Cooking & Kitchen Tips: Another Hodge Podge

There are so many great cooking and kitchen tips out there it's really hard to decide what to post about each week! This week, i've decided to feature a bunch of great ideas shared by the forum members of our friends at FamilyCorner.com.

• When you chop onion for a recipe, use half the onion and chop the rest and freeze it for another day. The frozen onion is fine if you intend to cook with it~ it just has a little more moisture than usual at the start. Throw in the pan frozen.
  


• To keep cucumbers fresh longer, wrap them in plain old newspaper.
  


• The pointed end of a beer can opener is the perfect tool for deveining shrimp.
  


• Easy homemade slushies: Pour prepared kool-aid into a clean milk jug and put lid on tight. Put in freezer. Every 30 to 45 minutes, give it a shake. 
  


• Cutting Pineapple: Cut off top, now the sides and bottom. Now slice crossways (not length ways). Use an apple corer and put it right in the middle of the pinapple slice over the core and push. You have nice little triangles of pineapple without the core
  


• Sometimes I use a toothpick to dip round candies such as truffles and peanut butter balls into melted chocolate. Other times I use a meat fork that has the tines curved up a little.
  


• When freezing casseroles that contain pasta, don't cook the pasta completely before assembling the casserole. It will finish cooking when you heat the casserole later.
  


• If you run out of sour cream for tacos, add some cream cheese to the taco meat.
  


• Break each egg individually into a separate container. If you happen to have a bad egg, you've only lost one - not the whole dish.