Kitchen Tips Tuesday!

[Ashley]

Share some kitchen tips for our blog for Tuesday! I'm crunched for time so I need someone to write one for me today pretty pretty please! :support:

[Farah]

No one??? Come on....ladies I know you have some great tips!

[Elaine]

A few weeks ago I had an epiphany. Ben wanted to play in the kitchen sink (which is a daily battle) but it needed to be cleaned. I didn't want to use a harsh cleaner and I remembered reading that baking soda was a fantastic cleaner of sinks so I pulled the box out of the freezer (I have a feeling that it's long past it's deodorizing abilities by now but with out limited cupboard space the freezer is where it stays) and gave it a whirl. I sprinkled some in the sink and went at it with the scrubbie.

After a few minutes of scrubbing I rinsed the sink out and stared down in amazement. It was spotless. Absolutely spotless. Nice and shiny too! No nasty smell, no worry of missing a spot while cleaning up and Ben getting it on his hands, nothing. It was a miracle! I proceeded to attack our bathroom with my new found cleaners and you guessed it! Spotless!

Later on I did some online searching for homemade and chemical free cleaners. There is an absolute treasure trove of info out there of safe, non-toxic cleaners you can make on your own. My personal favourites are plain old baking soda and distilled white vinegar. Apparently you can do darn near anything with baking soda from freshening the cat littler box to cleaning your teeth to shining silver. Who knew?

A few days later I was cleaning up after some particularly messy fried potatoes (a few taters decided to attempt an escape from the frying pan but only made it as far as the stove top before they were thwarted) so I grabbed the bottle of vinegar and water I'd mixed up (recipe found on Make Your Own Cleaners (http://makeyourowncleaners.com/index.html)), sprayed the stove top and with one wipe of the paper towel the grease was gone. Gone. Completely gone with virtually no effort and the little effort that was required came from squeezing the spray bottle.

I'm trying to figure out who exactly convinced people that harsh cleaners are so much better than the basics everyone used to use (baking soda and vinegar). There's no extra work involved, everything comes just as clean as it does with chemical cleaners AND you don't have to open every window in the house to get rid of that 'cleaner' smell or wear rubber gloves so the chemicals don't eat holes in your hands.

My new found best friends: baking soda and white vinegar. I wonder if I can buy baking soda by the truck load...

[Ashley]

Elaine, you rock! Thank you!! It's posted both on our blog and linked to, thank you so much! :hula:

[Jojo]

I'm a lazy cook. I try to take the easy way out a lot of times but I do love cooking. I love eating also so I try my hardest to make everything scrumptious.

One of my favorite foods in potatoes. Who doesn't love the mushy goodness of carbs?! BUT I hate peeling potatoes. Hate it with a passion. I especially hate the nobby parts and the nooks and crannies because you have scoop them out with the peeler end. By the time you're done peeling and scrubbing and soaking you realize you should have just bought a bag of Ore Ida fries.

So what I do is lightly rinse them. I get a big pot of water and put the potatoes in. Boil them until they are tender and then I cool them off and peel off the already falling off skin.

Now this works wonders for Mashed potatoes or potato salad but not so well for french fries or home fries or anything involving "fries." What I do for those is I get my husband to wash and scrub and soak. ;)

[Farah]

I'm a lazy cook. I try to take the easy way out a lot of times but I do love cooking. I love eating also so I try my hardest to make everything scrumptious.

One of my favorite foods in potatoes. Who doesn't love the mushy goodness of carbs?! BUT I hate peeling potatoes. Hate it with a passion. I especially hate the nobby parts and the nooks and crannies because you have scoop them out with the peeler end. By the time you're done peeling and scrubbing and soaking you realize you should have just bought a bag of Ore Ida fries.

So what I do is lightly rinse them. I get a big pot of water and put the potatoes in. Boil them until they are tender and then I cool them off and peel off the already falling off skin.

Now this works wonders for Mashed potatoes or potato salad but not so well for french fries or home fries or anything involving "fries." What I do for those is I get my husband to wash and scrub and soak. ;)
:hehe: That's awesome! My mom does that for potato salad, but not anything else. So weird!

[Elaine]

Holy crap. Good tip Jo! I'm going to have to try that! :twothumbs:

[Ashley]

Thanks Jo!! I'm going to slightly cheat and use it for our Works For Me Wednesday, because really, less work making potatoes does work for me! :hehe:

[Jojo]

Thanks Jo!! I'm going to slightly cheat and use it for our Works For Me Wednesday, because really, less work making potatoes does work for me! :hehe:

Cool :bluegiggle: