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This hip trick comes to us courtesy of the fabulous ladies behind the Future Craft Collective. Make yourself a handy dandy portable or wall-affixing needle and pin area by grabbing a $2-sheet of adhesive magnet from your local craft shop. Cut out your preferred size and stick it inside any enclosed little case, an old pin box works swell.
Needles and other sharp things that are easy to grab and safe for transport, all thanks to the wondrous powers of magnetism!
Muffins are an easy make-ahead convenience item. They freeze beautifully, but up until now, I’ve had a hard time defrosting them without encountering cold spots in the middle (or needing to saw away at a rock-hard, still-frozen muffin).
I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to come up with this solution, alas necessity strikes again! Slice your completely-cooled muffins in half, separating top from bottom, and place in an air-tight freezer bag. When you pull out two frozen halves, they’ll toast up perfectly and be consistently warm throughout. (Plus, this provides the perfect palette for a jam or butter inside your muffin!)
Keep herbs fresh longer by placing them in the fridge inside a glass with a little bit of water in the bottom. Wilt-prone herbs, like dill, might also need a plastic bag placed over the top of the glass.
Even if you’re not smack-dab in the middle of the worst drought in Texas history, saving water should be at the top of any global human’s list of concerns. Enough soapbox’ing for today, here’s how you can avoid wasting water during your handwashed dish sessions.
This hip trick comes courtesy of my good pal, Zora in Astoria, Queens, who reminded me that you don’t have to use/fill an entire dishtub (as described in my book on pages 24-25) in order to efficiently handwash dishes. Use a small bowl, something from the stack of to-be-washed items, as a suds enliven’er and suds-up all your items at once. Rinse them all at the same time.
I gave away my standard candy thermometer last year because I couldn’t manage to use it without inevitably burning myself. (Tilting the pan to get a decent reading requires coordination and I’m not blessed in that realm.) Well, lately I find myself in the throes next-book research: yogurt and cheesemaking, tasks which ask you to keep good measure of temperatures, and rightly so; the bacteria in question prefer you to be precise.
This hip trick, born of necessity, kept my fingertips out of the steaming milk and my trusty meat thermometer in a place where it could do its best work. What problems can’t a clothespin solve?!
Get rid of that chalky, mineral ring inside pots that see a lot of boiling water action by swirling a splash of white vinegar around the affected areas.
Budgets are tight with vacation expenses and back to school looming next month. Splurging at the grocery store might be out of the question for you right now. Well, think again. Visit the fancy cheese section of your local grocer (I went to Whole Foods here in Austin), and scout out their small pieces and samples bin. You can get an array of small portions of expensive cheeses without breaking the bank, and it’s a good way to try out lots of different types of cheese.
If your store doesn’t have one of these bins, suggest it to the cheesemonger (what a fun word to say!).
Planning to try a small batch of fermented pickles this summer? Use a quart- or gallon-sized wide-mouth jar with an upside-down half-pint jam jar to keep the pickles submerged in the brine. Don’t forget to place a bowl or plate beneath your fermenting jar, to catch any wild brine bubble-overs!
Visit this post for a quick intro, ideas and resources for first-time fermentation projects.
Copyright © 2009-2020, Kate Payne unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.
