utenzi

Normally when the weather warms up, egg production at the farmstead goes up. But this year that didn't seem to be the case. Now, sure, it could be because the weather is unusually warm for this part of the year. The chickens and other fowl might still be in Winter mode since this time of the year is normally still quite cool. But still, we thought that the chickens would be laying more than a few eggs a week now. And then a few days of stormy weather blew a lot of leaves out from under the front porch stairs and lo and behold.... there was a nest of eggs under there. Now I check for eggs under the stairs frequently because they like it under there and I find a few a week. But they're always out in the open like that overexposed one in the front of that first picture. With most of the leaves out of the way, a whole bunch of eggs were exposed to the eye so we used a rake to pull them out. As you can see here, there were 16 eggs in that nest plus the one that was out in front. Tha...

Many people seem to think that the most difficult part of making an omelet is folding it at the end. That's just not true. Here's an omelet that I made this evening for my meager little supper. It's comprised of 3 eggs at room temperature, a few ounces of feta cheese and one slice of ham, diced. After you dump the beaten eggs--I don't add anything to the eggs when beating them other than a pinch of salt--in the pan, let them sit for a couple of minutes to firm up. Don't have the pan too hot else the eggs will burn. I use one notch below the medium setting on my stove. Of course all stoves are individuals so take that with a grain of salt. Add fillings onto the egg once you can shake the pan and the eggs will slide. The eggs haven't completely set at this point. Most guides want you to add fillings after the eggs set all the way but I like to give the cheese more time to melt. Once the eggs are completely set, fold the first edge over by moving a spatula undernea...

Or maybe I should title this post eggs and software. When I do a CAM (Chorioallantoic Membrane) assay, which is an in vivo angiogenesis model, getting the results is a 3-step process. First of all, of course you have to do the experiment, which isn't trivial since there's so many damn things that can go wrong. Some eggs aren't fertilized, lots of eggs develop problems when you break them, and there's some eggs that, for no apparent reason, don't develop properly after being added to a petri dish. Yet, eventually we end up with eggs that look like the picture above. Around 30% will develop all the way and we have 3 - 5 discs per egg which adds up to a faily significant number--statistically speaking. So step two is taking the picture. But getting the picture up on top is just the first step in the analysis. Each disc (these are filters that have drug added to them--or saline in the case of controls--so we can see what affect there is on angiogenesis) gets photographe...

Another day off of work... On days that I work I rarely eat anything before noon, and then it's usually just some candy and water until I get home and have dinner. But since I have today off, I had eggs and taters. And I didn't even have to prepare them! Life is good. 8 eggs and some fried potatoes. The picture was taken before they hit the frying pan, of course. The other people that I work with have stopped eating eggs since we started using them in research last month. For some reason it's not hurt my appetite for eggs. Go figure. Dell sucks.