my father called me this morning from market basket to tell me he forgot his wallet. so i quickly biked down with my credit card. i'd wanted to get some groceries as well, but i was there to pay, and figured maybe i could come back later when i had a better idea of what i needed.

i bought 2 dozen eggs on sale ($2/dozen) more than 2 weeks ago, with the hopes of converting some to fabled tea eggs. i've made them in the past (120917 150303 150410), this would be my 4th attempt.

i boiled the eggs in cold water with a tsp of salt. for some reason i had the stove on medium heat, and it was taking forever to boil (more than 20+ minutes) until i finally cranked it up to high. next time: boil on high! after letting it boil for 3 minutes, i removed the eggs, but turned the heat down to medium and added the tea egg packets (one for spices, one just tea) and a handful of old sichuan peppercorns (from my 2006 trip to china).

after rinsing the eggs in the sink, i began cracking them. from my notes i learned that brown eggs are better for tea eggs because the shells are stronger. the shells of the white eggs are thin and prone to flaking off. still, i did the best i could. once the eggs were cracked, i added them back into the pot, along with 6 tbsp of salt (tablespoon!). i never add enough salt. my father gave me this advice, to add enough so that when you taste it, it's so salty that you couldn't drink it. so that was the theory i was working under when i went ahead and added 6 tablespoons.

i simmered the tea eggs for 3 hours. i'm starting to question the necessity of a long simmer, since the eggs will continue to steep in the fluids long after i finish simmering. maybe next time i'll just simmer for an hour but a longer steep time instead. even though i had the cover on, the liquid still reduced to the point where i had to add a bit of hot water to keep the eggs submerged.

while waiting for my tea eggs to simmer, i went out and raked the leaves in the backyard. it also gave me a chance to shoot another time lapse movie. basically, any occasion is a good occasion for time lapse. i'm ready to set up the camera for a special thanksgiving time lapse video. out of all my recent gadgets, this SJ4000 action camera is the one i use the most. makes me wonder if i should upgrade and get a genuine gopro (i'm thinking hero4 silver, 4K, 0.5 second time lapse interval, night photos).

when i came back into the house, it felt like a sauna: the combination of my boiling tea eggs combined with ana drying her clothes in the dryer steamed up all the windows.

after the tea eggs finished simmering, i left them to steep in the fluids.

the late afternoon was a quiet time. ana went to go take her nap, while i was in the living room surfing the web and catching up on some shows on the computer. she woke up around 5:30p and spent a long time in the bathroom, which was a clue that she would be going out tonight. sure enough, she left around 6pm.

i went to go check on my tea eggs after steeping them for 3 hours. i tried one and found it a little salty. maybe 6 tablespoons was too much! that's when i decided to stop steeping them so they don't get saltier. normally i might steep them for 24 hours or more. i took them from the pot and put them into used yogurt containers.

for dinner i couldn't wait to reheat my leftover risotto. 2 minutes in the microwave, stirred, then back into the microwave for another 2 minutes. i finished it off with some hard cider and a honeycrisp apple. ana came home around 11pm.