Easily save the rest of the can when your recipe only uses a bit of tomato paste

You know how every recipe ever that uses tomato paste only calls for 2 tablespoons? Maybe 4 if you're lucky? And those pesky cans come in the 6 ounce variety...which is 12 tablespoons, by the way. Not terribly handy. My personal favorite is the pizza sauce one that calls for 8 ounces. Grr.

So here's the easy way to keep the paste on hand, pre-measured and ready to use:

just freeze it. But don't just chuck the can in there like Martha says, that means you will have to try and saw a frozen lump apart, or even worse, try to pry a frozen lump out of a frozen can.

Take your handy dandy tablespoon measuring spoon, and make some glops on wax paper. 2 tablespoons is one ounce of paste, so make sure you have room in your freezer to lay a decent sized sheet out for a good minute. Ok, an hour, but who's counting? I, being very organized, forgot, and did the packaging part a day later. Or two. Close enough. Once they're frozen through (or once you remember that you're doing stuff and get back to it) pry them off the wax paper (it's easy don't worry) and either pack them two by two with a foodsaver, or wrap in wax paper and put them all in a ziploc. (Wrapping is essential if you aren't vacuum sealing as they'll stick together far too easily).

Label, pop them in the freezer, and use one or more as needed. They thaw in just moments since the paste has a very low water content and they never get that hard frozen state going.

Smashing Chicken

I had a moment of perfect clarity the other night: I'm a dork. AKA, "this is so freaking obvious, how did I not figure it out WAY before now??"

So, you know how chicken is all germy in a general sort of way, and we've all (hopefully) gotten the message about don't rinse chicken before cooking it because it splashes micro drops of that bacteria EVERYFREAKINGWHERE. Right? Right. But what about when you need to smash it so it is an even thickness? If you pay close attention, even if you've patted it dry with a paper towel, there's still droplets going everywhere when you bust out ye olde meat tenderizer, aka, Momma's big ole stress reducing hammer.

Allow me to just drop this here...

Yep. Just smash it while the bag is sealed. 

Took me years to figure that one out. Durr de durr dur durrr.... 

How did I never learn about powdered buttermilk before now??

Powdered Buttermilk for baking

Seriously. I love baking, but hate trying to keep buttermilk on hand, both because of the wastefulness of only using a half to one cup before it spoils, and because i never think about needing it when I go grocery shopping. And then, I find out about this wonderful stuff, just by happening to read along the random links in a recipe about easy breads. Amazon is out of the 3 pack (who really needs 3 cans anyhow?) but some quality grocery stores (NOT Wally World, at least not around here) stock it and other brands of the same regularly. I need to track some down!
 *** update: wally world started stocking this recently, over by the powdered milk, for about $5 a can!***

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for some odd internety reason, I can't log in and comment on our own blog! but here's some alternatives I've found, and also, they make a heavy cream powder, too!
Powder heavy Cream Substitute

1 lbs. bag of powdered buttermilk

Bob's Red Mill brand powdered buttermilk

Seeing as Bob's Red Mill is in on the action, I may be able to find it at Natural Grocers locally, or there's always an excuse to run down to Ft. Collins (Which is oddly like the Yellow Springs of Ohio)


OOH! OOH! OOH! Barry Farm Foods on Amazon has all these, and lots of other baking goodies (whole powdered eggs, anyone? Black Lentils? Arrowroot? Powdered egg whites? You know, ALL the stuff you can't easily find at wally world)