Household Quickie – Square Muffins

Image courtesy of Kitchen Kraft.com

I found this item via my membership at eVite, the online invitation and party ideas scene. Square muffins are apparently all the rage with the party set and in-the-know home chefs. I dunno about that; will check it with my foodie friend Sarah.

In any case, eVite had some great ideas for other uses for square muffin pans.

1) individual brownies – no cutting
2) individual Thanksgiving stuffing portions – everyone gets a crunchy top
3) square muffins stand out in a crowd at potluck parties

If these sound like a good idea to you, you can order square muffin pans from Kitchen Krafts.

My favorite idea for using these square muffin pans (or any muffin tins for that matter) is to freeze unused wine. Wine cubes are a much easier way to get wine into soups, stews and stir frys than uncorking a new bottle every time you make a recipe that calls for a 1/2 cup of wine. What are you supposed to do with the rest of the bottle? Drink it every time? Cook with wine too often and before you know it you’ll have an addiction problem on your hands. Frozen wine cubes are a better idea.

Related Posts

1. Household Quickie in the Shower
2. My Dark Furniture Always Looks Dusty. Help!
3. Top 14 Items to Keep Away From Your Pets

Household Quickie – Shower Curtains

Image courtesy of I Can Has Cheezeburger

Haven’t had a Household Quickie posting for a while. Also, I’m still suffering with the writer’s block that crept through the blogging Realtors’ world a few weeks back.

So today I turned to my favorite humorous cat website (is there more than 1 of these I wonder?) for inspiration.

And whammo! It came immediately.

One of the best household care tips I ever got was this: when your plastic shower curtain liner gets icky with mold, scum and other unmentionables, pop it into the clothes washer with some towels. Add bleach if the towels are white and the liner is clear or white plastic.

It just that simple. Out of the washer comes a load of clean towels, ready for the dryer, and a shiny clean, like-new shower curtain liner.

Now I’ll admit that shower curtain liners are a mere $5.99 at Target online, but with all the recent talk of economic crisis, belt-tightening, sacrifice and so forth….   Saving $5.99 is better than buying a new liner and tossing the old (mildewy) one into the trash. They aren’t biodegradable, ya know?

Besides $5.99 buys a really big Starbucks’ coffee. Or a really small sandwich for lunch on the go, once the real estate market picks up again.

Household Quickie in the Shower!

Now that I’ve got your attention with the headline, welcome to my blog! My Household Quickie series is actually a group of tips for household cleaning. Admittedly cleaning house is much less exciting than first thought my headline probably provoked, but I hope the series is helpful nevertheless.

Did you know that baking soda and vinegar are great for almost every household cleaning task? There’s environmentally friendly, safe for use around kids and pets, and much cheaper than chemical household cleaners to boot!

If your plastic shower curtain and/or shower curtain liner gets slimy with mildew you can clean it with baking soda and vinegar.

Put the shower curtain in the clothes washer with your usual amount of detergent, a couple of big bath towels and 1 cup of baking soda. Use the highest level of water and add 3-4 cups of vinegar to the rinse cycle. The shower curtain will be sparkly clean when done. (Don’t run it through the dryer though.)

You can see more uses for the humble vinegar and baking soda combination at the Heloise website, where I got this idea.

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Household Quickie – Dust

Courtesy of the Queen of Clean, Linda Cobb, here are some natural & effective ways to deal with Arizona’s persistent dust/dirt.

To clean today’s trendy dark dark wood furniture, use a damp cloth (use plain tap water and wring the cloth out until it’s just damp) to wash it. Then immediately buff the furniture dry with a lint-free cloth such as chamois or bar towels.

Don’t use retail furniture polish on your wood furniture – it usually contains silicone which is actually drying. Here in the deserty dry of metro Phoenix, our furniture suffers from dry air enough with us helping it along with silicone. Instead, use a mixture of:
**About 1 cup mineral oil
**About 2 teaspoons lemon extract
Mix these together and store in a well-labeled glass jar.

Used fabric softener sheets work exceptionally well for cleaning glass.

Household Quickie – Pantry Storage

From Heloise.com:

Hang a plastic shoe organizer on the inside of your pantry door. You can store boxes of aluminum foil, plastic wrap, self-sealing plastic bags, plus larger containers of spices, powdered mixes, etc. This will free up some valuable space in the cabinets.

Household Quickie – Teflon Pans

Did you know that microscopic levels of the teflon coating on your cooking pans can leach into your food at extremely high heat?  You won’t see it, but who wants to risk eating teflon? Who knows what they put in that stuff and it’s a sure bet that God didn’t design our guts for digesting Dupont chemicals.

The solution? Don’t use anything higher than Medium High heat when cooking with teflon coated pots and pans. If you must use High heat, use a non-coated pan and some good old fashioned oil or butter.

Household Quickie – Keep Pets Away From These Items

Did you know the following common foods are harmful for your pet?

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1.  Avocados
2. Chocolate
3. Coffee
4. Onions & onion powder
5. Garlic
6. Grapes (choking hazard)
7. Raisins
8. Macadamia nuts
9. Alocholic beverages of any kind
10. Salt
11. Fatty foods
12. Gum, candies, or other treats sweetened with xylitol
13. Tea leaves
14. Raw yeast dough (including store-bought raw pizza dough)

Household Quickie – Dishwasher Tips

Got stinky sponges in the kitchen sink? Use a wooden clothespin to clip the sponge to a top dishwasher rack. Run ‘er through a cycle and extend the life of that sink sponge.

Plastic coating on the dishwasher racks going a little thin? Coat them with a light layer of silicone caulk to extend their life and avoid rusting through.

Household Quickie – Garbage Disposal Smelly?

Garbage disposals get smelly from time to time. Whenever yours does, dump a tray of ice cubes and some chopped up lemon rinds down there. Turn on the water and run the disposal for a minute. The ice will help flush the smelly food bits down the drain, and the lemon rinds will deodorize the unit.

Household Quickie – Unclog Showerhead

Best way to unclog a clogged showerhead is to soak it in vinegar. You can do this without removing the showerhead. Use a heavyduty gallon sized zip top bag. Heat enough vinegar to fill the bag, then tie it around the showerhead. Leave it there for 8 hours or overnight. Voila!

Taken from the Yankee Magazine‘s book Make It Last.

Household Quickie – Dryer Sheets

Another quickie for household maintainers. Re-use your used dryer sheets to quickly mop up pet hair off hard floor surfaces. Works for hairy husbands who shed a lot too. ;-D

Household Quickie

No, this is not what most of you think of when I say the word “quickie.”   This is a quick household tip, and I hope a recurring series of entries into the future.

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Did you ever notice that your hands smell for hours (or even days!) after chopping onions and garlic, or handling smelly foods like fish or kimchi? Here’s a household quickie that gets those odors off your fingers. To remove food odors from your hands after handling smelly foods like onions, garlic or fish, simply rub your hands around the stainless steel neck of your kitchen sink faucet. Voila! Odors gone. (I suppose this would work on the trendy new stainless steel appliances, too, but since I don’t have ‘em I don’t know.)

I don’t know why it works, but it does. Try it. Really. It’s one of those things I expect that Saint Peter will explain when I die and arrive at the Pearly Gates. I’m also expecting him to explain where I lost my skate key in 3rd grade, and where all my missing sunglasses went to. Actually, I expect old Peter will hand me a cardboard box full of the stuff I’ve lost here on Earth (including the mate to all those single socks that emerge from the clothes dryer), but that’s a whole other entry, now isn’t it?

Eat smelly foods!