it.

6.  Start the actual peeling at the fat end of the egg.  The egg has a little air pocket on that end, so it just makes it a natural place to grab ahold and start peeling.  When/if that stops working well, start at the other end.  I'm not quite sure why that works better, but it just does (for me, anyway).

--and another helpful tip from Rachel if  you're making deviled eggs:  Put your yummy egg yolk filling in a zip-lock bag.  Cut off one corner and pipe the filling into the egg white.  Nice and Neat!

Hope this is helpful!  And if you're eggs don't peel well, at least you kind of know why they're not!

*This egg dish was my mom's.  She loved that ruby-border glassware!  She also bought the punch bowl and glasses at (what-was-then) Eckerd's Drug Store in Waco.  She frequented that store because it was where she got her film developed.  They offered double-prints when you got  your film developed (a new trend!).  She loved, loved, loved to take pictures of and share pictures of her grandchildren.  It was her goal to make photo albums for each of them.  She started out good...but there were many, many empty albums (that she'd picked up when they were on sale) and bundles and bundles of photographs...neatly labled with dates, of course!

Granny Conner's "Famous" Pecan Recipe

I've really been into recipes lately.  The harvesting of spring veggies (and the eruption of new life) spurs me to explore new ways to prepare old standbys...

All that (I guess) led me to my old (yes, printed on paper) cookbooks as I was trying to finalize the menu of a meal I am wanting to take to a church family with a new baby.  While perusing my create-your-own cookbook I acquired in 1980 while living in Rockdale, Texas,  I happened upon a recipe, written in my 20's-something handwriting, entitled "Granny's Pecan Pie".

Generations to come should know that my Granny, Ada Ratliff Conner, won a blue ribbon at the Houston Fair (which even then was a BIG deal) with this recipe.  Of course, when you reproduce this recipe yourself and it just tastes like pecan pie, you should remember that at these kind of shows presentation is---I started to say 99%, but it's probably not quite that high.  Maybe only 98%---of the score in the winning entry.  I remember that my Granny told me how she chose the perfect pecan halves (My Uncle Gene ran a pecan orchard in Houston at the time.) and placed them to form some sort of decorative design on the top. May sound easy, but you should just try to place those pecan halves very perfectly in an unbaked pie shell and then pour goo over them and have it all come out of the oven perfectly... I never acheived good results.   My poor results might just be due to my inept ability, but her far superior results are probably (at least in part) due to her very experienced hand.

I should really look this up before publishing, but Granny was 1 out of 7 or 8 girls in her family.  Granny was the "tomboy" of the bunch, but her job in the family kitchen was making the desserts.  She was an extremely great pie maker!!  (Those pie safes they used to have?  I'm thinking the Ratliff family might have had one...but maybe not...)  At Thanksgiving or Christmas when I was a kid, there were always at least 10 pies!

I don't have a picture of Granny with a pie, or even a picture of one of her pies...(They were all consumed!)...but I do happen to have this picture of her with Rachel and Ira.  It is dated September 1980.  She was a very lovely lady; she remained that way even in her last days.

But here is the recipe:

Granny's Pecan Pie

3/4 c Karo (she used light)

1 cup sugar (she used Imperial)

3 eggs

3 T butter (I'm pretty sure she used REAL butter!)

1 cup pecans

1 t vanilla

Unbaked pie shell

Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.  

---please note that I have the 30 minutes marked out in my cookbook and have written 50 minutes.

....and there are actually no further instructions with the recipe.  I do know that the butter was melted.  The pecans were laid out in a design and then the goo was poured over it.  I recollect her talking about how carefully she had to pour goo over the pecan halves so they wouldn't shift in the pouring. 

I also know that her pie shells were definitely NOT of the frozen variety.  Crisco pie crusts were the rage of the day.  That recipe (and the recipe I have alongside the pie recipe) is:

Crisco Pie Crust

1 1/3 cup flour

1/2 t salt

1/2 cup Crisco

3 T ice cold water

Combine flour and salt.  Cut in Crisco.  Sprinkle with water, 1 Tablespoon at a time.  Toss with a fork.  Work dough into a firm ball.  (and the rest you'll have to take from there!  Google and YouTube are great resources!)

And that's all I've got.

Maybe when you're feeling nostalgic you'll try out this recipe.  If you, like I finally did, don't want to try the fancy designs or give up on trying, you can always use chopped pecans or pecan pieces. Just place them on the bottom of the unbaked pie shell and then pour the goo on top.  This is a very forgiving method of just making a yummy pie.  Please note that it's always best with a little "cream" (what Granny called ice cream) on top!

Dressing Up

As Ira was leaving our house after the Christmas celebration, he asked me if I liked his new shoes. They were some fancy black leather dress shoes. He said he'd bought them on E-bay and had paid only 20% or so of their original price. (Because of a bank merger in November, Ira transferred from a bank branch in the outskirts of Fort Worth to a another branch close to down town Dallas. That's a dress-code change of almost cowboy to suited executive.)

Then he talked about purchasing some long-sleeved dress shirts off of E-bay. These shirts didn't have button cuffs but needed cuff-links. Kelley had purchased some vintage cuff links (again) off of E-bay. I got the bright idea of looking in PeePaw's stuff to see if there were any cuff links Ira would be interested in.

These are the ones we came up with:

The tractors in this cuff link and tie bar set have "International" branded on them. My grandfather, Roy Ragsdale, (We called him Pampa.) owned and operated an International Harvester and Oldsmobile dealership during the depression, World War II and afterwards. My dad worked for him a while--and had stories to tell. I really don't know if these jewelry pieces date back that far (and I really kind of doubt it), but that makes them of far more interest than just a random tractor cuff link/tie bar set.

These cuff links are a ruby red. I don't know the story behind them. All the schools my dad attended and/or had long-term affiliation with had purple as the primary color. (San Saba-Purple; ACC-Purple; University High School-Purple) I have some recollection of my dad wearing these cuff links, but don't know any story past that... Maybe ruby because his and mom's anniversary was in July... or maybe someone bought them just because they were pretty or on sale. I think you can be sure that they weren't purchased on E-bay!

...and these.... These are just some tie bars that Ira decided to take with him because he thought they might go with some cuff links he already had.

Then Ira and I had a discussion about how it was hard for him to even imagine PeePaw dressing up. Made me stop to think that the man Ira knew as PeePaw had been retired and worn not much of anything but overalls for about 20 of the less than 30 years that he had know him. But there was a day that Ira Conner, as a public school administrator, dressed in a suit coat and tie every day for work. I somehow suspect that Ira Spies will be a bit like his name sake and after his working-career is over with will revert to whatever the equivalent of overalls will be...

Love (loved) the Iras in my life!!

Old Things Used in New Ways...but for the same reasons...

Back around 1971, my mom, dad, my friend Pat Kenner and I made a trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas. It was one of those "4 days and 3 nights in our lovely resort-give ya $50 to spend-just gotta listen to our 30 minute sales pitch" 'free' vacations ... (My dad was one that just loved to string the sales person along...get him to thinking he had a sale for sure, only to say no at the last.)

One of our little jaunts into town included stopping by at an estate sale. I had no idea what an estate sale was. We just sat in some red velvet covered chairs and they showed some trinkets, furniture, jewelry, etc. and an auctioneer did his thing. Well, surprise of all surprises, my Dad bid on and bought my Mother a diamond ring! Pretty cool!

But this barely-turned-17-year old girl was not to be outdone! I wanted a diamond ring, too! I had been working at Safeway for a whopping $2/hr. (and yes, that was a whopping sum back in those days...) By golly, I was going to try to buy me one, too. And I did. My ring was quite a bit like Mom's, but was--brat that I was--just a little bit bigger, and therefore, better, of course!

I did enjoy wearing my ring (and wore it constantly during the few years that I lost the solitaire diamond out of my engagement ring and the time when it could be replaced)...but I'm sure I didn't enjoy it as much as my Mom enjoyed wearing hers. She wore hers all the time until she literally wore it out. (The gold in the band wore thin and broke, therefore causing one of the little side diamonds to fall out.) She also let Stephany wear it between the time that Donnie proposed to her and when he could buy her an engagement ring. The ring had quite a romantic significance during it's tenure in the Conner household...

But the romance in the life of mom's ring lives on past her...

On December 23, 2010, Ira and Kelley Cook became engaged. It was the culmination of their Christmas date-week. (I'll let Kelley and Ira tell their own version of that special week.) Prior to the actual engagment, they got to "open" their stockings. Inside Kelley's stocking were these two gifts:






The ring is (yep, you guesses it) Mom's ring that's been repaired and coated with whatever you coat rings with to make them have a silver color rather than the yellow gold that it is originally. The earrings are made out of the two biggest diamonds of my ring. Isn't that a lovely addition to the story? I would be happy to hear some more lovely, romantical additions to this saga up in Heaven. Nice reunion, I'm thinking....



(PS--Sorry I didn't think to get/ask for "before" pictures...)

Hot Caps

I'm here at home at 11:30 on a Tuesday morning. It is 20 degrees outside and we have snow flurries. You guessed it: A Snow Day! (Actually, it's more of a sleet/ice day.)

My sweet little, hard-working, organic-farming husband worked so hard last weekend for this:



What you're seeing here is 102 broccoli, 25 lettuce, and 25 spinach plants all tucked neatly under their "hot caps". (Plus an abundance of onion plants--for all but you, Chris!)

Last year, Bob remembered that his grandfather had used "hotcaps" in his garden and did a little internet research and found a site that sold them. He used them last year and was able to plant early, avoid freeze and frost damage, and harvest a bit early. He tried it again this year: Planted on a day in late January--the 28th-- when the the temperatures were close to 80...and then the next week (whoops!): well, we're expecting a low of 9 degrees tomorrow night... Hmmm....will the hot caps be "hot" enough?? We're gonna have to wait and see!

The "story" behind all of this?

Well, I was visiting a bit with Aunt Ruby (that's Gwe-Gwe's [Bob's mother] sister) last spring. I had just assumed that Bob's grandfather from which he had the memories was Opah (Bob's mom's dad). But, it wasn't! It was Grandpa Spies.

Turns out that Grandpa Spies made part of his living by selling produce to the stores in town: The earlier you were able to harvest things like broccoli, lettuces, and tomatoes, the higher price you could expect. So, I'm thinking Grandpa Spies was quite progressive in his thinking and his risk-taking...way to go Grandpa! Hope it works in Glen Rose, Texas in 2011, too!

I hope to find a picture of Grandpa Spies to add to this post...

An addendum:
Bob added his additional memories: He said his Grandpa and Granny Spies had this little business after their "retirement". They sold their farm in Carmine and moved to Brenham where Grandpa farmed the lot and 2 others (about an acre in all) and sold his produce to the grocery stores. The "hot caps" were his ticket to being one of the first to be able to deliver fresh, home-grown tomatoes to the stores.

Bob also added that while his Grandpa and Granny still lived on the farm, his Grandpa had a "giant" broiler house. (How big is "giant" to a kid?) No need to wonder any longer why Bob Spies has this drive to raise chickens and garden....

A New Season

The first day of Autumn was ushered in this week.

This official declaration of a season change prompted a call to the florist shop. I ordered an arrangement of silk Fall flowers for mom and dad's grave. "So what?" you say.

This is a relatively new ritual in my life. As I was growing up, I honestly don't think we EVER visited a family member's gravesite just to visit or to decorate it up. If another family member died, we might meander over in the cemetery to see where another family member was buried, but that was it.

But when we buried Dad here in Glen Rose and Mom came to live with us, we'd go every now and then to visit Daddy's gravesite. For that one year that I was able to take mom, we'd take a small seasonally appropriate silk arrangement each season.

As I'm reflecting about it right now, I'm not quite sure how Mom felt about it. I would just suggest our going, and of course, (Those of you who knew her personality so well understand completely!) she would never say, "No, I don't want to." I can imagine her being OK with going, but feeling a little guilty (?) because Daddy would never have expected her to or maybe even approved of our going. He was very matter-of-fact about death. Dead was dead. Dead was gone.

To put that in a bit more of a perspective, he did have both a sister and a brother die while he was still a kid. But I've been told (by Mama) that he never even looked at his own mother's dead body. I think people worried about him because of that. I've been told that psychologist say that kind of behavior is an indication that a person never fully accepts that the loved one is gone. I don't think that was the case with Daddy. He accepted death and dealt with it very matter of factly. He never felt a reason to apologize with dealing with emotional issues in the way that suited him best. ...and, yes, sometimes his way of dealing with things was a little less than considerate of the ways that others dealt with them.

In contrast, Bob's mom (and her sisters) had a completely different take on visiting gravesites of family members. She would visit Bob's dad's grave on or around every significant holiday with flowers. Parents' graves would be visited regularly, too.

Anyway, all that meandering to say that I've kept up the little exercise of placing flowers on the grave of my mom and dad each season this past year. My reasoning? It just seems a respectful, peaceful thing for me to do. (and I know that the proximity of the cemetery to the house definitely is an issue!) Even though it's not physically Bob's mom's gravesite, the flowers are for her, too. I may never travel to Houston to put them on her actual plot, but these flowers evoke good memories of her, too.




This little seasonal exercise helps keep the circle of life in perspective for me, too...not in a sad way, just an "in-awe" way. (Ever heard of the Seasons of Life?!) We are expecting to welcome 2 new babies into our family within the next 6 months! What a blessing to be a part of their heritage!

And, yesterday, as I went out to place the flowers, I could see where a new grave had recently been dug. That helps to keep me aware that as I have many reasons to rejoice, there are others in this world--in my very community--that are hurting. I want to be Christ's heart and hands to reach out to them in all seasons.

Flower Fix

The date is August 23, 2010.
It is my first day of full-time teaching after taking off for a year and a half to care for my mom and recoup after her death and the death of my mother-in-law.
About half way through the day, the secretary brought me this:



Gotta share the story with you:
About 8 years ago, I had to move from my comfortable little job of Content Mastery teacher into a not-so-comfortable job as 3rd grade classroom teacher. (Actually, I guess the phraseology should be that I got to make the move; but believe me, I just wasn't feeling it!)

Even though I was very stressed about this change, I did not feel that I had any right to complain about it. My prayer had always been that I could stay out of the classroom (and away from the extra demand of time and expense that it requires) as long as I had children at home. I was reassigned the summer after Jodi graduated from high school. Kind of hard to respond (outloud anyway) with anything but, "Thank you, God!"

After watching me agonize day after day, night after night, and weekend after weekend over my job and all the responsibility of getting those 3rd graders to pass the TAKS test, my sweet husband came up with the perfect Christmas gift. He arranged for the local florist to deliver flowers to me at school every two weeks for the remainder of the school year. Oh, how that brightened up my day and life! (and probably his, too!)

I suppose I showed my appreciation adequately, because he then gave me a Mother's Day gift of flowers for the Fall. He has continued to arrange for my "fix" of fresh flowers to be delivered to me at school each subsequent year, interrupted only by my time at home.

Yes, I enjoy the flowers. They remind me of a beautiful life outside of school. And I love it when people ask me about the flowers. I get a chance to brag on my sweet, thoughtful husband.

Love you, Bobby!