Kidding Around

Keep a few jumbo plastic food bags in the diaper bag to provide a clean place to lay baby while changing diapers. Store soiled diapers in a zipper locked bag to prevent odors escaping while traveling. Sealable storage bags are great for keeping toddlers’ stickers, crayons, puzzle pieces, and small toys in one place. Make non-toxic instant sidewalk paint that will wash off with a garden hose by smashing blackboard chalk in a zipper lock bag and mixing it with water in a small, unbreakable container.

Important Matters

Protect important insurance and registration documents in the car from spills by storing them in a sealed plastic bag in the glove box. Keep passports, insurance and medical cards, and other important papers in plastic bags to protect them. You can easily see what store coupons you have when they are kept in a clear plastic bag.

Storage Ideas

Separate nails, screws, thumbtacks, and pushpins into small plastic bags to keep them organized in a toolbox or kitchen drawer. Place necklaces, bracelets, and earrings in snack size food storage bags to keep them organized in a suitcase. The small bags also keep hair barrettes and ties together and protected in luggage. To keep clothes protected from spills when traveling, place shampoos, colognes, and lotions in sealed bags before packing.

Kitchen Helpers

When cooking or baking foods that require mixing with your hands, keep a stack of sandwich size bags handy so use as a makeshift glove to answer the phone or operate the kitchen faucet. If you don’t have a pastry piping bag, fill a sandwich size bag half full with frosting and snip off one corner to decorate cakes and cookies.

Easy-To-Grow Herbs

Basil, chives, parsley, cilantro, dill, mint, oregano, rosemary, and thyme are all easy to grow in small containers at home…and they are also the most used herbs in many savory dishes. Cut them back often to encourage growth and freeze the ones you can’t use right away to use later in dishes that don’t require garden fresh herbs.

• Basil grows best in a cool, sunny location where the temperatures don’t dip below 50F degrees. To ensure a never-ending supply, plant two pots a month apart and harvest often.
• Chives prosper in the same conditions as basil. When they mature and form flowers, use the flowers in salads.
• Parsley comes in two main types, curly and Italian flat leaf. The curly kind has little flavor and is typically used as a garnish. Italian flat leaf has more flavor and is better for cooking. Both types thrive in a cool, sunny location.
• Cilantro likes the same conditions as parsley. If you use a lot of it, stagger the plantings as suggested for basil.
• Dill is a great addition to sauces or to flavor grilled fish and likes cool, sunny conditions. When the feathery leaves go to seed, the seeds can be used in pickling solutions.
• Mint sprigs add flavor to iced tea and lemonade and go well with grilled lamb. Mint can withstand temperature variations and adds a lovely fragrance to the air.
• Oregano is a hardy plant with stiff stems. A little goes a long way, so one plant usually meets the needs of a home cook. It grows well in almost any location.
• Rosemary has characteristics similar to oregano and will thrive in different environments as long as it is not overwatered.
• Thyme is one of the easiest herbs to grow. It loves direct sunlight and its leaves can be dried and stored in an airtight container.

Souper Sausage

Instead of adding ham to split pea soup or ground beef to chili, substitute sausage. Polish sausage links cut into bite-size pieces nicely pair with split peas and carrots. Chili has new depth when you use chorizo or Italian sausage instead of ground beef or just replace half the ground beef with sausage. Let the chili cook for a while before adding lots of seasonings as the sausage will impart it with many spicy flavors.

Saucy Sausage

Instead of browning ground beef for spaghetti sauce, use bulk Italian sausage, sweet, hot or a combo, or remove the casings from link Italian sausage for the sauce base. Add an extra layer of flavor to lasagna by substituting the ground beef with sausage.

Sausage Casseroles

Layer sliced potatoes, onions, and carrots in a Dutch oven or slow cooker and top with your favorite sausage. Kielbasa, Italian sausage, or sage-infused breakfast sausage links all work well. Create an easy and satisfying one-dish supper with layers of sausage, al dente pasta, mozzarella cheese, red and green bell peppers, and onions topped with a zesty tomato sauce, covered and baked until the meat is done and the cheese melts.

Grilled Sausage

For summer cookouts, add some link sausage to the grill alongside the burgers and hot dogs. If you’re using thick sausages, parboil them first so they get done through while they’re browning over the hot fire. Serve them as a main course or provide sautéed peppers and onions and hoagie rolls for people to build their own stadium-style sandwiches.

Tips and Hints

Prick the skins of link sausages before cooking to prevent curling and bursting. For slow-cooked sausage casseroles, use a sausage with enough fat content to seep down through the rest of the ingredients. Some sausages made from poultry lack enough fat to adequately flavor the other components and may dry out during slow cooking.

Difference Between Rolls and Buns

Rolls are a side dish, normally served on a small plate with a pat of butter and broken off in pieces before eating. They can be served at room temperature or warmed, wrapped in linen, and placed in a communal basket. Buns are conventionally used to encase sandwich ingredients and cut in half horizontally to facilitate sandwich preparation.

Top Roll Shapes

Round rolls are most common because they are easiest to make, especially at a commercially produced level. Smaller bakeries and home bakers often vary the shapes for aesthetic reasons. Popular roll shapes include cloverleaf, which is created by placing three small same-size balls of dough into the bottoms of muffin tins that rise to form a puffy-top roll with three sections that easily break apart when baked and served. For fancier rolls called Kaisers, use five balls of dough. To mimic crescent rolls from the supermarket refrigerator section, roll the dough thin, cut it into triangles, and roll it into crescent shapes before the second rise and baking.

Bun Bodies

Hamburger and hot dog buns are the most popular buns. They are sold plain or adorned with sesame seeds, poppy seeds, or bits of roasted onion. For hot fillings, buns are frequently grilled or toasted to make them stand up to the sandwich ingredients without becoming soggy. If they are used for cold cut sandwiches, they are usually served plain, at room temperature. Buns called hoagie or sub buns are oblong and thicker than other buns to withstand multiple toppings and condiments.

Jelly

This firm, clear spread contains no pieces of fruit, which makes it perfect to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches without the sweet layer poking through the bread. Made from a reduction of fruit juice, sugar, pectin, and acid, jelly can be heated to a liquid state and used to glaze hams or mixed with other ingredients for sweet and savory sauces.

Jam

For people who prefer a bit of texture in their sweet spreads, jam is a good choice. Whole pieces of fruit are boiled with sugar and pectin until they lose their natural shape but remain thick enough to form spreadable blobs with soft textures. Jams are good on toast and perfect for filling cookies or doughnuts or topping Danish pastries.

Preserves

If you like big chunks of fruit you can bite into, choose preserves over jellies or jams. As the name implies, this spread has pieces of fruit preserved in a jelly base that acts as a binding agent. Preserves are a sumptuous topping for biscuits, English muffins, and toast and are wonderful on pound cake or ice cream when slightly warmed.

Marmalade

Orange marmalade is the most common type but you can make it from any citrus fruit. Made from fruit pulp infused with tiny pieces of the fruit peel, marmalade has no pectin and is thickened by slow cooking. Marmalade is a good glaze for poultry and ham.

Fruit Butters and Spreads

Apple butter is the most common fruit spread, although you can transform almost any fruit into a butter/spread through cooking fruit with sugar until it becomes a thick paste. The process intensifies the flavor of the fruit, so butters and spreads are typically spread thin on bread and toast.

French Fries

First there were plain-cut frozen French fries and then there were crinkle-cuts that mimicked the fries many restaurants serve. Now you can purchase frozen curly fries, seasoned varieties, shoestrings, fast-food fries, country-style fries made from unpeeled potatoes, extra crispy French fries and even those that can be cooked in the microwave and turn out like oven baked or deep-fried potatoes. Frozen potato waffle fries look like tiny breakfast waffles and bake to a light crispness, perfect alongside burgers or skewered on a toothpick as an appetizer.

Baked Potatoes

If you crave twice-baked potatoes but don’t want the hassle of baking russets, scooping out the inside, mixing it with seasonings, putting it back into the hollowed-out skins, and baking them again, your yen can be satisfied in the freezer section. You can buy tasty stuffed baked potatoes flavored with butter, cheddar cheese or sour cream and chives. The potatoes are piped into the shell so the fancy tops brown beautifully in the oven.

Mashed Potatoes

One of the most desirable comfort foods, mashed potatoes, meets all the criteria for food satisfaction. They have the perfect texture and taste and can be eaten plain, embellished with cheese or sour cream, or topped with gravy. They are now available in bags in the freezer section that steam the potatoes to perfection in the microwave. Just heat and fluff them with a fork before serving.

Specialty Potatoes

Steak fries, the big fat potato sticks served as the “chips” in fish and chips, are available in the freezer section, plain or seasoned. Frozen potato tots, popular with kids and adults, crisp up quickly in a hot oven for side dishes or appetizers to dip in sauces. Want roasted potatoes in record time? Buy frozen ones that heat up fast and taste like they’ve been slow-roasted from scratch.

Recipe: Mona Lisa’s Fontina and Arugula Pizza

From Bite Me Cookbook: Why the big fuss over da Vinci’s painting? I mean, my sister is The Mona Lisa – she’s got the brown eyes that follow me everywhere, the corners of her mouth in a slight upturn and a constant air of mystery. But she melts down like the Dali clock when I ask her how much longer until her master- piece – this crispy thin-crust pizza topped with nutty-tasting Fontina and arugula – comes out of the oven.

Preparation time: 30 minute(s)

Number of servings (yield): 12

My rating 5 stars:  ★★★★★ 1 review(s)

Copyright © Pinky Swear Press Inc..

Alternate Tuna Salads

Tuna salad can take many forms; it doesn’t have to be the mayo-hard-cooked egg sandwich filling most people make from a can of tuna. Make a filling, healthy tuna salad with drained and rinsed cannellini beans combined with diced celery or fennel, chunky albacore tuna, and a light lemon juice-olive oil dressing. Add taste and protein to your favorite pasta salad by tossing it with drained, chunky tuna. Dress up a Nicoise salad by mixing the potatoes with tuna chunks before adding the crisp-cooked green beans, chopped hard-boiled eggs, and light vinaigrette.

Hot Tuna

Salmon croquettes made from canned salmon are favorite supper dishes but they can be made just as easily with canned tuna mixed with crushed saltine crackers, a raw egg and a pinch of tarragon. Instead of a grilled ground turkey or ground beef burger, mix canned tuna with minced scallions, parsley and garlic and bind it together with Panko bread crumbs, a raw egg, and sour cream and grill or bake the burgers for about 10 minutes a side. Transform a conventional tuna salad sandwich into a melty masterpiece by adding cheese to the sandwich and grilling it until the cheese is warm and stringy.

Tuna Sauce

One of the oldest ways to serve tuna is to make it into a sauce. Puree tuna packed in oil with capers, canned anchovies, and mayonnaise and use it as a pasta sauce or served over sautéed veal or chicken fillets. For a more elegant presentation, top the dish with a few chunks of drained, canned tuna.