Try It Tuesday

We eat a lot of eggs in this house.  I buy at least 3 dozen each week and of those, 18 are hardboiled for egg salad, to be chopped up in a salad, or to eat as is.

I saw on Pinterest that hard eggs can be done in the oven and thought I would try it. The claims were that the egg tastes better when baked and, as a bonus, makes the process easier.

In order for it to work, the eggs have to be at room temperature.  They should be placed on the center rack, with a cookie sheet underneath just in case an egg breaks.  The oven should be set at 325 and the eggs baked for 30 minutes.

I tried this with a few eggs and the results were a disaster!  The eggs got brown spots on the bottom - at least the ones I was able to peel the shells off of had brown spots.

I took a step back and reassessed the process to determine if I did anything wrong.  I 'fessed up that I may not have exactly planned ahead and the eggs most likely were not at room temperature.  I also left the eggs in an extra 5 minutes.

So I tried it again.  And again.

Three times at bat and three times I struck out.  I will be hard boiling my eggs the way I have been for years.  Even if this procedure had worked, it seems much more time consuming.  To boil 18 eggs, I just place them in my big pasta pot, fill with warm water, add a touch of vinegar to the water and bring it to a boil.  Once it reaches a boil, I turn it off and let it sit for 11 minutes, drain the water, allow the eggs to cool and wash the pot.  If I use the oven, I have to remember to take the eggs out and allow them to come to room temperature, put them in the oven, along with a pan (just in case).  If one does break, I imagine baked egg is a pain to clean.

I'm just not sold on this one and it is getting deleted over at Pinterest!


**I apologize for lack of pictures this time.  My camera went with the husband and kids on a boating adventure and seems to have failed to make it back out of the boat.  I don't trust the set up enough to climb in there and search for it.

Try It Tuesday

Sometimes when we set goals, we fail at reaching them.  So be it.

I had planned on trying something each week from my Pinterest account.  An issue that cropped up is that I wanted to first move some of the pins from my private Pinterest account, to a public one linked with this blog.  I sort of just kept putting it off.  I did set up an additional account, but moving pins from one to the other has been more difficult than I anticipated.  Slowly but surely, I am figuring it out.

Now I have done that and the testing can begin!

Or so I thought.

First road block.  I never actually pinned the tip I was going to try this week and then share today.  I have been looking and looking for it, but no luck.  I have also been searching for a saying about weddings that I thought was wonderful, but obviously not wonderful enough to either remember it, or pin it!  I am suffering from Pinterest regret :(

But I am the kind of gal that throws caution to the wind.  And you WILL forgive me when I share this tip with you.  Because it works INCREDIBLE and you will LOVE me and ADORE me for sharing it with you.

Are you ready?  Because this is a game changer.

We eat a lot of enchiladas around here.  We also eat a lot of chicken salad, and salad with chicken in it. And a lot of chicken noodle soup and chicken rice soup.  Chicken and broccoli.  Get it?  We eat a lot of chicken.  But cutting and cooking chicken can be time consuming and a pain in the tush.  Did I mention I was about to share a game changer?

Do you see that?  That is a load of shredded, cooked chicken.  It is just begging and waiting to be added to an enchilada, to soup or to any other recipe you have.  If necessary, it will sit in a freezer bag in your freezer until you need to whip something up.  And it was so simple to get to this point.

 While boneless chicken breast cook in boiling water on your stovetop, pull out the Kitchen Aid mixer and put this attachment on.  I am sure it has a name, but I have no idea what it is.  Ree would know.  I love her - for many more reasons than the fact that she would know the name of this.

Remove the chicken from the boiling water once it is done.  If they went in frozen, they need to be in there about 40 minutes.  If they were thawed, 25 to 30 minutes will work.  These HAVE to go into the mixing bowl HOT!

I put three breast in at a time.  In hindsight, I probably could have done more at once.

I turned the mixer on to 3 and let the mixer work its magic.

Here is its magic.  Look at that beautiful shredded chicken!  I shredded an entire family package of boneless breasts.  I put 1/3 of it in the enchilada's we had that night.  I used a bit of the rest to make enough chicken salad for all of us to use for lunch for 2 days.  The rest went into a freezer storage bag to be used when I want to make a quick batch of chicken noodle soup.

Since recently returning to work, I have found my biggest challenge to be getting a healthy dinner on the table.  When I get home from work, I can either walk my dog or start making dinner before I have to get at least 1 kid to a practice field.  My dog (and I!) deserve that walk.  This weekend, I am going to do another batch of shredded chicken and then plan my weekly menu around it and the use of my crock pot.

Now that I have shared this tip with you, feel free to spread the love and share with me any ideas you have on how to incorporate shredded chicken into a recipe I may not have thought of making.

My First "Try It" Tuesday

I love Pinterest.  Sometimes.  One thing I don't love is finding a beautiful coat, or an interesting top and then finding out it is no longer available.  There should be a time limit on all clothing and merchandise pins.  Once an item is discontinued or sold out, those pins should disappear.  

But I digress.

I have been finding recipes that look delicious.  I keep pinning helpful hints that if they worked would make life easier, and crafts with a finished product that doesn't appear too "crafty".  

I have made a decision to actually try some of the recipes, crafts and hints that I have pinned before I pin anything else.  Just as putting goals to paper increase our likelihood to take action to make them a reality, I thought that going public with my plan would make it more likely that I would follow through.

Today I am reporting on a hint I saw a while back and pinned to my board Tips .  It is for homemade soap scum "killa".  It involves mixing equal parts hot vinegar and blue Dawn dish detergent.  I microwaved 1 cup of vinegar for 2 minutes and poured it into a spray bottle that contained a cup of blue Dawn dish detergent.  The original hint makes a point of telling us that it must be the blue Dawn!  I shook the spray bottle to mix the two ingredients and then went to town spraying it all over the showers in my home.  The blog I traced this hint back to said to leave it overnight, but I worried a bit about the blue foam staining the grout.  So after about an hour, I went in and used the flexible shower head to spray down all the walls and the inside of the tub.  

I was extremely happy with the results.  I ran my hands along the tiles and found no traces of any soap scum and thankfully, the grout was not affected at all by the blue coloring.  I was also pleased to not have to worry about breathing in fumes.  This is definitely a hint that will become a regular part of my weekly cleaning routine!