Dear Polly: Try putting fruit-flavored yogurt over your favorite breakfast cereal instead of milk. It tastes delicious and the cereal never gets soggy. - Laurie
Dear Laurie: What a delicious treat! This makes a nice informal dessert for the kids, too. If you'd like to avoid all the sugar in some commercial flavored yogurts, plain yogurt with a little naturally sweet fruit stirred in works well, too.
Dear Polly: Many years ago, I rid my house of roaches by cleaning with a pine oil cleaner, then spreading garlic powder all around the radiator pipes and under the kitchen sink. Since then, I've never had a single roach in six years. - Elmer
Dear Polly: The gasket around the ends of my refrigerator door is getting mildewed. Is there any way to prevent this? How can the mildew, which has stained the white rubber, be cleaned off? - Janet
Dear Janet: Clean off the present mildew with a good washing with a mild chlorine bleach solution - a tablespoon or two of bleach in a quart of water should do the job. Then keep the mildew in check with regular, daily wipings of the gasket with a wet cloth or sponge. A good routine is to wipe off the gasket while you're cleaning up from dinner every evening. Regular cleaning will not only keep the gasket mildew free, but will keep it soft, pliable and working properly.
Since your gasket has already been neglected, it might be a good idea to check its efficiency with this simple test. Close the door on a dollar bill so one end of it sticks out. Then tug on the dollar bill. If you can pull it out, your gasket is no longer fitting properly and needs to be replaced. If the
dollar is held securely, the gasket is in good shape.
Remember the gasket helps seal warm air out and cold air in. A leaky gasket greatly reduces the efficiency of a refrigeration or freezer unit, so it pays to maintain this small, but important, part.
