A Thousand Times No

Getting in a quick entry here before powering down for Earth Hour.  Meanwhile, the PECO building has been taking an extended lights-out since the beginning of the year, replacing the monochromatic marquee banner that wrapped the top of the monstrous tower with new, multi-colored, more efficient LED lights.

The nighttime visual strumpetry of the nearby Cira Center must have prompted the grand old timepiece of the Center City skyline to raise its game.  But for now, all is quiet on the western edge of the city skyline.

Mark Bittman has just published a new noodle recipe in the New York Times that I think he might have copped from looking over my mother’s shoulder.  Mixing ketchup with soy sauce, a dash of rice wine vinegar, a touch of sesame oil and some chili garlic sauce, he’s whipped up the very dish that I like to eat when I’m feeling a little blue.  I’ve been blending ketchup and soy sauce together on noodles for as long as I can remember.  It sounds vaguely disgusting, but it’s actually delicious.

When Bittman publishes a smarted-up recipe for fried eggs topped with a combination of sugar and soy sauce, I swear that I’ll have to start searching for the hidden camera over my parents’ stove.

While at the grocery store last night in search of lean proteins, I found myself standing in front of the egg section of the refrigerator case.  Much of the shelf space had been picked bare, so the egg selection was somewhat limited.  While the cage-free large eggs were completely sold out, I noticed that conventional large eggs remained in both brown and white.  The brown-shelled eggs were about 10% more expensive.

Though the color of chicken eggs is generally determined by hen breed and has no effect on the flavor of the egg, regional preferences exist.  When I think back to my Midwestern childhood, every last egg found in the supermarket was white.  Brown-shelled eggs seemed different and, well…dirty.  But now that I live smack in the middle of Filthydelphia, brown-shelled eggs are everywhere.  I’ve lived here so long that white-shelled eggs seem a little, uh…suspect.  And the prices at the supermarket indicate that I’m not the only one with such a notion in my head.

My rational side knows that the eggs are all the same on the inside, so I reached for the cheaper eggs with the white shells.  When I opened the box to make sure all the eggs were intact, though, I slid them right back onto the shelf.

Why?  They all had tattoos — you know, those little individual date stamps that indicate the freshness expiration date of each egg.

I’m sorry, subtle white markings on brown eggshells are fine, but I can’t deal with the way screaming red ink looks on white eggshells.   So I paid the eggstra 10% premium just to dodge the red ink.

I’m sure Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner wishes he could get the same deal right about now.

Greetings, everyone — I’m back from my completely unintentional hiatus.  Worry not, everything is dandy here in this corner of meatspace.  I’ve simply been doing several non-routine things during the past few weeks, resulting in a severe lack of spare time.

Last year, during my Post-A-Day exercise, I managed to blog on even the busiest days by dragging my laptop to bed with me, dutifully pecking out content by the glow of my little bantam 12″ screen.  While this was helpful for posting, it completely gutted my “sleep hygeine,” making my bed the place where I was typing (and snacking, and telephoning, and researching, and so on…) and consequently not drifting off into the Land of Nod.

So back in January I forced myself to quit blogging in bed.  In a variation of “Make Love, Not War,” I needed to remind myself of proper behavior when hitting the sack: “Snog, Not Blog!”

However, fresh content has some powerful friends in faraway places.  Since my last post, our friends in Cupertino announced the release of Teh New, Teh Shiny.  This post is brought to you today courtesy of the seventh Mac that I have had the pleasure of bringing home and uncrating.

You might wager that after twenty-some years, the thrill would be wearing off a bit around the edges.  Take my advice: Don’t bet on it.