Dealing with Garlic

Ever thrown away a bulb of garlic because it's gone mouldy before you could use it all? Ever struggled to pick the papery skin off each clove? This trick quickly solves both those problems and you don't ever need to find you have run out of garlic again. I buy garlic in huge quantities from the market, about a dozen bulbs at a time. Quickly break the bulbs into individual cloves by snapping the stalk and just roughly pulling the cloves apart with your hands. Leave the paper on. You don't have to, but it's just quicker and easier that way. Pop the cloves in a bag and put them away in your freezer.

When you want a clove or two of garlic, just get it out from the freezer. Clip off the root end and the paper will just come away easily. The cloves defrost really fast for crushing, or can be chopped whilst still frozen. It tastes and performs just as well as fresh.

When Life Gives You Lemons

When life gives you lemons and you don't fancy making lemonade, you can chop them into quarters and freeze them, or freeze in slices for straight into drinks [mixed ice and lemon in one],

or food process into mush and freeze in ice cube trays, the peel adds a really good zing to dishes [buy un-waxed] and apparently they are healthier like that too.

Or put them in a jar quartered and top up with vinegar. Leave for six weeks and you have your own pickled lemons. So delicious to cook with and so much nicer and cheaper than the posh shop variety.

Freeze the Cheese

I don't know if you know you can freeze cheese. I found out later in life that it was a do-able thing, maybe I was just a late starter on the freezing things spectrum.
I had a block of mature cheddar in the fridge, just kind of sitting there getting sweaty in its packet and approaching its 4th March expiry date. I'm counting calories, so to be honest, it wasn't seeing a lot of use- just too high cal for casual consumption. So instead of freezing it, I cut it into weighed out 100g pieces, individually wrapped in clingfilm and then put in the freezer. Now I know how many calories are in each piece when I defrost it for use, and it's a good size to work with, for a meal for two. It reminded me I have many hacks which involve freezing things...watch this space.

Water bottle on the go

When you are out for a walk, and you don't need to take a backpack, and it's a hot day and you need to take a bottle of water. On occasions like that, you might find you have to carry the water bottle all day, which can be really annoying, and you can leave your special BPA free bottle behind somewhere. I think we've all been there at one time or another.
You can get these carabiner clips for as little as 50p, and they are great for clipping your water bottle to your belt, for hands free walking and clambering.

Tangled Necklaces No More

So I got really fed up with keeping my necklaces in boxes where they would get tangled up, and also I could never find the one I wanted. I would end up not bothering to wear one just because it was too much hassle. So, with just some gold glittery gift ribbon, some green bauble hooks, but paperclips would work fine too, and some spare space around shelf brackets that wasn't doing anything- I came up with this system.

At a glance I can easily see which necklace I want to wear. They don't get tangled, and are easy to pic up and then put away again later. Also I think they make a bare bit of wall look kind of pretty. Here's a close up of the clips and ribbon.

Cable Tidy

It kept cropping up in our day to day lives; life hacks, recycling, re-using, re-purposing; but it didn't fit in with my Diary of a Writer blog, nor my Travels with Moggie journey diary. So I created a new blog where I will put these things, these ideas, as they crop up.
Firstly, the plastic ring pulls off cartons of milk. In looking for a photo of them on the carton [you can't always tell whether they will have one or just twist and rip a hole in the film seal, and I didn't want to open milk unnecessarily], I discovered lots of pictures of people having made them into pretty junk jewellery, rings and bracelets.

But my hubby uses just the ring part as a cable tidy for phone chargers, mini headphones and suchlike. Keeps things neat.