Hard Boiled Eggs In The Oven!

What? Bake eggs to create a hardboiled egg effect?! I actually found this nifty little trick on Pinterest (unfortunately I was not smart enough to come up with this one!) and the post can be found here. Now when I saw this, I was thinking “is this for real?” I CAN be quite gullible at times but as I thought about it, this really made sense and really should work. I don’t know about you, but when I’m hardboiling eggs, I NEVER seem to catch that water boiling when it starts. Who knows how long the water’s been boiling when I check on it. Then I just guess how long I should finish boiling them for and just HOPE they are done as well as not fused to the shell. Sound familiar? So when I saw this, I was sooo hoping it would work!

Well, I put it to the test today…I baked 4 eggs in the shell to see what happened.

I preheated the oven to 325 degrees and put 4 whole eggs, in their shells into my muffin tin (FINALLY! A use for that thing!) and popped them into the oven (please ignore the dirty oven).

I set the timer for 30 minutes…and voila!

They were speckled….But that’s ok, that part is going in the trash…besides, that just adds character…Next, I used tongs and placed the eggs in a bowl of ice water so they stop cooking
I let them sit in there and cool til the ice melted….Then I peeled one

It worked!!!!! Notice the brown streaks. They didn’t all have that and when I tasted it, there wasn’t a burnt taste or anything..tasted fine!

Beautiful yolk!

I found my new no fuss way of making hardboiled hardbaked eggs!

I think the brown streak was from where the egg was touching the muffin pan. I will try again at that amount of time to see if it’s the same because I just might not have heard the timer when it went off…..Rats, I still couldn’t catch it in time!

Chocolate Raspberry Banana

This recipe is my daughter’s (Kaela) recipe as she is the smoothie connoisseur! I have pretty much tasted all of her smoothies and they are awesome!

I never thought that fruit and chocolate went together until I tried chocolate covered strawberries. Let me tell ya, they go together 😉

1 frozen banana
1 cup of frozen, or fresh raspberries
1 cup of vanilla coconut milk, or 1/4-1/2 cup of water OR yogurt

1 scoop of chocolate protein powder

Put everything in the blender and use the “crush ice” setting to break it up. Then just blend until smooth!

This is really good and it’s freezing into pops at this very moment 🙂

Coconut Aminos

Coconut Aminos is a soy sauce substitute as well as a salt substitute. This liquid aminos is soy free but does contain added sea salt although the sodium content is less than Braggs. To me, this has a lighter flavor than the Braggs and I use it mostly on dishes that aren’t as strongly flavored because I’m afraid the Braggs may be too overpowering. That’s just my opinion though, I could be wrong. This one has 17 amino acids. Oh, and no, it doesn’t taste like coconuts! 😉 You can read more about it and see what it looks like here: Coconut Aminos

Braggs Liquid Aminos

Braggs Liquid Aminos is a soy sauce substitute that I use and is commonly used as a salt substitute. It has no preservative, gluten, chemicals, etc. The reason it is called liquid aminos is because it contains 16 amino acids.  I didn’t really like  it at first (I was a saltaholic and this just didn’t do it for me) but now I do. It tastes like soy sauce and you would never know that there is not any added salt.

You can read more about it and see what it looks like here: Braggs

Raspberry Banana smoothie

This recipe is my daughter’s (Kaela) recipe as she is the smoothie connoisseur! I have pretty much tasted all of her smoothies and they are awesome!

This is really just a variation on the strawberry banana smoothie but it’s just as good. I know some people don’t like raspberries because of the seeds in them but I actually really love them. This smoothie has a lot of seeds but I like to crunch on them 😉

1 frozen banana

a handful of frozen or fresh raspberries

1-2 spoonfuls of honey

1/4-1/2 cup of water, or yogurt

Put everything in the blender and use the “crush ice” setting to break it all up. You can add more water to get things going if you need too. Blend untill it has a thick consistency.

Enjoy!

Tropical smoothie

This recipe is my daughter’s (Kaela) recipe as she is the smoothie connoisseur! I have pretty much tasted all of her smoothies and they are awesome!

So this was the first smoothie I made using the protein powder and it was fantastic. It tasted just like that fluffy fruit salad with the Cool Whip and mini marshmallows. I was very happy. We had bought mangos from Costco and of course they came in a six-pack, and I couldn’t just get one (I tried). I ended up having to freeze four of them so looks like I can make this one again soon 🙂 too bad mangoes are such a pain in the butt to chop due to the large seed right in the middle. Worth it in my opinion though, and probably yours once you try this:)

1 mango, peeled and chopped

1 orange, peeled and sectioned

a handful of frozen pineapple

a splash of orange juice

1-2 spoonfuls of honey

(optional) scoop of protein powder

Peel and slice the mango and orange and put into the blender with everything else. Use “crush ice” setting to break up the pineapple and then blend until smooth. You can add more orange juice if it’s too thick.

I froze this into smoothie pops but next time I think I’ll just drink it. It’s too hard to wait 😉

Grapple smoothie

This recipe is my daughter’s (Kaela) recipe as she is the smoothie connoisseur! I have pretty much tasted all of her smoothies and they are awesome!

So a few weeks ago my mom got a membership to Costco and I went with her one time to do the grocery shopping. We were near the fruit and I saw these red grapes that were about the size of a golf ball, dead serious. So we got them and I tried one as soon as we got to the car. Turns out they were seeded not seedless. So there’s about four big seeds in them that make it annoying and unenjoyable to eat them. So I figured I’d be the only one to eat them, because they had competition (huge, black seedless grapes that were so much better). So I put the unwanted seeded grapes in the freezer to use for smoothies. But when I took the out to use I still had to cut the seeds out, crunchy smoothies are a no-no. So I put them in a bowl of hot water to make it a little easier to cut them and went to work de-seeding them. I don’t know how many I really had but it was a sandwich baggie full. I still have a quart size baggie of them in the freezer too so I’ll probably make this one again soon, cause it’s delicious.

1 large apple, peeled and chopped (you can color coordinate with the grapes if you’d like)

about a sandwich baggie full of frozen, or fresh grapes.

2-3 spoonfuls of honey, or to taste

1/4-1/2 cup of water, or yogurt

(optional) protein powder

If using frozen grapes, chop them in half first to make it a little easier on your blender. Put all ingredients into the blender and use the “crush ice” setting to break up the grapes, if using frozen. Blend it all together until smooth.

You can drink this straight or freeze them into yummy smoothie pops like I did.

Cantaloupe and Honey smoothie

This recipe is my daughter’s (Kaela) recipe as she is the smoothie connoisseur! I have pretty much tasted all of her smoothies and they are awesome!

So a few certain people (mother and boyfriend) have decided that I don’t get enough protein in my diet because I’m a vegetarian. So to please them, I started adding protein powder to my smoothies, and then freezing them to make smoothie pops. They are awesome. You don’t have to add the protein powder or freeze them, but I’ve been having to make them everyday because they’re just so good. We have a popsicle mold that makes four, and these recipes usually fill it and then I pour the rest into little Dixie Cups and freeze them too. I made this one yesterday because we had cantaloupe that was starting to get a little lot ripe, and ate all of them, not all at once of course 😉

1 cantaloupe, cubed and frozen, or fresh

2-3 spoonfuls of honey, or to taste

1/4-1/2 cup of water, or yogurt

(optional) 1 scoop of protein power (I use the Jillian Michael’s Natural Whey Protein, vanilla cream shake flavor. It tastes like cake batter to me, soooo yum)

Put everything in the blender and use the “crush ice” setting to break up the cantaloupe (if using frozen). Add more water as necessary and blend to get the consistency you want.

As I said, you can either drink this straight up (it’s delicious) or you can freeze it and make smoothie pops, which rock too 🙂

Strawberry Banana Smoothie

This recipe is my daughter’s (Kaela) recipe as she is the smoothie connoisseur! I have pretty much tasted all of her smoothies and they are awesome!

Okay, so I love smoothies. There are so many flavor combinations that you could try every one and probably not get bored with it. I know I couldn’t. I used to make them with fruit and yogurt but I found out you don’t even need the yogurt, but you can add it if you want. The secret for creamy, yogurt free smoothies? Frozen banana. Yep, it’s that easy. Because banana always seem to go bad around here and each of us like them at different stages of ripeness, there usually is a point where none of us will eat them. Then I found out you can just freeze them. Just peel and slice them up and put them in a baggie and pop them in the freeze to use later. It just makes everything a lot easier. So, here’s my first (and probably my favorite) smoothie

1 Banana, frozen

A handful or two of frozen or fresh strawberries

1/4-1/2 water (or you could use yogurt, vanilla tastes great in this)

1-3 tbsp of honey (or to taste, I love honey so maybe I go a little overboard)

Put the banana, strawberries and honey in the blender. Use the “crush ice” setting until it’s mostly broken up.  Add the water (or yogurt) a little at a time until it’s at a nice thick consistency. Turn up the blender and blend until smooth.

Should make 1 serving or you can add more of everything to share, but that’s no fun 😉

The Best Salsa Ever!

Oh how I missed store-bought salsa! With its high sodium and sugar content, it was a definite no, no for me. So, I made homemade salsa. What a disappointment! So I tried and tried again and even though I was getting closer to the taste my brain remembered, I just could not achieve it. I looked at all kinds of jarred salsa reminiscing about my favorite snack of chips and salsa. I checked their ingredients hoping to find something magical that I had missed. Well, after many flopped…well not really because they were still good, just not what I was tasting for….batches, I FINALLY came up with an awesome taste that made me forget about that jarred stuff! The only problem…I didn’t measure. I usually eyeball stuff which tends to make things inconsistent. So, the next time I made the salsa, I eyeballed it with a measuring spoon low enough into the bowl so I couldn’t see it…that would have thrown me off! Well, it worked! So here it is…THE BEST SALSA EVER!!!!!

The Best Salsa Ever

Ingredients:

3 lg plum tomatoes

4 green onions, sliced

2 jalapenos chunked, (I use 1 with seeds and 1 without)

Cilantro

1 can no salt Fire roasted tomatoes

2 tsp coconut aminos

2 tsp vinegar

2 tsp lime juice

2-3 cloves of garlic

1-1 1/2 tsp xylitol

Instructions:

Quarter tomatoes and place in food processor with garlic. Pulse until medium chopped. Add onions, cilantro (I love this stuff so I use a lot..probably a handful. make to your liking)jalapenos, aminos, lime juice, vinegar, and xylitol and pulse to chop and combine. tomatoes should now be chopped fine-medium. Add canned no salt added fire roasted tomatoes and pulse just enough to blend. Pour into quart jar, refrigerate, and enjoy! YUM!