Simplify Your Life with Kitchen and Food Hacks!
Hacks simplify your life and we found a kitchen cupboard full of new food tricks that can make cooking easier and life better! Some of these hacks require a specific kitchen tool or two – which you can find at the King Soopers Marketplace four miles away on 1891 Highway 7 in Erie. Or try the Williams Sonoma store at Flatiron Crossing in Broomfield – about 10 miles from your front door.
Fruit and Veggie Cutting Hacks
Chowhound has 48 food hacks that will change your life. Okay, maybe just your food and your meal prep, but did you know you can make limp celery crisp again? And that sliced cucumbers dropped into leftover pickle brine makes for quick pickles? And – you’re going to love this one – that you can scrape the skin off of those ugly ginger roots with a grapefruit spoon! Who knew?
Look at these genius hacks for cutting, peeling, chopping, coring and hulling – fruits and vegetables. BuzzFeed Nifty’s video takes you through 21 different varieties in less than 30 seconds each. You’ll see how to handle mangos, kiwis, watermelon, avocados, hot peppers, strawberries, garlic bulbs – with a hack for all your favorites that are guaranteed to simplify food prep in the kitchen!
The Food Network has more convenient tips from how to slice onions super thin, to a genius pineapple-cutting hack.
Like dried fruit? The Spruce has lots of recipes for healthy dehydrated fruit snacks – like strawberries, cherries, apples and carrots dried in the oven – simple, sweet and chewy-crisp to eat.
If you’re a fan of bell peppers but hate cleaning out the seeds, did you know bell peppers with the most seeds are “female”? We’re not kidding. 
The ones with four bumps on the bottom are male and have fewer seeds, and the peppers with three bumps are female, sweeter and seedier, but better for eating raw!
Egg Hacks for Breakfast
Making breakfast for a crowd? Pull out your muffin tins and crack open a dozen eggs to bake in your oven – which beats standing over a frying pan or griddle and cooking them four or five at a time! Scoop the eggs into English muffins (like you-know-who) and layer with cheese for breakfast sammies.
For 10 more brilliant egg hacks, like the perfect poach method, waffle-iron eggs and scrambled eggs — still in the shell! — Huffington Post has all the details!
Blogger Lisa at Crazy Adventures in Parenting invented cheesy baked-egg toast with an easy-to-follow process. Smash a square into each piece of bread with the back of a spoon, add a cracked egg, butter, and cheese and bake to over-easy (or your preferred “doneness”) at 350 degrees.
And from Russ Parsons at the Los Angeles Times, for an easier time peeling the shells from boiled eggs, crack the cooked eggs slightly before plunging into an ice water bath. If you can let them sit in the cool water for a few minutes, even better.
Okay, the only eggs in this one are in the batter, but Cooking Classy came up with a hack for mini-pancake bites that are sure to please any breakfast bunch. With fruit (or chocolate chips) sprinkled into the batter, sweetness is baked right in. But you can still dip ‘em in maple syrup for that traditional pancake taste!
Microwave Magic
Corn on the cob cooks to perfection in the microwave (four minutes). And when you cut off one end and squeeze (after donning an oven mitt) the corn sheds its husk AND its hairy corn silk. Hack that!
Did you know you can make brownies, crisp bacon and dry herbs in your microwave? First We Feast shows you how. You can also soften brown sugar, peel tomatoes and peaches more easily and disinfect your cutting board (wooden) in your microwave, and Lifehack.org has all the “cooking” times and particulars.
Rubber Glove Hack
And finally, from theKitchn, a hack that never occurred to any of us: using rubber gloves to help unstick a stuck-on jar lid. Works like a charm!
Charming Kitchens in Colliers Hill!
The master-planned community of Colliers Hill is where some of the cleverest cooks in Erie prep and serve amazing meals, week-in and week-out! Stop in to see the beautiful new homes by Shea Homes and Richmond American Homes with kitchens that are both fabulous-looking AND functional. Choose from more than 10 stunning model homes, priced from the upper $300s to the $600s.
