October 2007 “Cooking Tips” Winner —
Karen Murray

Using wine is a great way to add flavor to sauces and stews, cutting down on fat. However, sometimes you don't have a bottle of wine handy. The next time you open up a bottle and can't finish it all....don't throw it away....freeze it in an ice cube tray. When frozen pop into a ziplock bag and store in the freezer. You can just keep doing this until you have a bag of both white wine and red wine cubes. Then whenever you are making a spaghetti sauce or another recipe that calls for a small amount of wine...just pop a couple of cubes in the pot!

Karen Murray

Prize:

• Cooking tips:
  Tea Time Jellies
  Hurd Orchards

October 2007 “Cooking Disasters” Winner —
Sasha Sunderling

I really am a pretty decent cook but I don’t like very spicy food. On the other hand, my husband loves it – the spicier, the better. No matter what I make for dinner, he thinks it’s bland and then pours all sorts of hot sauce over it, no matter what it is.

One evening I was meeting my sister for dinner and my husband would be fending for himself. I decided to make him a REALLY SPICY dinner which he could re-warm when he got home from work.

I had a good stir-fry recipe using sliced red and green bell peppers, onions and beef slices. I figured I could make it spicier by substituting Habanero peppers for the bell peppers. Since I don’t usually cook spicy food, I really wasn’t that familiar with hot peppers but knew that the seeds add to the hotness. So I sliced up the peppers, added oil to the wok and started cooking.

First I noticed that my hands were burning a little. Then as the peppers started cooking, my eyes started watering, my nose was burning and runny and I started sweating and coughing. Afterwards I found out that I created a homemade pepper spray. If you fry any sort of hot pepper, you are supposed to cover it with something else quickly since the pepper oil is released as it fries.

Well, I carried on adding the onions and beef. Since my husband always adds hot sauce, I also added a splash of “Dave’s Insanity” since I knew it was one of his favorites. I left my creation in a microwave dish for him to heat up and then left to meet my sister – after washing my hands several times and touching up my makeup from my watery eyes.

When I came home – all he said was “That was quite a dinner!”. He never asked me to make it again and he never complained again about my bland food!

Sasha Sunderling

Prize:

• Cooking Disasters:
  Wild Mushroom Pizza Set
  Made in Napa Valley

Previous Winners

Click here to see our previous "Cooking Tips" and "Cooking Disasters" contest winners!