Important safety tip: If you’re going to be working with raw meat, make sure that any cut on your hand is covered. Also, make sure that you wear rubber gloves. This applies even if you just have a paper cut. If you’re not careful, the bacteria from the meat can get into your cut and can cause a really nasty infection. I was going to include some pictures of people with these infections. However, my wife saw them and said they were too gross!



OK, you’ve just cooked a pizza in your oven, you get ready to serve it and you realize that you don’t have a rolling pizza cutter. What do you do? Simple, use kitchen scissors. Your family will either think you’re a genius or a nut. If they think you’re a nut, blame it on me.



Here’s a great tip for my senior citizen gardeners. As you get older, it gets harder to bend over and put seeds in a perfectly straight row. Here’s a device that you can make that will help. Get a PVC pipe that’s several feet long. Attach a funnel to one end of it with duct tape. Now, as you walk along your row, just drop seeds down the pipe and have them land where you want them!

Tim Thompson lives in Gainesville. E-mail Tim your ideas for tips, tools or tricks.