Farmyard Boogie: Winter Fun

Naomi and I have been hiking quite a bit, especially considering it's usually pretty difficult to get Naomi outside during the winter. I had been feeling like I had a pretty funless summer and just wanted to get out and do stuff. We've been out a handful of times and seen some cool places. I'm really enjoying getting to know my new area here.

We've also had a few fires in the backyard, especially so I can get wood ash to nixtamalize the corn we grew this past summer. One recent afternoon while burning some wood, Naomi came up with the idea to make foil dinners! Well, I just love foil dinners!! I also suggested that we roast an egg in on the coals, and proceeded to attempt to find the "best" way to roast an egg on coals. The internet provided me with just TOO many options. I also remembered watching Steve Rinella try to roast some pigeon eggs on TV once. His eggs boiled out and he lost most of the insides.

So the best thing I came up with was to hollow out an orange and stick the whole egg in it. I had cooked cupcakes in orange peels at camp once, so the method seemed the most familiar. While it was roasting, the sun was setting. I went to close the coop and grab the day's eggs, and I discovered that one of the eggs was cracked. Having nothing to lose with that egg, I popped a tiny piece of loose shell from it and set it right on the coals. An insignificant amount of egg white came out of that little hole and ran down the side, but also provided us a view to the progress inside the shell. Meanwhile, the other egg was doing who-knows-what inside that tangerine peel.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, we determined the eggs (and the foil dinners) to be done. The naked egg looked completely cooked through, and we figured the other one should be about the same, so we pulled them from the coals. Naomi got the naked egg, and I took the tangerine egg. Naomi's yolk was just barely not cooked on the top side that never touched the coals directly, which wasn't all that surprising. The tangerine egg was cooked perfectly. Both were absolutely delicious; like a friend and a hard-boiled egg combined, but somehow better than either one. We determined that the tangerine peel was both unrealistic in a woodcraft situation, and totally unnecessary.

After we finished our eggs, we pulled the foil dinners. They were PERFECTLY done, minus the apple chips that were right on top. Those burned, so we took them off. I'm hoping to make some more foil dinners in the not-so distant future.