Cooking Tips and Tricks

• Be energy wise. When cooking, choose the method or appliance that uses less energy. Don't put a casserole, stew, beans or chili in the oven to simmer all day, use your crockpot. Don't heat up soup on the stove, use the microwave. Your pressure cooker is your energy friend, use it whenever possible.
• Baking, cooking, canning and dehydrating add heat to your home. In the winter open your kitchen door and let kitchen activities warm your entire house. But in the summer, move whatever you can outdoors - put a toaster oven, crockpot, and dehydrator on the porch. Use your grill or a campfire as much as possible. If you must cook indoors, put the kitchen fan on high and close all the doors to keep the rest of the house cool.
• Plan ahead. Dried beans are cheaper than canned. Set them to soak the night before you need them as an ingredient in a meal. Set your dough to rise early in the day when you need bread or rolls for dinner.  Start your crockpot after breakfast and it will be ready by dinnertime.
• Use the wrappers on butter and margarine  to grease pans.
• Tough cut of steak? Marinate it in cola for a few hours before grilling.
• Add flat coke and a package of onion soup mix to chuck steak and cook in a crock pot for a tender and delicious pot roast.
• Get a good deal on chicken pieces or steaks? Place one serving in a baggie, add marinate, close, and freeze. Use salad dressings, lime and garlic, orange juice, bbq sauce, etc. The meat will marinate as it freezes and as it defrosts.
• Keep large baggies in your freezer - one for vegetable scraps, one for overripe fruit. When full, use the veggie scraps for soup and turn the fruit into jam.
•  Scrub your potatoes well before peeling, season to taste (I like to mix paprika, garlic, salt and pepper) and bake until crispy. Top with cheese and sour cream.
• Buy olive oil in large containers for the best price. Fill a wine bottle that has pourer and stopper with oil and keep it on your kitchen counter to have handy when you are cooking.
• Make double batches and freeze one for later.
• Don't make a meal with ingredients that will last a while - like spaghetti and jarred sauce - when you have perishable food that will spoil if you don't use it. First use up or preserve ingredients that can go bad.
• Ground coffee and loose tea, tea bags, and individual servings like k-cups can be re-used to make a second cup now, or put the grounds (in the filter) into your refrigerator and use later. Don't save for more than 24 hours.
• You will use less cream and sugar in flavored coffees and teas.
• Add barley or rice to stews, pot pies, etc to add protein and fiber and make it more filling.
• Assemble lasagna with uncooked noodles, adding a half cup of water to your sauce. Let sit in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, bake, covered, until 10 minutes before done. Then uncover and finish baking. The noodles will soften overnight then cook in the liquid while baking.
• Save the juice from canned fruit and add to tea. 
• When you make ice tea or lemonade, fill an ice cube tray with the beverage. Then use those ice cubes when serving and you won't water down your drink.
• Throughout November and December, make one batch of freezer cookies per week. Keep rolled dough in the freezer until a week before Christmas, then bake them all up. Wrap up in pretty packages and gift friends and family. 
• Excess fruit? Dice and freeze. Then use for pies, add to muffins, use for ice cream or sherbet or smoothies, make chicken curry.
• When baking, always put a couple of russet potatoes on the rack to bake too. Many uses for baked potatoes.
• I keep a couple of boiled potatoes and eggs in my fridge. If I don't use them during the week I make potato salad on Saturday.
• Buy a big roasting chicken. Put in a pot with celery, onion, garlic and carrot and simmer for 40 minutes. Remove the chicken and place in oven at 350F to bake. Remove the vegetables and reduce the broth down to chicken stock. Your roast chicken will be extra moist and you'll have chicken stock for soup with the leftover meat. 
• Fresh eggs are harder to peel. When making eggsalad, deviled eggs, etc, use the oldest in your fridge.
• To make hard boiled eggs easier to peel, plunge into ice water after cooking and let sit for 5 to 10 minutes.
• Put leftovers or make ahead meals in muffin tins and freeze for single serving sizes.
• Don't heat up your oven to reheat that leftover slice of pizza. Heat a cast iron skillet, put the slice in, and cover. 2 minutes later come back to a crisp crust and melted cheese.