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Star-shaped eggs and solar keychains!
OK, so one of the things I've been eyeing on eBay when it comes to bento are egg molds. They're plastic molds that you use by putting a peeled, still-warm hard-boiled egg into them, snap them shut, and toss them in ice water or the fridge for 10 or so minutes for the egg to cool off and take on the shape of the mold. They tend to look something like this:
I hadn't bought any because of a combination of the price and being unable to figure out what shapes I wanted. Then I ran across a post by
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ss_biggie, who found some ice cream sandwich molds by a company called Tovalo. She tried them out, and they pretty much worked out just fine. So I went for it - I found an $11.95 set on Amazon.com, and Mom has Amazon Prime and has no problems with ordering them for me and having them shipped to me. She also managed to accidentally order herself a set, and is awaiting my results. :) I didn't care much for the farm animals, so I got this set, which contains a star, a heart, and a weird little cross between a square and a circle that they call a "squircle." Which is just fun to say. Squircle, squircle, squircle.
Reader, I tried them. And they more-or-less worked!
As you can tell, the star is almost perfect, the heart is a wee bit cracked, and the squircle ended up being a squashed football shape. My problem was that I was using large eggs, and extra-large or even jumbo (in the case of the squircle) would have been better. I think the next time I do this, I'll also take advice from
ss_biggie and lightly spray the molds with Pam or something like that, to keep it from sticking.The biggest trick to molding eggs is to get the shells off without the inner membrae of the egg sticking to it and tearing the egg's surface up, and to get it in the mold while still hot. I pored through websites that offered all sorts of tips, and picked three of them to all use. Which worked wonderfully. I don't know which one or ones is responsible for my just-about-perfect eggs (especially since I'd boiled the other eggs from the same carton two days ago and managed to rip up half of them while peeling), but I don't care. So...
First, take your eggs. Don't use fresh eggs from the store. They need to be 1 week or, better, 2 weeks old - as they age they shrink away from the shell and that membrane. Place them in a good-sized pot, cover with enough water to cover them + 1 inch. Tip #1 - put salt into the water. I put in about a tablespoon. Tip #2 - put vinegar in the water. I put in about a tablespoon.
Put them on a burner on high, until they come to a good boil. Put the lid onto the pot and turn the burner off. Let sit without touching for 17ish minutes.
Drain the still-hot water. Tip #3 - To crack the eggs - I used a paper towel to hold the first couple, since they were still hot - tap it sharply on the counter, first on one end, then the other. Then put it on its side and roll it for one full revolution to crack the outside. Put it into a bowl of very warm water (I used hot tap water). Peel in the bowl. (I ended up peeling out of the water but dropping it back in every few seconds as it got too hot. But by the time I was on the 6th egg, it was perfectly handle-able.)
Take your still-warm egg, dry off on a paper towel, and put in mold. Real egg molds have catches that snap shut, but I used rubber bands to hold the ice cream molds shut. After I got three eggs into the three molds, I put them in the fridge and piled heavy stuff on top of them because the rubber bands weren't quite holding it down hard enough. I let them sit while I went and biked, and after I came back, I unmolded them. Ta-da!
Here's one of the molds:
This is what it looks like put together:
And now for the solar-powered keychain!
This is it. It's about 2 inches long.
This is the side, where you can see the solar panels/cells/whatever. PLus the reflection of the lens cap it's balanced on. The back side of the keychain is mirrored with the Death Note logo on it, and doesn't photograph well.
And here, with my l33t Photoshop skillz, I simulated what it does when the edge with the solar panels is exposed to light:
That's fairly close to the frequency at which it blinks.
And in an unrelated item, here's a picture of a rabbit humping a chicken. Don't say I didn't warn you.
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Augh, it's so hard to peel hardboiled eggs. My mom and I have a system. She does something with the cooking of them that makes them really easy to peel, but it totally inept at peeling them herself. XD So she cooks them and I peel them. I think the main trick is not overcooking them, and peeling them under running water. I usually try to break the air pocket at the bottom of the egg and then run it once over the counter to break up the whole shell, and then peel from the bottom. If you pop the air pocket right, you can usually grab hold of the membrane and peel it away from there.
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That's how I'd build it, anyway. :-)
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Thanks for posting your tutorial - it's not something I'd ever have thought of on my own. :D
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The last eggs I boiled, I tried peeling them under water, and I still ripped half of them up. I don't know which of the three things I did worked for this batch, but I was quite happy.
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I also have a vague desire to disassmble it and see if I can hook it up to anything else, but I have not the technical skills or knowledge needed to do such a thing. :)
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Hey!
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YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED!
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>> shot glasses with the Saiyuki characters on them. <<
Is inspired to hit Google with this idea ...
And I now wonder how I have lived this long without Saiyuki Lint Free Eyeglass Paper ...
- Cho
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And A++ on the animation. I feel like I'm there.