Helping Myself Remember Vitamins!

Here's a completely random idea.  Maybe it'll help you too...

I always have a hard time remembering my multi-vitamins.  When I leave the ugly bottle sitting out on the countertop, I usually remember.  But then there's the ugly bottle on the countertop.  Last week, after dusting off and re-locating an empty antique canning jar for the umpteenth time, I finally put two and two together. 

Now I store my vitamins in this jar, which looks much cooler so I don't mind it sitting in plain view, and being able to SEE the vitamins every morning jogs my groggy, pre-coffee memory to take them!
Plus, this jar came out of some dusty boxes of cool antique stuff my Dad gave me from his shed attic, so that makes it doubly cool...

If you feel the need to keep the ingredient list or directions, you can always stash away the empty bottle somewhere or write the info you need on a piece of masking tape on the bottom of the jar.  Now just make sure to keep them way out of little ones' reach! ID Mommy cannot be held responsible for kiddo's who mistake vitamins for candy!! ;-)

ID Mommy Kitchen Tip: Freeze your Tomato Paste

Here's a little trick that just dawned on me to try the other week.  Not sure why it took me so long to think of this, but here it is in case you haven't thought of it either...

I've found that most of my recipes that call for tomato paste only require a Tablespoon or two.  While the cans are pretty small, I still find myself wasting a lot of left-over paste after I open a can.

So here's what I did.

I used the one tablespoon needed for the recipe I was making.  Then, I put a piece of plastic wrap on a plastic food container lid.  I measured 1 Tbsp portions and dropped them on the plastic wrap, then stuck the whole thing in the freezer.

Then, just label a plastic bag, and once they are frozen, dump them into one bag in your freezer.

Now you have pre-measured tomato paste ready to go when you need it, without the waste! I count 8 Tablespoons in this bag....that's probably 4-8 meal's worth that I would have tossed out in the past.  Which isn't a ton, but when you think about what I used to do in using a whole can for every recipe, well, I'm buying one can instead of up to 8 cans!