Two tips for grating cheese: First, it’s best to grate cold cheese so leave it in the refrigerator until you’re ready. Second, lightly spray your grater with cooking spray to make cleanup easier.

A friend of mine is always on the cutting edge. We’ve all had water served with lemon slices, right? Last night, my friend offered glasses of cold water, some garnished with sliced of lime and others with cucumber slices. Nice touch.

To make uniform-size burgers, crab patties, potato ckaes or other such items, use a Mason jar lid. You can line the lid with plastic wrap or wax paper, then fill the lid completely with the ingredients, then remove the patty by gently pushing the lid up from the bottom.

Put the rinds of lemons, limes, grapefruit and oranges in your kitchen sink disposal—the strong scent of the citrus fruit as they grind refreshes the disposal as well as air in the kitchen.

I learned this trick years ago from a caterer and used it last week when I was making tons of chicken salad sandwiches for a bridal shower. To coarsely or finely chop hard-boiled eggs, grate them on a box grater. You can also press hard-boiled eggs through a fine-mesh sieve to get extra fine crumbled eggs to use for garnishes.

When preparing Steak au Poivre, it’s best to crush the black peppercorns rather than grind them. I have two methods I find do the trick. Put the peppercorns on a cutting board and use the back of a heavy skillet (rocking it back and forth) to crush them. Another method is to spread the peppercorns in a plastic storage bag (be sure to seal the bag completely) and whack them with a sturdy rolling pin or meat pounder. The layer of crushed peppercorns on the steak prevents juices from escaping and causing dryness.

I’m not much of a baker so I don’t know many of the tricks of the trade. But I did learn one today. Trim excess pastry from pie crust with kitchen shears. Probably this is an old trick, but a new one for me.

Allspice (also known as Jamaica pepper) taste like a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves but really comes from the pea-size berry of the evergreen pimiento tree. Just a bit of it added to stewed chicken gives it a delightful flavor. It’s also good (just a bit) in beef stew.

Fresh (and I mean fresh—not the one in a bottle) lemon juice can tweak just about anything—salads, baked or grilled fish and chicken, and steamed vegetables, and such. During the summer, I use lots of fresh lime juice…
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File (pronounced fee-lay) powder is ground dried sassafras leaves from trees that grow along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. First used by the Choctaw Indians, it is commonly used today to flavor and thicken gumbo. It becomes stringy when boiled and should be added to gumbo after the gumbo pot is taken off the heat. It is available in most supermarkets and in some specialty food stores.