Best Kitchen Gadget and a Great Summer Recipe

This gadget by West Bend is a little bit of heaven!!! Now my Vegan friends can just by pass this post all together, but for everyone else this is a must have in the kitchen!

My very, very best of friends Kevin and his lovely Mother bought this for me as a little Easter present this year. I celebrate Passover now, but I love gifts from the Easter Bunny regardless:)  Kevin was going on and on about how great this gadget was one night and poof it was on my door step a few weeks later. I love useful gifts!!! This is one of the best gifts I have ever received!

Eggs are a great source of protein, vitamin E and contrary to old research eggs are not bad for you. A study came out years ago stating that eggs are horrible especially the yolk. The study has been de-bunked because the people that where a part of the study where eating bacon with the eggs and did not take this into account. It was the bacon that made the cholesterol levels go threw the roof not the eggs.

I love eggs. The West Bend brand egg cooker is such a great invention. Boiling water to get hard boiled eggs uses a lot of wasted water and energy. With this gadget you just poke wholes on the top of the eggs with the provided egg poker that is on the bottom of the water measuring cup and then place them in the cooker. You then put the appropriate amount of water needed for the quantity of eggs you are cooking which is minimal and then put the top on and turn it on. Anywhere from five to thirteen minutes later depending on how many eggs you cook, you have perfectly cooked hard boiled eggs. You can cook one to seven eggs at a time. Also you can do soft boiled and poach one to four eggs at a time with a included tray. 

I usually hard boil and then put them in the refrigerator for Ben to snack on when he gets home from work. He loves it!

So with my handy dandy egg cooker I make really simple lunches with the beautiful eggs I pick up from the Farmer's Market. I found a recipe in Everyday Food from the July/August 2011 issue pictured below on page 118. Ben and I eat our biggest meal at lunch time and something small for dinner. So this salad would be great for dinner time as well.

 

The recipe is quite simple. I changed it a little for my taste. Makes four sides or two main courses.

You will need:
one pound of trimmed and cut in halves or thirds Green Beans
1/2 cup of Kalamata Olives cut into halves and pitted
1 cup of chopped tomatoes or halved cherry/grape tomatoes
1/2 tbsp of good quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil
two chopped garlic cloves
couple of pinches of sea salt or kosher
couple of good turns of the pepper mill
2 to 4 hard boiled eggs (depending it this is a side of a main course)sliced or roughly chopped
Juice and zest of a half of a lemon

Grab a large pot and fill with about 6 to 8 cups of water and turn stove to high heat just until water is steaming you do not have let it go to a rolling boil way too hat out to do that. Add your Green Beans and let them cook for about five minutes. Do not let them over cook. Drain them in a colander and run cold water over them. Add them to a large salad bowl. The add the rest of the ingredients and toss and serve. YUM!!!