By Trish Barber, Reader's Digest
Remove scorched taste from rice
Did you leave the rice cooking too long and let it get burned? To get rid of the scorched taste, place a slice of white bread on top of the rice while it’s still hot. Replace the pot lid and wait several minutes. When you remove the bread, the burned taste should be gone.
Soften up hard marshmallows
You reach for your bag of marshmallows only to discover that they’ve gone stale. Put a couple of slices of fresh bread in the bag and seal it shut (you may want to transfer the marsh-mallows to a self-sealing plastic bag). Leave it alone for a couple of days. When you reopen the bag, your marshmallows should taste as good as new.
Absorb vegetable odors
Love cabbage or broccoli, but hate the smell while it’s cooking? Try putting a piece of white bread on top of the pot when cooking up a batch of “smelly” vegetables. It will absorb most of the odor.
Soak up grease and stop flare-ups
To paraphrase a famous bear: Only you can prevent grease fires. One of the best ways to prevent a grease flare-up when broiling meat is to place a couple of slices of white bread in your drip pan to absorb the grease. It will also cut down on the amount of smoke produced.
Pick up glass fragments
Picking up the large pieces of a broken glass or dish is usually easy enough, but getting up those tiny slivers can be a real pain (figuratively if not literally). The easiest way to make sure you don’t miss any is to press a slice of bread over the area. Just be careful not to prick yourself when you toss the bread into the garbage.
Dust oil paintings
You wouldn’t want to try this with an original Renoir, or with any museum-quality painting for that matter, but you can clean off everyday dust and grime that collects on an oil painting by gently rubbing the surface with a piece of white bread.
