Pumpkin Spice and My Mini-Steamer

Well, on Tuesday we at Starbucks got in our Pumpkin Spice syrup just for partner samples before we release it in fall phase 1. Ian Gillies, my barista bud basically dropped dead with excitement, and the day continued to get better when I got home and received a bunch of my Amazon orders in the mail. My two favorites were the rice cooker cookbook that will certainly help out in college and a microwavable mini-steamer that I tested that very afternoon. It came with a cute little half-sheet of paper that gave suggested times for cooking different vegetables, and it included the warning that cooking times varied from oven to oven. Why include the times, which, by the way, were all 3-5 minutes anyway, literally? It just didn't make sense to me, so I set my microwave to 70% and cooked for 3 minutes and let it sit in the microwave post-cooking, residually steaming for another three minutes. The broccoli, carrots, kale, spinach, peppers, and celery were all wonderfully steamed to excellent tenderness and well-flavored with the salt, pepper, Herbes de Provence, and red pepper flakes that I added. I added a clove of garlic to the steaming water in the basket underneath, and it worked out very nicely, adding to the earthiness of the vegetables. I recommend the microwave steamer to anyone who only has a microwave for cooking and desires the steamed food. It's tiny and meant for one, but it works out very nicely allowing for a good side dish or single portion meal when a stove is unavailable. Of course, a microwave could destroy vital nutrients about which we don't know yet, so when possible, don't use the microwave for steaming wonderfully healthful vegetables. For a college kid...it just works.