Because of my job I find myself in a variety of hotels across the country week after week. Once in awhile I'll order breakfast delivered to my room. My standard is a Continental or American style breakfast. These usually have some combination of bacon, toast, scrambled eggs, and juice. Not exactly the healthiest of breakfasts I know but it is 'the most important meal of the day'. Over the years I'd like to think that I've learned what to expect from these breakfast items. Bacon can either be undercooked, cooked but limp, crisp, extra crispy, or burnt to a crisp. A similar situation exists for toast. It can either be 'warmed bread', lightly toasted, toasted, toasted and slightly burnt, burnt toast, or a block of charcoal. Scrambled eggs have me puzzled. I have yet to receive a breakfast that contains scrambled eggs that actually look like scrambled eggs. Sometimes I will get eggs that are a deep yellow all over. Sometimes I will get eggs that are light yellow all over. I've even received eggs that were orange. Yes, orange! As you can probably guess, I rarely eat any of the 'eggs' that appear on my breakfast tray. I really don't know what's going on with the eggs. Often they appear homogeneous. I speculate that in the kitchen several eggs are cracked into a blender and then mixed into one homogenized liquid which is then fried or cooked in a skillet. In my book this is not a scrambled egg. Others have confirmed that in their households, blenders were often used when large amounts of 'scrambled' eggs were needed. In addition, I've heard that additives such as milk often used to increase the egg's fluffiness. Maybe I'm a purest but a scrambled egg should be just that, a scrambled egg. On the rare occasions when I prepare scrambled eggs at home, I crack two to three eggs into a pre-heated (medium high), pre-oiled skillet and mix them with a fork until they are done. When the are done, a heterogeneous white and yellow product is formed. It's stiff, firm and not watery. The following image depicts what I consider to be scrambled eggs:

Milk is not added for fluffiness. If extra fluffiness is needed, the eggs are mixed more vigorously during cooking. Given that there are many names for the various ways an egg can be prepared (i.e.: sunny-side up, egg's Benedict, eggs-over-easy, poached, etc....), perhaps a name should be given to this 'standard' way of preparing eggs. I think it should be called: 'Eggs a la Ray'....

This may be viewed as selfish but there are two products I'd like to see back on the shelves. Product #1 is Ivory shampoo.

I was told that it was discontinued in January of 1999 due to low sales. Luckily, I still have half a bottle left (am I saving it for a special occasion???). This shampoo was great. It was not loaded with perfumes or a bunch of high tech-emollients. It was basic, plain, and 'relaxing' in the shower. This may or may not have contributed to its apparent lack of sales. Personally, I feel it wasn't marketed very well. I bet a lot of the people who like Ivory soap and dishwashing liquid don't know that Ivory made shampoo. Also, I don't think it was given a fair chance in terms of shelf-space in stores. For those of you who tried the shampoo and agree with me or for those wanting to get a chance at trying the shampoo for themselves, here is what I propose: Go to the following address:

Click here to go to Ivory's Comments Page

and paste the line "Please bring back Ivory shampoo!!" in the comment window. Hopefully it won't be an exercise in futility.

Product #2 has been off the market for a few years. It was called JELL-O 1-2-3.

This product was cool. Basically it was three layers of different textures of JELL-O. The topmost layer was foam. The bottom layer was standard JELL-O. The middle layer was something between foam and JELL-O. I have not seen anything on the market like it since it was removed. I don't even see it referenced on JELL-O's "The History of JELL-O" website. Sales of the product could not have been that bad because it was on the market for several years. For those of you who've tried JELL-O 1-2-3 and agree with me or for those wanting to try it for themselves, go to the following URL:

Click here to go to JELL-O's(Kraft's) Comments Page

and paste the line "Please bring back JELL-O 1-2-3!!" in the comments field.

In my last 'Opinion' page I mentioned that I would talk about my experience at the 1997 COMDEX show in Las Vegas. Since its been over a year I've decided that it's no longer that interesting. It's old news. I will be attending the 1999 Fall COMDEX show. If anything interesting happens at the show (like me getting thrown out) I'll include the details in the December edition of these pages.

Some of you may have noticed that I removed the 'Web Page Counter .Gifs' section. I decided to remove because it didn't seem to be getting that many hits plus it sucked up a lot of server space. All of the .gifs can still be found at the site I copied them from:

Click here to go to the Web Page Counter Page

That's all for now. I think I'll have more to babble about next month!

Previous postings......

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You can email Ray at:Ray@yarayara.com