REALLY COOL, HELPFUL KITCHEN HINTS

One of my Red Hat sisters sent me a bunch of wonderful kitchen hints and I thought I'd share them with you. Some I've already tried and a few I've yet to try but will soon. These would be good to print up and laminate for young brides and/or college bound kids.

1. Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.
2. Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!
3. 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.
4. Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.
5. 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.
6. ESPECIALLY GOOD -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.
7. 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.
8. 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!
9. ReHeat leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove: set heat to med-low, add a bit of Olive Oil (1/2 to 1 tsp) and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. This is also a wonderful way to prepare foccacia breads.
10. Easy Deviled Eggs Put the cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal and mash till they are all broken up. Add the rest of your recipe's ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip off the bag and using like a pastry bag, squeeze mixture into egg white halves. Just throw bag away when done... easy clean up.
11. 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.

Peace all...and I'm outta' here.