Thanks to Vivian’s post about eggs, I started lusting after some tea eggs, a la my mother. I e-mailed her to ask what she did, and she called me back (from China!) about it. Here are her instructions – loosely translated, of course:

Ingredients:

• Eggs
• Dark soy sauce (mushroom flavored is good)
• Tea (loose or bagged) – black is the usual, but mother says anything goes. I would guess one bag for every 3 or so eggs.
• Sugar
• Star anise (??) – optional, but good for “more taste”
  

Directions:

• Cover the eggs with cold water and bring to a boil over low heat
• Boil for about 15 minutes (sounds like a long time to me but whatever)
• Drain the water and rinse the eggs in cold water until you can handle them
• Gently crack the eggshells, either by hand or with a spoon
• Add soy sauce, tea, star anise (if desired), and a tiny bit of sugar to enough water to cover the eggs
• Add the eggs and bring to a boil over low heat once again and let simmer for a couple of hours
• Let cool and continue to soak in the sauce in the fridge, at least overnight and up to a few days
• Enjoy them either warm or cold!

Even though Adrian claims to hate hardboiled eggs, I will be giving this a try after our weekend jaunt. I’ll try to remember to take pictures and write about it later on. Hopefully they’ll come out looking like this:

By the way, I know at least my coworkers noticed that I made my first post during work time. It’s true – I took a break from programming and made an entry. My bad! I’ll try to refrain from doing that from now on, although it’s hard not to write a short bit about something at the moment I am thinking about it. Maybe I can just file things away for publishing later or something like that.