| Martha's
Way |
My Way |
| Stuff a miniature marshmallow in the bottom
of a sugar cone to prevent ice cream drips. |
Just suck the ice cream out of the bottom of
the cone, for Pete's sake, you are probably lying on the couch with your
feet up eating it anyway. |
| Use a meat baster to "squeeze" your
pancake batter onto the hot griddle and you'll get perfectly shaped pancakes
every time. |
Buy the precooked kind you nuke in the microwave
for 30 seconds. The hard part is getting them out of the plastic bag. |
| To keep potatoes from budding, place an apple
in the bag with the potatoes. |
Buy Hungry Jack mashed potato mix and keep
it in the pantry for up to a year. |
| To prevent egg shells from cracking, add a
pinch of salt to the water before hard boiling. |
Who cares if they crack, aren't you going to
take the shells off anyway? |
| To get the most juice out of fresh lemons,
bring them to room temperature and roll them under your palm against the
kitchen counter before squeezing. |
Sleep with the lemons in between the mattress
and box springs. |
| To easily remove burnt-on food from your skillet,
simply add a drop or two of dish soap and enough water to cover bottom
of pan, and bring to a boil on stovetop. |
Eat at Chili's every night and avoid cooking. |
| Spray your Tupperware with nonstick cooking
spray before pouring in tomato based sauces and there won't be any stains. |
Feed your garbage disposal and there won't
be any leftovers. |
| When a cake recipe calls for flouring the baking
pan,use a bit of the dry cake mix instead and there won't be any white
mess on the outside of the cake. |
Go to the bakery. They'll even decorate it
for you. |
| If you accidentally over salt a dish while
it's still cooking, drop in a peeled potato and it will absorb the excess
salt for an instant "fix me up" |
If you over salt a dish while you are cooking,
that's too damn bad. My motto: I made it and you will eat it and I don't
care how bad it tastes. |
| Wrap celery in aluminum foil when putting in
the refrigerator and it will keep for weeks. |
Celery? Never heard of the stuff. |
| Brush some beaten egg white over pie crust
before baking to yield a beautiful glossy finish. |
The Mrs. Smith frozen pie directions do not
include brushing egg whites over the crust and so I don't do it. |
| Place a slice of apple in hardened brown sugar
to soften it. |
Brown sugar is supposed to be "soft"? |
| When boiling corn on the cob, add a pinch of
sugar to help bring out the corn's natural sweetness. |
The only kind of corn I buy comes in a can. |
| To determine whether an egg is fresh, immerse
it in a pan of cool, salted water. If it sinks, it is fresh, but if it
rises to the surface, throw it away. |
Eat, cook, or use the egg anyway. If you feel
bad later, you will know it wasn't fresh. |
| Cure for headaches: Take a lime, cut it in
half and rub it on your forehead. The throbbing will go away. |
Martha, dear, the only reason this works is
because you got lime juice in your eye, and then the problem isn't the
headache anymore, it is because you are now blind. |
| Don't throw out all that leftover wine. Freeze
into ice cubes for future use in casseroles and sauces. |
Leftover wine? |
| If you have a problem opening jars: Try using
latex dishwashing gloves. They give a non slip grip that make opening jars
easy. |
Go ask the very cute neighbor to do it. |
| Potatoes will take food stains off your fingers.
Just slice and rub raw potato on the stains and rinse with water. |
Mashed potatoes will now be replacing the anti-bacterial
soap in the handy dispenser next to my sink. |
| Now look what you can do with Alka-Seltzer.
Clean a toilet. Drop in two Alka-Seltzer tablets, wait twenty minutes,brush
and flush. The citric acid and effervescent action clean vitreous china.
Clean a vase. To remove a stain from the bottom of a glass vase or cruet,
fill with water and drop in two Alka-Seltzer tablets. Polish jewelry. Drop
two Alka-Seltzer tablets into a glass of water and immerse the jewelry
for two minutes. Clean a thermos bottle. Fill the bottle with water, drop
in four Alka-Seltzer tablets, and let soak for an hour (or longer, if necessary). |
Put your jewelry, vases, and thermos in the
toilet. Add some Alka-Seltzer and you have solved a whole bunch of problems
at once. |