Have You Heard of Baking Eggs Instead of Boiling Them?

I love having hard boiled eggs around, but they can be a pain in the tush to make.  The pot can boil over if the eggs break in there, making a horrible mess to clean up; there is a risk of not getting them done enough; and there is always the chance that I'll forget about them and wind up with smelly, exploded egg on the ceiling (now THAT'S a riot to clean up!).

Then I read about baking whole eggs, in-shell, on-line and gave it a try.  I gotta tell ya- I was nervous.  But amazingly, it worked!  I am certainly not the first person to blog about this, but thought I would pass this on to my readers in case they did not know about it.

Here's how it's done:

Preheat your oven to 350F.

Put an egg into each of either a regular sized or mini muffing tin.  I have two muffin tins that make 12 muffins each, so I can either cook one or two dozen eggs at a time.  (Alternately, you can put the eggs right on the racks in the oven, but if one of the eggs cracks I'd rather clean up a muffin tin than the bottom of my oven.)

Stick the tin in the oven and set the timer for 30 minutes.  (Now you have something screaming at you at the end of the cook time, so you won't forget and boil all the water out of the pot and risk your whole kitchen smell like burnt egg shells.  Nasty!) 

Hang on to your egg cartons- You'll store the cooked eggs in them when they are done.

When the timer goes off, take your eggs out of the oven, but leave them in the tin for 5 minutes at room temp.  They will have little brown spots on them, but don't worry about it:  They will come off in the next step.

In the meantime, fill something with cold water (I just plug up my sink and turn the water on, filling it enough to just cover the eggs).    At the end of 5 minutes, put the eggs into the cold water.  (I use tongs if they are still too hot to handle.)

The muffin tin is usually clean still, so I just put it back in my cabinet.

When the eggs have cooled, put them in the saved egg carton.  Be sure to mark it, so that you know which eggs are hard boiled and which are not in your fridge.  I put an "HB" on the sides of mine with a sharpie so I can see it easily when I open the fridge.

That's it- Perfectly cooked "hard boiled" eggs without the watch-time and potential mess of doing them on the stove.  Yay!

For the Guys, On Behalf Of Women Everywhere

I want to apologize- This blog was published in draft stage, before I was done with it.  Embarrassing!

I'll come right to the point: Guys, we women like for you to have butts. And it seems that as you age, if you don't get your.... er... butts into the gym, you wind up with flat backsides.

This flattening pretty much expressly comes from sitting a lot.  I can spot a guy with a desk job who never visits the gym within 100 feet: Wide, flat, and almost narrow at the very bottom. Yeah, guys- We women notice nice butts on men that are in their 40's and beyond. It impresses us.  If you have one, endeavor to keep it.  If you don't, get to the gym and get one!

Now, I'm a gal who loves a nicely defined upper body.  I'm a self-admitted chest girl. But true fitness is displayed in a man in his midsection and his butt.  That's the area that takes the most self discipline for you guys to build up and maintain.  So while a moundy muscular chest gets my initial attention, I have respect for a man in mid-life with nice glutes.

Not only is it about appearance, but having a well-developed lower body is good for your health and quality of life.  A strong lower body will carry you around longer, be less likely to suffer things like back problems in the lumbar spine that so often start hitting men in their 40's, and greatly reduce your likelihood of suffering broken bones when you fall as you age. (Does hip replacement surgery sound like fun?)

Chances are that if I have inspired you to go to the gym, you will head for variations on the squat and leg press, because not only are those the grand-daddy of moves to develop the lower body, but they're also done on masculine equipment:  REAL men use the big plates.  (Insert caveman-type laugh here.)

But the fact is that the guys I see with good butts in midlife and beyond are the ones in the gym that aren't too proud to do lunges, step-ups, all variations of split squats, and cable kickbacks.  And you'll see them getting cardio sometimes on the step-type equipment.  Yeah, I know all those have the rep of being girly, but they do NOT create a girly look for you guys!  They create a butt that gets our attention.

We women miss your butts!  Please, bring them back!

Guys, are you listening?  And women, do you agree?

Coconut Oil- Try it and You'll Never Go Back!

Have you ever heard of coconut oil?  I hadn't either, until I read about it in Tosca Reno's "Eat Clean" books. She says she eats 3 Tablespoons of it a day.  Now, Tosca doesn't eat any foods that are not clean, so I'm sure that 360 calories of a good source of fat don't hurt her. But for the rest of us it might not be the best idea to consume this quantity if we are trying to lose weight.  However, it's a great food to substitute for some other fats in your diet for a myriad of reasons.   Here's an article that goes into detail, because I am too lazy to type it all out:  www.organicfacts.net/organic-oils/organic-coconut-oil/health-benefits-of-coconut-oil.html

At any rate, I have discovered how versatile this oil is and how wonderful it makes food taste!  I have tried substituting it in a myriad of recipes, from stir-fries to baked goods, and every time, without exception, it improves the recipe tremendously.  The  texture makes even recipes where whole-wheat flour is subbed in for regular white (which usually results in a tougher product) melt-in-your-mouth.

Case in point:  I'm GREAT at making pie crust, but have always had to use refined white flour for it to be flaky enough to grant my approval.  Last night I made my traditional pie crust (my own recipe and technique), but substituted 1/4 of the white flour for whole-wheat and all of the shortening with coconut oil.  It was wonderful!  Next time I am going to try it with all whole-wheat flour.  I'll bet it turns out terrific.

Coconut oil can be substituted strait over for any kind of fat a recipe calls for, but is especially good in recipes that call for butter or shortening, the latter of which is particularly bad for your heart and arteries.

An unusual property of coconut oil is that it holds solid at temperatures 76 degrees Fahrenheit and below.  Above that and it starts to melt.  I was keeping it in the same cabinet I always had, but mysteriously it was beginning to liquify.  It finally occurred to me that it was being stored next to an exterior wall:  With the Texas summer heat on the other side of the wall the coconut oil was getting a little too warm to hold it's solid state.  I moved it to my pantry, which is on an inside wall, and it went back to solid.

If you want to use it in a recipe that calls for liquid oil, just melt it first.  In a recipe that calls for a solid fat (butter, margarine, or shortening), use it strait out of the jar.

Unlike olive oil (which is also heart healthy), coconut oil is heat stable.  So you can use it for types of cooking that call for prolonged exposure to heat and it won't destroy the flavor of your food.

And it's not just good for cooking- I like to stir a teaspoon of it into my oats or whole-grain cream of what in the mornings.  It adds a nice flavor and texture to it, and the added fat slows digestion and helps to keep me full longer.

Most stores carry coconut oil on the shelves with other types of cooking oils.

One caveat of coconut oil is that it is more expensive than most other commonly-used fat sources.   But I think that once you've tried it you'll be sold and never go back to shortening, at least, again.   It's worth the investment to get that artery-clogging stuff out of the diets of you and your family.