Crème brûlée is a set custard that you melt the sugar on top of- but you can do that like. Any way you could melt sugar! You can just stick it under a broiler or melt sugar and pour it on. OR, just... don't melt the sugar, straight up flanning it! Dont bother with the sugar! You can make a set custard then pour maple syrup over it, that's pretty good! Ice cream is basically just frozen custard as well.

I've never had devilled eggs, though. What are they like? What spices devil them?

It's basically a hard boiled egg where you've removed the yolk, mixed the yolk with some other ingredients (mustard at least, usually mayo, and then maybe other stuff too) into a paste, and filled in the space where the yolk used to be with the new paste. Often it's garnished with other stuff on top after that. Your average deviled chicken egg looks like this:

I don't know if other people use other spices, but when I do it, I hard boil the eggs (for quail, bring to boil, add eggs for 6 minutes, remove whole pot from heat w/o dumping water, run under small stream of cold water for ~10 minutes). Then I peel and cut them all in half, removing the yolks to a separate bowl. The whites get laid out bowl-side-up in a 9x11" pan. I always make extra eggs, so I can toss (to the birds) whites that don't look pretty enough, but if you're just eating them at home, you don't have to do this. BUT. You will have less filling per egg if you don't, and I love deviled eggs with lots of filling. You can always make some potato, egg, or pasta salad alongside the deviled eggs, and add the extra whites to those.

For the yolk filling, I mix the yolks with mayo, dijon mustard (can use plain mustard + vinegar in a pinch, the mustard is one of the things that makes an egg "deviled" because it's spicy), a little pickle juice (to make the filling smoother/looser but not goopy), and then lowry's seasoned salt (I'm not sure what is in this, and it's not something I saw in other recipes, but it's really good on eggs) and regular salt. You will (probably) add paprika to the top, but you can also add it to the mix, I do. The amounts when I do it are measured by my heart, but it's more mayo than mustard. You want the insides to be slightly looser than spreadable margarin or peanut butter, like a smooth frosting, so you can pipe it easily. Add to a sandwich baggie (or if you have frosting bags + tips go for it) and cut the corner small, and then fill the eggs. You can fill them however you want, but I stick the tip deep into the egg and let it smoosh out around the tip, lift, smoosh, lift smoosh. You should get a fairly clean fill that looks good

If you don't stick it down in, the filling may not stick to the egg and come back out with the baggie tip.

This is what they look like too loose (first photo) or too firm (second):

You can also see relish chunks in the second, I don't like the texture. People make them different all over, putting different stuff in them but I like mine simple. They so garnish them differently; paprika sprinkled over the top is most common around me, but people put all sorts of stuff on them

And if you wanna get fancy, you can get some cheap piping tips and do fancier looking fills

And there's other variations, like cutting them different, or even deep frying them!

Also if I ever need just egg whites, I will poach the yolks in a pan, make deviled eggs filling, and spread it on crackers. VERY tasty use of yolks.

So yeah! lots of cool ways to make them, and they're pretty tasty. I prefer the quail eggs deviled because they're bite sized so it's cleaner to eat them, and the white-to-yolk ratio is better (you can see in some of these there's not a lot of filling..... but the filling is the best part imo....).

Ah. What's the mouthfeel like on it? I'm not that big a fan of hardboiled eggs, due to the graininess, but is this less grainy?

It's generally less grainy because of the mashing and the fat added to it. Adding on that I really like to put a little bit of pickle juice in my filling bc I like the pickle taste but not the texture

@ospreyonthemoon I agree it's less grainy, but I also want to say that quail egg yolks in general are a LOT smoother when hard boiled than chicken eggs, even with nothing done to them. It's an exceptionally silky yolk when hard boiled, and the main difference I tell people who ask. They don't really taste any different than chicken eggs, but the nutritional profile is a bit denser and the yolks are smoother hard boiled. Adding fat/oil to it and whipping it/mashing it into a paste only adds to that.

@raygender exact same reason I add the juice, and not relish. Cannot stand little Things in my smooth texture. That's NOT supposed to be there.

Post Upside Down Eddie who is one foot in grave but still makes sure that Steve takes care of himself while taking care of him. He makes him change his own bandages - “You tortured me, so now it's your turn!”. He promises not to die while Steve takes an hours' nap. He threatens to refuse food unless he sees Steve eat a proper meal first. He even gets Dustin to support him, which the boy of course does, and Steve stands no chance against the two of them together.

Steve is deeply confused because he is not used to people actually caring about him.

I’ve noticed some posts around about how you can’t romanticize your life during a fascist regime and while I deeply sympathize with this sentiment, I want you to try to understand that’s what they want you to believe.

Fascism thrives best in the cesspool of hopelessness. They want us so confused and hopeless that we give in. When you give in, you don’t fight back.

If you wait for life to look good to do the things that bring you joy; life will still be bad - you will just have less joy.

As someone who has struggled with my mental health a lot for the last thirty years, I know this struggle firsthand. And changing this belief system - the one where you spend all of your time expecting bad things so you won’t be surprised when they happen - it’s the hardest work that I have ever done. And I’m not perfect; I still have setbacks. I still experience really real fears about the state of the world and the US, in particular, because that’s where I live.

But I made a vow to myself that I will not let the choices of others ruin my life. When I made that vow, I was thinking of my parents - but it applies to the state of the government right now, too.

There are still flowers in my garden, and ripe tomatoes, and it’s almost pick-your-own apples season, and I have plans with my friends to go to as many cemetery ghost walks as we can find this October.

I still deserve to live. I still deserve to laugh. I still deserve to love. I still deserve to be as happy as I can be.

And you do, too.

*gestures broadly at the resistance movements in europe during the last reich*

“Where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.”

— The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank

“One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.”

— The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin

Crème brûlée is a set custard that you melt the sugar on top of- but you can do that like. Any way you could melt sugar! You can just stick it under a broiler or melt sugar and pour it on. OR, just... don't melt the sugar, straight up flanning it! Dont bother with the sugar! You can make a set custard then pour maple syrup over it, that's pretty good! Ice cream is basically just frozen custard as well.

I've never had devilled eggs, though. What are they like? What spices devil them?

It's basically a hard boiled egg where you've removed the yolk, mixed the yolk with some other ingredients (mustard at least, usually mayo, and then maybe other stuff too) into a paste, and filled in the space where the yolk used to be with the new paste. Often it's garnished with other stuff on top after that. Your average deviled chicken egg looks like this:

I don't know if other people use other spices, but when I do it, I hard boil the eggs (for quail, bring to boil, add eggs for 6 minutes, remove whole pot from heat w/o dumping water, run under small stream of cold water for ~10 minutes). Then I peel and cut them all in half, removing the yolks to a separate bowl. The whites get laid out bowl-side-up in a 9x11" pan. I always make extra eggs, so I can toss (to the birds) whites that don't look pretty enough, but if you're just eating them at home, you don't have to do this. BUT. You will have less filling per egg if you don't, and I love deviled eggs with lots of filling. You can always make some potato, egg, or pasta salad alongside the deviled eggs, and add the extra whites to those.

For the yolk filling, I mix the yolks with mayo, dijon mustard (can use plain mustard + vinegar in a pinch, the mustard is one of the things that makes an egg "deviled" because it's spicy), a little pickle juice (to make the filling smoother/looser but not goopy), and then lowry's seasoned salt (I'm not sure what is in this, and it's not something I saw in other recipes, but it's really good on eggs) and regular salt. You will (probably) add paprika to the top, but you can also add it to the mix, I do. The amounts when I do it are measured by my heart, but it's more mayo than mustard. You want the insides to be slightly looser than spreadable margarin or peanut butter, like a smooth frosting, so you can pipe it easily. Add to a sandwich baggie (or if you have frosting bags + tips go for it) and cut the corner small, and then fill the eggs. You can fill them however you want, but I stick the tip deep into the egg and let it smoosh out around the tip, lift, smoosh, lift smoosh. You should get a fairly clean fill that looks good

If you don't stick it down in, the filling may not stick to the egg and come back out with the baggie tip.

This is what they look like too loose (first photo) or too firm (second):

You can also see relish chunks in the second, I don't like the texture. People make them different all over, putting different stuff in them but I like mine simple. They so garnish them differently; paprika sprinkled over the top is most common around me, but people put all sorts of stuff on them

And if you wanna get fancy, you can get some cheap piping tips and do fancier looking fills

And there's other variations, like cutting them different, or even deep frying them!

Also if I ever need just egg whites, I will poach the yolks in a pan, make deviled eggs filling, and spread it on crackers. VERY tasty use of yolks.

So yeah! lots of cool ways to make them, and they're pretty tasty. I prefer the quail eggs deviled because they're bite sized so it's cleaner to eat them, and the white-to-yolk ratio is better (you can see in some of these there's not a lot of filling..... but the filling is the best part imo....).

Despite it all

Fandom: Stranger Things

Characters: Steve/Eddie (pre-slash), Nancy/Jonathan, Robin

Summary: They all gather at Steve's. Steve's nervous about it.

A/N: Please god bring my family back together.

Words: 1.9k

Steve isn’t sure if any of them realizes how much of a front he’s putting up. How strange it is, seeing them all in his living room, and as he forces himself to stay absolutely still where he’s sprawled out on the couch, he doesn’t know if he’s doing it out of excitement or nerves. It’s kind of stupid, being nervous of people you know and have saved the world with sitting in your living room.

Eddie’s pretending too. He can tell. He’s much better at acting natural, maybe because his nervous energy translates much easier into something restless which can almost be mistaken for curiosity. Because why would Eddie Munson care about what movies Steve’s parents have lined up along the TV mostly for show, or about why one of the pictures on the fridge has someone cut out of it at the far left?

“An uncle, you say?” He’s leaning closer to the fridge. Steve can see him from where he’s laying, despite the low lighting.

Legit that seems like such an affordable way keeping poultry, looking at the chicken bills at my workplace is just like woah. Cheers for the breakdown!

Mmm dreaming of eggs...

Oh it's hands down way cheaper than keeping chickens. On top of just straight up being cheaper, taking up less space, being quieter AND less work than chickens, the quail rarely get injured (anymore. After I culled heavily against aggression) and in 5 years of keeping them they've gotten parasites one time- and that was coccidia from me bringing home birds from another breeder that kept her birds on raw ground, not something they caught here first. Up on the wire... They're good. like, going into any chicken group is a nightmare wade through all the health issues and horrific injuries. Even my spoiled rotten peafowl get feather lice every spring from the wild birds and at least once a year I have to treat coccidia or worms or both because they pick up parasites from eating wild bugs and bathing in dirt in their pens. The savings on general parasite treatments alone between chickens and quail is significant. The quail have never gotten ill at all.

And importantly here (and one of the original deciding factors), they don't need any special equipment to butcher from cage to freezer. No cones, no pluckers, no tools, nothing. Good kitchen shears make it easier, a vacuum sealer makes them last longer in the freezer, but you could grab shears from any knife block and an off brand zipper plastic baggie and still be fine. Which means it's easy to cull birds and not worry about wasting them.

But the question is do they cost less than buying eggs at the store. I also forgot the cost of the birds in my factoring of the cost; unless you're breeding more yourself (need to buy an incubator, plus keep males) you'd be looking at replacing the hens every 2 years to keep up that level of production. Hens are generally $6-15 depending on the type and quality, so add more for that over time.