by Nora Spero

Created on: May 20, 2009   Last Updated: June 18, 2009

It's summertime and nobody wants to be stuck in the kitchen, especially a hot kitchen! So take a cue from these quickie ideas and enjoy them without all the fuss and bother in the kitchen.

"Leftovers Salad"

Got a bit of leftover grilled chicken? How about cold cuts like ham, turkey and anything else that are hiding in your refrigerator? You can include cheese, nuts, and avocado even a few berries for color.

Start with your lettuce you can soak lose-leaf and swish it in cold water to clean the head, then shake it dry before cutting. Lay it on the cutting board to chop quickly instead of ripping leaves by hand. Of course, compact head lettuce like iceberg can be quickly quartered and chopped after removing outer leaves.

Instead of crying your eyes out slicing up red onions, try cutting green onions with your kitchen scissors great flavor, quick and easy on the eyes. I do the same scissor-slicing with celery (just the hearts) and zip, they are in the bowl all in one step.

Use scissors for quickly dicing sliced meats like cold cuts: roll the slices together into a tube; then holding the "tube" at on end, make two cuts length-wise so the tube now looks like a paintbrush with four bristles. Now snip away in inch-long increments, you'll get four pieces with each cut. (You'll get more, depending on how many slices you rolled up together.)

Okay, you've got lettuce, onion, celery and meats, cheese, maybe some sliced almonds or some raspberries, what more do you want? Snip it right into your salad bowl. Then try plain or vanilla yogurt as salad dressing and you're out the door and into the fun!

Note this same basic technique of scissor-slicing cold cuts and veggies into the bowl can be done with a bowlful of leftover (pre-cooked but without any sauce) pasta like elbows, ziti (use the scissors to cut them down to bite-size if needed) or other macaroni; then just add mayo and your favorite spices plus maybe a bit of paprika and dry mustard, and voila, you have a great pasta salad. Use your imagination and your scissors and you'll be a summer not-in-the-kitchen wizard in no time!

2. Summer's Perfect Dessert: Fast, Nutritious & not fattening!

This dessert can be a lifesaver, and it can be served simply scooped out into plastic cups for a picnic, - or sliced into a stemmed glass with topping for a fancy gathering.

The recipe below calls for sugar-free gelatin, but check with your crowd's dietary needs some people do get a reaction to aspartame.

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