What little bits of kitchen/cooking wisdom have you gleaned (or learned the hard way?) Share your best hints here!

Here's a couple I have found:

1. Always cut your brownies with a plastic knife if you want clean cuts. Brownies stick to a metal knife so you'll wind up with all those brownie clumps if you try to cut with a metal knife. I'll sometimes start the cut at the edge with a sharp metal knife (to get through the harder part of the brownie) but cut through the center part with a disposable plastic knife. Perfect brownies every time!

2. If you have a recipe calling for a very small amount of a vegetable---like 2 tbs. chopped red pepper--instead of buying an ENTIRE pepper and having to either A) waste it or B) try to figure out what the heck to do with it... go to the salad bar! The grocery store salad bar has pre-chopped veggies and you can get just what you need without having tons leftover.

The salad bar tip is a great idea! I always end up throwing out portions of things because we dont end up using the whole thing.

A tip for making soups, if you find you have grease on the top of your soup put a lettuce leaf in and it will absorb the oil.  Then when you're ready to eat just pitch the leaf.  (I've never done this, but I heard it works.)

Also, the bread in the brown sugar totally works. haha

If you need to get rid of cig smoke (our garage smelled when we moved in) put orange peels in a bowl and let them sit over night. GONE in the morning

Brown sugar: when it gets hard open the bag put a damp paper towel in the microwave along with brown sugar and turn on for ten seconds (or until it softens)

This isn't cooking related, but if you rub a small amount of shaving foam onto a bathroom mirror (and keep rubbing/wiping until it's gone) then they area you've covered won't steam up (for about 3-4 weeks) when you shower

Hmm, I might have to think on this one!

For now I can say, quality does make a difference!  I have Gold Touch pans galore from WS and they are the best thing I have ever used!  I've converted all the ladies at work to them ... one Saturday DH and I were at the mall and found a co-worker buying her Gold Touch muffin pans.

Oh, if small amounts of tomato paste are called for (like 2tbsp, for example), I just use ketchup!

Ketchup! Huh! I wonder if that would work for my chicken tortilla soup recipe--it calls for a couple of Tbsp of tomato paste and I always feel like I am wasting it even though I buy the smallest can possible. The person I got it from said they usually buy "the kind in a tube" but I've never seen a tube of tomato paste...

I've never seen tomato paste in a tube either!  I used to buy the tiniest can until I started using ketchup and I've never noticed a difference.  Give it a try next time you make your soup, and let me know if you notice a difference!  :)

Oh my gosh!  I did the same thing.  Made chicken tortilla soup and bougth the smallest can of tomato paste and threw the rest away because it's not something I use often.  Totally using ketchup next time.

I did some googling and apparently some stores carry the tubed tomato paste in the produce section? It's also at whole foods, which we don't have here.

One of the best "secret weapons" I have in my kitchen is parchment paper. I use it for a lot of baking projects and in other instances where things stick to the pan (like when I make parmesan roasted potatoes.) No sticking, it's easy to flip stuff over and remove it, and you don't have to spend hours scrubbing stuck-on food off of your cookie sheets!

If you are making brownies and want to present them NOT in the tray, line the pan in foil with a few inches of overhang on the sides (may require a couple of pieces and sometimes I like to do it both ways).  If you press it really hard into the pan and then grease as normal, all you need to do is cool them and then lift them out of the pan before cutting.  Makes for pretty brownies every time and you don't have the edges stick to the pan.

Also- I ALWAYS make the cake-like brownies instead of the fudge-like brownies.  They come out so much prettier and nicer than the fudge like ones but still taste sinful!