Saying "Hi" to Breakfast

The other day, I was talking with some friends over at Boulder Indoor Cycling who expressed some concern that I wouldn't have anything to write about in my blog now that my UK and European adventures are over.  To that, I say, "Not so!"  I run into interesting things to look at, ponder, enjoy, and share all the time.

Magnetic metal balls are fun to play around with at tea time.

For instance, in December I went for tea at my friend Rob's new house in Redwood City, CA.  For Christmas, he received a toy that would tickle the fancy of any engineer.  The ball-bearing sized magnetic toys pictured above can be arranged into all kinds of interesting 3-d geometries.  In addition to making hexagons, I also arranged a string of them to make the outline of a whale.  Then I added a single string to turn the generic whale into a narwhal.

Changing topic a bit...

A little over a year ago, I joined Crossfit Roots, a Crossfit affiliate here in Boulder, CO.  In addition to teaching me how to maintain good form while lifting heavy stuff, skip double-unders, and do handstands, they are also a veritable treasure trove of information about nutrition.  Crossfit emphasizes the idea that nutrition is the basis for any kind of human performance.  As we like to say in engineering: garbage in, garbage out.

One of my resolutions for 2011 is to be more aware of what I eat. So, I thought that on this snowy Sunday morning, I would educate myself a bit about what I am eating and share it with anyone who cares to continue reading.

For breakfast today, I had the following:
3 hard-boiled eggs
Two slices of German rye bread with "Country Crock Shedd's Spread" and avocado
A grapefruit
2 Clementine oranges
Two cups of black tea
Two glasses of water

So, what do I know about these things already?  Eggs come from chickens, which in turn come from eggs.  This could get messy...  German rye bread is baked by Germans from rye grain flower, probably with some salt, sugar, and preservatives.  Country Crock Shedd's Spread said something on the container about being 40% vegetable oil.  Beyond that, I'd guess there is some salt and preservatives (based on the fact that the container is months, if not years, old) but I have no idea what else might be lurking in there.  Avocados grow on trees in southern California, among other places.  I'm pretty sure Colorado is too cold for avocado growing, but I'll find out more about that later.  Grapefruits and oranges grow on trees too, but I'm pretty sure also not here in Colorado.  Tea is made from submerging ground up tea leaves in boiling water.  The water comes from snow that falls in the Rocky Mountains, by way of the Boulder reservoir and the kitchen sink, and I think the tea leaves come from trees that grow in tropical climates like India, Asia, and Africa, but I'll have to look into that to be 100% sure.

For today, I'm going to learn something about the eggs...

I purchased the eggs came from King Soopers, the local supermarket down the street from where I live.  The carton bears "USDA Grade AA" and "Colorado Proud" markings.  From the USDA website, the USDA Grade AA marking means the eggs meet various standards for how the eggs are handled after exiting the chickens and that the eggs meet various aesthetic standards with respect to the shells, whites, and yokes.  It says nothing about how the chickens are treated, fed, or medicated.  That means (maybe?) the chickens could be raised on a diet of corn and ground-up chicken brains (yikes!), regularly injected with all sorts of chemicals, and perhaps waterboarded daily (ok, that's not very nice, likely, or economical).  "USDA Grade AA" doesn't say anything about the eggs' environment before being laid.

How about the Colorado Proud logo?  According to the Colorado Department of Agriculture, the Colorado Proud logo means the food is "Better for you.  Better for Colorado."  Or more specifically, it means it is grown, raised, and/or processed here in Colorado.  I like the sound of local growing, raising, and/or processing, but it still doesn't say anything about how the chickens are fed and treated before the eggs are laid.  In other words, it says something about the geography or the "where" of the food chain, but no specifics about the "whys" or "hows" in said food chain.  I have some more homework to do here to better understand my eggs. 

12 eggs were old, 6 were new.  Can you tell which were which?

This morning I hard-boiled 18 eggs.  12 of them came from an old carton (late September, before I took off for my multi-month adventures) and the other 6 from a new carton I bought on Friday.  Upon filling the pot with water, I immediately noticed that the 12 old eggs floated while the 6 new eggs remained on the bottom.  A little bit of searching on the web indicates this is normal.  The air pocket in each egg enlarges as the egg ages, through some combination of air seeping in through the shell, water seeping out, and gases from bacteria building up inside the shell.  I didn't know that before.  Cool!

At any rate, while some folks on the internet advise against using old eggs.  I don't automatically believe everything I read on the internet (someone wrote that old eggs float so that they won't drown) and am against wasting food, so figured I would boil all these eggs anyway and find out for myself if they are acceptably good or not.

One of the eggs had a hairline crack that I failed to notice before boiling.

After boiling the eggs, I noticed that one (pictured above) had escaped through a hairline crack in the shell.  This was one of the old eggs from late-September.  It looked pretty weird, but smelled fine, so I gave it a go.  It tasted just like any other egg, but had a softer (almost fluffy) texture, after being squeezed through the tiny crack in the shell.  Bits of the white became detached from that egg while the boiling, and ended up resembling little pieces of Styrofoam in the pot.  They were perfectly edible, and tasted just like hardboiled whites from any other egg.


After eating the portion of the egg that had evacuated the shell, I cracked open the shell and found it was mostly full of water and there was no egg white or yoke material left inside at all.  Interesting!

The next two eggs were from the late-September carton, but also seemed fine when I ate them.  Check back in a couple days to make sure my opinion hasn't changed...

Next time, I'll learn about some of the German rye bread.