An Easy Way to Deal With Scorched or Burned Pots and Pans

Before you soak or scrub, try this trick first!

I've scorched a lot of pots and pans, lately. While remodeling our kitchen, I've been cooking meals using a single burner hotplate. This little burner has been invaluable, as far as being able to boil, simmer, saute, and warm up food, but the temperature is tough to regulate. 

Pans can scorch or burn even on the best of appliances, and this can happen quickly. You get distracted and turn away from the stove to do something else, turn up the heat too high, or simply forget to stir. Suddenly, whatever you have been heating in a pan scorches and burn.

Hopefully, you can salvage whatever you were cooking, but the pan will be a mess. However, before you reach for caustic cleansers and tough scrubbing pads or leave it overnight to soak, give this trick I've learned a try. I'm not sure if it will work in every case, but so far it's worked for me.

How a Mistaken Identity Led to an Unexpectedly Delicious Oatmeal Recipe

Most of us know it is a wise practice to label food items before storing them in the freezer. Sometimes, though, we get lazy or just assume that we will recognize them. Or at least I do. 😊 

Food without a label can acquire a mistaken identity. This can have unexpected consequences, as proven by the oatmeal I made for breakfast.

My recent oatmeal "oops" 

To improve my diet and also just because I enjoy the taste, a while back I started eating oatmeal almost every morning for my breakfast. Not the prepackaged sugary kind. I get out a pot, place it on the stove and add some 5-minute oats (or more recently some steel-cut oats) with water, a pinch of salt, and some fruit. I cook these until they are nice and creamy, then scoop them into a bowl. A dollop of Greek yogurt and a sprinkling of nuts, and I see no need for any sugar. 

I recently read that while quick-cooking or 5-minute oats are better than the sugared individual-packet kind, steel-cut oats are even more nutritious. They take a little longer to cook, but the benefits (and the texture) are well worth it. 

I flavor oatmeal without sugar in all sorts of ways. Sometimes I add a little peanut butter and/or jam. It is really yummy with the addition of some fruit. Most often I just add part of a banana or some sort of berry. Fresh or frozen fruit cooks up equally well. 

This week, though, I accidentally added something quite unique ...

How to Survive a Badly Injured Fingernail

It might be a little dramatic to suggest how to survive a ripped fingernail, but anyone who has ever suffered the throbbing discomfort of a nail cut or torn past the quick may not think so. This fairly minor injury can cause a lot of pain!

Accidents happen.

In January, I was reminded that improper use of a sharp knife can be dangerous. I've learned all sorts of things from the online Master Class classes I have been taking, including the importance of heeding the teacher's warnings. Despite being cautioned against using a well-sharpened chef knife on a hard vegetable until completely proficient with the knife skill technique being taught, I did it anyway. 

Note: This blog post contains affiliate links. If you click on one and then make a purchase, I may receive a form of compensation. I only recommend products I believe in.

Oops. I did not cut off a finger (as it had been suggested could happen) when the big knife slipped. I did, however, slice right through the middle of the nail on my pinkie finger. Ouch.

Fortunately, the damage to the flesh under the nail was not deep. But it hurt - a lot. I was terrified I would completely rip off the top half of my nail before it grew out. My solution for a

The Learn Something New Every Day project: January 2018

My Learn Something New Every Day of 2018 project went well during its first month. As I explained in my last post, my goal is to recognize and record one thing I've learned at the end of each day. I'm sharing my lessons here, with the hope that you'll find some of them interesting or helpful too. 

Some days the information gleaned was useful and on others quite trivial, but for each day of January, I recorded a tidbit of knowledge I didn't have during the previous 24 hours. 

Note: This blog post contains affiliate links. If you click on one and then make a purchase, I may receive a form of compensation. I only recommend products I believe in.

Perhaps the lesson that amazed me most and was reinforced to me repeatedly this month, is how very quickly puppies grow up! 

Ours has already tripled in weight and grown exponentially since we adopted her.

My List of January Lessons: 

For more in-depth information about some of these topics, more details can be found in my previous post about Week 1 of this project and in future posts (soon to be published on this blog). 

January

Week 1.

•  1. Puppy toys can come unstuffed.
•  2. How to unclog a vacuum. 
•  3. It’s a small world. Well, sort of. 
•  4. Use vinegar to poach an egg.
•  5. The best place to do a puzzle. 
•  6. The aloe vera plant is useful for more than just first aid for burns.
•  7. An interesting political idea.

Week 2.

•  8. It's easy to make excellent artisan bread with a lovely crunchy crust.

I will be posting full details on how to bake bread like this soon, in an upcoming post.

This is the bread recipe I have always wanted!

•  9. Puppies grow quickly. 

The photos above already prove this point, but I can't resist sharing two more. We think she's cute.

I've lost track of how many times we've been told, "Wow, she's going to be a big dog!"





• 10. There's an easy way to get a dog to take a pill without spitting it out.

• 11. I found a few new ways to use the "Notes" feature on my iPhone and MacBook efficiently.

Learn Something New Every Day of 2018: Week 1

One of my goals for 2018 is to learn at least one new thing every day. 

Learning something new every day is not difficult. Being aware that we are doing so is sometimes the real challenge.

The things we learn on a daily basis range from significant to trivial, intellectual to emotional, mind-blowing to diminutive. Some days we learn things we already knew but forgot. Sometimes we learn things we never wanted to know or things we have always desired to grasp. 

Learning something intellectual, mastering a new skill, finding out something new about a friend, or understanding the world or myself a little better are just a few of the ways in which I expect I will meet this goal. I hope to recognize and record at least one thing I've learned every day in 2018. 

Some things I learn may be worthy of being shared. 

Sometimes I may learn things that readers of this blog may also find interesting, entertaining, or informative. When I do, I will try to share them here. This could even become a regular series of blog posts - but the probability of that remains to be seen!

Here are some things I learned last week:

Saturday Suggestion: A Simple First-Aid Trick for Cooks

It is quite common for someone who cooks a lot to occasionally burn or cut themselves. One simple first-aid trick helped me remain productive when I injured myself.

I am not always as careful as I should be with the sharp tools in my kitchen, and yesterday while cleaning the blade of my food processor I somehow sliced my pinkie finger. The cut wasn't really deep, but bled enough that it required a snug bandage to staunch the flow.

I was in the midst of preparing several recipes, and a band-aid on my finger was quite an inconvenience. From past experience, I knew it was likely the band-aid would slip off whenever my hands got wet. I also worried that if I began to bleed again, I could contaminate the food that I was cooking. That was something I really did not want to happen. With my nursing background, I am