I would not believe

if not that I had seen it with my own eyes:

This morning, I performed a task which I must have done thousands of times: cracking an egg.

I struck the shell against the edge of the pan, levered apart the two halves of the shell either side of the breach which I had created.

And the contents, as expected fell into the pan.

Except that, they were still wholly contained within the membrane. There, sat in the hot oil was a roughly egg-shaped, but not rigid, sack, containing my egg!

Perhaps I should have tried to cook it within its sack: something different.

But to add insult to injury, when I used my fingers to rip the sack apart, I also broke the yolk!

Ena, be afraid, be very afraid , you have cooked an Alien, I have just had a text from above if I know your address, thankfully , I do not however, they will send the same text to Tommy 2 stokes, Lets hope he keeps shtum if, he knows,

Ena, you could have poached it whole as the membrane can cause no health problems.

Very unusual for that to happen though.

On about eggs I always test the freshness of an egg by placing the egg in water.The other day I had just put two eggs in a glass of water when the carers came to see to my wife and with answering the door I got distracted from what I was doing. When the carers were leaving one of them(from overseas) ask why I had eggs in a glass so I explained to her that if the eggs sank they were fresh if they started turning in the glass they were on the turn(stale) and if they floated they were bad. She had never seen or heard of this method of testing the freshness of eggs

Good tip Peter, I've never heard of that before either

That's how I test my eggs for freshness as well. It saves trying to cook a stale egg. I heard about that trick a long time ago.

Talking about the validity of things, never EVER, open a tin without taking a clean cloth and wiping around the rim and the rest of the top first. When in storage, there is a chance that mice and/or rats can run over the unpackaged tins and urinate on them. If not cleaned, this can get into the food and contaminate it, leading to Weils Disease, which is very nasty, and the very least you'll get is a bad belly ache. Same thing about cracking open a tin of beer/lager/pop - always clean it first.

A similar thing I do is, you're sharing a bottle of beer/pop or wine with anyone ,wipe the bottle top with your tee shirt ,,,

I just buy fresh eggs from the market.

Rio how do know they are fresh eggs Most of the eggs I buy come from a supermarket all with date stamps but it does not mean they are fresh Sometimes I bought free range eggs Chicken/ Duck from a farm at Rufford but again I test them in water before use

Mollie I run water over a tin before I open it,read about it years ago good tip and I also wear rubber gloves when opening an awkward tin like corned beef

It's a fact that nearly all bad cuts to the hands that arrive at Wigan Infirmary are caused by opening corned beef tins...and I also do the egg in a jug of water to test if it's fresh.

tomplum when you're sharing a bottle of beer/pop or wine /water just tip it in your mouth with out touching your lips

How would you wipe an apple when you asked your mate to "STUMP YOU"

The most dangerous tins to open are the flat ring pull tins that sardines / pilchards / mackerel etc are contained in. Corned beef tins are a doddle compared with those!
If your not careful you can end up with a very nasty cut

You hve a good point there chesh those flatties are a tricky bugger but, My moneys on the corned beef can because, you are cutting a slice of tin with a key that forms two sharp edges on the strip and two sharp edges on the can which at one point splits the can making in total 4 razor sharp edges between your hands, Its an health and safety hazard of Biblical proportion and should have been Banned long ago, The Spam tin has updated to the ring pull but, not the corned beef, I wonder why,

Wait until the ring falls off and you've lost the key and you are stabbing away with a knife
or

I remember watching the film, 'The Pianist' (2002), where starving, he had difficulty opening the tin.

Survivalist's tip:

To open any can, bowt implements, stand can on a piece of abrasive rock, bricks, concrete or similar, and it will take little more than a minute to grind away the lap where the metal of sides creates bond with that of the ends of the can.

What happens if it's soup that you are opening ena?

Still works OK, same for juice.

You get to a stage where you can turn the can over, and lift off the lid, there being only friction holding it together.

It is useful to know if you go camping, and someone loses, or forgot to pack a can opener. Maybe less so nowadays as ring pull now so often the technique used.

Have yoo ever seen a dog trying to chew open a tin of dog food, the dog is intelligent enough to know what is in the tin, but it does not know how to open the tin.

Some humans are the same, if the ring pull snaps off, or the peeling strip on a tin of corned beef breaks, they don't know how to open the tin, but most folk keep some type of tin opener handy to open such tins.

I have one of these.


It opens anything and I have had it for years

Yes, but Tommy.
The idea of ring pulls was to eliminate the use and need of a can opener.

Obviously, ring pulls are clearly not doing their job.

Posted by: tomplum (11722) [View tomplum's page]
"You hve a good point there chesh those flatties are a tricky bugger"

Ive also encountered a few awkward Fray Bentos pie cans as well

TTS,

Not seen one of that kind for a while.

Most seem to be rotary cutting wheel type these days.

Just thrown out a load of them, they seem to soon fail.

So, using now, 'OXO Good Grips' model. Seems OK. hope it will last.

Downside is it cuts a thin sliver of paper from the label, and dumps it into the food, and I then have to fish it out.

found this

We have various types of can openers from manual openers like above to an opener with wings which you hold two handles to grip the can and then turn the wings to open the can. We also have a free standing electric opener which you put the edge of the can over a rotating wheel and press the cutter into the can then you can let go of the tin and the opener will stop when the lid had completely cut round. We also have a battery operated opener which you just place on the top of the can and then press a button and the cutter then cuts into the can not the lid and rotates round the can and stops when the lid is cut off the can. This as a magnet in the middle so you lift the top off and dispose of into the bin safely

Cheshire Puss

"Yes, but Tommy.
The idea of ring pulls was to eliminate the use and need of a can opener"

I think that yoo have to careful with all types of built in can openers, ring pulls or key and strip, with ring pulls I always put pressure on the ring pull using my thumb, before snapping it up and open,, I think that most people do that without thinking about it.

On about the hygiene thing, doo any of yoo remember the old pull tabs which were used on beverage cans, they were phased out in favour of the stay tabs, which press a tab down into the drink tin, the old pull tabs you pulled off proud of the can, and they had to be disposed of separately, the same way that food ring pull cans work today, well hygiene wise, some folk would pull the tab off and then drop the tab into the can and into whatever was in the can, before drinking from the can, I always thought that was disgusting, I would sup the drink, and then drop the pull tab into the 'empty' tin

Cheshire Puss

"ve also encountered a few awkward Fray Bentos pie cans as well"

Me too, I don't know what is with those pie tins, it is as though they have been 'designed' to be impossible to open, without receiving a nasty cut

On about eggs, when I worked in a grocers shop, I once took six eggs in a egg carton, and very carefully boiled them, making sure that the egg shells did not split, I did this by putting the eggs in a pan full of cold water, and bringing them slowly to the boil, I then returned the eggs to the egg carton when they were cold, and placed the carton back on the shop shelf, you could not tell that they had been boiled, and I waited for them to be sold and brought back to the shop, with the complaint that they had been boiled, I imagined some poor soul cracking open an egg into a frying pan, only to find the egg had been boiled

But nothing happened, the eggs went, but I didn't see who bought them, but they never came back, and I came to the conclusion that they must have been boiled again

I bet they tasted awful though

"Fray Bentos pie cans"

It was on one such can that I read their recommendation to use the OXO Good Grips opener. It does open those cans satisfactorily.

Nanajacqi, it's a good thing to rinse the tops off cans before opening, but it may not clean under the rim. When I first heard of this tip, I was amazed at how much "dirt" there was by drawing a cloth tightly as far under the rim as possible.

As to corned beef tins, I stopped buying the tins years ago when I found lumps of fat and gristle in them, so I buy the packs nowadays that have five slices in them, although I never had a problem opening the tins with the key.

I still use my rotary wheel can opener in the event of no ring pull, and I've had it for more years than I care to remember, but I couldn't cope with one of those that Tommy has shown.

My main gripe is about Spam tins. It takes me all my strength to pull the ring pull to start off with, then I struggle to drag the thing across the tin as my hands are weaker than they used to be, and THEN, getting the meat out is the next obstacle as it never just drops out, even when it's been in the fridge which supposedly shrinks it a bit.

Ah well, the things we oldies have to endure!

Another Top Tip...The plastic cap on tubes of Pringle crisps make an excellent cover for opened tins...soup ...beans etc... easier to cap the tin for a day or so instead of de-canting into a container...

I used to have a few plastic caps specially for that purpose, but I've lost them all.

Good idea about the Pringles caps though, but I'd have to make a point of buying them, just for the caps, as I'd never get through a whole tube!

Used to use caps like those for cat food, as tin larger than one meal. Later, it became apparent that my cats prefered the pouch cat food, so I probably slung the caps.

Whilst on the subject of food safety, it is not recommended to drink directly from a plastic bottle, like bottled water etc.

The reason being that, because of the chemicals that make up plastic, there is a risk of those chemical leaking into the contents which can cause cancer and other health issues such as hormone disruption. Plastic eventually starts to break down which can create more leakage.

On top of that, it has been estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastic wastage in the sea than there are fish and other sea-life, and that's very disturbing.

i have problems with cans of tuna with them being so small hard to Grip and this is the tin opener when i came here did not have a clue how to use it at first and they are still used today tin opener

There is a whole range of them, stemming from the 1942 USA military issue device, and now in various sizes, and with various tweaks. (The P-38 is known as a "John Wayne" by the United States Marine Corps)

They are very popular among camping/woodcraft enthusiasts, though not with me. No idea why, I just never took to them. Being durable, small and light in weight is the obvious attraction, such people go to great lengths to save every gramme: even cut the handles off their toothbrushes.

Peter Israel

That looks like it will do the job OK, but I would watch what me fingers were doing around an implement like that