Fluffy Baked Eggs

I have heard of baked eggs but never seen a recipe or ever tried to make them before so not sure if I make them the correct way or not - if there is a correct way.

So this was my first attempt and what I will call Fluffy Baked Eggs.

This is so easy and would probably be a good way for children to like eggs as they could probably make different shapes with them.

The longest bit is waiting for the oven to heat up!

I will tell you what I did this time but it is an 'Eggs in Process' to see which way I prefer after trying out various options.

They do look good and interesting though and hubby was impressed!

OK, so I just whisked the egg whites, dolloped them in a pile on the tray, made a dip in the centre and dropped the yolk in and baked them in the oven at 180 degrees for about 8 minutes until they started to go brown.

They taste very light and airy so unlike any other version of cooking eggs.

I think I will also try putting them in a cooler oven and let the whites cook for a few minutes before I add the yolks in the centre which may make a crispier alternative with a runnier yolk.

But I think you could make these into interesting shapes for the kids and get them involved with cooking them.

Happy baking and experimenting :)

Where have I been?

I have neglected my Blog for so long because I now post everything on G+.  You can always find me on there but I will try to be better and post more on here too.

I've been debating whether to keep it running because I didn't think anyone ever read it but when I came one here today I was totally shocked as to how many people read it.

Of course you are all probably new people who haven't met me on G+ or haven't got sick of reading my blog yet :)

But I should probably post on here more often and it is definitely a good place to put the odd recipe I make up so I can find it again, which brings me to the reason I came on here today.

I often (well most of the time really) make up recipes as I go along and 99% of the time they turn out great which makes me feel extremely lucky as some people have many failures even with recipes from a book.

I tend to just add things on the spur of the moment and so often my meals / cakes etc. are either very or slightly different from before.

If a particular dish turns out really tasty I often try to jot down what I put in it on a piece of paper when I have finished eating it so I can make it again.  

That's not easy though as I as I don't measure anything and just add a sprinkle of this or shake of that and a dollop of something else.   

But it would be a good idea if I got myself in gear and not just write these things on scraps of paper I can never find again but on my blog.

My psychic dog

Incredible!  How psychic is my dog!!!

A couple of times over the last week she hasn't wanted to go for a walk even though our other dog has gone quite happily.

Yesterday she came up and jumped on my lap at the computer and was physically shaking as much as she did with the fireworks last year and yet there were no storms around, no loud noises or anything to be worried about.  

After a few minutes I heard OH downstairs and called and asked him if there was anything for her to be frightened of and he said nothing he could think of.  He said he was just about to take them for a walk over the fields.

Both dogs and OH went downstairs but as he got her lead she came back up again and jumped on my lap.  In the end she could be persuaded to go.

They went for a long walk but on the way back they had to cross a bridge over a deep ditch between 2 fields with hedges both sides so you can't really see what's over the bridge in the next field.

Our little dogs were off lead and just going over the bridge when they suddenly met 3 huge dogs coming the other way, also off-lead (young dogs and not vicious or anything, but boisterous and totally overwhelming to our little ones - OH recognised one as a Newfoundland and he said the others were almost as big).

Anyway it frightened our dogs so much that one turned tail and ran for home but the other one got trapped by the big dogs on the bridge and fell off - 8 feet down into a couple of inches of water but the ditch is totally overgrown all round.  

OH and the man with the other dogs couldn't see her or find a way to get down at first, although finally managed it and luckily she was more or less where she fell rather than trying to follow the ditch.

So was that the reason she was so frightened before she even left the house and why she didn't really want to go? 

Why Oh Why!

These things always happen to me!

I'm tired and just on my way to bed, so at the last minute want to put some hand cream on.

But the tube is almost empty and no matter how much I squeeze nothing will come out.

So I squeeze from the bottom as if I am milking a cow (well I imagine, as I've never actually done that of course).  Still nothing comes out.

Next I try folding the bottom over to try and make it come up like in a toothpaste tube - but no, they make the tubes so that they wont fold over.
Now this is definitely so you don't get the full amount clearly labelled on the tube to use at all!

Now I should at this point go and get the scissors to cut through the tube 2/3 of the way down to get at the cream inside and use the top 2/3 as the lid - but can I be bothered to go and get the scissors - oh no!

So I give it a few sharp shakes downwards to hopefully throw the cream down to the opening - it works a bit and a tiny amount comes out - sooo I shake it down some more, open the end and give it a big squeeze.

Yep, you've got it - I get a whole dollop out - way too much!!!

No amount of rubbing gets it to absorb that much into my hands, so up go the sleeves and I try rubbing the surplus into my arms too - still way too much.  

So down come the pyjama trousers and I now have enough cream left to moisturise my legs too!

Now if only I had just made the effort to get those scissors I would have been in bed much quicker and had enough hand cream left for another 3 weeks!

So what is the point of having a burglar alarm!!!!

As you know I am an owl – I go to bed late and often get involved online so end up going to bed really late…..!!! 

Well last night at 3.30 the house alarm went off over the road.  As my computer room is upstairs at the front of the house, I looked out straight away to see if I could see a van or anything suspicious.

OK I didn’t have my distance glasses on as I was on the computer but I could see the house and the road pretty clearly even though it was dark although the bushes in the garden next door slightly hampered my vision at ground level.

There was no movement, no van parked outside or even in the part of the driveway that I could see, although I couldn’t see all their front garden because of bushes and I couldn’t see the driveway up the other side of the house.  But no figures hurrying away either.

I kept watching presuming that something had triggered the alarm inside and the owners would turn it off in a minute but no, ten minutes later it was still going.

By now I thought I really should do something about it and as it wasn’t an emergency I rang 101.  The lady on the other end took my details (which seemed more important than what was going on over the road for some reason!) and I told her what I knew.

While I was speaking to her the alarm stopped, although that was probably because it was set to stop after 15 minutes.

Anyway, she told me that the police don’t investigate when house alarms go off - even though it was 3.30 a.m. and it seemed that the owners couldn’t be there or they would have turned it off.

She just told me that if I saw anyone running away or a vehicle drive off to ring “the 9’s”.

Well unless I had night vision binoculars to hand and could tell them the make and registration of the vehicle, then I rather think that would be a waste of time too as by the time they got here the burglars would be well away.

I kept an eye on the house and about 5 minutes after the alarm had stopped, a light came on in a downstairs room which was on for a good five minutes or so and by the time I went to bed ten minutes or so later the light had gone out but the security light round the side was on.  But still no fleeing burglars to be seen, so I can only presume the owners had finally been woken by their alarm.

So…… what I have learned from last night’s episode is that burglar alarms are a complete waste of time and if you are a burglar and you set an alarm off, then just sit tight and carry on with ransacking the house, as the police wont bother you.  Then, by the time you leave, the alarm will have stopped and even on the off-chance that it had woken a neighbour, they will be tucked up back in their beds and be well asleep again by the time you leave.  No worries about turning lights on in the house either to make your job easier, as it is even more likely to make neighbours think that the alarm had woken the owners.

I decided a well-lit outside of the house, possibly nice crunchy gravel, and of course dogs, are much more of a deterrent than a burglar alarm.

What a blood bath!

Well that was a dramatic awakening this morning.  I obviously watch too many crime dramas and subconsciously wanted to replicate arterial spray at a murder scene.  

I couldn't believe how much blood there could be and how far it went from a nose bleed when you aren't awake to plug it.

If I had had a spare hand I would have taken a photo J  It must have looked hilarious and I know that I looked a complete bloody mess!

I can only imagine how much blood there would be at a crime scene if my simple nose bleed was anything to go by!

It’s not the first one I have had while asleep but I guess I normally wake up a lot sooner.  A vampire would have been really handy at the time.

I woke up to a strange sensation of wetness trickling down my neck and as I moved I realised it was a nose bleed and just the effort of trying to get up and reach for some tissues sent it spurting even more.  

It had obviously been bleeding for a while too as my face looked like I had been in a fight with Rambo!  

The only part of my face that wasn’t covered with blood was my forehead.  I must have been restless because gravity hadn’t just let it trickle in one direction.  

I suppose that’s why I didn’t wake up sooner as it didn’t run down in one spot to make me feel wet.  I had just gradually got damper all over.

My blood had also managed to go own my chin and neck too so the quilt cover was covered as well as the pillow.  

A passing thought went through my head as to how much worse it was than once before when I had a nose bleed in bed on holiday once and how embarrassing that would have been if it had been as bad as this.

Honestly it would have made a great comedy film to see me trying to stem the nose bleed while trying to get the pillowcase and quilt cover off before the blood went any deeper.  

Obviously my heartbeat got even faster at the whole affair as the blood was pumping out faster than my tissues could hold it.

I know the best thing for the nosebleed would have been to sit quietly with it but I’m a woman and I knew how much harder it would be to get the blood out of the quilt and pillow if I didn’t get the covers off the bed quickly.  

Maybe I’m lazy but it seemed more important to me to get them off than to sit quietly at that moment in time.  Deal with the mess and then worry about the bleeding.

I can tell you – trying to keep some tissue plugging your nose when it is pumping to that extent with one hand while trying to strip the bed with the other is no mean feat.  

I am on Aspirin and I can tell you that blood was pumping out at every fast heartbeat more than I could possibly stem at the time.

I have decided that they probably don’t show murder scenes on television as they would really look in real life as even my simple nose bleed caused a total blood bath.  

My hand looked as bad as my face and it was trickling down my chest and down my arm from the hand that held the bundled up tissue paper to my nose.

I didn’t even attempt to tackle my pyjama top until I was sure the bleeding had finally stopped.  So I am signing off now as I have a machine load of washing to put out and a bed to make.  

Oh and my head still hurts…from the blood loss or from the pressure….who knows!

I only wish I hadn’t been home alone as it would have made some hilarious photos.

Dogs are like elephants

Well not exactly of course.

But you know the way they teach elephants not to run away by tying a rope round their leg attached to a post when they are young and when they get older as long as they have a piece of rope round their leg it doesn’t have to be tied to anything because they think they can’t escape anyway. 

Funny thing the brain and association!

Well our two little dogs will be 3 yrs old in February and they have a similar quirk.

Our back garden (yard to my American friends) is safe and secure because we had a dog before which we sadly lost to liver disease.  But when we first brought our two little urchins home it was OK during the day but the first evening we realised that we could not see the black one when she was out of the range of the patio light, so we couldn’t keep an eye on her the same as we could the little cream one.

So the next day we did a major construction on the lawn with bamboo canes and chicken wire folded in half lengthways so that it was about 2’ high and we could still step over it but it would keep the pups in a smaller area of the lawn and patio which was lit by the patio light.

We did have to make major changes a month or so later when one of them kept managing to climb up the fence and over.  So we unrolled all the wire again and tried to flatten it out again as best we could to its full 4’ height so that she could not climb over it.  Of course this meant that we had to build a make-shift gate to get through as we could no longer get over the fence either.

Well this fence stayed up for the rest of that summer and all of the next too but early this year we took it down as we now felt it would be safe for them to roam the garden and not eat everything in sight.

Now here’s the fun bit – they still go round the outside circle of where the fence used to be. 

It’s not that they ever went outside the fence so never really took that route as they were always inside it.  But now they have the whole garden they still seem to go round the imaginary fence.  The do go “through” the imaginary fence but not before they have run round the outside to get to the back of the garden and then they walk on to what was “their” area.  But then they go back out of “their” area to run back round the imaginary fence again to come back indoors. 

It is so funny to watch.  OK the grass is a lot better round the outside part of the lawn as it hasn’t been used as a female dog toilet or been dug up by playful puppies but it is not so noticeable for them to go round the outside.  At first they even made a pathway in the lawn just around the outside of the old enclosure but now they don’t necessarily go quite so close to the imaginary fence so the “path” is not quite so noticeable.

Dogs always seem to get used to a routine if you have one but our dogs seem to be really bad at having a definite routine, as they know our habits I suppose.  When I have been alone in the house upstairs on the computer they have been scratching at the lounge door in the evening because they know they are usually in there by that time even though there is no-one in there. 

Also they are used to me taking them down last thing at night to go to bed in the kitchen and the only times that I haven’t been the one to take them down they just wouldn’t settle and kept scratching the door to come back upstairs again as they couldn’t believe it was bedtime if I didn’t take them down.

If they hear a word that sounds remotely like “brush” their heads whip round as they think a treat is in store because they usually get one after their brush.  There are many little habits / expectations like this too.

And like all dogs of course, they always try to tell us when it is walk time, dinner time and treat time.