Easter 2012

* Test egg. 

* Cold from refrigerator, into hot pressure pot.

* Ten minutes on 7.5 - 11 LBS pressure

* Shock in ice water. So shocked twice

from cold to hot, then rapidly from extremely hot to extremely cold.

* I have found that in Denver hard boiled eggs are propper bastards to peel and that takes all the fun out of it. The membrane does not separate between the egg white and the shell, the three become as one inside so peeling takes half the egg white with it. Hard boiled eggs, no matter how I've cooked them, reliably at least half of them will look like survivors of a serious pox. Pressure cooking and shocking by temperature extremes separates the membrane from the egg very nicely. Some of these eggs veritably fly out of their shells, the shells remaining in a single piece or in two pieces with cracks all around. It's a whole different ballgame. 

These eggs are cooked perfectly, there is no unsightly iron migration, and they peel easily. I can put them out and know they will not be trouble.   

35 eggs

The idea is to set the egg in green dye to create a green oval sepal then reposition the egg to create an adjoining green oval sepal, then another to five or six overlapping oval sepals  to imitate a plant's full calyx. 

The black dots are ...

I don't know what the black dots are. It just seemed like a good idea.

Stylized American flag. Stripes and stars drawn with a wax pencil. A total pain in the ass and it's ugly.

Adapted to French flag. 

One fell in.

Carrots, real world bunny food.

Chocolate covered cranberries, fake bunny poo. 

These things are really good. Coconut with chocolate chunks.

I couldn't find the little chocolate balls with wrappers printed with the globe. You know, peace on Earth and all that. The people I asked knew exactly what I was talking about. It was as if they could picture such a thing in their minds. 

These are ginger. They are hot. The ginger kind of hot. As far as yinyang goes I would say it is 100% yin. 

These are slices of mango, dried, coated with dark chocolate. I notice the chocolate is actually tempered. Somehow I expected them to slip by and just melt it. 

These are candy shekels given out at Chanukah. Some of them resemble American coins. Sometimes I wonder about these with the Hebrew writing on them. You know in the old days you had to have the right kind of coin to make a monetary donation to the temple. As people came to the temple from all over the Roman empire they came with all manner of coin. The priests set up money changers for the convenience of complying with their rule. The temple profited by the currency exchange. 

Sometimes the coin was used to purchase an animal for sacrifice to the temple. The animal had to meet the priesthood's specifications for purity so they provided the beasts too. The priests were in the butchery business big time. They sold the animals they deemed to be sufficiently pure. 

Then they sold the slaughtered animals. The pascal lamb was such a sacrificed animal. 

So then the priesthood profited by 

* the exchange of coin to buy animals for sacrifice

* the sale of live animals for sacrifice

* the sale of temple meat butchered by priests. 

The temple was a veritable abattoir. So I wonder about these shekels. What if it happens I accidentally give these to an Islamic person? Would they take umbrage?

Well, I guess I don't really care.  

Full stop. 

You might think the above a bit absurd. What follows below is complete nonsense. We are now thinking as children.  These are all the typical things we would find in our Easter baskets, and let me tell you, for a kid it made Easter almost as awesome as Christmas and Halloween. How the candy people took over I have no idea, but they did and I love them. 

At another time of year these exact same eggs will be footballs.

Dove got into the act. Why not?

These are my all-time favorite things. Malted nougat, I think. I love malt. The chocolate shell of these are sturdy enough to hold up while you stick your tongue into the center and dissolve the inside. You can get the shell to stay intact and then collapse the chocolate shell which is almost melted by the time you suck out the guts. You gotta love candy that offers a challenge. 

These are peanut butter rabbits and they're a little bit gross. 

These are similar thing. They are a chocolate lidded cup filled with peanut butter sludge. 

When I was a tiny kid an aunt took me to Philadelphia for some reason. At one point she was shopping. That might have been the whole point. Seemed like gigantic department store but I'm wrong about all those things, it was probably a Sears, I recall the candy counter and the smell. Alluring. I hung out there and my attention landed on these tiny chocolate peanut butter cups. I never saw them before. I ended up with a whole bag. I sat in the back of a taxi and attempted to eat the whole bag. 

I didn't get sick but it put me off peanut butter cups for a good two decades. I still don't care for them. Had my fill way back there. I think, but I don't know for sure, due to the peanut butter these are probably an American thing.

Jelly beans renamed jelly eggs for Easter. These are regular jelly beans. 

Jazzed up jelly beans that don't bother with seasonal name changes. Gourmet jelly beans. Ha Ha ha. There is a key on the back of the package that tells you what they're trying to be. It might be a Ronald Reagan thing, it might be a Bertie Bott's Every Flavour thing.

The camera didn't budge. This is the real relative difference in sizes.  

There are sixteen packages. Thirteen for units on my floor, fourteen including myself, I think, if not then too bad. Plus two extra or possibly three extra to sprinkle around randomly.

I know two of my neighbors by name. A third recognizes me by name and I know where they live but I have no idea who they are. So through this last year I have spoken to two of them in passing. I find this situation strange but it's okay with me. Oh, my other neighbor I hear coming and and going about three to five times a day but I've never have seen him for a whole year. Statistically that seems impossible. There are a lot of young people here and they move in and move out so fast I cannot keep up with them.

Update: Sunday afternoon returning from a pretzel run at the same moment another resident was returning, putting our keys in our doors at the same moment, she half a hallway away and very close by is a little girl, oddly it seemed, of another race. So, what's up with that? I wondered, adoption, babysitting, or what? That's all. The woman said, "Thank you for the Easter bag." The girl turned around and regarded me. 

I was dismayed. I said, "You are welcome. How did you know who did that?" The girl abandoned her interest in getting inside their own apartment, she put it together and became interested in that man down there, me. The woman said, "A little birdie told me." 

See? I give and give and give and I can't even get a straight answer on Easter. That's what my dad would say.

That is the apartment where Karen told me a sex perv is living. The diaper guy. Harmless enough, but still. As an Easter bunny I was thinking, "here's your bag, perv," and moved on but then today when I saw that woman and the child I was pleased about the whole thing. I'm happy this one feedback incident showed me this and I am glad to see a child involved with the Easter thing I did.