Quick Refrigerator Cleaning Tips

You’ve decided to clean the refrigerator; you’ve put it off long enough!  Since you have the time and the patience; let’s give you some quick refrigerator cleaning tips to hurry along the process.

* Take everything out of the refrigerator.
* Throw away outdated cans, jars and plastic bottles.
* Take out the vegetable bins; wash and dry.
* Use a sponge or wet cloth to clean the shelving and the inside of the door. You may want to use baking soda as the cleaning agent.
* Put back whatever items you have left.
* Put the bins back, and sprinkle a bit of baking soda in each.
* Place an opened box of baking soda towards the back top shelf.
* Clean the entire refrigerator; top sides and doors and Voila!

You’re done!  That was easy enough, right?  Well that’s because you have been cleaning it religiously every month.  Alas, there are some refrigerators which have not been so lucky, and cleaning will require more time.

To keep your refrigerator clean so that a simple once-over is required, here are some additional tips to follow.

* Use tin foil under your milk cartons to prevent leaking.
* Use food containers to store your leftovers.
* Change the box of baking soda every three months.
* Keep the temperature at the manufacturer’s recommendation.
* Try not to accumulate more than two items. Check certain items before buying them.  Oftentimes, we buy too much of one item, and it just stays in the refrigerator for months on end.
* Keep your vegetables in zip lock bags to maintain their freshness.
* Defrost your freezer at least once a month. Don’t forget to place a box of baking soda in there as well.

By following these simple tips, your next cleaning will be easier and faster.

Jazzing Up Leftovers

by Christine Steendahl

Most refrigerators are packed with leftovers. While a lot of us hate to let food go to waste, the only alternative is to reuse food we didn’t finish a few days ago and prepare dinner out of leftovers. While leftovers were once a tasty meal, sadly, to many family members they are no longer appealing. Fear not, with just a few tricks, you can create tasty meals once again simply by utilizing leftovers. Following are some hints.

Mix Your Leftover Meat Dishes with Fresh Pasta
One way to recreate a great meal from your leftovers is to blend it with fresh ingredients. In this example, pasta works good with many different beef and chicken dishes. Use thin spaghetti, wide noodles, wagon wheels, spirals, you name it with your meat leftovers. Add gravy, ketchup, tomato sauce or even chili to to turn an ordinary dish into an extraordinary dish.

Vegetable Dishes with Rice- Twice as Nice
If you have leftover vegetable dishes that you would like to reuse, one of the greatest ways to do so is to prepare it with rice. Whether you choose white or brown rice, you can prepare an awesome vegetable dish and make it into an entirely new meal. Usually with vegetables, you have little opportunity to reuse them as leftover before they become mushy. Try to keep them crisp and fresh.

Create Soups with Leftovers
If you are stuck with a few meals in your refrigerator and you don’t know exactly what to do with them, you can always toss them into a pot and prepare delicious soup. Whether it is chicken, turkey, hamburger meat or beef, making flavorful soup out of leftovers makes sense and also is quite great.

Preparing soups using leftover is extremely painless. You can pretty much add in any sliced meat and chopped vegetable into some broth or cream to create a great tasting soup. Even old bread can be useful.

Use Leftover Fruit for Fruit Smoothies
Generally, many houses will have a couple leftover apples, oranges or bananas in their refrigerator. While the odd piece of fruit is not necessarily a leftover, practically all fruit can be utilized to prepare delicious fruit smoothies. Fruit smoothies are easily prepared with some milk, yogurt, fruit and a blender. Not only are they healthy, but perfect for a treat or even breakfast. Fruit smoothies are ideal for leftover fruit or even slightly over ripen fruit. Mixed with many other ingredients, they still taste good and won’t go unused.

The next time you search deep into your refrigerator and see all the meals from the past week, don’t panic, use them to prepare new meals, soups and even savory desserts.

Author Resource – For delicious family friendly dinner recipes visit www.dinewithoutwhine.com

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