HOW many eggs?
August 11, 2015 7:03 AM   Subscribe

HOW many eggs?
So, my friend and I, (both librarians and enthusiastic eaters) who did a previous food-related project, have a new one where we make things we've always wanted to eat from our favorite books. We are far from the first to have this idea, but we get kind of intense about it.

Some examples:
Ellen Pringle's 36-egg pound cake from Anne of Windy Poplars
Snarking Out, Daniel Pinkwater-style
Bruce Bogtrotter's giant chocolate cake from Matilda
The Harry Potter Month roundup
The Harry Potter Food and Drink Index and Concordance
Role: Co-founder and chief cook
posted by exceptinsects (9 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
This project was posted to MetaFilter by aniola on August 12, 2015: 36 Eggs

but we get kind of intense about it

The intensity is the best part!

This is amazing and so are both of you.
posted by barchan at 9:13 AM on August 11, 2015


What I really want to try is some fried apples-n-onions.
posted by the_blizz at 1:10 PM on August 11, 2015


Wait, *that's* what it means to mix by hand??? I...use a spoon or whisk or something in my hand.
posted by unknowncommand at 4:04 PM on August 11, 2015


Fried apples-n-onions are definitely on the list! We are planning a whole Farmer Boy breakfast, where we get up super early and go work in the garden, and then come back and eat enormous quantities of food.

And yeah, unknowncommand, apparently so! We found it really helps in getting a uniform texture. And with a really giant amount of batter, you can make sure you're mixing all the way to the bottom.
(...unless this is a practical joke on the part of the Culinary Historians of Canada, which is a possibility--they seem like fun people)
posted by exceptinsects at 4:58 PM on August 11, 2015


I am extremely curious to know how they discovered this, and also at what point it seems to have stopped meaning that you use your actual bare hands to touch batter.
posted by unknowncommand at 5:17 PM on August 11, 2015


This is a brilliant idea!

When I was a teacher of K-1-2, we spent a year on farms, read the whole Little House series, and culminated the year with a Farmer Boy breakfast event (we even made our own maple syrup for it). Fried apples'n'onions was good, but you know what really blew our minds? Bird's Nest Pudding. It's like apple crumb cake and Yorkshire pudding had a delicious baby.

I've often thought about doing some kind of writing on favorite meals from books, but never re-creating them. That's just genius. If it were me, I'd do some kind of trout fry from the Nick Adams stories.
posted by Miko at 7:55 PM on August 12, 2015


Pickled limes?
posted by gingerest at 8:06 PM on August 12, 2015


unknowncommand, I've discovered from my research into 19thC domesticity that housemaids were sometimes activity discouraged from using rags or other tools to clean things. Hands were supposed to be so much better at getting into crevices and whatnot. (But at the same time you were supposed to store your food in a separate pantry so your servants didn't breathe on it too much. Go figure.)
posted by mmmbacon at 2:39 PM on August 13, 2015


mmmbacon, I'd also be curious to learn when that changed.
posted by unknowncommand at 8:10 PM on August 14, 2015


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