Posted on 03/24/2017 7:48:03 AM PDT by Jamestown1630
We’ve had requests for a thread on ‘kitchen problems’, so I thought we’d do it this week.
* I cleaned out my refrigerator a few days ago, and was reminded of something I used to do and must start to do again. No matter how careful you are, there are always drips and leaks, or mess from a forgotten, rotten vegetable, staining up your refrigerator – especially the little shelves on the door. A good idea is to cut craft paper – or a brown paper bag – to fit those spaces, and then just change the paper out a few times per year, when you do a complete cleaning of the fridge. The few minutes of work this takes will save you a lot more time later.
* I keep the cans that vegetables, tomato sauce, etc. come in – I rip off the labels, run them through the dishwasher, and use them to deal with the leftover fats and juices from cooking that I don’t want to put through the drain/garbage disposal (the dregs from a beef roast have seemed in my experience to be especially bad for the disposal system). I freeze these, and then they go easily into the trash the morning of trash pickup. If your neighborhood recycles, and you don’t want to dispose of the cans along with garbage, you can just pop the frozen stuff out.
* Sponges in the kitchen are great collectors of bacteria, but you can kill it by routinely microwaving your sponges in a MW-safe bowl or dish, for a couple of minutes. Make sure they contain no metal, and are WET when you do this; and be careful when you take them out, because they’ll be very hot.
* We never seem to have enough space in our freezer, and I’ve started taking prepared frozen foods out of the big boxes that they come in – the boxes take up much more space than the contents, and the contents are usually wrapped anyway. Cut out the part of the box that has the instructions and save it someplace convenient – you’ll only have to do this once for each item. If you have a vacuum packer (a great investment, by the way) use it to re-pack items that you will store long-term; otherwise, things can just be put into a plastic ‘baggie’ for protection.
* If you make a lot of soups, and your own stocks, another great space-saver is Helen Witty’s Chicken Extract – a way of reducing stock to where you can freeze a tablespoon in each section of an ice-cube tray, and then pop the cubes into a bag or container. Generally, you will reconstitute one of these cubes per cup of water, to make stock. You will appreciate the added space in the deep freeze, and the convenience of having the cubes of stock on hand. Here are the directions for this – it’s long and drawn-out process, but depending on your frequency of use, you only have to do it a couple or three times per year:
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1990-04-19/features/9001030683_1_chicken-broth-pot
* Save all the little plastic ‘twisty-ties’ from bread and other items, and keep them in the ‘everything-drawer’; you’ll always find a use for them.
* Invest in something like a Swiffer Wet Mop, or some other very easy to grab-and-use floor cleaning implement, and run it quickly over your kitchen floor EVERY NIGHT! This will save you a lot of work when you go to do your general kitchen cleaning (especially if you have a very ‘Exuberant’ cook in your family – like my hubby ;-)
* Finally: when you are cooking, clean everything *as you use it* - that way you don’t wind up with a depressing sinkful of stuff that has to be dealt with all at once, when you’re done. Cooking is much more pleasurable then.
-JT
People are talking about brown sugar keepers. A clean piece or two of broken clay flower pot ought to do the job. I did see a lot more pretty ones at amazon.
I’m confused - do you put the vinegar-towel in a container with the cheese, or just near it in the fridge?
Thanks, you’ve both given me great info as it’s a u-shaped kitchen so there is no option to do a different countertop near the sink. The sink gets heavy use by kids who won’t always be careful about wiping up splashes.
Hmm...I’ll have to do some searching. Thanks!
I watched the video, looks nice. We considered concrete as we have a concrete expert, my husband’s brother, in the family. He does everything from buildings to stamped concrete patios and kitchen counters. The guy is amazing and very talented. Ultimately decided that concrete is just too porous and high maintenance.
Just google vinegar towel cheese and choose the method that would work for you. I'll read some ideas again to be sure I'm doing it the best way. It's worked so far but certain types of cheese are more susceptible to mold than others. I cut off mold if it isn't too bad. Some is so gross it goes in the trash.
Thanks; I will try it. I, too, just cut off minor mold.
There are lots of dishes that have hard-to-clean places, from the hole in the paddle of the bread machine, to the inside of a narrow-mouthed sports bottle, to those hard plastic reusable drinking straws.
The solution? Test tube brushes! https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_n_1?fst=as%3Aoff&rh=n%3A317975011%2Ck%3Atest+tube+brush&keywords=test+tube+brush&ie=UTF8&qid=1490414507&rnid=2941120011
Get a big one and a skinny one, and you’ll be able to reach just about anywhere. I use the bigger one for bottles, including glass liquor bottles (which I reuse to store my own concoctions in), and the skinny one for straws and other tiny places. They work really well. And since the handles are made of wire, you can bend them into whatever shape you need.
Very good idea! I was thinking of this tonight, as we have decorative wine bottles that we keep oil and vinegar in, and they need to be cleaned now and then. I have a set of slender brushes, but those look much more useful.
Maybe the parts of the counter near the sink could be covered with some of those tiles mentioned up the thread.
That’s from Martha Stewart! Before she went to jail! LOL
“Hints From Heloise” was at my kid’s dentist. She just didn’t have magazines but informative books. Loved going there!
My conclusion as well. The guy that put my granite tops in, cut everything by hand with a Makita grinder with a diamond blade and the seams are practically invisible. Drew a line and cut by hand no straight edge no guide, I was amazed.
We keep the co-jack (orange & white), pepper jack & Monterey on hand. Tillamook is pretty good, but I just read recently that they now get their milk (or actually produce their product) somewhere else. Too bad for the locals, as Tillamook is always hurting for jobs.
The only two woods that I am aware of that are waterproof are Cyprus and Teak. However, both are quite 'pricey', and may well be outside of your expense range.
I assume you want to see the wood grain in the kitchen; I would suggest several applications of a urethane finish (transparent)
but I don't know how long it would last with scratches or miscelanious dents and dings.
What about bamboo? Or maybe I’m recalling that it’s very durable for floors...
Um, ashamed to say, but I had it in a Debbie Meyer green container & it had changed life form ; )
Y'all probably know about this, but anyway: one part hot vinegar and one part blue Dawn dish detergent painted onto the surface to be cleaned (I did the shower stall and glass doors with it--left it on for 24 hours--a friend did her fridge with it). Rinse and squeegee--surfaces look like new. I've used it on fiberglass, plastic and glass. You can apply it with a spray bottle but I don't like to aerosolize stuff I don't want to inhale. It develops a gel-like consistency.
How does it do on mold and mildew?
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