Category Archives: kitchen tips

October 9, 2010 · 7:50 pm

Saturday’s Slick Trick

We all have them…little tricks that we do to make life easier. Usually, we don’t think much about them until someone notices and it occurs to us that not everyone does whatever we just did. For example, a couple of years, I posted about using grocery store savings cards to get stubborn crusty food off dishes as I wash them. A few weeks ago we discussed how to get rid of fruit flies. I LOVE learning new tricks like that, so I thought we’d start sharing a few of our favorite kitchen short-cuts once a week.

Today’s slick trick has to do with making chicken stock. Every once in a while, I run out of time and buy a rotisserie chicken from the deli section in our grocery store. Lately, I’ve been saving every bit of bone, skin, and gristle after I’ve pulled the meat off the bones. I stick the all this in a ziplock bag which I put in the freezer. Usually I collect up a couple of chicken’s worth of bones in one bag. Then when it’s convenient or when I need homemade chicken stock, I just grab that ziplock bag and dump its contents into my deep stockpot. If the urge to make homemade chicken stock overtakes me, I already have everything I need! It’s no more trouble to quick boil up those chicken carcasses than it is to run to the store to BUY a can of sodium-laden chicken stock.

I’d love to hear from all of our readers if you have some favorite tricks.

 

Barb   

– don’t forget that we’re on FacebookAND Twitter now! “Like” us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for the very latest in the Kitchen.

 

 

3 Comments

Filed under kitchen tips, methods, musings

Tagged as

October 1, 2010 · 2:35 pm

Homemade cough syrup

This week I posted about my son Nate’s home remedy for a cold and my friend Char’s Power Soup . On another online magazine, High Country MomSquad, someone commented on homemade cough syrup. That comment sent me searching out homemade cough syrups. WOW. There are about a billion out there and some of them look really good!

I wanted to share with you a couple of sites that I found that I particularly like the look of:

For the underaged and those who don’t want any alcoholic content, this site has a good recipe that contains a whole bunch of health food store ingredients that I’ve used separately in the past. It makes total sense that combining some of them will make a great cough syrup.

This is the simplest homemade cough remedy I found online.

This one takes a little more work and some time on the stove. This post also contains some interesting information, written by someone with a nutrition background.

This site has a whole page of reader-generated ideas for dealing with cough. Be mindful that anyone can post anything on pages like this, so you don’t really know if these ideas have real merit. Still, some interesting reading.

This site has a HUGE collection of links to various homemade cough remedies. You could get LOST on this site, so be sure to bookmark it!

Barb   

– don’t forget that we’re on FacebookAND Twitter now! “Like” us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for the very latest in the Kitchen.

5 Comments

Filed under kitchen tips, Lemon recipes, methods, musings

Tagged as

September 28, 2010 · 7:33 am

Home Cold Remedy

Ugh. It’s THAT time of year again at our house. Every year when the weather changes, we all seem to catch a really unpleasant virus. This year, we’ve been concocting different home remedies, trying to use some kitchen craft to head off this bug before it takes up residence and turns into something that requires antibiotics.

First, my disclaimer. I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. Some components of this home remedy probably have some good science to support them somewhere, but I can only speak to the actual experience that our family has had thus far. If your cold lasts more than a couple of days or you start running a high fever, please see your own doctor.

I started by reaching back into my memory of home remedies that my grandma used to brew. Mostly, she was a hot lemon and honey kinda gal. The ONLY time I can choke that elixir down is when I have a really miserable cold…and oddly enough, it actually tastes good to me then.

This year, we decided to kick things up a notch. When someone in our family starts to feel the crud creeping up, they start drinking this mixture preventively. Here’s what we do in our own kitchen:

Continue reading →

8 Comments

Filed under kitchen tips, methods, musings, recipes

Tagged as

September 21, 2010 · 12:06 am

Preparing your pantry for a cross-country move

I’ve been thinking lately about how to prepare, food-wise, for moving.  That’s because my family will be moving from Minnesota to Virginia in the near future so that my husband can go to seminary.  And while the prospect of being within weekend-trip distance of my dear sister (as well as my brother and my best friend!) has me doing the happy dance, I’m a bit overwhelmed at all the preparations that are involved in a)getting a house ready to list for sale, and b)preparing to move on a somewhat uncertain timeline.  So I’ve been thinking through, among a host of other things, how to get my pantry ready to move. Continue reading →

5 Comments

Filed under Food for Thought, kitchen tips, Uncategorized

September 6, 2010 · 6:50 pm

Oven-roasted Tomatoes

Oven-roasted tomatoes, where have you BEEN all my life? I was initially just trying to avoid canning tomatoes when I stumbled upon this incredible way to process lots and lots of tomatoes. I can’t find adequate words to rhapsodize about the depth and richness of flavors these roasted tomatoes contain. (Insert noises of delirium.)

Best of all, oven-roasting tomatoes is NOT HARD! My mind has been racing through all our favorite recipes and figuring out how to substitute roasted tomatoes for fresh. Just try them and you’ll understand why!

Continue reading →

11 Comments

Filed under Appetizers, Canning and Preserving, Eating seasonally/CSA, kitchen tips, methods, Vegetable dishes, Vegetarian/vegetarian-friendly

Tagged as , ,

August 28, 2010 · 2:52 pm

How do I get rid of all these fruit flies???

We have fruit flies everywhere and I NEED to get rid of them somehow. Yesterday, one of my sons said, “Mom, you have a FRUIT FLY EMERGENCY!” And he’s right!  At this time of year, I usually have a lot of fresh produce sitting around my kitchen. Some of it, for better or for worse, needs to sit on the counter for a few days to ripen fully.

I’ve been buying fabulous peaches that are so delicious, the juice just drips off my hands when I eat them, BUT the day I buy them, they’re not ripe yet. If I put them in the fridge, they’ll never ripen into juicy, sweet perfection. But when I let them ripen on the counter…. the fruit flies….ACK!

So yesterday I was moaning about the fruit fly emergency at my house to my good friend Sarah Pinnix at High Country Mom Squad and she gave me the goods on how to take care of those pesty flies. Build fruit fly traps. No, no power tools are required (I would LOVE to go after them with a blow torch but I hate to think of all the unintended consequences to that idea.)

These are the things you need:

Continue reading →

15 Comments

Filed under kitchen tips, methods, musings

Tagged as , ,

April 6, 2010 · 4:42 pm

Roasting Peppers

I know, I know, I’ve been promising my Chile Verde recipe for months now….and I’m still promising it. This post really is germane to that promised recipe. Roasted chiles are an essential ingredient to chile verde and lots of other foods. I didn’t learn how to roast peppers until just a couple years ago, so I figure that are a few folks out there who need the information on how to do this at home.

You can buy roasted peppers in the grocery store but don’t. Just don’t.  Roasted peppers are often packed in oil which dramatically increases their caloric content. And really….roasting peppers yourself is not a hard thing.

Start by buying good, fresh peppers. You can roast any fresh peppers. Bell peppers of all colors roast nicely, as do all the chiles you find over with the hotter produce. Look for peppers with firm flesh and taut, shiny skin. The deeper and clearer the color of the pepper, the better. If the pepper is soft or shriveled, only buy it if you have no other options.

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Canning and Preserving, Eating seasonally/CSA, Ethnic, kitchen tips, methods

Tagged as ,

November 25, 2009 · 10:25 am

Uh-oh, my turkey is still frozen and it’s Wednesday night!

If you just realized, with enormous panic, that your turkey is still rock hard in the deep freeze and it’s NOT going to thaw in the fridge overnight, take a deep breath. Is it possible to thaw a turkey fast?

 

Continue reading →

6 Comments

Filed under Christmas Recipes, Holiday recipes, kitchen tips, methods, Thanksgiving Recipes

Tagged as

November 24, 2009 · 12:53 pm

Very simple, very easy Thanksgiving Table Decorations

I’ll admit right up front that I’m not much for doing a lot of decorating. I can’t ever bring myself to buy flowers or a centerpiece for a holiday meal. I like a nicely-set table as much as the next person, but to me, the REAL decoration on the Thanksgiving table is the bounty of lovingly-prepared food.tdaytablesingle.jpg

So over the years I’ve figured out some quick easy ways to make my holiday table look dressed up. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under kitchen tips, Thanksgiving Recipes

Tagged as

November 18, 2009 · 5:56 am

Planning a timeline for Thanksgiving Dinner Festivities

I don’t know very many people who aren’t really, REALLY busy at this time of year. Years ago, I got caught way short on time at Thanksgiving, realizing on Wednesday night that my turkey was still frozen solid in the deep freeze. So….I’ve developed a timeline that helps keep me a little more sane. (I won’t claim to be fully sane, because that is asking a lot!) Some of you are way ahead of me on this, so this post isn’t for you. This post is for you if Thanksgiving dinner is just ONE of the many balls you have up in the air right now. So keep juggling….and do just a little bit at a time!

Here’s my Plan for this week. Obviously, it needs to be tweaked to fit the individual family. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Filed under Food for guests, Holiday recipes, kitchen tips, methods, Thanksgiving Recipes