Product Reviews

Before I start here, let me say that none of the companies whose products I'm going to talk about gave me anything for free (but I'd be willing to accept something!)

This little gadget has been widely advertised on TV in our area.

It snaps over the top of an opened can of soda, and it's supposed to make the can spill proof and keep the "fizz" in if you don't drink the whole can.

Most of the places I'd seen it you could only by a 12 pack (and just why would I ever have 12 cans of soda open at once?!), but our new ACE Hardware store had them available individually at their recent Grand Opening.

It snaps on really easily -- I would highly recommend washing the entire top of the soda can before you snap it on as whatever you're drinking will probably come into contact with that surface as you drink out of it.

The spill proof part works pretty well, it fits tight -- in fact I had to work at it to get it off after the can was empty.

The keeping the fizz in part was about as effective as returning an opened and reclosed bottle of soda to the refridgerator. If there was a lot of fizz in the original, a lot will be retained. If you buy the cheap store brand sodas that don't have as much fizz in the first place, the result is less fizz.

I still can't see a use for a dozen of these, but having one is good since I never drink an entire 12 ounce can all at once.

So, I'd give this a B- grade.

These, on the other hand, get an A+

I saw an ad in the coupon section of our paper and when I visited our local Walmart, they had these (on an introductory sale)

A serving is 5 crackers

While I sort of expected that they would be like the standard Ritz cracker with a little sugar and cinnamon on top, they are actually quite a bit lighter, almost the consistancy of good pie crust.

They are not over sweet, and that serving size is just about right.

(Yes, these might be a logical candidate for squirting whipped cream on!)

I would definately buy these again, especially if I can get a coupon for them.

My daughter was asking about the attachment her dad uses to grind meat.

We don't buy hamburger or ground meat at the grocery -- there have been too many issues with e coli in ground meat that comes out of the big processing plants, and we just don't want to go there.

We buy chuck roast to make hamburger out of.

The DH cuts the meat into strips that are the right size to go through the grinder and then we put the hamburger into portion sized packages in the freezer.

We originally bought this attachment for our Kitchen Aid because we were going to make pasta with it, and that part of the attachment was a big disappointment -- the meat grinding part however has more than paid for this little gadget.


We had been receiving this magazine in the mail for quite a while, having signed up for it on line, and it was a free.

It arrived about every three months and was full of recipes, ideas and lots of coupons -- all for Kraft foods -- a sort of giant advertising brochure.

When our copy arrived last week, there was a bill. Evidently from now on to get this you will have to pay for them to send you their advertising.

Needless to say, I will not be paying for it.

I will miss the coupons and some of the recipes, but I refuse to pay for them to advertise to me.

Have you used any new products lately? I'd love to hear what you think!

This is the way we scrub the pans

One of our pet peeves is two fold --

1. those nylon scrubbie things you buy in the store just don't stand up to any long term tough use, and

2. there ought to be something you can do with all these net bags you get assorted produce in at the grocery


A while back we came up with an idea that actually solved both of those problems, and we're happy to provide here a step by step instruction to transform that pile of bags (you ARE saving those aren't you?!) into something useful in your kitchen.

Here then are the step by step directions.

Step #1: Sort the bags you have on hand roughly into sizes.

The longest ones (about 18 to 24 inches) are the best ones for using on the outside of your scrubbie.

If the bags have a label of some sort on them, cut it off. The batch I had this time had a couple with paper labels over the top (or bottom) end of the bag, so I just cut it off. If you get a bag that has a label over part of the side, just cut the label off and use that netting for part of the inside of the scrubbie.

Step #2:

Select one of those longer bags.

at one end, tie a simple overhand knot and pull it up tight (the nice thing about this mesh stuff is that it does clamp down on itself really well, which is useful for keeping the knot snug)

Step #3:

Once you have tied the knot and pulled it snug, turn the bag inside out so that first knot is on the inside of the bag.





Step #4:

Select one of the other pieces from your pile and loosely bunch it in your hand. (Now is when you can make use of any pieces of mesh that are not actually a tube -- like the ones that you cut labels off of.)

The idea is to seperate the mesh so it is a soft loose sort of ball instead of being all stuck together.

Step #5:

Once you have that soft little bunch, slide it down inside your tube from step #2.

Don't press too tight -- the idea is to leave some "bounce" in the little bunch of netting


Step #6:

Repeat steps #4 and #5 twice more so you'll have 3 pieces of netting inside your bag.

I try to select netting of varing size and stiffness to make each one if I have a variety on hand.

Your bag will look something like this one when you have finished putting 3 pieces inside.

If you're using little pieces or smaller chunks, you may want to put in a few more to get to a nice "poofy" size.




Step #7:

Once you have the desired number of pieces inside, gently bunch the bag together --

The idea is to make a compact bundle but not one that is hard -- that "air space" inside give the netting room to move around and do the desired "scrubbing" when you use it.

Step #8:

Once you have everything gathered together, give the bag a couple of turns to twist the top.

Then turn the open end of the bag back over the bundle giving a double layer of mesh over the outside of the whole thing.

Step #9:

Tie another simple overhand knot at the top of the bag.

Push it down snug to the bundle.



Step #10:

Trim the end of the netting close to the top (don't forget to save that piece to put inside another scrubbie!).

These little lovelies do a great job on non-stick pans without scratching and they're pretty effective on steel pans too.

I run mine through the dishwasher with a regular load of dishes at least once a week (more often if I've cleaned up a particularly nasty pan or something that had either eggs or cheese as those things seem to get inside the mess worse than other things do)

Now, aren't you glad you thought there was something you could do with those mesh bags?