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Chicken or Egg?

March 28, 2012 By

My friends sometime give me sh** and call me “Martha”. Well, first of all, I don’t think Ms.Stewart would use the word sh** in any of her publications, but secondly I think she can boil an egg. Yes folks, that’s right, I struggle to boil eggs. I love egg salad sandwiches. I love deviled eggs. I love crumble up hard boiled eggs on my salad. But more than once I’ve googled directions, followed them religiously, only to end up with…soft boiled eggs (and I know some people like these, but they just give me the heebie jeebies, plus they would make very goopy deviled eggs).

Now that I have two almost one-year-olds (Ack!) who LOVE scrambled eggs, I decided it was time to introduce them to hard boiled eggs. That’s right. Yesterday afternoon I decided it was time to conquer my fear. I hadn’t tried to make a hard boiled egg in over three years (SERIOUSLY!). And I’ve done many things I’m very proud of in the past three years, so I decided it was time to try again. I googled directions. I followed them religiously and 25 minutes later–8 soft boiled eggs.

So, what did I do? I broke out the leftovers and I made some kick-a** chicken salad from a roast chicken I made on Monday (I doubt Martha wouldn use a** in her recipes either). Seriously folks, this chicken salad is A-MAZ-ING. It’s just chicken, non-fat plain yogurt, a smidge of mayo, grapes, celery, chopped pecans, a dash of salt and a tsp. or so of curry powder. I was going to have half of it for dinner last night and half of it for lunch today. But after I made a few lettuce wraps with the first half, I decided I needed all of it in my belly ASAP. I encourage you to make this now. Especially if you’ve just thrown out a bunch of soft boiled eggs.

After making that amazing chicken salad, I decided it was time to try again. I told myself “I can make soufflés! I can make crepes! I can hold a Thanksgiving dinner! Of course I can boil eggs.”

This time, I broke out my trusty Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and read the “recipe” for hard boiled eggs. They recommended letting the eggs sit in the pot for 3 minutes longer than my google recipe. And it turns out that those 3 minutes are essential to the success of my eggs. Because 28 minutes later–four perfect hard boiled eggs! Woo hoo!

In case you are wondering, this is how you properly make hard boiled eggs.

1. Put eggs in a pot and fill with cold water until the eggs are completely covered.

2. Put pot on stove and turn to bigh until the water boils.

3. Once the water boils, remove the pot from the burner, put on the lid, and let it sit for 15 minutes.

4. Once the 15 minutes are over (and don’t you let anyone tell you it’s 12!) plunge the eggs into ice water until they cool.

5. Peel and enjoy!

2 Comments Filed Under: Kitchen Adventures

Strawberries, Rhubarb, and American Girls

July 6, 2011 By

I hope you all had a marvelous Independence Day! Our holiday was pretty low key…we relaxed around the house with the boys, made a killer celebration dinner (including a new recipe: strawberry rhubarb crisp, which I’ll share below), and then yes, we braved the local firework display with our two 3 month olds. We had decided to punt the fireworks this year–my hubby and I were both a little bummed about missing them. But while catching up on my blog reading yesterday, I read that a lot of moms take their babes to see fireworks. Many babies do perfectly well with the noise, especially if they are commonly exposed to loud sounds. Since our two little guys frequently put up with Paul the Dog barking and have yet to cry from his loud voice, I figured we were probably safe. So off we went and it was perfect! We found a nice little spot in the grass, spread out our quilt, and watched a lovely little display with our two boys, who were a little more quiet and less squirmy watching fireworks than they had been all day! Woo hoo!

As for that strawberry rhubarb crisp, all I can say is YUM! I love rhubarb, but I’ve always been a bit stand-offish when it comes to doing anything with it myself. It looks like pink celery, folks! But don’t let the color scare you away. I was determined to use it in a dessert this Independence Day, and I found this recipe from Anne Burrell on Food Network.

Ingredients

Filling

  • 1 quart strawberries, stemmed and quartered
  • 4 stalks rhubarb, cut into 1/2-inch lengths
  • 1 cup sugar (Anne only called for 1/2, but I wanted it to be a bit sweeter!)
  • 1/4 cup cornstarch
  • 1 orange, zested and juiced
  • 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Topping

  • 1 1/4 cups whole-wheat flour
  • 1/2 cup rolled oats
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 1/4 sticks butter, cut into small
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • Pinch salt
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons water

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine all of the filling ingredients in a large bowl and stir to be sure everything is well combined. Spoon the filling a wide shallow baking dish.

In a food processor combine the flour, oats and brown sugar and pulse to combine. Add the butter, vanilla, and salt and pulse pulse pulse until the mixture looks dry and crumbly. Add 1 tablespoon of water and pulse until the mixture starts to come together and look crumbly. If the mixture still seems dry add 1 more tablespoon of water and pulse to combine. Crumble the topping over the filling. Bake in the preheated oven until the filling is hot and bubbly all the way through and the topping looks crispy and light brown, about 25 to 30 minutes. Serve warm with whipped cream (my favorite) or ice cream.

Yummy!

And now, totally unrelated to Independence Day or strawberry rhubarb crisp, I have a musing I’d like to share with you. Did you (or your daughter or your sister or your cousin or your neighbor or your best friend…) ever have an American Girl doll?

I had Samantha and I LOVED her. I had almost all of her clothing and would change her outfits frequently. While changing her clothes was always fun and exciting, it was kind of a pain due to the fact that she really offered no help when it came to putting on all her fabulous Victorian garb. And her fingers! They seemed to get caught on everything! But in the end, she always looked so stylish…

Well, that’s what I think of almost every time I get the boys dressed.

3 Comments Filed Under: Kitchen Adventures, Musings

The Boobs are Gone!

February 3, 2011 By

You may remember our boob lights.

They were installed by the previous owner. I seriously don’t know what she was thinking! These types of  lights already kind of look like boobs on their own, but hang two of them together? All I see are BOOBS!

So we bought some light fixtures a few months ago at Home Depot. But when we took down one of the boobs to install them, we saw there was a huge footprint underneath the fixture that we would need to patch and paint. The problem? No more yellow paint (which I want to get rid of at some point, but that’s a MUCH bigger project). So we were going to have to paint the whole soffit another color, probably white.

UNTIL…I was putting away the paint for the nursery (I’ll be telling you all about my paint storage technique next week). And I discovered this little gem:

I was SOOOO excited to find this. You see, the lady who lived in the house before us left all her house paint, nicely labeled by room. However, she didn’t store it well, so most of it was pretty icky, and was the paint was degraded to the point where it didn’t match the colors on the wall anymore. That is, all the paint except for ONE can. And that can? The paint for the kitchen! Hurray! I had totally forgotten I had it.

So the Hubby took down the boobs:

And then he spackled the old holes and used an electric sander to sand down the rigid line in the paint where the boobs were:

Then he used that fabulous little sample of paint to touch everything up. I am SO happy we don’t have to paint that whole soffit now (which goes around the whole kitchen)!

Last, but not least, he installed the new lights. I LOVE how they look! See how they coordinate with the chandelier we installed a while ago?

So there you have it…the story of how I got rid of my boobs.

7 Comments Filed Under: Crafting and Decorating, Kitchen Adventures

Random Acts of Kindness

January 24, 2011 By

I am really bad about doing random acts of kindness, but I love doing something randomly nice for someone, and watching them smile. So yesterday, when I made a batch of cookies yesterday, I decided to take some over to our neighbor. And of course, I had to make them look cute! I few months ago, I bought a bunch of various containers from Garnish. If you’ve never been to their site, I suggest you pop over there right away! They have all sorts of fun containers and great ideas on how to use them. I’ve used their products to take dinner over to families in my husband’s unit, to package party favors, and even to make centerpieces.  Their products really are versatile!

I used one of these kraft molds and lined it with parchment paper. I stacked the cookies inside like so:

Yum Yum Yum! Then I folded the parchment over, and wrapped it all up with some green rafia I had on hand. I wrote a little note on a scrap of fun paper, and just slipped it on the rafia. I love how it turned out!

For only a little over $1.00 I made my neighbor smile! Have you done a random act of kindness lately? I challenge you to do one today!

4 Comments Filed Under: Kitchen Adventures
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