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How to Organize Your Kitchen

Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis

Want to know how to organize your kitchen pantry?  It is not really hard to do. There are basically two things you must consider when organizing your kitchen pantry. One, make sure you can easily see what is in the pantry. Two, make sure you have it stocked with the right ingredients. Read on for some very simple ways about how to organize your kitchen pantry.

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Recipe Substitutions

Published recipes often call for ingredients you may want to avoid. I found these suggestion for healthy substitutions in our paper:

Substitute wine, balsamic vinegar or fruit juice for oil based marinades.

Substitute mustard or low-sodium soy sauce for soy sauce.

Substitute herbs, vinegar or lemon juice for table salt. I also use sea salt instead of regular salt.

Substitute garlic or onion powder for garlic or onion salt.

Substitute two egg whites for one egg.

Substitute fat-free milk-based soups, potato flakes, pureed potato or carrot for cream of mushroom or other creamed soups.

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Shelf Life Home Baking

If you bake or cook often you probably don’t need to concern yourself with the shelf life of ingredients. Once and awhile though you find items that have been sitting in your pantry for a long time. Here are some tips from a group of experts including the U.S. Department of Agriculture on storing ingredients and determining shelf life.

Butter - Stored in its original container in a freezer-safe sealable plastic bag, butter will keep for as long as four months. For optimum flavor use within two weeks. Store butter in coldest part of the fridge. Keeping the sticks in the original container or sealed bag keeps butter from absorbing food odors.

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Peanut Butter Scare

According to the FDA, more than 500 people in the United States have contracted salmonella from products with peanut butter. “The key here, said Dr. Anish Masharani with Texas Children’s Pediatrics Associates, is ‘products’. Packaged food with peanut butter added to it should be avoided for now. The only other thing that’s been found to have issues is the big, institutional size jars of peanut butter. So maybe don’t order it in a restaurant or cafeteria for now.”

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The Quick Homemade Spaghetti Solution

If you had half an hour, and suddenly found out you needed to feed 15 guests, what would you do? Of course, you’d make spaghetti, but you’d want to make it taste good too, right? I got this from an old cookbook, and have used it for years. Everybody thinks I cooked for hours. Plus, you can use really simple things that are easy to store, just in case your kid brings home five friends, or your family all shows up in time for dinner!

Have To Have:

How To Select The Healthiest Tortilla

Whenever I go to the store I can never figure out which brand of tortilla I should buy. I recently read an article in the food section of our local paper which solved the mystery for me. Apparently, not all flour tortillas are the same. Depending on the size a flour tortilla can be as little as 100 calories with 1 gram of fat or as much as 400 calories and 12 grams of fat.

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Leftover Spaghetti Makes A Great Spaghetti Pie

Here is great recipe for using up leftover spaghetti. As a matter of fact it is so wonderful that I don’t even wait to have leftover spaghetti. I found this recipe in a quick and easy cookbook but it is actually credited to famed cookbook author Molly Katzen. It is such an easy recipe your kids can help too. They can mix the spaghetti with the sauce in a big bowl. It is a vegatarian recipe but you can add meat or chicken if you desire.

Prep time 15 minutes Cooking time 30 minutes

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Want to make the cheapest, easiest, least fattening microwave popcorn ever? I found this recipe in our local newspaper and have been making it for years. Put a half a cup of popcorn in a brown paper lunch bag (the oversized lunchbag works best but a regular size one will do) and close the top of the bag. Fold it over twice. Stick it in the microwave on it’s side and cook it on high for three minutes more or less depending on your oven. When you no longer hear the popping sound the popcorn is done. Empty the popcorn into a bowl. Spray with butter flavor cooking spray and sprinkle with salt. My favorite way to eat the popcorn is to sprinkle it with soy sauce.

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How To Make Your Own Pizza The Easy Way

You want something fast and easy for dinner. Almost everyone loves pizza. You can make your own quicker than the pizza delivery person can get to your house. Here is a recipe from Sarah Fritschner’s Vegatarain Express Lane Cookbook. The cookbook is out of print but well worth obtaining a copy from online sources or used book stores. The recipes are easy and fast. I use the pizza recipe once a week. She also gives you a recipe for a pizza crust mix which make up to 10 pizzas which are 12 inches in diameter. Each 3 and 3/4 cup of mix makes two 12 inch pizzas. When I had third grade brownies,(girl scouts) they made this pizza themselves with only a little assistance from me. It’s so easy a third grader can do it.

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No Bake Cookies Recipe

I’m not a super mom but sometimes I have supermom moments. I had one last Sunday. I was in the kitchen when I decided that before I emptied the dishwasher, I should check my email. Why check email? Mostly because I didn’t want to empty the dishwasher. As I glanced through the email I saw one that said I should bring 2 dozen cookies to the Sunday school picnic. “Please have cookies in the kitchen by 9:30 am” I read. I looked at the clock. Uh oh, 8:15. And I still had to empty the dishwashers, get the kids up and make breakfast. For about five minutes I ran around the kitchen trying to figure out if I had the ingredients for one bowl brownies - the quickest thing I knew how to make. In my frantic running around, I flung the door to the pantry open and peered in hoping for some inspiration. I swear I heard an angels chorus when I spotted a bag of chow mein noodles. That’s it I thought - Canine Crunchies.

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