I make stew pretty much the same way as this, but I usually use a cast iron pan on my stove for searing, then cook it in my crockpot instead. Try using leftover bacon grease to sear th...

EmilyW - There are two chapters of the book that are mainly about meat, one for wild meat and one for barnyard raised. However, there are plenty of other recipes that make this book worth having o...

Little-Melly, if you aren't planning on pureeing your soup, cook the potato separately, then puree it with a little broth, and add that to the soup. My mom used to do this for beef barley soup, an...

I have always liked croutons on mine. Garlic or ceasar ones are great on tomato soup. I recently made my own, and they were super easy to make. I had a loaf of home made bread that o...

Muffingirl: the only cleaning that my blender gets is hot water, a shot of dish soap, and a quick whir, then a rinse. I don't think it needs more than that. Running it with dishwater will get to...

Oh, I also forgot to mention that I keep all my plastic lids in a small shoebox on one side of my cupboard shelf.

I use old dairy (sour cream, yogurt, cottage cheese, etc) containers for tupperware. They come in 3 sizes, 250, 500, and 750 ml. They all nest together, and the lids for all 3 are interchangeable...

I used to crush crackers (saltines), and pour milk over them to make myself cereal. My dad taught me this, and I preferred it to regular cereal as kid. I also enjoy cornbread and milk, but prefer...

For my cats I always just kept their food dishes in corner of the kitchen floor, and they always looked messy and out of place. Then I bought a small floor mat and put this in a corner with their ...

My mom does awesome fabric painting on clothes, so when I got grease stains on a shirt, I just give it to her to paint. She paints over the stains, and gives the shirts back to me for gifts. The ...

If you don't have a toothpick on hand to test it, you can always use an uncooked spaghetti stick, works just the same.

I keep a babyfood jar in my utensil drawer for just this purpose. Whenever I want to thicken a sauce, I just put a couple spoons of cornstarch in the jar, add water, shake, and dump in the pot. I...

I really like adding pear-apples to a salad, particularly a spinach one, but its good with lettuce to, usually with a homeade, tangy, lemony dressing.

My favorite use for bacon fat is in biscuits. Just substitute it for half or all of the shortening and you get bacon flavored biscuits (might go well with the tip to use it in the gravy for biscui...

I agree with vhsdr, I almost always make enough for leftovers/lunches. However, with how much my boyfriend eats (and he's slim too, aaarghhh), I often make a 4-6 serving meal, and ther...

If I'm going to be eating the rice by itself I put a dab of butter on the top and the microwave it, either that or a pour a little sweet and sour or indian food sauce on it then microwave, then sti...

For non baking recipes what I usually do is look them up on the internet and read several of them to get the basic idea of them. Then I take the ideas and use the ones I like. Usually I follow on...

Now I drink plain old skim milk bought by the gallon, and go through plenty of it. I like nothing better than a glass of milk with a peice of cake or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I eat lot...

I often gather the ingredients on the counter or at least make sure I have them all, but I tend to do the prepwork of later steps while I'm waiting for the earlier steps. Chop veggies while I wait...

I remember Bob Blumer on the show Surreal Gourmet did some great fake food like this. The one I remember most was mashed potatoes that looked like a baseball, but I know there were others as well.