Made Me Laugh

Chinese Tea Eggs

As a child, Easter at my house always meant Chinese Tea Eggs. I suppose you can make them any day of the year since there's no religious significance to making them, but if you're boiling eggs anyway what's another 2 hours? Basically, they're eggs cooked in black tea, soy sauce and star anise pods. They're spicy, salty and smoky and the rich, dark shells are beautiful. You crack the shells while cooking to allow the tea mixture to seep in and make the web-like patterns on the egg whites. Recipe below. To those of you making faces before you've even tried them: You cannot be convinced. Take your nasty wax Cadbury Creme Eggs and go away.

Chinese Tea Eggs

6 eggs

3 tbsp dark soy sauce

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp black tea

5 star anise pods

1 tsp Chinese 5-Spice powder

1 tsp cracked black peppercorns

1 bay leaf

Boil eggs in cold water for 2 minutes and remove. Crack shells slightly but do not remove. The more cracks, the more elaborate the design. Place back in water and add remaining ingredients and simmer covered on low for 2 hours. Allow to cool before removing and peeling. Chill and enjoy!

Spring Cleaning #29 - Spam, Phish and Cookies...Yum

How often do you defrag? No, this is not a Cosmo question. Defragmentation, in computer lingo, is a process that eliminates fragmentation in a file system, which occurs when there's not enough space for the system to store the entire file in one space so the pieces are stored separately. Defragmenting helps by physically moving (compacting) the pieces closer, thereby freeing more space. I think. Anyway, I do know that if you "defrag" your hard drive on a regular schedule of maintenance, things run smoother and more efficiently...and faster. At home, I defrag regularly, but don't pass that around. I also run a weekly Virus Scan and use a little program called CC Cleaner (Crap Cleaner...I kid you not) which is like getting a colon cleansing for your computer. Gets rid of old temporary files, cookies, empties my recycle bin and history urls. THEN, I run an anti-spyware progam called Ad-Aware to catch companies attempting to "phish" or illegally gain info about me by pretending to be someone I know. All three programs are free, not shareware although you can upgrade to a fancier model, which I'm sure provides more in-depth protection. All of this is to keep my e-mail clean and free of junk and to keep others from spying on me...and sending me junk.

At work, it's common sense to keep e-mail, what is essentially a common workspace, clean and clutter-free. I don't always delete as often as I should (but to be fair, if you read my profile I do admit to being a packrat) but I will endeavor to streamline in the future. I don't have a personal workstation so e-mail is about the only area I can claim responsibility for. I know that "personal e-mail" really applies to your work persona and not to your private home entity who receives tacky jokes and pictures of LOLcats or your friend's daughter's prom pictures. Makes sense to me. Although when I worked for the school system (won't say which, but whose name sounds a lot like the library branch where I work) we regularly received pictures of the superintendent's grandchildren through our school mail. Hmmm. I guess the lines are still blurry to even those who should be in the know.

Spring Cleaning #28 - Getting Dumped

Getting rid of old useless crap is always a good idea, whether you're cleaning out your closet, your hard drive...or your marriage. he he . Cleaning up makes everything flow easier, and in the case of your computer, a lot faster. I did look at the Wikipedia entry for GTD (Getting Things Done) but I don't think my life is busy enough to need "a plan." Ditto for the online sites, which might be helpful if I had four kids, traveled for work, planned dinner parties each week and didn't know my head from my hindquarters. I'd also need a good therapist with a Valium connection if I was stupid enough to over-schedule myself like that (Moms...it's ok to say "no"!) but that's another soap box. Simplifying frees you. If you look at the sites listed like Remember The Milk, Ta-Da List, etc., to me, these are just MORE *things* to do. One more text message to receive, one more website to check before leaving home. And although I'm getting to the age where forgetfulness is no longer a character flaw, usually, one Post-It note in my purse is enough to remind me to get whatever the heck it was that I needed. The other good thing about being this age is that, even when I *don't* remember, I realize that I no longer care that I forgot.

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