With the holidays just around the corner and all the delicious goodies that are made from flour; I thought I might impart some tid bits of information for the next time you find yourself in the baking aisle getting ready to make pie crusts, cakes, breads or cookies.

To begin the difference between Cake, Pastry, All Purpose, Bread and Semolina Flour is the amount of protein and ability for gluten to form. Cake has the least and Semolina has the most.

Self-rising- I was told by a professional baker NEVER use this because every brand contains a different amount of baking soda and salt. This will change the recipe too much

So for standard baking, just use all purpose flour and watching your mixing to make sure too much gluten does not form. If it calls for bread/high gluten or semolina,I would go out and get that!

Hope this helps next time in the baking aisle

In the gazpacho recipe it calls for peeled tomatoes, I realized that some might not beware of this fantastic trick to peeling a tomato. Boil water and place tomatoes in boiling water for about 3 seconds. After you remove the tomato from the water, the skin will just peel right off. So really it is not the nightmare you might have thought it would be!

Cookie batters usually make upwards of about 50 to 60 cookies per batch. This many is usually not necessary for me as much as I would love to eat them all. Take an ice-cream scooper and scoop out all the batter into desired cookie sizes and freeze them in an air tight container. Now they are all ready to be baked, whenver you want, so you can have a fresh cookie every night!

I realize that some people think that place cards are too formal. It is my belief, though, that at a dinner party of more than six people they are integral to the success of the evening. There are always many kinds of personalities; some are talkative and some are not. The key is to have everyone participating and engaged in conversation. Although it has to do with the people that are attending, it also has to do with where they are sitting. For example, it is not wise place two talkers next to one another.

If you are at a party where the hostess used place cards, ahdere to them because most likely there was a reason for them. There are plenty of fun ways to be creative with them too!