Use Your Oven to make Crispy and Delicious Bacon I had friends over for brunch the other morning and, instead of frying the bacon to go with the eggs, I baked it. I don’t think I have ever had so many postive comments on something that I served. Ahhh…bacon. It seems that almost everyone just …
Cooking Tips
Roasting Fresh tomatoes gives a great taste to any marinara sauce recipe. This is the time of the year when tomatoes are in abundance if you have a garden or visit your local farmer’s market. Don’t waste the left over tomatoes from your garden. I love sweet tomatoes straight off the vine in salads and …
This collection of cheat sheets give you a handy way to find the info you want quickly. Sometimes, I just wish there was an easy way to have all the great information that you find online handy in one place, don’t you? Cheat sheets are the way to go. These helpful graphics and charts make …
What else can I do with My Potato Masher? We all know that making mashed potatoes needs the use of a common kitchen item – the Potato masher. (affiliate link) The term “potato masher” seems to imply that this kitchen tool has only one function. In fact, a potato masher can be used for a …
These reader tested cooking tips and households hints will make sure that your time spent in the kitchen is fun and productive. I recently asked my readers on my Facebook Gardening Cook page to give me some frugal cooking tips. They did not disappoint. These are some of the ideas they came up with! Reader …
Anyone can dunk strawberries and other fruit into melted chocolate. It is easy and fast to do and makes a great looking party appetizer. But perfectly drizzled chocolate looks so much more professional. These cooking tips will make sure that your drizzled chocolate will rival those on any dessert tray. Growing strawberries is much easier than …
Most people who cook will have used the dried version of oregano, but growing oregano is easy. If you love the flavor of garden fresh taste in your recipes, be sure to try growing herbs. Oregano is a herb used in many international dishes, but is best known for use in Italian recipes. Oregano is …
Grating Soft Cheese is easy if you follow this tip Have you ever tried to grate Mozzarella or other soft cheeses and found it difficult to do? I have and the cheese seems to sort of “wobble” and this makes it hard to grate it. Well this does not have to be a problem at …
This easy diced garlic is a great cooking tip that will help with that task. It can take quite a bit of time, too, when you need to mince a lot of garlic at once. Garlic…ahhhh, who doesn’t love its flavor. If a recipe call for some of it, I usually double it. But the cloves …
Hydrogen peroxide is one of those things which people have in their bathroom, that they use primarily for healing wounds and cuts. It is a shame to save this handy bottle for just medical uses, when there are so many more uses for it around the home. And it is so inexpensive too! Hydrogen peroxide …
We spend so much time in the kitchen and not all of it is fun. And yet there are so many things that will make what might be heavy duty chores into something much easier. I thought it might be useful to share some of my favorite tips for making life in the kitchen easier. …
Pam is an easy way to cook without adding a lot of oil to a pan, but it is full of chemicals and the aerosol is not so great for the environment. The solution is simple – make your own vegetable oil sprayer. Using an oil sprayer is a great way to save calories on …
I was born in Maine, and one of my fondest memories is the collection of fiddlehead ferns each spring. Even though I have moved away, each year my family boxes up a whole bushel of them and sends them to me by priority mail here in NC. It’s always a special day when that box …
Now, I like grapefruit as much as the next person, but I only need a few each week to keep me happy. Imagine my dismay when I got home from the grocery store the other day, with what I thought was a large bag of oranges, only to discover (after I had cut open the …
Any meal is made more special with the addition of the perfect mashed potatoes. They seem to scream comfort food! Mashed potatoes are the ultimate comfort food. We all love them, don’t we? I get asked often for cooking tips, but when people taste my mashed potatoes, they always want to know my tip for …
What could be better in a grapefruit based cocktail than these grapefruit ice cubes? What do you do when you have a huge bag of grapefruit that you thought were oranges? Why juice some of them and freeze the juice to use later, suggests a fan of the Gardening Cook on Facebook – Violet Roew. …
I have always loved cats, to the point where I even purchased a set of Lenox spice jars called “Cats of Distinction.” Anyone who looks on eBay, Ruby Lane, or other sites that sell vintage items will see old kitchen items that you may have used at some point being offered for sale. Today, I …
Every now and then, it is fun to just let your hair down and enjoy a bit of gardening and cooking humor. These graphics and jokes are a way for us to lighten your day. Life should not always be too serious. The Gardening Cook agrees. So we have made a collection of some of …
This handy butter Margarine conversion chart will show you how much oil to use in the recipe instead of the butter that is called for. I keep a very well stocked pantry, but there are still times when I am out of something that I needed for a recipe, only to discover that I am …
Food carving and creative food art is something that requires a great deal of patience to end up with just the perfect result. I love seeing what creative people can do with food to make it into an art form. Food is soft and this makes it the perfect medium for carving into life-like objects. …
Many drink recipes ask for a sweet and sour mix. This home made version is perfect for those who don’t want a very sweet mix. There are lots of commercial sweet and sour mixes available for purchase in grocery stores and where liquor is sold. But most of those are too sweet for my liking. …
There are plenty of egg replacements but first you have to examine your recipe to find out what you want the egg to do. Eggs have many different uses. Sometimes they are used for binding ingredients, sometimes for making a recipe lighter and fluffier, ) and sometimes just for the taste of the egg itself. …
This easy recipe makes a super DIY stainless steel cleaner at a fraction of the price of a retail product. There is nothing quite like the look of stainless steel appliances in a kitchen. They are very popular right now and most kitchens seem to have them. But one of the problems associated with them …
Food manufacturers seem to think that all home cooks have muscles to spare! This easy DIY jar opener shows them I mean business without heading to the gym before opening their jars! The older I get, the more I start to believe that some jar lids were just not meant to be opened. Some just …
Readers of the recipes on my blog know that I love my slow cooker. Today, I have another love to tell you about – A crock pot timer. Have you ever found a great crock pot recipe for breakfast but thought “I’d have to get up in the middle of the night to get it …