Friday, January 22, 2010

Friday Free-For-All :: Kitchen for Dummies

Second edition of the Friday Free-For-All. This one should be dubbed the Kitchen for Dummies list. And away it goes.

1) Cream of Tartar is a powder. It is also a vital ingredient for Play-dough (if you ever need to make your own). Inquiring minds like myself had to to know exactly what this stuff is and does. So, like any true research analyst would do, I wikipedia'd it. Also known as potassium hydrogen tartrate, CoT is a byproduct of winemaking. Hmm. I was quite fascinated with my new found knowledge. You really should look it up the next time you are feeling a little bit inquisitive and have an extra six minutes to kill.

2) I use one of those nifty little microwave splatter guard toppers to keep my food from, well, splattering of course. It works great and I hardly ever have to wipe down my nuker anymore. However, I recently learned that you shouldn't pop a bag of popcorn on top of it. Turns out the two will melt together. Oops.

3) Canned pumpkin is not found in the canned vegetable aisle. After searching two different grocery stores, I learned that it is shelved with the pie fillings. So there you go. And just in case you are ever told that you can substitute a can of pumpkin for the egg and oil needed to make a chocolate cake from a box, you absolutely can. The texture is almost identical. However, it will have a slight pumpkin taste which can easily be masked with a topping of ice cream. But that kind of defeats the purpose. Right?

4) Diapers can double duty as a pick-up for large liquid spills in the kitchen - especially for those spills that are so far from the sink or trashcan that while running with a gianormous pile of dripping wet paper towels you would leave a greater mess of sticky polka dots all over the floor that, if missed during clean-up, will eventually morph into what I like to call "floor velcro."


5) Spring mounted cafe rods can be used to make your own pantry platter organizer. Simply place two rods on the vertical between shelves. I added a rubber drawer liner to keep my platters from slipping. See photo below. You can thank Martha for this one.


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