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 Post subject: Tips and Tricks (Not cooking related)
PostPosted: Thu Mar 03, 2011 8:30 am 
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Location: Near Ithaca, NY
vt cook posted these on TOBB. Thought it was worth repeating:

Peel a banana from the bottom and you won't have to pick the little "stringy things" off of it. That's how the primates do it.

Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.

Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!

Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating. Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.

Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.

To really make scrambled eggs or omelets rich, add a couple of spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and then beat them up.

For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed. Melt Andes mints in double broiler and pour over warm brownies. Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.

Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste of garlic and at the end of the recipe if your want a stronger taste of garlic.

Leftover snickers bars from Halloween make a delicious dessert. Simply chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!! Serve alone or with vanilla ice cream.

1. Reheat Pizza
Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.

2. Easy Deviled Eggs
Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up, mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done. Easy clean up!

3. Expanding Frosting
When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake or cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and calories per serving.

4. Reheating Refrigerated Bread
To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.

5. Newspaper Weeds Away
Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers put layers around the plants overlapping as you go cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening
plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.

6. Broken Glass
Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards of glass you can't see easily.

7. No More Mosquitoes
Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.

8. Squirrel Away
To keep squirrels from eating your plants, sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn't hurt the plant and the squirrels won't come near it.

9. Flexible Vacuum
To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge, add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.

10. Reducing Static Cling
Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and -- ta da! -- static is gone!

11. Measuring Cups
Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don't dry cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right
out.

12. Foggy Windshield?
Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car. When the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth!

13. Reopening Envelope
If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside , just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Viola! It unseals easily. Just write self a note to go get it......

14. Conditioner
Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It's a lot cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It's also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn't like when you tried it in your hair...

15. Goodbye Fruit Flies
To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass fill it 1/2" with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid, mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!

16. Get Rid of Ants
Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it "home," can't digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works & you don't have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!






Posted: 2/5/2008 8:38

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 Post subject: Re: Tips and Tricks (Not cooking related)
PostPosted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 1:25 pm 
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Where is the "like" emoticon? Thanks, KSS!


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 Post subject: Re: Tips and Tricks (Not cooking related)
PostPosted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 1:32 pm 
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A friend of mine posted (on FB) a couple weeks ago about using a piece of bread to pick up broken glass. She said it work really well.


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 Post subject: Re: Tips and Tricks (Not cooking related)
PostPosted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 1:47 pm 
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Location: Portland, OR
KSS,

Thanks for the advice!

However, I will take issue with a couple of these tips. Or I wouldn't be me:

Quote:
Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.


Ripening faster is a bad thing?

Quote:
Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!


Baking parchment works even better. Wrap the cheese in parchment (or butcher paper) and then wrap that bundle in foil or plastic.

Quote:
Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating. Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.


I'd love to see some blind testing on this. I think the above is a myth.

Quote:
Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste of garlic and at the end of the recipe if your want a stronger taste of garlic.


... or both at the beginning and the end, if you're me.

Quote:
4. Reheating Refrigerated Bread
To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.


Better not to use the microwave at all, and use the oven.

Quote:
7. No More Mosquitoes
Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.


Anyone tested this? Seems unlikely, at best.

Quote:
8. Squirrel Away
To keep squirrels from eating your plants, sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn't hurt the plant and the squirrels won't come near it.


I'm gonna test this one as soon as it stops raining. If it doesn't work, time to get out the blowgun.

Quote:
15. Goodbye Fruit Flies
To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass fill it 1/2" with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid, mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!


If you try this in California, you will end up just attracting more fruit flies into the house.

Quote:
16. Get Rid of Ants
Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it "home," can't digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works & you don't have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!


I'm not sure I believe this one. Anyone tested it?
Here's something I know works for ants in the kitchen: orange peel oil. Such as that in Orange Guard or various natural cleansers. You spray it in crevices, and ants won't go near it because it's like tear gas to their delicate sense of smell.

My tips:

If you spill red wine on cloth or upholstery, cover it heavily with salt while it's still wet. This will substantially reduce staining.

Baking soda paste will also help remove fresh grease stains from items which are not launderable (like suede).

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 Post subject: Re: Tips and Tricks (Not cooking related)
PostPosted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 1:54 pm 
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I'm pretty sure they debunked that dryer sheet thing over at Snopes. My guess with the pepper thing is that different breeds tend toward the 3 bumps or 4 bumps, with the 4-bumpers being hardier for shipping. It seems that most of what shows up at the local Farmer's Market (in Michigan) are the 3-bump varieties, which are more tender. Can't speak to the flavor, bells peppers are not a big favorite of mine. I really only like them cooked with other flavors.


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 Post subject: Re: Tips and Tricks (Not cooking related)
PostPosted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:14 pm 
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JB,

Probably the pepper thing is something that was true in one place at one time, but isn't generally valid. The bell peppers common to most grocers here will have 3, 4, or even 5 bumps, and it's the same varietal, from the same plant.

There is a tasty variety of italian sweet pepper which only has 1 to 3 bumps, which I can't generally get here. So if the pepper thing is a saying from, say, New Jersey, I could see it.

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 Post subject: Re: Tips and Tricks (Not cooking related)
PostPosted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:22 pm 
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that pepper is what we call a Shepherd pepper up here, no idea if that is the real name but that is how they are labelled at the stores. It's the one we use for roasting.

And wrt the bananas, ripenning faster is bad when you like bananas only when they still have a little green on them. ;)


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 Post subject: Re: Tips and Tricks (Not cooking related)
PostPosted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:28 pm 
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I, for one, hope the cayenne works. We have lots of those little grassy(liriope, I think) plants, and a huge bunny rabbit problem, they stay close to the house, the electric fence keeps the dogs out of my plants. So, I'm always looking at the plants, eaten to the ground, and grrrrrrring.

Living in Podunk has it's own complications. Deer, rabbits, and raccoons--the last time we grew corn, the raccoons would wait(I swear) until the corn was ready, climb the stalk, break it over, and eat on the corn.

Yeah I'm with Jean, we save the rotten ones for Rod, lol.


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 Post subject: Re: Tips and Tricks (Not cooking related)
PostPosted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 4:36 pm 
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The pepper flakes in birdseed works because birds can't taste capsicum. The squirrels can, and don't like it. IT takes a fair amount though, so by cheap flakes from the dollar store and mix them in the birdseed before you fill the feeder.
No idea if it works on bunnies.
I do know that cucumber peels will kill cockroaches because it gives them gas and they can't fart.


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 Post subject: Re: Tips and Tricks (Not cooking related)
PostPosted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 5:11 pm 
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I can vouch for the cayenne keeping away the squirrels. Been dousing the soil with if after I plant bulbs for at least 10 years now and have not lost a bulb to those pesky creatures in the same amount of years, to my knowledge :). I buy cayenne at the dollar store or WM so its cheap enough to waste.

I also read that shaving Irish Spring soap over the top of the soil keeps them away. I did that for a few years until the year it rained not too long after I shaved the IS and my neighbors were wondering what this crazy neighbor had done to make her soil bubble.


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