Person holding fresh lettuce

Are you taking steps to ensure safe fruits and vegetables are in your kitchen?

Prairie Fare: Asian-style Cobb Salad and B.L.A.T. Wrap with Bacon Mayo

Are the cucumbers at the store safe? Have any recent foodborne illness outbreaks occurred with spinach, peppers or lettuce? Lately, you might have heard or read about a recall of cucumbers imported from Mexico that reached various U.S. restaurants and retail stores. At the time of this column, 341 people in 30 states were sickened

Storage checkup

During the winter it’s easy to get caught up with the many activities that prevail in our Prairie communities. Couple that with work and family responsibilities, and it is sometimes difficult to remember to check all the garden produce that we have stored away for the winter. Vegetables as well as flower bulbs and corms


Let’s try to waste less food

Have you thrown out any food recently? Did you find less-than-appetizing food hiding in your refrigerator? Was it in an opaque container that may have startled you when you opened it to view the contents? Have you happened upon food well past its “use by” date in your cupboard or refrigerator? If you discarded food

One noisy hitchhiker

After coming home from a camping trip, my husband and I discovered a stowaway had concealed his presence by hiding in some blankets our grandkids used in their tent. He didn’t let out a peep until darkness fell, and then just when overnight visitors were bedded down in the rec room, someone exclaimed, “There’s a


Tips and questions

Dear Reena, I just discovered a method for freezing peaches and it is a wonderful time and mess saver. This works the same way as freezing whole tomatoes and it is so easy! Just freeze the whole peach, with skin and all, and when it is time to use it, run it under hot water

Thaw And Cook Your Thanksgiving Turkey Safely

On Thanksgiving, many of us will take on the challenge of cooking 12 to 20 pounds of poultry not something we do every day! The basics of roasting a turkey at 325 F for approximately 15 minutes per pound are pretty simple, but there is more to the safe preparation. Before purchasing the turkey, assess


Try This Freezer Quiz

I noticed a chill in the air when I stepped outside on a recent morning to admire my flowering plants. I went back inside to grab a light jacket. As I zipped my jacket, I could sense the approach of autumn in the crisp morning air. I m not ready for autumn just yet. Soon

School Lunches Are Not Cool (Enough)

Tests of more than 700 preschoolers’ packed lunches found that fewer than two per cent of the meats, vegetables and dairy products were cool enough to be safe, according to a U.S. study. One in six U.S. residents gets food poisoning every year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but


New Winter Weather Pattern Normal

As we head into the holiday season, it seems there are some strange things going on with our world’s weather. Some people are describing it as upside-down weather or backward weather, and yet others are simply calling it bizarre weather. Any way you look at it, the weather over the past few weeks in the