Looking Back - Favorite Kitchen Things – Electric Egg Cooker

I am going to try cutting back on my posts here at least for awhile. Because of that I will be trying to post my mid-week posts all on Wednesday and they will vary widely. There will still be photo posts but not every week any more, but they will be interspersed with other things. We have had a lot of thunder storm days this spring when I am off the computer entirely. This may not continue, but at present responsibilities with my parents and other things we desire to do means that I have more things to think about and juggle. For today I'm reposting a review of a kitchen gadget. :-)

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Five years on and I'm still using this same cooker. I have looked at buying a stainless steel model for health purposes (no plastic leaching), but so far have not done that. It is perhaps not quite as accurate as it used to be, but I can still guess on the water amounts close enough. :-)
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This little electric egg cooker was given to me by my Texas sister-in-law.  This one is called an EggGenie™.  It is very handy and since it uses a minimal amount of water for cooking boiled eggs (really steamed), it also does not waste water – something we think about quite a bit in Texas these days (and should think of more).

Although I’m not exactly thrilled to cook my eggs in a plastic cooker, this is still one of my favorite kitchen appliances.  The electric egg cookers my mom had when I was growing up all involved aluminum in their construction – something I want to avoid.  This one is plastic and stainless steel.  I don’t make boiled eggs terribly often, so it isn’t like I use it all the time.

It can cook up to 7 eggs at once.  The measuring cup that came with it gives exact amounts of water for the level of done-ness for various numbers of eggs.  It’s pretty accurate if you don’t leave the eggs sitting in the cooker too long after turning it off.  Ahem! :-)



Also, before cooking the eggs, you have to poke a little hole in the large end of each egg.  There is a sharp pin inside the cooker for this purpose.  It usually works fine, but occasionally there is that weak shelled egg or something goes wrong and then there’s an clean up job to deal with. :-/  The purpose in the hole is to allow the air to escape from the little sealed chamber at the large end of the egg.  If you don’t do this the egg can crack and even leak during cooking.  Apparently this is more of a problem when steaming eggs.

One complaint with this model is that it doesn’t have an on/off switch.  When you plug it in, it’s on.  So, I have to remember not to plug it in before it’s ready to go – something I forget regularly.  It also doesn’t have a very loud buzzer to let you know when it’s done, and it does not go off till you come and unplug it – really Not Good!

Nevertheless, I’ve used it and found it very handy since I can get the eggs cooking and then tend to other things without giving them much more thought – except to turn them off and rather promptly remove them. :-)

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First published in March 2014.

Favorite Kitchen Things – Lettuce Spinner

 

When I was younger and foolisher (ahem) I thought my Grandma was a bit silly for liking her lettuce spinner so much.  I didn’t think there was anything wrong with our method, which was shaking the leaves or patting them with paper towel.  Well, it’s a strange, but with at least some things, the older you get the more you think like your mom – and your grandmothers.  Now, I think my lettuce spinner is great!  (I also love watermelon, but that’s off the subject.)

My local sister-in-law bought me this neat little salad spinner (pictured above) and I’ve learned to use and and enjoy it!  Sometimes I do forget to use it still (old habits die hard), but I have remembered a fair amount. 

I also figured out that it works for other things besides lettuce.  I’ve spun baby carrots and blueberries in it as well.  It’s really handy for making smallish fruits and veggies less drippy!  And, the removable basket is useful for rinsing small vegetables and fruit under the faucet, then putting it in the spinner to spin. For something that just needs a surface rinse it works as a colander.

Another cool thing about it?  I can store my lettuce right in the container in the fridge and it stays nice and fresh!  I do drain out the water from the bottom if there’s an excessive amount, but then I just pop the basket holding the lettuce back in and put the lid on and it’s ready for the fridge.

Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but I also don’t always really wash it after I use it.  I will if I’ve used it to store lettuce for awhile, but if it’s just a short job I usually rinse it and put it in the drainer.  My reasoning is that we’re going to eat the fresh carrots or lettuce or berries just the way they came out of the spinner, so why is the spinner “dirty”?  I only rinse and drain if it’s visibly dirty or been storing something for awhile. :-)  Easy peasy.

(Yeah, I can hear one of my local friends now asking me to please wash the lettuce spinner before they come to dinner if we’re having salad. Haha.)

Favorite Kitchen Things – Erasable Boards

 

Erasable white boards are useful additions to the kitchen.  They can be used for a variety of things – lists, chores, reminders, prayer requests, praises, memory verses, phone numbers, etc.  I have the one pictured above hanging where I will see it often and have used it to post  scripture.  It’s empty now, but I’ve thought about putting names of people I especially want to remember in prayer up there.

I also have one on the fridge that has reminders of things that need to be done – either on a repeated basis or things that are more urgent than my regular “To Do List”.  It also sports a few doodles and decorations. :-)

I got the idea of a kitchen white board from my dad who put this one up in my Mom’s kitchen years ago:

Note: Beriberi in this case is referring to an Ethiopian spice blend, not the disease, just in case you wondered. :-)

A Few of My Favorite Kitchen Things – the Steamer Pot

Every kitchen needs some good tools that really work or help make work easier. I am going to try to give you some reviews on various items that I have found to be especially useful in real life. I say, “in real life” because before I was married I collected a lot of things for my hope chest – some of those things proved useful to me once I started keeping house myself. Some did not. In fact, I got rid of some things long before I ever married because I could see that they weren’t worth carrying back and forth across the country as much as my family moved. Either I didn’t figure I’d use them, or I figured I’d find something when I needed it.

If you already have a kitchen of your own, or if it’s a dream for someday when you have your own home to keep, maybe these posts will give you some ideas about what is useful and what is not. Not everyone has the same needs, but at least you may get some idea as to whether you could use a particular item.

I would call this a steamer-stew pot combination. It is stainless steel (with no non-stick coating). As you can see in the picture, the stew pot part is not invaded by the steamer part, which sits only slightly nested into the bottom. This actually makes it more useful.

We received this as a wedding gift from some friends and it is one of my favorite kitchen tools. At the time that I put it on our registry (we were only registered at Amazon.com), I think that I didn’t really anticipate using the steamer part much since I wasn’t fond of steaming vegetables. I don’t remember if it was the only model that had the size and type of pot that I wanted at the time or what. I just knew I needed a large stew pot for making soups, stews, roasts, etc. for larger groups. Since there are six adults when my family here are all eating together, this is kind of necessary for my kitchen. If I had to get a steamer with it, well, that was OK too.

I used the pot for stews and stove top cooked roasts several times and it turned out to be a good pot. Then I made a great discovery. I could cook meat (and potatoes) in the bottom of the pan and steam the vegetables in the steamer part all at once, thus getting the whole meal cooked on one burner! (Plus it added flavor to the veggies and vice versa.) Wow. What a great idea! :-) That was a real plus.

Then last spring we had an abundance of greens (that was before the real drought hit Central Texas). I needed to help out by processing them for later use since there was too much to eat at the time and the weather was getting hot (not good for most greens). Back in the day when my family still used a microwave, Mom used to blanch greens for freezing by putting them in the freezer bags and putting them in the microwave for some seconds till they got warm and started to wilt. Since we no longer use microwaves, it occurred to me that maybe I could just steam the greens in my steamer and then put them in bags and freeze them. This sounded a lot better than the traditional dipping method.

Well, it worked great! Bringing the water to a boil first, I’d put a batch of greens in and let them steam for a few minutes on one side then turn them over with tongs and let them steam on the other side briefly. Then I carefully put two servings of greens into each bag, let them finish cooling, labeled them and put them in the freezer. I could do several batches of greens with the same batch of water. It turned out beautifully. :-)

(Side Note: The rich broth left in the pan after this is done can be used as a soup base or an “energy drink”. There are a lot of nutrients there, as the color indicates.)

So, a good combination stew pot-steamer is a very useful tool if you:

- cook for larger groups.

- like to conserve energy.

- process large quantities of greens or other vegetables that could be steamed before freezing.

We have used this pot to make large amounts of East African style tea. :-) A pot like this is also handy for canning things like jams or jellies.

Cons -

The only problem I’ve had with this particular model is that the handle on the lid, which is metal, gets hot to the touch. I have to be careful to use a hot pad or over mitt whenever I’m cooking in it. However, I think I can put the lower pot with the lid on it in the oven because all the parts are stainless steel or glass, which could be useful at some time.