So this summer I joined the electric pressure cooker craze. I promised my husband I would ditch my crock pot if I bought the pressure cooker. I did give up my extra large crock pot without looking back, but I did keep my smaller ones and so far I haven’t needed them. I’ve used the pressure cooker for all kinds of things and have been absolutely loving it! It still boggles my mind that a pot of beans that used to take hours in the crockpot can be done, (and very tender) in less than an hour. It almost feels like I’m cheating! As if I didn’t need one more reason to love this thing, I started hearing about people steaming their eggs in them and getting perfect, easy to peel eggs every time. I had to give this one a go, and sure enough they were not only cooked perfectly, but the yolk was nice and creamy, and not at all dried out like sometimes happens when hard boiling them. With a quick rise under cold water, the egg shells slid off in large pieces like a dream.
My pressure cooker is not the popular Instapot. Mine is the Power Cooker so the settings will be slightly different. Also, I don’t have a bottom steam rack. Mine sits toward the top and it fits 18 eggs perfectly. I was a little worried that the lid wouldn’t close or would smash the eggs, but it is a perfect fit. I found that 4 minutes cooks the eggs perfectly so I use the vegetable setting (of 3 minutes) and then add a minute on. It takes longer to build up pressure than it does steaming the eggs but it is SO worth it. What I always have to remember though, is that once the cycle is done the pressure cooker automatically switches to the hold/warm setting and will not begin to release pressure until you hit cancel. This means they continue cooking in there and may overcook if you forget about them. I have forgotten for a few minutes and not had any problems but I would hate to leave it on more than that. Now that I have discovered this I have been on a deviled eggs kick and I’m thinking egg salad sounds pretty good too!
My family kind of has a thing for pickles so we go through tons of jars of them. The jars are all great sizes so I never want to throw them away when the pickles are gone. I have an extra large one in my laundry room holding all of the socks that are missing a mate, we have jars with coins or hardware in them and I have used others to store sauces or other food products. The only problem is I still have an abundant collection of empty pickle jars sitting on top of my refrigerator just waiting to be repurposed in a project. After a while I get sick of the clutter so I tell myself I need to decide to do something with them, or just break down and throw them away. Since I already took the time to wash the jars and peel the labels off, today I decided to decorate one and use it for a dog treat jar.
Hot dog! It’s summer time! Summer plans, bar-b-ques, good times and baseball are all in full swing, and for most of us, the regular routine activities of life must continue as well. Despite the heat, healthy living enthusiasts can be found walking, running and biking as faithfully committed as they do throughout the rest of the year, but with a little added precaution. Living in the Arizona desert, heat safety education is constantly being promoted to protect people from emergencies like heat stroke and dehydration. These situations can escalate very quickly and can become fatal to even the most fit and healthy. We understand the importance of water intake, and we pay attention to which hours of the day are safer for exercise, play and laborious physical activity. We even adhere to heat advisory warnings for temperatures that are considered unsafe without the proper precautions. But what is considered safe for our furbabies?
Hope is a poweful thing. It allows us to suffer long and endure when life gets tough. It gives us the strength to inch forward another day when circumstances don’t otherwise look good. Hope fuels our will to do what is necessary and what is right when our current situation doesn’t show any signs of improvement. We have an amazing tenacity for suffering as long as we have just a glimmer of hope and our pain has a purpose. Because of this, we have to be very careful with whom or what we put our hope in. If we put our hope in people, situations, dreams or even our own ability to accomplish things, we set ourselves up for heartache and disappointment because although we can work hard and do our best to make the right choices, we truly have no control over life circumstances, and though some of us may try, we certainly have no control over other people. When things don’t happen the way we had imagined, or when people don’t cooperate with the dream we had envisioned, this is when our heart becomes disillusioned and our hope faulters. Often times this becomes a root of depression which can lead to all kinds of other things including suicide, self-harm overeating and substance abuse because we are mourning a loss of control in our lives and these things put us back in the driver’s seat…so it seems. Until once again, we lose control and are given over to be controlled by our impulses and cravings.
