A home runs on food; it really does. Make sure that you get the best food for the best prices with the following grocery store tips. Know Where to Look Shelf placement is important to grocery stores. If you want to find the latest or the most popular products, look at the shelves at eye level. For less popular speciality items and items that cost the least, check out the top most shelves. Finally, bottom shelves are usually devoted to bulk items and items in larger packaging. Try Before You Buy You never have to get stuck with sour oranges … Continue reading →

Oh, the trepidation. It’s renovation week. It has finally arrived. This is the second time that we’ve renovated using contractors. The first time was when I was very, very pregnant. This time, we’re not doing much DIY simply because we don’t have the time, and delightfully, we do have the money. This is a blessing, in that we don’t need to actually do the work. This fills me with trepidation, since we’re at the whim of someone else’s abilities and schedule. Already, our final kitchen installation has been rescheduled. Everything’s going out this Friday, and it’s not coming back until … Continue reading →

Are you a coffee drinker? Starbucks sells in the area of 4 billion cups of coffee a year. Starbucks serves roughly 30 million customers a week and around 4 million customers each day. That’s a lot of coffee. It’s Pumpkin Spice Latte season at Starbucks. I don’t really like pumpkin pie, but I love those warm cups of spicy pumpkin goodness. Eggnog season is coming and eggnog lattes are better than Pumpkin Spice Lattes. Several years ago a barista encouraged me to put chai in my eggnog latte. I didn’t know that something as wonderful as eggnog latte would be … Continue reading →

It is no good stocking up for food for an emergency if most of it goes bad before you can use it. A good idea is to rotate your stockpile of course. Use some of your saved food in your regular meals and replace those items with fresh ones that you newly purchase. Still, making sure that you pick staple items that have a long shelf life will help you be better prepared for an emergency, since you know that there is a good chance that your emergency food supply will be edible and nutritious, two things that can be … Continue reading →

A little bit of care will help keep all of your glassware looking like new, whether you have crystal stemware or everyday drinking glasses. A little TLC will go a long way to keep your glasses scratch free. Should You Put Glassware in the Dishwasher? Hand washing glassware is always best, but yes, you can glasses in the dishwasher. If you want to keep them at their best, you should use the delicate wash cycle, space the glasses out so they don’t accidentally clink together, and skip the high heat drying cycle. Instead, air dry the glasses. Hand Washing Glassware … Continue reading →

When I got married I cooked dinner for my husband almost every night. I subscribed to several different cooking magazines and couldn’t wait to try each recipe in every one of them. I bought cookbooks and drooled over the pictures and wanted to cook, cook, cook. I am the youngest of four with five nephews and four nieces. Whenever my family would gather together for holidays and events, I would bake a beautiful and delicious cake. I loved baking cakes for the family and the compliments my cakes would receive. Our first house was ideal for cooking and baking. The … Continue reading →

I love upcycling. I love a good repurposed sweater, one made out of old sweaters. I love finding great finds off Craigslist and using them for novel purposes in my home. And yes, I love upcycling in the kitchen too. Yuck, you say? Not really. Clever cooks have been upcycling for years. When you save that last bit of rice in the pot or the three leftover apple slices from snack and put them in a pudding the next day, you’re upcycling. Having a limited student budget made me a good upcycler. After that, it was the child that did … Continue reading →

Do you ever go to your pantry to get an ingredient out and you’ve got to start the big hunt to find it. What a waste of time that is. This is where it shows the advantage of an ordered pantry. It makes sense and saves a lot of time to have things that are related together. For example the top shelf of our pantry contains foods that I can’t eat because I am allergic to wheat, gluten and honey. That way Mick can reach his cereals and spreads etc easily since he is taller than me. A shelf which … Continue reading →

There is a really nice person who lives at my house. Sometimes when I come home, she has dinner waiting for me. Granted, it is a little cold, but I can warm it up. And yes, usually I need to make a salad to go with it. But isn’t it nice of her to make me dinner? Ok, I confess. It’s me. I love my freezer pantry. When I come home to a meal waiting in the fridge for me to warm up, it does feel like someone came into my house and left me something to cheer me up … Continue reading →

Is there a way to make dinnertime fun? This is the question that races through the mind of every homemaker at least once in a while. I can’t say that I’m an expert, but I do have some ideas that might be of use. 1. Try new recipes, and let your family judge them on a scale of one to ten. This encourages even picky eaters to at least try the dish, because they can’t cast a vote until they have tasted it. Every dish that scores over an average of eight goes in your recipe binder, and everything that … Continue reading →