Cloud Eggs and Huntsville Prison

A new social media "thing" caught my eye.  It is a breakfast dish called "cloud eggs" and they make a very pretty presentation.  For that reason and probably simplicity of preparation, they had been greeted with roaring enthusiasm.  You know how online can go nuts. 

They were old hat to me.  When we visited my cousin James and his wife George Anne in Huntsville, easily 20 years ago, she made them one morning and I was blown away.  She, however, didn't even have a name for them!  They were just "eggs."

I brought the how-to home and served them as well. 

"Eggs GeorgeAnne"
A toasted, buttered English muffin half per egg per person.
Number of eggs to serve number of people - very carefully separate the eggs and put the yolks gently aside.
Beat the whites as if for a meringue but do not add sugar and carefully apportion on top of the muffins.  Then working very softly, use a spoon to make an indentation in the top of the whites and slide the yolk into it.  Bake at 450 for five minutes and serve.  It's show time!

While in Huntsville, we did a very interesting tour of the Huntsville Prison Museum.  It was then and I think still today a "working" prison.  The museum is, of course, not on the prison grounds. 

Among the exhibits ... "Old Sparky" the electric chair which was in use from 1924 to 1964 and had dispatched 361 death row residents.  Service was not restored (so to speak) until 1982 when lethal injections became the favored means of execution.

The exhibits show the inventiveness and creativity of some of the inmates.  Weapons fashioned from every-day  items included a rubber flip-flop with a swing-out knife concealed in the sole.  The handle of a toothbrush honed down to a formidable point, tableware ditto - until management wised up and used plastic utensils.

If they had applied the same ingenuity to something worthwhile - such as patents - they would never have found themselves in prison. 

The display of restraints used over the years includes a couple of ball and chains - the real deal, not a cartoon about a henpecked hubby.

One of the most poignant exhibits has to be a framed picture of the criminal with a small inset of the victim and the last statement of the condemned and one from the victim's family.  That was an outstanding idea on someone's part.  This exhibit was not in place when we were there.  I wish it had been.  But we did get the mandatory shots of each of us behind bars in a mock-up jail.  As close as I ever want to get to jail.