Instructions: Right after you make soup, let it sit for about five minutes so all the fat particles rise to the top. Put a paper towel right on top of the soup and all the fat will rise into the paper towel. Then throw it away. Its so very simple. You might have to use a couple of paper towels.

Simone ONeill and Vita Williams

Pour 1 quart of boiling water over four bouillon cubes. Stir well and store in the refrigerator. Keep this ready to use instead of shortening for cooking and browning meat, vegetables or chicken. Or have a cup of bouillon for a low-calorie snack, hot or cold. Fix vegetables in the microwave and add bouillon instead of water. Its a quick, low-calorie fix for everyday cooking.

Clela Wanamaker

Use your Salad Shooter for grating cheese! This saves time as well as knuckle skin.

Shannon Rojas

When I buy fresh strawberries, I store them in a large glass jar with a paper towel over the top. Then I put the lid on and store it upside down in the fridge. They stay fresh really a long time. The trick is not to wash the strawberries.

Crystal Emmott

When peeling or dicing onions, I put a small piece of onion on my tongue, in my mouth, and my eyes never water. I dont know why this works but it does!

Valerie Sutherland

If you hate to chop onions but dont mind slicing them, or if you have leftover sliced onions from that hamburger cookout, put those onions in double Ziploc bags. Freeze them, take them from the freezer, and hit that bag of frozen onion slices with a meat mallet or rolling pin. Youll have nice chopped onions, no tears, no mess.

Mary Jane McHenry

Spray a pan with PAM or non-stick cooking spray before cooking items that will boil over in water, such as pasta. This prevents them from boiling over.

Sky Hartigan

I read a long time ago in Heloise or somewhere that to keep bacon from curling up, dip the strips in cold water before you start frying so theyll stay flat. It really works.

Have your automatic drip coffeemaker do double duty in the summertime as an iced-tea maker. Add the same amount of tea bags to the coffee basket that you would use making tea any other way, fill the reservoir with cold water, and run it through the cycle. When its finished you have perfectly brewed tea concentrate to make iced tea.

Darlene Reid

When cooking pasta, throw in some chopped vegetables the last couple of minutes. Broccoli, carrots, cauliflower all work really well. That way the pasta and vegetables are done at the same time. Toss them with a little bit of garlic, olive oil, some Parmesan cheese, and you have the fastest pasta primavera in the world.

Linda Dooling

Reggie says: I have left this in because it can easily be converted to a wonderfully quick and elegant lowfat dessert. I would use lowfat vanilla ice cream and nonfat chocolate ice cream or sorbet. You might even have other preferences.

You can take any kind of a mold, spray it with PAM, and fill the base and the edges all the way to the top with vanilla ice cream. Then fill the center with chocolate or sherbet, or whatever you want. Put it in the freezer with a piece of waxed paper over the top. Also, put a cold dish in the freezer. When you unmold the ice cream with warm water and invert it on that cold dish, it wont run all over. Then take a can of Reddi-Wip and go over all the sides and edges. Or use Smuckers chocolate coating and dribble it all over the sides. This looks very fancy, takes less than 10 minutes, and people love it for dessert.

When you make Jell-O and a few days later it looks watery, put it in a microwave just long enough to melt. Then put it back in the fridge and itll firm up again, even if you have fruit in it.

Kay Bergeron

The simplest way to have a clean cutting board is to buy a pack of the very cheapest paper plates and use one as a cutting board, then throw it away. Theres no chance of contamination.

Elaine Nielson

Try adding 3/4 teaspoon rum flavoring to banana pie filing.

Henrietta Haeal

If you dont have bread crumbs or saltines, crush up croutons for salads to use that to top any dish that might need what youre out of.

Anne Kerkhoven

To make a fat-free chocolate cake, use white cake mix and add 1/2-cup cocoa and substitute for the oil either fat-free vanilla yogurt or plain yogurt or applesauce. Instead of whole eggs, substitute 2 egg whites for every egg.

Brenda Gowey

When I cook albongidas soup and the fat comes up, I get ice cubes and let them float. All the fat gets on the ice cubes, and then I scoop them out, and that leaves a clear broth.

Mary Ellen Robles

The Vegetable peeler works both ways. It cuts the skin off on both the upstroke and the downstroke. For years, Id use it just one way.

Christina Smithbaker

When you burn something in the pan, add some baking soda to it, add water, let it sit. The burn residue will come right off.

Cindy Jaramillo

If you stack your Teflon skillets instead of nestng them, they wont scratch. Put the smallest one on the bottom and stack the larger onces on top of that.

Linda McHugh

If you are making a meatloaf, to absorb grease on the bottom, I take stale bread or heels of bread and make a full layer of harder bread on the botom of the 9-X-5-inch loaf pan. That will abtsorb all the grease during baking time. Then lift (the meatloaf) out with a spatula and just slice the bread off the bottom.

Yetta Seidon

When I cut onions, I use a small fan to direct fumes away from my face. If you dont have a fan, cut onions on your stove and have the exhaust fan on. I havent cried over onions in a long time.

Helen Brown

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