Even though I create recipes that I hope will be followed to the letter, when I'm cooking, I, um, don't always stick to the instructions 100 percent. And one of my most frequent hacks is skipping the steamer basket when I steam vegetables.
After my success with microwaving cauliflower, I was pretty sure the microwave would be the way to go for steaming veggies. I tested this technique two ways, placing one batch of vegetables in a microwave-safe bowl with a tablespoon of water and one batch without water, then covering with plastic wrap (you can also use a microwave-safe plate), and cooking until crisp, checking frequently. (This should take about 2 1/2 minutes for the broccoli and 5 minutes for the potatoes, depending on the particulars of your microwave.) The vegetables cooked without water tasted dry; I don't recommend this. But those cooked with 1 tablespoon water tasted crispy and "steamed," although all of the microwaved vegetables had a slightly shriveled appearance. Another important factor: these cooked much faster than the vegetables cooked in the pot (about 3 minutes less cooking time, plus no wait time for the water to boil).
Next I tried out my method: fill a pot with 1/2 inch of water, add the vegetables, cover, bring to a boil, and cook until crisp-tender. Drain and set aside. I was a little disappointed to find that my method wasn't all that great. It worked well for the broccoli, and would also be good for other firm vegetables like cauliflower or carrots, but the potatoes ended up tasting watery. And compared to the other tests, it wasn't the easiest or fastest option.
Lastly, I tried out a method the Internet touted as a steamer hack, placing the vegetables in a fine-mesh sieve in a large pot over boiling water, covering it, and steaming until tender. Unless you have a very large pot and a deep sieve with a lip, covering the pot tightly enough to capture steam is nearly impossible. Because very little steam was captured, this method took the longest, and the resulting vegetables tasted water-logged.
Steaming vegetables can be a real life-saver when it comes to dinner, which is why we're bringing back this steamer basket hack from Sarah Jampel, originally published in 2013. Here's how to steam vegetables without a steamer.
Place the food in a single layer in the strainer, bring the water to a boil, then lower the heat so it's barely bubbling. Cover the pot as much as possible in order to prevent steam from escaping. Check on your food often to prevent over-cooking! Keep in mind that steaming times will vary depending on the food you are cooking.
This one's for anyone who doesn't have a metal strainer. First, fill a large pot with about half an inch of water. Now pause for a brieft arts and crafts project: get out your aluminum foil and make three balls of roughly equal size.
Heat the oven to a low temperature (approximately 200F) and bring a teapot of water to a boil. Pour half an inch of the water into a large pot. Arrange the food in a single layer on a baking rack and place it over the pot.
Now give yourself a pat on the back for making your very own vegetable steamer. And while you're being resourceful, check out these other kitchen hacks, as well (it turns out you don't need that cherry pitter, after all).
Item Spawner - Integrates my CrucibleUI mod, a work in progress item spawner. It grabs its item definitions from the game's script manager, so it's automatically compatible with mods such as Hydrocraft!
Refactored ISUICheatMenu, mod now works with Debug Mode enabled & should solve issues with large mods.
Replaced Teleport & GPS with the Teleport Menu, which has POIs for every vanilla map & a (theoretically) infinite number of custom teleport locations.
Infinite Carryweight now persists.
Added a proper colour slider to vehicle options, should make changing colour a lot more intuitive.
Clarified how to use the Vehicle Selection tool.
Vehicle Selection Tool now notifies you upon successfully selecting a vehicle.
Rewrote Delete Mode.
Made Terraform Mode separate from Delete Mode.
Rearranged the Cheat Menu.
Fixed Cheat Menu not showing up in co-op servers. Will now show up for hosts & admins.
Fixed Instant Actions not working on Build 39.
Fixed zombies spawning naked.
Restored God Mode to the way it worked pre 2.8.
God Mode now disables the Zombie Dragdown Instakill sandbox option when enabled.
Fixed Instant Actions not applying to certain inventory transfers
Fixed No Boredom
Modified how HandleToggle() works, let me know if anything starts acting odd.
Increased the amount of health that Prevent Death adds when the health threshold is reached, from 200 to 2000.
Fixed the Lua Interpreter window not being correctly resized after closing the Import/Export window.
Added vehicle spawning under the Vehicles menu
Added Noclip
Fixed instakill melee not restoring values properly on weapon switch / unequip
Fixed god mode not protecting against apocalypse difficulty horde instakill
Fixed refill ammo and infinite ammo
Prevent Death now functions properly, courtesy of Slok. Thanks to his code contribution, nothing short of falling several stories will kill you.
Fixed quite a few bugs for Warp Time, it now correctly sets days/months.
Changed the amount of years in Warp Time from 1 - 20 (additive) to 1993 - 2077.
Fixed a minor bug in the Vehicles submenu that added engine power/loudness/quality setters to every menu in the Under-the-hood category.
Zombie Brush now allows you to set the amount of zombies you wish to spawn.
Added GenericInputWindow.lua as an API to make input windows easier to create.
Overhauled Max All Skills, now iterates through PerkList instead of manually maxing each skill. Also means that it'll max any new skills without me having to manually add it.
Overhauled the Skill Max menu, iterates through PerkList and creates the subMenus for each skill automatically, whereas previously I had to define them manually. This also means that any new skills added will be supported, as I won't have to update the mod to manually include them.
Removed the Nutrition editor as it didn't work.
Added Instant Crafting. Just open the crafting menu and click the item you want, and it'll instantly give it to you for free.
Added Instant Actions. Every action, such as building, will now be performed instantly.
Added a nutrition editor. You can now tweak the nutrition values to your liking, or you can just click the "Become healthy" button to instantly become healthy.
Added Weather Changing.
Removed the old debug "MLG Mode" code
Prevented admin checksum spam
Fixed a bug where Barricade Mode would add a plank to the players inventory if the object already had the maximum amount of barricades. Also, general code-cleanup for Barricade Mode.
Fixed the bug where Cheat Menu would create 50+ menus for some people
Fixed an issue with Insta Kill Melee erroring out when not using a weapon
Now the only thing that you need to learn, is how to spawn zombies on command. I remember that's why i downloaded necroforge the first time, but with so many updates, that feature stopped working. Ive been wanting to start a game with no zombies, and created a base and have it tested with zombies.
well i tried it out and have to say everything is working like a charm, indeed! There are a few things though. One when i try to spawn in 100 zombies they are pretty much over top of me when i do it so its very hard for me to escape the hordes wants i do it,lol. Maybe a invisible option could work great for that so you can set up, whatever it is you need done. Do you have plans on adding an item spawn system as well? Also any plans on a warping system to. I wish i could do this stuff ide have a blast with it. But anyways so far is looking great.
For the zombie spawning, what it does is that it spawns the zombies where you originally right clicked to bring up the menu. I probably should've mentioned that on the button lol, guess that's another note on my to-do list for V1.5.
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