Holiday Weekend

I was off for three days this Christmas weekend and I will be off another three next weekend as well.

Even though I did not work and the weather kept me from doing much outside, I still did my part over at mom's and was put to work right where I am most comfortable at, the kitchen.
That picture there is rare. Only a couple times a year I wear a collared shirt. I figured it was worth a picture to one of the girls to catch me in it.

Just like it should be at Christmas everybody and their dog showed up, no literally some brought their dogs, and we all had a good time. Some more than others when a new family member brought over his home made brew.

For the ones that do not know, this right here is why I am the meanest guy around.
These girls are my world.  

As far as work goes. I had the chance to get the pig pen done between rains and now they are happy little pigs plus the dogs get their yard back.

I also made two more batches of powdered eggs and ten pounds of beef jerky.

Oh, there's the laundry buzzer again, gotta run.
(Boy I hate rainy days)      

Finally, Perfection At Last

At last it is done. I am not ashamed I had to take the advise of my Mom but in the end, I now have my own Powdered Eggs.

To start off I will tell you what I was doing wrong,

1. My first batch never dried and came out just oily clumps of nasty eggs because I used butter in the pan and added all the seasonings.
2. The second batch turned into little rubber balls because I used the oven to dry them and set it on too low of a temp for way too long.
3. The third batch never dried even after two days because I was using the wrong kind of Dehydrator. It did not have a fan in it.
4. The forth batch I went back to using the old 1970's model dehydrator but they never dried all the way because my pieces were too big.
5. This is the batch Momma told me how to do it and they came out just fine. Here is what I did.   

Without using anything in the nonstick pan, I cooked the scrambled eggs until all visible moisture was gone and then a little more. During the cooking process I chopped the eggs up as small as I could so the heat would cook the moisture out.  



Then I put all the eggs into a food processor and chopped them as small as they would go. This is one of the steps I did not do before.







Right out of the food processor and right on the dehydrator tray they went.






I spread the cooked and finely chopped eggs evenly all over the tray. Eighteen eggs should fill up two trays.

The dehydrator was set on 145 degrees overnight. The end result was crispy burnt orange egg crumbles.





A Christmas gift from years ago finally came to use. It worked fantastic on grinding the eggs into a powder. My mom uses her grain mill and says it works even better.



It looks just like corn mill when it's all said and done. All eighteen eggs did not even fill up a pint sized mason jar.
I will vacuum the jar lids to the jar and label the top with the date. All I can Say is that it is about time I got it. Thanks Mom.
Next is dehydrated hamburger meat.

This Should Egg You On

I have been getting several eggmails and personal comments on why I have not done a follow up post on the outcome of the Powdered Eggs.
Here's the deal, I failed at it. I wasted about twenty dozen eggs and got really tired of my house smelling like eggs so when I trashed the last batch of nasty half dried egg crumbles, I hung my egg in defeat.
I was not going to even mention my not so eggtastic eggventure and hoped others would forget about it as well. I just wanted to chalk this one up for eggperience and leave it at that.

Eggmails started coming in asking what came of it all and people I new started egging questions. "I didn't know aggyone was really interested" I thought, so I just egged them on saying I was still working on it.

A couple of weeks ago I was over at my Mom's house and while sitting on the back porch having a cold one with my Dad, my Mom came out and asked the same question, "Hey, you never told me how your eggs turned out"

I hung my head in shame and simply replied, "Momma I can't get them right"

She asked what the problem was and I told her. She then went in the house and brought out a mason jar full of the best looking powdered eggs I have egger seen. With a smirk on her face she said, " Mine turned out great and it was really easy"
Talk about adding insult to injury.

Swallowing my pride I asked her how she did it. About halfway through her eggsplination like a light bulb it hit me and all I could say was, "OOOHHH"

My Dad chipped in about that time and with a laugh said, "I bet having your momma tell you how to do something won't make it on your blog will it" he continued, "Oh, Mr. Big Redneck had to have his momma help him out"

He was right, I never eggtended to let you good yolks know that I egged out on this one, but I just could not pass up the chance to try and see how many times I could add the word egg into another word.

So there you go Dad, eggxactly how it went down.

I am now fixen to do it the way momma told me how and then see how they turn out.