Three Simple Kitchen Hacks

Whilst I’m on a little babymoon maternity leave from the blogosphere, I thought you’d still like a dose of She Sows Seeds goodness! I’ll hopefully be still popping in with baby spam and news of life in our little farmhouse with two littles now to fill my arms and days (you can also catch us over on Instagram). But in the meantime, here’s something I prepared earlier…

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I don’t know much about much, middle east conflict I’m not going to solve anytime soon, but sometimes little things which seem second nature to you can be light bulb moments for others. I’m all about paying it forward so I thought I’d share three simple ‘hacks’ I use regularly in my kitchen, changing the world one mundane tip at a time, that’s me! Or something.

How to quickly ripen an avocado…

If your house is anything like ours, you go through a lot of avocados. I’m a huge avocado aficionado, and Eleanor eats an avo wrap or sandwich pretty much every day for lunch alongside her cheese and fruit. So, I buy a lot of avo’s, but at different times of year obviously this can prove problematic when all you’ve got are rock hard fruit which will take days to ripen. What’s a girl to do…simply wrap the avocado in foil, pop it in the oven for 10  minutes at about 90 degrees Celsius. Voila! Perfectly soft avocado ready to use. You can also assure yourself a good avocado in the supermarket by looking under the top stem bit (just pick it off) – if it’s green the avo is a goodun’, brown and it’s probably so-so inside.

How to soften butter in a hurry…

I do a fair bit of baking, but I’m a shocker at not having butter out ready at room temperature ready for creaming, when I know that softened butter often makes the difference to fluffy muffins and nicely creamed sugar and butter. Microwaving butter to soften just rarely ends well (you’ll just melt it, trust me). So if you’ve got chilled butter cut off your required amount into sticks, pop the kettle on to boil then fill a glass with boiling water, then pour it out. Your glass should be nice and warm (you could also run the glass under the hot water tap, make sure the glass is quite hot though). Pop the warmed glass over your butter sticks for a minute or so, you’ll have evenly softened butter ready to use for baking.

How to boil an egg with a shell that will peel right off…

Eleanor eats a lot of eggs too – boiled, poached, scrambled, eggs, eggs, eggs. When all else fails and I don’t have any idea what she’s going to have for dinner and it’s 5.55pm, a boiled egg for some protein and some steamed veg is my go-to. But with a hungry toddler at my feet the last thing I want to be fiddling around with is an egg with a shell that won’t come off, or takes half the egg with it. Solution? Add a teaspoon of bicarb soda to your water. The shell should come off a lot easier. I’ve also heard that the same can be said about a wedge of lemon in the water, although I haven’t tested this yet. Putting your egg in only once the water is boiling is also a no brainer, don’t cold start the egg as it won’t appreciate it.

Do you have any little household tips or tricks which you just think are normal, but to somebody else is life changing? I’d love to hear any other simple hacks you have up your clever sleeves! Sharing is caring. Or if you could find world peace solution, that could be good too.