Manicotti Mania

My friend Jenni just made my family the most delicious manicotti and I had to share the tip she gave me. If you are like me, any entree that requires hours of stuffing cheese into slippery, fragile pasta is more than a bit intimidating. But Jenni's process makes it so easy:

1) Undercook the manicotti noodles to a pre-al dante state.

2) Add a little extra grated cheese to the mixture to stiffen it up a bit and then form the cheese mixture into cylinders that can be shoved into the pasta.

She says these two steps cut the prep time a lot and, like I said, it was the best tasting manicotti I've ever eaten!

Pop-tops - Revisited

I have owned the smooth edge can opener for several years and I never could figure out what that flat edged thing on the end of it was for. Thanks to my genius friend Kaylene, I am now enlightened. She sent me this great tip:

"The pop-top cans can be opened with the top edge of our fabulous PC can opener. The flat edge that's on the top goes right under them and pops it up easy as pie. Give it a try. I love my new can opener for many reasons, and that's one of them! :) "

I guess now I can't dislike pop-top cans so much.