Ripen avocados more quickly by placing them in a paper bag with an apple or banana. The ethylene gas put out by the fruit will speeding the ripening process.

If your plastic storage containers have a funny oder, stuff balled up newspaper in them, cover (seal), and let them sit overnight. The paper aborbs any lingering food smells.

I’m not a big kitchen gadget collector, but I do use my kitchen shears for all sorts of things. If you want to chope canned tomatoes, put them in a large bowl and chop away. This controls the mess of squirting juices all over a cutting board. Use your shears to snip herbs (I use them to chiffonade basil), slice pizzas, and cut cooked chicken into serving pieces.

I rarely hear anyone say that they like meatballs, but I’m here to say that meatballs are on my list of what is called these days as comfort food. I sometimes poke a hole in the center of my rather large meatballs and insert a big olive stuffed with anchovy, or what about an olive stuffed with a garlic pod, or perhaps one stuffed with blue cheese will give your everyday meatballs a big bam! Sometimes I put a whole garlic clove in the meatball. Once the meatballs are cooked, the semi-soft garlic is a real taste treat and it also gives the meatballs a great garlic flavor. Try it!

My mother used to say “where there’s food there are flies” whenever we swatted them away from the food when eating outdoors. I remember that she often covered the food (and pitchers of tea and lemonade) with muslin or cheesecloth secured with with clothespins. It worked. You can do the same using paper towels or colorful cotton napkins.

I don’t have a lot of kitchen gadgets so I try to “make do” with what I have on hand. I don’t have a salad spinner to dry salad greens, but if you put a couple of sheets of absorbent paper towels in the bottom of a large mixing bowl or salad bowl. Add your washed salad greens and toss around with the paper towels. You may have to do this a couple of times with fresh paper towels but it does the trick. Oh, and I sometimes keep the salad greens in a clean pillow case, rolled up, in the vegetable drawer in the refrigerator to keep them fresh for a couple of days.

My kitchen sink disposal has been on the blink for a couple of days, and of course it had to be on days that I was peeling shrimp and cleaning garden vegetables. I remembered something my mother did back in the Dark Ages and it works just fine…
Read more »

A bouquet garni is a bundle of herbs that is tied together or placed inside a small cheesecloth bag, used to flavor soups, stews and broths. The classic combination is parsley, bay leaves and thyme, but some cooks will also include whole peppercorns and sometimes other herbs, depending on the application and the flavors of the dish they are preparing. The herbs are tied or bagged together so that they might easily be lifted out of the prepared dish before serving.

Drawn butter IS the same as clarified butter and is quite easy to make. Simply melt unsalted butter over a low flame. The milk solids will separate (dropping to the bottom of the pan) and leave a golden liquid (your clarified butter) at the top. Just pour off this clarified butter and use in your cooking. You will find it helpful because it burns at a higher temperature than whole butter (since you eliminated the milk solids.) Clarified butter also keeps longer for the same reason. The only drawback to clarified butter in my opinion is that you lose some of that great, rich butter flavor — sometimes there is just no substitute.

My potted herbs are thriving and I can’t seem to keep up with the basil, Greek oregano, lemon thyme, and rosemay. I’m certainly not complaining, but I’ve become quite creative with my herb crop. Of course, the basil is fantastic with garden-fresh tomatoes. And I’ve found the other herbs are great with chicken…
Read more »