Food Tip #1: Always have the following on hand:

For those of you who have not seen my business cards, I have this on the back:
---------
Food Tip #1: Always have the following on hand:

one sharp knife
one plastic freezer bag
one slice of bread
one tablespoon of ketchup
2 cubes of ice
a sharp, pointy stick
---------

Here's why:

1. One Sharp Knife: Having at least one sharp non-serrated knife in your kitchen toolkit will allow you do almost everything you need to do in your home kitchen. From paring an apple to cutting a tomato... from slicing bread to slicing cheese... from cutting open a chicken to cutting open a bag of salad. Some people will tell you not to cut open the bag of salad with it, but as long as you are keeping it dry (NEVER let your knife soak in water for any reason) and sharpening it (you can pick up a great knife sharpener for a couple of bucks), feel free to cut open any MINOR packaging with it.

2. One Plastic Freezer Bag: A plastic freezer bag has so many uses in the kitchen -- marinade in it, portion out meals for the week and have fresh meals READY when you come home from work, store your measuring cups and spoons together in the cabinet so you never have to hunt them down, freeze meals for leftovers, keep the odds and ends from cooking in it and use contents to make a great broth at the end of the week... and the list goes on and on.

3. One Slice of Bread: Ever made a sauce that was way too salty? Remove your pan from heat and push everything over to one side and let the sauce drain to the other side. Take a piece of regular bread and sop up as much as the sauce as you can/want. Return the pan to heat and add a little water and/or chicken broth to rehydrate and dilute what you have left. Voila! This works in a pinch if the dish hasn't cooked for too long.

4. One tablespoon of ketchup: This is one of those secret ingredients that I use all the time. If a broth-based soup is a little lacking, add a little ketchup and it will immediately taste better. Same with salsa, same with pasta sauce. This is for American eaters only, though... one reason it works is that American palates are so used to the combination of flavors that it makes the food more "friendly" to our tongues.

5. 2 Cubes of Ice: From "shocking" vegetables to soothing the burn on your hand, ice is just plain "hand"-y. Yes, I went there...

6. One Sharp, Pointy Stick: This is one of my new discoveries. At the beginning of the summer, I got a gas grill. I prefer gas because I have the ultimate control of temperature. Of course, at the beginning of the summer, I tried shish-kabobs. I used about 10 of the wooden sticks that came in the pack of 50 and the rest have sat in my drawer for months. So, I started experimenting with them. They are great for stirring tea, flipping chicken breasts in a saute pan, securing a pork roast and handling small and medium-sized pieces of raw meat. The key here is that they are cheap and DISPOSABLE and since they are wood, they are biodegradable and can be composted. I primarily use mine to put raw meat on the grill because I touch raw meat as little as I have to in the kitchen to cut down on contamination.

Remember, if you're in the Knoxville area and want more... just email me and we can set up a time to meet.

Happy eating!