Keep Me Out of the Kitchen

I am not the world’s greatest cook.  I’m not even a runner up!  In fact, if I were enter a cooking contest, I would be one of the first eliminated.  I haven’t decided if I can’t cook because I hate cooking or if I hate cooking, therefore I can’t cook.

Included in my aversion to the kitchen (except to bake and sneak chocolate and Pepsi of course) is the dread of doing dishes.  I refuse to allow Tony to buy a dishwasher until we get decent water.  No sense in wasting money to have one get filled with lime.  

So, what can you glean from these confessions?  I’m here to share a few time-saving tips.  If there’s one thing I am eager to learn about cooking, it’s how to make my job easier!  So here we go:

When I make spaghetti, a whole 8 oz box is usually just a little too much for our family and there isn’t usually quite enough sauce to cover that much.  But I usually go ahead and boil it all.  I then save the plain leftover pasta for an Italian pasta salad later in the week.

I also save the spaghetti jar to put my leftover spaghetti and sauce back into.  Our family is horrible about eating leftovers, so should we opt out of having spaghetti for lunch in the next couple of days, I don’t have to clean out another dish to wash.  I just toss the old spaghetti, jar and all into the trash (I don’t have a garbage disposal).

Next tip, thawing frozen hamburger to perfection!  I absolutely hate to defrost frozen hamburger only to have the corners of it partially cooked and the rest of it fry up lumpy and chunky.  I like my hamburger to brown to a fine crumble.  Tony taught me this trick, though interestingly enough, I have to remind him how to do it now.  Instead of using defrost on the microwave, set it to 50% power.  Then cook for 2 minute intervals.  It usually takes 2 times or maybe an additional minute to get that hamburger just like it came home from the meat counter.

Last but not least, a trick I did the other day and it worked great.  I hate shredding cheese but I abhor buying it already shredded as it’s usually dry.  I use my salad shooter for shredding which is a pretty quick and simple process.  But again, I hate washing all the parts to it!  So, I decided the other day to try shredding 3 packages.  I did my sharp cheddar first, then Monterey jack.  Last I did mozzarella.  They stayed nice and fresh through the week and I didn’t have to get the salad shooter out each times I needed shredded cheese.

I better stop there or I might give away the secret to my yummy chewy brownies or super moist cake (from a box!)