Here’s a hot tip. One of these days, when you’re in the mood, make your favorite soup recipe in your slow cooker.

I know—who wants to eat soup in the summer? No one. But eating it isn’t the tip. The tip (which comes to us courtesy of Jill, owner and creator of www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com) is this: For perfectly portioned soups, pour your favorite homemade soup into paper cups and place them in the freezer. Once the soup is frozen, peel away the paper cup. Now you’ll have “canned” soup at the ready anytime!

And here’s another hot tip, one we call “Microwave Magic.” You know how reheating leftovers in the microwave can often result in unevenly heated food? Some spots will be too hot to eat, while others are stone cold?

This annoyance has an easy fix—a much easier way to get your food to heat more evenly. Just arrange your leftovers into a “donut” shape on your plate, and then microwave as usual. Problem solved!

But wait, here’s yet another hot tip: Were you aware that when you have a LOT of garlic cloves to peel, you can make it so much easier by placing the unpeeled cloves in a container of water overnight.

After a night of soaking, you’ll be able to push the skins right off the cloves with little to no effort. Even soaking garlic cloves in water for a few minutes will make them easier to peel, though overnight will yield the best results.

Finally, here’s a hot tip that just may cause you to put me in your will: chill your plastic wrap! Crazy, huh? But haven’t we all had enough rage-inducing plastic wrap encounters to make us open to even a crazy idea for fixing this infuriating issue?

So here’s the deal: plastic wrap is much easier to deal with when it’s cold. When it’s room temperature, it’s sticky and staticky and impossible to handle. So keeping it in the fridge is a smart alternative.

Now I know this tip is dependent on your available fridge space. My fridge is very small—I hardly have room for our food, so this idea won’t work for me. But for those of you with that big, beautiful French door version, you just may have space to act on this idea.

You see, chilling plastic wrap makes it a little more rigid and less prone to folding over on itself. People that have tried this swear by it. It’s a simple storage swap that saves time and frustration!

Pretty good tips, right? So good you just might want to pass them on!

    Alice Osborne
    Weekly Newsletter Contributor since 2006
    Email the author! alice@dvo.com