• Steamed Fresh Vegetables

     There is just something about Spring and fresh garden vegetables!  Whether you get your vegetables from a garden or the store they are still delicious and a healthy part of the meal for your whole family.  We enjoy our vegetables raw (at meals, in lunches or just for a snack), on the grill (add touch of Italian salad dressing and they taste amazing), baked, or steamed (a perfect compliment to any meal).

    The pictures are some of the vegetables we ate recently.  Included in the steamer are cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, green beans, and purple beans.   Some were ones we had from our garden and the rest we got at our local grocery store.  I prefer to steam the vegetables over boiling them because I believe more of the nutrients remain in the vegetables plus they tend to stay more firm (not mushy, which happens if they are boiled too long).

    Our steamer has printed on it how long it takes to steam a variety of items.  Since there are several vegetables in this one I just average out the time for the items I put into the steamer and make sure to check it before dinner is served.  Although the purple beans are beautiful they do lose their purple color (they turn green) when cooked.  If you want the purple beans to retain their color you will need to serve them raw (on a salad, raw, or in any other cool dish that calls for green beans).  What is your favorite way to eat fresh vegetables?

    Steamed fresh vegetables

  • Super Easy Way to Make Hard Boiled Eggs

    I am all about finding ways to help make cooking even more efficient in our household.  Our refrigerator typcially has a carton with hard boiled eggs in it for making a quick egg salad sandwich, to stick in a smoothie, make deviled eggs, salad topping, or many other uses we find for it.  Several years ago my husband started putting the eggs in the steamer to hard boil them.  I LOVED it!  It is super easy and my eggs don’t crack (once or twice an egg has cracked if it already has a weak spot or was knocked when put into the steamer)!

    Steamed Hard Boiled Eggs

    • Eggs
    • Steamer
    • Water

    Stick the eggs in the steamer (we usually do between 10 to 12 eggs depending on how many we have in the carton).  Fill the water level up to high.  Steam for 25 minutes.  Once it is done steaming remove the lid and allow eggs to cool.  You can run cold water over them if you need them to cool quicker.  Use hard boiled eggs or place back in the carton to use for later.

    If you come to our house and open up an egg carton you may encounter something like the picture above.  I make sure to mark the eggs that have been hard boiled with an “X” so anyone that wants to grab an egg whether regular or hard boiled it is easy to decipher which ones are which.  This especially comes in handy with kids who like to help in the kitchen! 🙂