crochetmania.myfastforum.org :: "Not so bad ideas": nice list I found on the web

Serena · MANIA MOD

Peel a banana from the bottom and you won't have to pick the little "stringy things" off of it. That's how the primates do it.

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. Simple 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 ap ples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!! Serve alone or with vanilla ice cream. Yum

1. Reheat Pizza
Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. Re-heating 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.

5. Newspaper weeds away
Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers, put layers around the plants overlapping as you go cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.

6. Broken Glass
Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards of glass you can't see easily.

7. No More Mosquitoes
Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.

8. 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.

9. Flexible vacuum
To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.

10. 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 -- ta da! -- static is gone.

11. 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.

12. 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!

13. Reopening envelope
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. Voila! It unseals easily.

14. 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...

15. 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!

16. 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 & you don't have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!

17. 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, 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 catch fire & potentially burn your house down with it! He said the best
way to keep your dryer working for a very long time (& to keep your electric bill lower) is to take that filter out & wash it with hot soapy water & 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!

Kahud48 · BOARD OWNER

This is a great list of ideas, thanks for posting them

I see one thing I do dif, and it works very good.
Pizza... I take moist paper towels and lay loosely over top of the
pizza then micro-wave and that also will keep the crust from getting chewy. Micro-waves are rough on bread but just a moist paper towel works great!

Oh yea, on the cheese, I just pop mine down in a Glad bowl and seel the lid...does the trick. Hubby is not fond of aluminum touching his food.

LOL, I see one more...eggs.
I use to work in a resterant and what I did was add a pat of margarine and a tad of milk, (then some shredded cheese with onions and sweet bell peppers if they wanted the last three here) and they would scramble up soo fluffy

And on number 5, I found it works better with placing the moistened paper towels over top of all the bread or biscuits

LOL, I could do up my own list huh?

Mom w/a Motif

I wonder if you could sprinkle cayenne pepper around the base of the bird feeder to keep squirrels away, or if it would keep the birds away too... My step-mom has a big squirrel problem. She even put up a corn feeder just for the squirrels, but they don't appreciate it. They still eat the bird seed. I don't know if the cayenne pepper would hurt the birds, though.

I am going to try the cornmeal thing w/ ants. We have had an ant problem here lately. It's starting to get cooler out, so they come in the house?

It doesn''t ever rain here, so I don't have to worry about that!

Those are all interesting things, the brownie/mint thing sounds yummy. :)

Tina

Kahud48 · BOARD OWNER

Hey Tina,
I found this on squirrels when we set up our feeders here (we have a bunch of them here) and it seems to work pretty good. Just put theirs over near the birds but not right at them. Mine are a few feet away and they love it! They never go to my bird feeders, but they do share the ground droppings under my bird feeders with the doves.

The squirrels here love the oiled sunflowers seeds.
*******************************************

YOU CAN JOIN 'EM
We prefer to join 'em. Research has shown that squirrels are very territorial.
When fed continuously away from your bird feeders, they will mark the area
as their own and protect it from other squirrels entering the area.
A good motto to keep in mind is: A WELL FED SQUIRREL IS A HAPPY SQUIRREL!!

Their favorite foods are
whole raw peanuts,
sunflower seed or
whole or cracked corn.. And in that order!

Don't expect them to eat that corn if you have some plump peanuts or sunflowers lying around!
Throw these favorite foods into a hanging platform feeder (platform feeders give them plenty of room to sit!)
or a specialized squirrel feeder.
We would also recommend a great booklet called Enjoying Squirrels More (Or Less)!

Serena · MANIA MOD

KH, I'd be very interested in your list, if you'd care to write one.

I use aluminum foil on the tray in the toaster oven and to cover what I use as a drip tray in the gas oven. Means I never have to clean the oven.

I put cat hair, sent to me by a couple of very nice crocheters, around the base of my plants to keep the squirrels out of them.

Also put moth balls underneath the house to deter critters.

I'm going to try the safety pin for reducing static cling, and the vinegar-&-soap for fruit flies.

Kahud48 · BOARD OWNER

Well, right off hand there is one thing I do that I just thought of.

You know that space above your frig where it can get rather dusty?
What I do is I put a big thick towel across the top og mine (it covers all
of the top of my frig) and I just take it down once a month, pick in wash and dry, then put it right back.
It keeps my frig top clean

Serena · MANIA MOD

KH, that's a good one. It is hard to reach the back.

Hooray for household tips!

Kahud48 · BOARD OWNER

LOL, Yep!

Only us lady's know the little tricks
that make house keeping chores more fun