CLEVER IDEAS WORTH KNOWING

CLEVER IDEAS WORTH KNOWING Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store.  If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.                                                   Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil.  It will stay fresh much longer and not mold! Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating.  Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.           Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking. To really make scrambled eggs or omelets rich add a couple of  Spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and then beat them up. For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed. Melt Andes mints in double broiler and pour over warm brownies. Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.  Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste  of garlic and at the end of the recipe if your want a stronger taste of garlic. Leftover snickers bars from Halloween make a delicious dessert. Simply chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!! Serve alone or with vanilla ice cream. Yummm!   Reheat Pizza  Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-lowand heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. I saw this onthe cooking channel and it really works. Easy Deviled Eggs Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done easy clean up.                                  Expanding Frosting  When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and calories per serving.  Reheating refrigerated bread To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.               Newspaper weeds away.  Put layers around the plants overlapping newspapers as you go. Cover with mulch and for-get about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.                                                    Broken Glass Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip t o pick up the small shards of glass you can't see easily.                         No More Mosquitoes  Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.                                         Squirrel Away!      To keep squirrels from eating your plants, sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn't hurt the plant and the squirrels won't come near it. Flexible vacuum  To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towelroll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.  Reducing Static Cling Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and ... At DA! .. Static is gone. Measuring Cups Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don't dry cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.                      Foggy Windshield? Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car When the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth!                                  Re opening envelopes  If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Viola! It unseals easily.                                        Conditioner     Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It's cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It's also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn't like when you tried it in your hair.                       Goodbye Fruit Flies  To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass, fill it 1/2" with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid; mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!                                        Get Rid of Ants     Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it 'home,' can't digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works and you don't have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!                               INFO ABOUT CLOTHES DRYERS      The heating unit went out on my dryer! The gentleman that fixes things around the house for us told us that he wanted to show us something and he went over to the dryer and pulled out the lint filter. It was clean. (I always clean the lint from the filter after every load clothes.) He told us that he wanted to show us something;   he took the filter over to the sink and ran hot water over it. The lint filter is made of a mesh material .. I'm sure you know what your dryer's lint filter looks like. Well .... the hot water just sat on top of the mesh! It didn't go through it at all! He told us that dryer sheets cause a film over that mesh that's what burns out the heating unit. You can't SEE the film, but it's there. It's what is in the dryer sheets to make your clothes soft and static free ... that nice fragrance too. You know how they can feel waxy when you take them out of the box ... well this stuff builds up on your clothes and on your lint screen. This is also what causes dryer units to potentially burn your house down with it! He said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very longtime (and to keep your electric bill lower) is to take that filter out and wash it with hot soapy water and an old toothbrush (or other brush) at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long! How about that!?! Learn something new everyday! I certainly didn't know dryer sheets would do that. So, I thought I'd share!  Note:  I went to my dryer and tested my screen by running water on it. The water ran through a little bit but mostly collected all the water in the mesh screen. I washed it with warm soapy water and a nylon brush and I had it done in 30 seconds. Then when I rinsed it .. the water ran right thru the screen! There wasn't any puddling at all! That repairman knew what he was talking about!

CLEVER IDEAS WORTH KNOWING

CLEVER IDEAS WORTH KNOWING Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store.  If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.                                                   Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil.  It will stay fresh much longer and not mold! Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating.  Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.           Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking. To really make scrambled eggs or omelets rich add a couple of  Spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and then beat them up. For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed. Melt Andes mints in double broiler and pour over warm brownies. Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.  Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste  of garlic and at the end of the recipe if your want a stronger taste of garlic. Leftover snickers bars from Halloween make a delicious dessert. Simply chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!! Serve alone or with vanilla ice cream. Yummm!

Herb de Provence

Image via Wikipedia

by Tierney O'Hara

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Herbes de Provence or "Provencal Herbs" is a mixture of common herbs that are ground together and sold or stored in a single jar. This is not a mixture that has been used for centuries but a rather new blend of herbs created in southern France in the 1970s. What herbs you ask? Well that is the tricky part of the situation. The recipes for Herbes de Provence vary and can be the cause of great discussion and even argument among professional chefs.

Thyme, oregano and marjoram seem to be included in everyone's mixture of Herbes de Provence, but some individual herbs like chervil, savory, basil, mint, bay leaves, rosemary and fennel may be included in some versions of this complex seasoning and not in others. What can cause the greatest debate is the inclusion of dried lavender in the mixture. Some chefs believe lavender is unnecessary in the mixture; others believe it isn't desirable in Herbes de Provence; while a third faction swears that without lavender, you have a collection of dried herbs but not the neoclassic seasoning called Herbes de Provence.

A recipe that appears frequently on the internet suggests using the following herbs and spices:
1 tablespoon thyme
1 tablespoon chervil
1 tablespoon rosemary
1 tablespoon summer savory
1 teaspoon lavender
1 teaspoon tarragon
1 teaspoon marjoram
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon mint
2 powdered bay leaves
Grind together and store in a cool dry place.
Easier than making your own is to purchase Herbes de Provence at your local grocery store or buy it from a specialty spice store.
This mixture is fantastic on just about any meat, fish, and vegetable or in any soup. Roast new potatoes with a healthy tablespoon of Herbes de Provence and 1/4 cup olive oil on 425 for about 35 minutes for easy gourmet tasting potatoes.
Herbes de Provence is wonderful in scrambled eggs; mixed into butter it becomes a delightful spread for toasts or crackers and is often just sprinkled on prepared food as a condiment.
It may sound unusual, but Herbes de Provence is often used in baked goods like scones, muffins, crepes or waffles. A savory scone, muffin, crepe or waffle can be paired with creamed chicken, broiled salmon, sauted vegetables and cheeses both hard and soft for example.
Dumplings seasoned with Herbes de Provence turn a plain beef stew into a French-tasting delicacy. A chicken pot pie baking in the oven with a crust sprinkled with this herb mixture fills the house with an aroma that makes one's mouth water. Even the youngest family members will comment on the wonderful kitchen smells and ask, "When are we eating?"
The most unusual use of Herbes de Provence I ever saw was in a magazine I read about ten years ago. The recipe was for a homemade ice cream cones that had no sugar in the recipe but did have two teaspoons of Herbes de Provence. Once the cones were baked and then curved around a cone-shaped mold, they were left to cool completely.
Once cooled, they were filled with chicken salad, shrimp salad, ham salad and tuna salad and wrapped in plastic for a wonderful portable lunch suitable for a walk in the park, a day at the beach or just a fun presentation for old standby lunch salads.
Herbes de Provence has such a pleasant savory flavor, it will give additional zip to just about any food you choose to use it in or on.

Related articles

• Herbs de Provence Roast Chicken (foodelf.wordpress.com)
• My Favorite Chicken Recipe (momblognetwork.com)
• Save money by creating your own spice mixes (celebrategreen.net)