Lemons, limes, oranges in a bowl is a wonderful idea. Once I went to a party and the hostess had put loaves of fresh bread in a large basket. I do love things like this.

Julie,

You are so right about using a knife properly. My problem was which knife to use to cut which food. I did an online search and found this great site from the USA Government. I printed it out and keep it with my cookbooks.

The site is pdf and has lot of pages, but well worth looking into and printing.
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I cut up my veggies when I first buy them, and then I freeze them. When it is cooking time, all the time consuming prep work has been done and it goes by so quickly.

Peeling ginger is so fast when you use a spoon bowl held with round part towards you and just scrape! Like magic it peels and doesen't take half the ginger away.

I learned this on the Thai site here on Bellaonline-so clever!

I recently bought a handy gadget that helps when making salsa. It's a Vidalia Chop Wizard. It has two different inserts to chop
onion or tomatoes. I really like it. The chunks of tomato look neat and the onion is smaller.

I too always use aluminum foil on my baking sheets. Easy clean up Also when baking cakes or pasta dishes I always put a tray lined with foil underneath so spills are not a problem.

good tips thanks for posting :)

Whenever I make curry, I grind tomatoes, onion, ginger garlic and all the spices together and fry it in the oil in spite of frying them individually, This saves a lot of time fuel and gives a better taste.

nice tips

I now keep a large cookie tray in my oven to collect spills. I got this idea from poster 'three spices.'