How to Soften Stale Bread Baguette

 With food prices going nuts everywhere, trying to stop wasting food is one way to stretch the food budget.  But who wants to eat an entire baguette or uncut loaf all in one go?  Not me.

A couple ways to deal with this is to:

Slice the baguette or uncut loaf of fresh bread right away and freeze what you don't use today in freezer bags that can seal tight for another day.  Awesome.

But what to do right now?  You got the bread yesterday with intentions of eating it with dinner, but for whatever reason, you didn't.  So for today's dinner you have a rock hard baguette right?

Don't throw it to the birds just yet.

Step 1:  Run the kitchen faucet on a steady stream of cold water, not blasting, just steady.

Step 2:  If you have a cut end of your loaf, try NOT to get the water on the inside or you will end up with soggy bread.  Simply get the outside crust wet.

Step 3:  Set your oven to 300 degrees F.  Place the damp loaf directly onto the rack (don't use a baking tray)  The warm oven will heat the damp crust causing some steaming action inside the loaf.

Step 4:  After 5 minutes give the loaf a squeeze.  It should give a little, with a crusty outside and softer inside.  Don't go past 15 minutes or it will harden again.

Step 5:  Enjoy your warm crusty on the outside and soft on the inside bread!  

EAT and ENJOY!

Hopefully this tip helped.

You can also purchase bread savers, to get that extra mileage out of your bread and hopefully prevent it going stale to quickly.

Saving your leftovers, is one of the best ways to stretch that food budget.

Quick Cleaning Life Hacks

 As the weather gets nicer, it is nice to fling open windows and let some fresh air in, but also comes to the sunlight to shine a light on smudges and dirt.  Below are a few life hacks that I have tried that work AWESOME!

1.  Stainless Steel Appliances

As great as these look in the store showroom... they tend to show smudges, dirt and hand prints quicker than those old white ones we had.  You can use an all purpose cleaner, but they don't seem to shine that nicely.

Car Wax to the rescue!  Take a clean cloth and after getting rid of any obvious dirt, run some car wax on the stainless steel (especially the front of the refrigerator) and then let dry and buff with a clean cloth.  This brings the shine back, and resists finger prints!

2. Dishwasher for Building Blocks

I watched my one year old nephew with large building blocks at his mouth, drooling, and then we pick them up later and box them.  YUK!  Take one of those net laundry bags (people use them for smalls and delicates) put the blocks in this bag to keep track of them.  

Place in top rack of dishwasher, run through a regular cycle but take the bag out before the drying cycle.  Dump them out onto a towel to air dry and you are done with the germs!

3.  Clogged Sink Drain

Use a long zip tie.  Take a knife or scissors and carefully cut slight notches in the end of the tie (this will catch the hair etc)

Now take the zip tie and go carefully down the drain with it, since they are plastic and bendable they will go around the curves.  Holding onto the top of the zip-tie stops it from going to far in.  

Be ready, when you yank it out, there will be disgusting hair and other things attached.  Simply throw it out and your drain should be clear.

4.  Re-Use Used Dryer Sheets For Floor Dusting

Don't throw out those used dryer sheets!

Wrap them around a flat duster or mop and go over your floors.  They will still pick up dust bunnies and save on purchased dusting sheets.

5.  Sweeping Up Tiny Shards of Glass

Take your dust pan and tape it to the floor at it's edge with painters tape.  This won't harm the floor or tiles, and when you sweep the broken glass, you will get all of it, rather than having tiny pieces go under the dust pan that always end up under your feet later!!.

Hopefully the above 5 ideas will help you with your day to day cleaning.