Refrigerator

Rogue ice had formed on the floor of the refrigerator freezer, and I was getting frosted. This was the household's backup fridge, one that sits in the basement. It had been moved there when a new first-line fridge took up residence in the kitchen some months back. It had become known as the "beer fridge," the place where brews, brats and other vital components of basement life were stashed. The machine started acting up right before Christmas -- the fridge wasn't cooling properly, and ice was forming, then melting on the freezer floor.

When shopping for lemons and limes, look for fruit with the smoothest skin and the smallest points on each end. They have more juice and better flavor.Lemons and limes will keep longer in the refrigerator if you place them in a clean jar, cover them with cold water and seal the jar well. After using half of the fruit, store the other half in the freezer in a plastic bag. This reduces the loss of moisture and retards bacterial growth. Properly refrigerated limes and lemons will last one to two months.

To store grapes, remove soft or spoiled fruit. Place grapes, unwashed, in tightly sealed plastic bag in the coldest part of the refrigerator.Grapes will keep up to a week, although their quality is best when eaten within three days. Wash just before using.-- Cole's Cooking A to Z

1908: Happy Mother's Day1911: Women's Civic League of Baltimore begins meeting1913: First refrigerator for the home

To prevent bread dough from rising too rapidly in warm weather, cover and set it to rise in the refrigerator for about 8 to 12 hours before shaping into loaves.-- Cole's Cooking A to Z

TODAY'S TOPIC IS: Domestic Tips From Guys.Guys do not get enough credit for being domestic. This is because the people who give out the credits for being domestic are - not to generalize or anything - women.Women tend to believe that domestic things should be done in a certain way, defined as "not the way guys do them." I have a perfect example of this type of thinking in the form of a letter I received from a woman named Karen in Portland, Ore., who does not approve of the way her fiance handles his dirty dishes.

The grandmother of all convenience foods is the icebox (refrigerator) cookie. Predating boxed mixes and plastic tubes of ready-made dough, these cookies go back to the days when chilling food meant putting it on ice - literally - or, in cold climates, setting it out on the screened porch.As a category, refrigerator cookies are less work than cut-out cookies and more visually appealing than the drop or bar variety. Unlike molded or pressed cookies, refrigerator cookie dough is shaped immediately after mixing.

Two men with semiautomatic handguns robbed a Wendy's restaurant in Laurel of an undisclosed amount of money Saturday, county police said.Employees of the restaurant, on Russett Green, told police they were cleaning up about 1: 30 a.m., after closing, when two men appeared at the counter. The manager told police he had locked the doors and that the men waited in a bathroom or had a key. There were no signs of forced entry.The gunmen forced three workers into a walk-in refrigerator, then ordered the manager to empty the contents of the cash drawers and a safe into a black bag, police said.

It's time for cookouts and picnics, so dust off your summer cookbooks and rev up those warm-weather recipes. And while you're at it, take a minute to polish up your food-safety skills.Nobody wants to get sick from all that fun summer food, yet every year millions of Americans suffer the flu-like symptoms of food-borne illness.Over the past few years, we've been scandalized by outbreaks of E.coli from under-cooked hamburgers and unpasteurized apple juice that made hundreds of people sick and killed five children.

Thanksgiving offers a chance to be truly grateful for the bounty of food available to us -- but it also offers an occasion of great anxiety to those of us who don't normally prepare large, festive, multicourse, tradition-bound, sit-down dinners.Here are some tips for dealing with the holiday meal that might make your day go a little easier.The main courseFirst of all, here's how to cook a turkey:Read all the instructions first and make sure you allow enough time for each step.Figure on 1 pound of meat per person.

A Baltimore summer seemed to last forever when I was a child. Things were so languid during July and much of August that many of the city's downtown department stores would close early on summer Saturday afternoons. It was that dead downtown. City noise quieted. If you rode a transit bus, you avoided the rear seats over the motor. They heated up, and air conditioning in transit vehicles was a distant dream. The movie houses, which promoted their cool air, had a corner on cool comfort.

Not every garden project is a raging success. If you have been a gardener for more than 10 minutes, you know that. The ladybug project is one of those not-a-raging-success stories. The cool and rainy spring brought with it plenty of garden pests, including the aphids that were chewing on my roses and the white flies that were attacking my herbs. At the suggestion of one of my colleagues, I decided to try the ladybug cure. Her husband had great success releasing ladybugs in his garden.

1 Geno? No: As Connecticut plays Arizona State for a spot in the women's Final Four (7 p.m., ESPN), consider this: Is Geno Auriemma the most annoying coach in America? 2 Money game: Purdue-Oklahoma (after UConn-Arizona State on ESPN) is the next stop on Sooner Courtney Paris' Scholarship Refund Challenge. 3 It keeps going ... : Watch the replay of the Virginia-Maryland seven-overtime men's lacrosse game on ESPNU. But it starts at 8:30 p.m., so you might be sleepy in the morning.

It is back-to-school time for the college set, and plenty of parents, who will miss their kids like crazy in less than a week, are glad to have their bathrooms and their car keys back. Not to mention a good night's sleep. Me? I can't wait to get the refrigerator back. My daughter, Jessie, the budding foodie, has been home for the summer working two jobs. But the hunger such a workload might trigger isn't the reason my sink is always filled with dirty dishes. The child doesn't eat much, but she cooks like crazy.

While doing chores with my son, I had occasion to bring up an old maxim. "You should never put anything smaller than your elbow into your ear," I declared. "What?" he said. "This whole project just reminds me that you should never put anything smaller than your elbow into your ear," I repeated. "But what's that supposed to mean?" he said. Aha! Today's teenagers know so much - always calling us over to the computer to show us the latest YouTube video, read a topical joke, view the hottest commercial or pass on breaking news.

After the van from Martin's Caterers pulled into the back entrance, kitchen staff and inmates began unloading covered trays of Salisbury steak, mixed vegetables, mashed potatoes and gravy. They donned hairnets, placed the food in Styrofoam boxes and stacked them in a multi-purpose room converted into a makeshift kitchen. It was dinnertime. The 250 inmates at the Carroll County Detention Center received a culinary diversion that started Monday and will continue for about a month. As the detention center gives its 1984-era kitchen a facelift, staff will gain a respite from the 300,000 meals they annually prepare there.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 76 million cases of food-borne illness occur each year in the United States. Summer is the time when the likelihood of food poisoning increases. More people are picnicking, barbecuing and enjoying the warm weather. But the heat isn't good for some foods, especially salads and meats. Best advice from Dr. Carolyn O'Connor: Cool it down. What causes food poisoning? Food poisoning is caused by bacteria or toxins in contaminated food.

How long will condiments last in the refrigerator? I searched the Web to determine what are the shelf lives of ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. All three products have high acid contents, and it is their acidity that keeps bacterial growth at bay. Heinz recommends that you use its ketchup within 15 months of its manufacture, regardless of where you store it. To determine when it was made, decode the product code on the package. For example, in FR6B08, "FR" refers to the production location, "6" represents the year of production (i.e.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Consider it the ultimate home center: a 37-acre bazaar where a record-breaking 1,900 exhibitors at the International Builders' Show displayed cutting-edge products for the home last week. Among the innovative items were smart refrigerators. Manufacturers are integrating high-tech entertainment devices and hookups into their appliances, as is the case with the LG Electronics refrigerator with a 15-inch, high-definition LCD TV screen on the door. The refrigerator also has a 4-inch screen that displays a five-day weather forecast, a recipe bank and digital photos uploaded from a USB port.

Rogue ice had formed on the floor of the refrigerator freezer, and I was getting frosted. This was the household's backup fridge, one that sits in the basement. It had been moved there when a new first-line fridge took up residence in the kitchen some months back. It had become known as the "beer fridge," the place where brews, brats and other vital components of basement life were stashed. The machine started acting up right before Christmas -- the fridge wasn't cooling properly, and ice was forming, then melting on the freezer floor.