First Aid Supplies:

To help you with your holiday cooking here are some helpful hints from How to Repair Food by Marina & John Bear.

First Aid Supplies:

Instant vanilla pudding: A dessert's salvation. You can pad out skimpy pie fillings by using the pudding as a base layer, with the fruit on top. You can use it as a sauce over insufficient quantities of fruit or cake.

Evaporated milk: Next shopping list, add a 12-ounce can. How many times have you run out of milk. Use evaporated milk anywhere you'd use whole milk by adding an equal amount of water (a 12-ounce can makes 3 cups of milk). There are low-fat versions, too.

Mashed potato flakes: Mashed potato flakes are are a fast and nutritious thickener for soups and stews. Just add them by the handful until you've got the consistency you want.
Other Food Related Hints:

Stale baking powder can ruin whatever your'e making. But old powder isn't necessarily stale. Here is a simple test for baking powder stalemess: Put 1 teaspoonful in a cup of hot water. If it bubbles a lont, it's good. If it doesn't, throw it out.

Fudge won't fudge: Beating a heavy, syrupy glop that just won't firm up is most certainly not cooked enough. Scrape it back into the saucepan, add a teaspoon or two of water, and keep cooking, stirring constantly.

Not quite enough egg whites: Before beating, add 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar for each cup of egg whites. They will beat up fluffier, thus having greater volume.

Oranges: Bland - Vanilla is delightfully compatible with with orange flavor. Add a tiny bit of vanilla extract to your indifferently flavored oranges, or to indifferently flavored orange juice as well. Difficult to peel - Pour boiling water over the oranges and let them stand for 5 minutes. The peels will come off very easily, and so will all the whilte stuff under the peel. The peel is permanently looseded by this nechnique, so you can do it in advance and still refrigarage the oranges. This process also bends to make the oranges considerably juicier.

Popcorn won't pop: The usual reason is that it is too dry. Soak the kernels in water for 5 minutes, drain them, and try again. If this doesn't work, an almost certain remedy is to freeze the kernels for 24 hours or more and pop them while they are still frozen. Some people store their popcorn in the freezer for this reason.