1. Stuff a miniature marshmallow in the bottom of a sugar cone to prevent ice cream drips.

2. Use a meat baster to “squeeze” your pancake batter onto the hot griddle – perfect shaped pancakes every time.

3. To keep potatoes from budding, place an apple in the bag with the potatoes.

4. To prevent egg shells from cracking, add a pinch of salt to the water before hard-boiling.

5. To get the most juice out of fresh lemons, bring them to room temperature & roll them under your palm against the kitchen counter before squeezing.

6. 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-skillet will be much easier to clean.

7. When a cake recipe calls for flouring the baking pan, use a bit of the dry cake mix instead-no white mess on the outside of the cake.

8. If you accidentally over-salt a dish while it’s still cooking, drop in a peeled potato-it absorbs the excess salt for an instant “fix me up.”

9. Brush beaten egg white over pie crust before baking to yield a beautiful glossy finish.

10. Place a slice of apple in hardened brown sugar to soften it back up.

11. When boiling corn on the cob, add a pinch of sugar to help bring out the corn’s natural sweetness.  (ah, an old 1940’s Fannie Farmer trick!)

12. To determine whether an egg is fresh, immerse it in a pan of cool, salted water. If it sinks, it is fresh-if it rises to the surface, throw it away.

13. Cure for headaches: Take a lime, cut it in half and rub it on your forehead. The throbbing will go away.

14. Don’t throw out all that leftover wine: Freeze into ice cubes for future use in casseroles and sauces.

15. If you have a problem opening jars: Try using latex dishwashing gloves. They give a non-slip grip that makes opening jars easy.

16. Potatoes will take food stains off your fingers. Just slice and rub raw potato on the stains and rinse with water.

17. To get rid of itch from mosquito bite: try applying soap on the area, instant relief.

18. Ants, ants, ants everywhere … Well, they are said to never cross a chalk line. So get your chalk out and draw a line on the floor or wherever ants tend to march-see for yourself.

19. When you get a splinter, reach for the scotch tape before resorting to tweezers or a needle. Simply put the scotch tape over the splinter, then pull it off. Scotch tape removes most splinters painlessly and easily.

20. 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).
• Unclog a drain-clear the sink drain by dropping three Alka-Seltzer tablets down the drain followed by a cup of Heinz White Vinegar. Wait a few minutes, then run the hot water.

Juiciness and tenderness are two very important factors when it comes to meat quality. Both factors are influenced by the cut of meat you choose and how long the meat is cooked. The more a muscle is used, the stronger, and therefore tougher, the cut of meat will be. And the longer meat is cooked, the more liquid it loses and the tougher it becomes. Factors that also influence tenderness and juiciness are: The animal’s age at slaughter, the amount of fat and collagen (connective tissue) contained in particular cuts, and, to a small degree, brining.

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Fat is a source of energy that is stored in muscle tissue. When fat is heated, it melts and lubricates the muscle fibers in the meat, helping to keep it moist.

The cuts of meat from cows and pigs that contain the most fat are those that come from areas where the muscles aren’t used as extensively, such as the ribs and loins. The fat in fish is contained in the oil that is present throughout the body, so most of the fish has an inherent “lubrication” source.

What is sugar?

The white stuff we know as sugar is sucrose, a molecule composed of 12 atoms of carbon, 22 atoms of hydrogen, and 11 atoms of oxygen (C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁). Like all compounds made from these three elements, sugar is a carbohydrate. It’s found naturally in most plants, but especially in sugarcane and sugar beets—hence their names.

Sucrose is actually two simpler sugars stuck together: fructose and glucose. In recipes, a little bit of acid (for example, some lemon juice or cream of tartar) will cause sucrose to break down into these two components.

If you look closely at dry sugar, you’ll notice it comes in little cubelike shapes. These are sugar crystals, orderly arrangements of sucrose molecules.

Under a microscope, you can see that sugar crystals aren’t cubes, exactly, but oblong and slanted at both ends. (Image courtesy of Nutrition and Food Management Dept., Oregon State University)

What happens when you heat a sugar solution?

When you add sugar to water, the sugar crystals dissolve and the sugar goes into solution. But you can’t dissolve an infinite amount of sugar into a fixed volume of water. When as much sugar has been dissolved into a solution as possible, the solution is said to be saturated.

The saturation point is different at different temperatures. The higher the temperature, the more sugar that can be held in solution.

When you cook up a batch of candy, you cook sugar, water, and various other ingredients to extremely high temperatures. At these high temperatures, the sugar remains in solution, even though much of the water has boiled away. But when the candy is through cooking and begins to cool, there is more sugar in solution than is normally possible. The solution is said to be supersaturated with sugar.

Supersaturation is an unstable state. The sugar molecules will begin to crystallize back into a solid at the least provocation. Stirring or jostling of any kind can cause the sugar to begin crystallizing.

Why are crystals undesirable in some candy recipes—and how do you stop them from forming?

Interfering agents (Image courtesy of Nutrition and Food Management Dept., Oregon State University)

The fact that sugar solidifies into crystals is extremely important in candy making. There are basically two categories of candies – crystalline (candies which contain crystals in their finished form, such as fudge and fondant), and noncrystalline, or amorphous (candies which do not contain crystals, such as lollipops, taffy, and caramels). Recipe ingredients and procedures for noncrystalline candies are specifically designed to prevent the formation of sugar crystals, because they give the resulting candy a grainy texture.

One way to prevent the crystallization of sucrose in candy is to make sure that there are other types of sugar—usually, fructose and glucose—to get in the way. Large crystals of sucrose have a harder time forming when molecules of fructose and glucose are around. Crystals form something like Legos locking together, except that instead of Lego pieces, there are molecules. If some of the molecules are a different size and shape, they won’t fit together, and a crystal doesn’t form.

A simple way to get other types of sugar into the mix is to “invert” the sucrose (the basic white sugar you know well) by adding an acid to the recipe. Acids such as lemon juice or cream of tartar cause sucrose to break up (or invert) into its two simpler components, fructose and glucose. Another way is to add a nonsucrose sugar, such as corn syrup, which is mainly glucose. Some lollipop recipes use as much as 50% corn syrup; this is to prevent sugar crystals from ruining the texture.

Fats in candy serve a similar purpose. Fatty ingredients such as butter help interfere with crystallization—again, by getting in the way of the sucrose molecules that are trying to lock togeter into crystals. Toffee owes its smooth texture and easy breakability to an absence of sugar crystals, thanks to a large amount of butter in the mix.

The devastating floods that affected the Philippines look like repeating again this weekend. My beautiful girl has lost Christmas cards, letters and gifts, all material i know, but nonetheless items that are so important for sentimental reasons. The impending sense of fear at yet another flood devastation, the tragic life loses and hundreds of thousands of people displaced with no where to live.

I cannot begin to fathom the deep emotions that are running.

Please spare a moment when you sit down to a hot meal, a beer or wine and when you take a hot shower, play with your kids, turn on the tv and then crawl into a comfy bed. There are hundreds of thousands tonight that dont get to do that, some wont ever get to play with thier kids ever again, I know I will be forever changed by this tragedy. Keep praying please.

Here are some useful substitutions for common food ingredients in case you’re ever stuck in a jam (we’ve all been there before right?). Most of these are pretty standard and we’ll be adding more to the list as often as possible. As always, your suggestions  are welcome!