Another Bartering Opportunity

A few months ago, I started a new job.  The really cool thing is that I work with newborn babies and their happy families.  It's a breath of fresh air.  An added bonus is that it is at a hospital closer to home, a place I worked at about 18 years ago as a moonlighter.  Some of the nurses remember me from then.  Others remembered me from when I had my kids there.  And then there are new nurses for me to get to know and we often find out we have things in common.

One nurse raises horses, sheep, and chickens.  She and her family have shown the sheep at the Topsfield Fair for a long time.  I'm quite certain I've seen her at the Fair when we went through the sheep barn.  This year, for sure, I'll be making a point to go find her!  As we were talking recently we ended up discussing my jam-making and arranged a barter.  She brought me a dozen eggs and, when I get strawberries in June, I'll bring her a jar of strawberry jam.  A little delayed gratification for her; I got to enjoy the eggs today!

In our quest to get the perfect soft-boiled egg, today I boiled the water and put the (cold) eggs in.  After 30 seconds I dropped the heat to the lowest setting and let the eggs sit in the hot water for another 5 minutes and 30 seconds.  6 minutes total, and they were, indeed, perfect.  And incredibly tasty.

In other news, I used the yogurt I'd made from the powdered culture to make a second batch and it came out with exactly the right texture.  I left it on the heating pad for about 9 hours, maybe those extra 2 hours helped it firm up a little.  Since I'm keeping a tally of how many batches I can get out of one packet, so far we are at 2.