Hell-Louise's Helpful Household Hints

This posting represents a major departure for Mourning Dove Hill, an excursion into a very different subject area.

1. Ever notice that, when you put spaghetti sauce from a jar onto a plate of spaghetti, you get a pool of watery liquid, almost water, on the bottom? And you blame the sauce for being watery or not thick enough. (It's probably the same story with homemade sauce; and you wonder why your sauce just is never thick enough!)

Well, here's what to do about it (rather than unjustly blame that sauce): When your spaghetti is cooked, of course you pour it from the pot into a strainer or colander to drain it. If you use one of those sort of crescent-shaped pot strainers, what I say still holds.

Well, that doesn't drain your pasta well enough. From the strainer or colander, put that pasta on a plate or platter or in a bowl—and then put it in the microwave. Heat it in the microwave for maybe 20 or 30 seconds. You'll drive off all the extra moisture and, voila! – no more watery residue at the bottom.

2. Got a banana that you want to eat but it's not quite ripe enough yet? The microwave to the rescue—again! Just microwave it for 10 seconds before peeling.

3. Twist-off jar lids hard to open? There are so many jar openers out there to help you; but I've found absolutely the best and simplest, too. It's called JarKey. It's a very simple device that pries up the edge of the lid just enough to break the vacuum (the button in the middle of the lid will audibly pop up). Then, miraculously! it's easy to open the lid with your hand. You can find the JarKey on the Internet, and it's inexpensive. (I have no connection with the maker of this device and I don't gain anything if you buy it.)

Note added later: There is evidently a pretty much identical product called JarPop sold for $4 at
The Container Store.

4. Yet another use for the microwave: I cook an ear of corn in the microwave. The recipe calls for peeling back the husks, removing the silk, and then recovering the ear with the husks. But you don't need to do that. (I do take my kitchen shears and cut off the husks and silk at the top of the ear.) Also sometimes it's recommended that you soak the ear of corn in water first. When the husks are wet, then the ear will steam—so the theory goes. Well, you can do that, or you can hold the ear under running water in the sink for a little while; but I think both of these are unnecessary. If the narrow end of the ear is not covered well by the husks, wrap a little plastic wrap around it. Then microwave for 3 minutes 20 seconds (for one ear). Trust me, this works beautifully.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein