Household tips and tricks! - Are you having trouble getting the wine stains out of your carpet? Do you clean your cookware with something extraordinary? Come share!

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Generic Name #37 said:
Anyone have tips for getting into cooking? I want to like to cook but for whatever reason when I try to cook with my parents I get overwhelmed and really anxious.
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There was an old food network show “How to boil water” that was fantastic for this.
 
Bees said:
There was an old food network show “How to boil water” that was fantastic for this.
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They made it into a book, too. I bought it for a friend moving out on their own and it was really useful, it gives a lot of information in an easy to understand format.


Nat's What I Reckon on youtube is another good one. He started making videos during the pandemic for cooking from scratch instead of using jars, packets, or pre-made meals. All his videos are about how easy it is, doing whatever you like, and also saying cunt and fuck a lot.
 
A digression in another thread reminded me to post this here.
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"Hair tie removers" are like scaled-up seam rippers made for removing tightly-wound tiny elastics from the ends of tiny braids, usually on tiny black girls.

They're great for cutting the hair that's wound around the beater bar/brush roll/moving vacuum cleaner part, especially if it has a small groove in it.

sub-tip: if you already have a designated vacuum de-hairing knife or pair of scissors, label them clearly so nobody uses it without knowing those are the floor-hair scissors. Tape "flag" on one of the rings is good.
 
This thread's more active than the kitchen tools thread but let me know if I should go to that one instead.

I need a new set of kitchen/chef knives. Something reasonably priced that also looks nice, all the ones I've seen in big box stores look ugly and cheap. Does anyone have any recommendations?

I haven't checked the asian markets here yet but I wonder if that's worth a look also, my rice cooker died and I need a new one anyway.
 
Rap Scallion said:
I need a new set of kitchen/chef knives. Something reasonably priced that also looks nice, all the ones I've seen in big box stores look ugly and cheap. Does anyone have any recommendations?
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I don't like sets. One peeler one chef's knife is all I need.
Sure a bread knife is not bad to have, but that's like three knoives overall...quality ones are sold single anyhow.
For chef's knives, you either go fiskars, zwilling or... yeah, no, that's it.

Don't go for weird Japanese knives - they're just retarded to wield.
In this one case, the japs just do it wrong.
Their "technique" for the santoku is just a case of "too stupid to use a knife".
And japanese knive's form follows that idea of a technique.

The best. And all you ever need. Good steel, you can sharpen it on a roller and it retains the edge.
I think $50 is the cut off price point for good cutlery.

Edit:

A set!​

Sets are too expensive for my taste, since you rarely need the weird knives they always seem to throw in...
Tho, it is an ok price to ask, imho.

I have the peeler and the chef one form that series.
 
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Major said:
What sort of stuff do you store, cooked/prepared or just fresh? I use ceramic baking dishes + tin foil. I want to get some glass ones but they're expensive.
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I use a combo - fresh stuff I wrap or cover in home made beeswax wraps (non meat items) I save tins like biscuit tins. I have a million jars of various sizes. DO NOT FREEZE in jars with shoulders - blue straight up and down jars and leave room for expansion. If I make soup I freeze in silicon soup saver cubes then onto silicon bags. For stuff like pasta I have massive glass jars with the rubber seal and the metal clip, kilner do them and so do many cheaper places. Flour is in massive stoneware jars.
Shig O'nella said:
Citric acid.
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Citric acid can be bought off Amazon and is FAB for all the descaling. You can also buy cheap pumice stones and use a combo of that and the citric acid to clean heavy lime scale - we have hard water and it builds up on toilets and shower heads etc. pumice it,
isalaide said:
Delia will never fail you
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Seconding this . Delia has never failed me.
 
DickMain said:
Would this work for a cheapo keurig using lemon juice? Or is that not quite strong enough? I have some of it lying around and a hard water problem at home. I took the thing apart a couple weeks ago but couldn't figure out how to disconnect any of the tubing to maintenance it.
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I don't think lemon juice is strong enough. You need the granulated citric acid. Esp. if your water is hard.
 
DickMain said:
I wound up using wine vinegar of all things which helped somewhat.
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Yeah, since I am no chemist, I'm always afraid to use anything but vinegar - but you should use the 25% highly concentrated variety for getting rid of build up, I often mix it with 2/3rds 50/50 water and when boiling, it clears even old iron pans out. With wine vinegar, I never really got what I wanted results wise, i think that's usually ~7%ish. I also use it at it's 25% ratio, undiluted - But if you even dilute the wine vinegar, it's not doing much at all in my experience. I do use soda (sodium carbonate) for getting rid of tea residues in stainless thermos with great, actually astounding results also when cleaning glassware for marmalade and such things. But I think it erodes aluminum and other metals. Citric acid I never really used much, tbh - it works too, tho. It stitting on my shelves. But afaik it's not as aggressive towards aluminum and other parts, since, unlike soda and water, it's not an "alkalische lösung" (not sure what high schools in the u.s. call that, google is fren.) I would try with stronger vinegar first.
 
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Dang dirty Pidgeons! said:
Yeah, since I am no chemist, I'm always afraid to use anything but vinegar - but you should use the 25% highly concentrated variety for getting rid of build up, I mix it with 2/3rds water and when boiling, it clears even old iron pans out. With wine vinegar, I never really got what I wanted results wise, i think that's usually ~7%ish. I do use soda (sodium carbonate) for getting rid of tea residues in stainless thermos with great, actually astounding results also when cleaning glassware for marmalade and such things. But I think it erodes aluminum. Citric acid I never really used much, tbh - it works too, tho. It stitting on my shelves. But afaik it's not as aggressive towards aluminum and other parts, since, unlike soda and water, it's not an "alkalische lösung" (not sure what high schools in the u.s. call that, google is fren.) I would try with stornger vinegar first.
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I'll definitely need to, it just happened to be what I had lying around in that moment was all.
 
Rap Scallion said:
I need a new set of kitchen/chef knives. Something reasonably priced that also looks nice, all the ones I've seen in big box stores look ugly and cheap. Does anyone have any recommendations?
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If you're still looking for knife recommendations and don't mind a separate knife, I swear by our Victorinox Fibrox 8" chef's knife. Grip is nice on the hand, easy to sharpen, and a cinch to wash. It's light without feeling flimsy. We don't put it in our knife block, but I suspect it would fit in one if you have one already... we just got a separate plastic cover, which works great if you want to keep it in a drawer (or take it with you when you visit family so you can use a good sharp knife when cooking...). We use it nearly every single day.

Wusthof steak knives and bread knife are amazing, also. Probably overpriced, but I don't regret getting them to replace the ones we got in a Target knife set when we were young and retarded.
 
Victorinox Fibrox knives are excellent and very affordable.

Pro tip: if you don't give a shit about your knives matching and just want quality that works for you? Goodwill.

I've got thousands of dollars worth of knives that I spent less than $50 on in total. Most are Wusthof, with a couple of comfy feeling Sabatier and Chicago Cutlery ones. And a nice Mercer offset bread knife.

If you know the names to look for (Wusthof, Mercer, Sabatier, Zwilling/Henckels, etc.) you can often luck out and find a knife that retails for hundreds for a couple of bucks. And you can feel the weight and balance of it, which you can't do when you buy online.
 
I love Chicago Cutlery. I don't know if they still are good but man, I have one I got at a yard sale 25 years ago and it's still my favorite knife.
 
Dang dirty Pidgeons! said:
Yeah, since I am no chemist, I'm always afraid to use anything but vinegar - but you should use the 25% highly concentrated variety for getting rid of build up, I often mix it with 2/3rds 50/50 water and when boiling, it clears even old iron pans out. With wine vinegar, I never really got what I wanted results wise, i think that's usually ~7%ish. I also use it at it's 25% ratio, undiluted - But if you even dilute the wine vinegar, it's not doing much at all in my experience. I do use soda (sodium carbonate) for getting rid of tea residues in stainless thermos with great, actually astounding results also when cleaning glassware for marmalade and such things. But I think it erodes aluminum and other metals. Citric acid I never really used much, tbh - it works too, tho. It stitting on my shelves. But afaik it's not as aggressive towards aluminum and other parts, since, unlike soda and water, it's not an "alkalische lösung" (not sure what high schools in the u.s. call that, google is fren.) I would try with stronger vinegar first.
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Pro (loser) tip: do not use vinegar on shiny nickel finishes. Or at least do not leave it on for long on an attempt to remove buildup. :-(

a hapless toad said:
Victorinox Fibrox knives are excellent and very affordable.

Pro tip: if you don't give a shit about your knives matching and just want quality that works for you? Goodwill.

I've got thousands of dollars worth of knives that I spent less than $50 on in total. Most are Wusthof, with a couple of comfy feeling Sabatier and Chicago Cutlery ones. And a nice Mercer offset bread knife.

If you know the names to look for (Wusthof, Mercer, Sabatier, Zwilling/Henckels, etc.) you can often luck out and find a knife that retails for hundreds for a couple of bucks. And you can feel the weight and balance of it, which you can't do when you buy online.
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I bought a shorter Mercer chef's knife (new) a few years ago, after a lot of research. Outstanding. Affordable and excellent quality. It was the Mercer Culinary M21078 Genesis 8-Inch Short Bolster Chef's Knife. I have two other chef's knives - one is Zwilling and the other KitchenAid - and Mercer ties with the Zwilling in terms of performance. Comfort is maybe slightly less, but I'm not spending hours at a time using it, so no concerns there.

Q:
for kitchen utensils? I snapped my big slotted (perforated) spoon in half (I think it was oxo, nylon/plastic) and need a new one. Maybe also a new ladle. Don't want metal. I started looking around and ran into "don't use black plastic." All of my utensils are black (or white) plastic (or wood; scrapers are silicone, whisk is wire...but mostly plastic) so I'm probably already poisoned but I suppose I may start replacing more things. A deep red would match the mixer, so that's OK. I love cream, but as with white would be concerned about staining esp with all the tomato-based pots of things I make. So Idfk, but open to recs for brands, materials, etc.
 
Friend of Dorothy Parker said:
Don't want metal. I started looking around and ran into "don't use black plastic." All of my utensils are black (or white) plastic (or wood; scrapers are silicone, whisk is wire...but mostly plastic) so I'm probably already poisoned but I suppose I may start replacing more things.
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Huh, yeah, I also become paranoid about using too much plastic, escpescially when it's clear that your scrape it while using, so I have stainless utensils now set me back ~60 dollars/euros. I also went back to just wooden spoons and spatulas for baking and frying. Basically I use stainless in stainless pots when it doesn't go metal on metal to much, like stirring soup or mashing potatoes and for handling dough or when I fry things that stick, I use wood now. Also bought myself stainless bowls and threw out the old, scratched tupperware. It's kinda insane, if you think about it how everybody basically used their hand-mixer in tupperware bowls, while obviously ingesting fine ground plastic for decades.
 
I am tackling a mold issue on the walls of a family friend's apartment bathroom and wondering if anybody has tips. The bathroom has no windows and very minimal airflow with one shitty ceiling vent and the apartment is a borderline slumlord situation, so although the drywall should probably be torn out and a better fan installed it isn't going to happen. The family friend is severely physically disabled and finding another apartment isn't currently an option either. Should also note that because of the local climate mold is an ongoing issue for everybody although not usually to this extent.

So far I put on a N95 mask + gloves and sprayed down the walls with diluted bleach spray, let sit for a while and then scrubbed the best I could with a swiffer (only thing I had at the time) because the mold is too high up for me to reach even with a step stool. This cleaned up some of it but there is still a lot of visible mold.

After I was done I read that vinegar is more effective than bleach at treating mold so my tentative plan is to let it completely dry (don't want to accidentally create chlorine gas) and then come back with an extendable wall cleaning scrubber and do it over again with undiluted vinegar. Long term I'm going to recommend that they shower with the door open and maybe get them a dehumidifier.

Is there anything else I should be doing?
 
There She Glows said:
The bathroom has no windows and very minimal airflow with one shitty ceiling vent and the apartment is a borderline slumlord situation, so although the drywall should probably be torn out and a better fan installed it isn't going to happen.
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I've had good success with the Mold Armor line of products, mostly for window wells now but in the past I've used it for mold on rental walls. It comes in a spray and you're only treating a bathroom, so hopefully you could get on the stepstool and hit the mold with the spray bottle, or spray on the Swiffer pad.


Can the friend use a squeegee on the shower walls after bathing? Getting that water down the drain, and not on the walls where it has to evaporate, will help some with humidity and mold. They sell shower squeegees but if it's a reach issues those car-washing squeegees have longer handles.


Can you take a look at the vent fan, or is it up high too? Usually you can unscrew the vent (maybe have to cut around the edges if it's painted down) and see the fan. If you're lucky it might be a dust/buildup issue and you could get a little more air movement from cleaning it, probably using the same tools you use to clean a laundry vent.

Replacing the fan is possible; they're often cheap, but depending when the apartment was built/upgraded there are dozens of different models it could be. Still, if you can take pictures/measurements and especially if there's a label you can read, there's a good chance you could get a new fan for $20 on Amazon and swap it out.

And I know, in an ideal world you'd report to the landlord and rent strike until it's habitable per local bylaws, but this is reality. There should be a term for the level of DIY that someone naturally does to keep off a slumlord's radar and not rock the boat.
 
Aunt Carol said:
Can the friend use a squeegee on the shower walls after bathing?
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It's a very high ceiling. Probably 12-14 feet? I had to get on a step stool to reach the ceiling with the swiffer (the worst of the mold is close to the ceiling) and they won't be able to do the same with their mobility issues.
Aunt Carol said:
Replacing the fan is possible; they're often cheap, but depending when the apartment was built/upgraded there are dozens of different models it could be.
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The building was built sometime in the late 1800's with a question mark over when it was halfassedly divided into apartments and upgraded so that's fun. The fan is visibly filthy so at the very least the vent is going to need to be taken off and cleaned, but there is no way I'm going to be able to reach it so it will have to wait until I can recruit a taller person or obtain a bigger step ladder. I have a feeling you might be right and the existing fan isn't doing its job due to dust buildup. When I get a chance I'll take a look (will also look into Mold Armor).
 
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