Cool before refrigerating. Photo by Edward
O’Neil | IST.

That’s also why thawing and refreezing of uncooked or cooked meat and seafood is not recommended. You increase your risk of bacterial contamination when the item goes through several temperature changes.

• Defrost frozen meat/seafood overnight on the lowest shelf or in the meat drawer—you don’t want raw drippings contaminating other foods.
• Let cooked meat sit in a room-temperature container for half an hour; then cover and immediately refrigerate it. Meat that is already at room temperature or just slightly warm can be refrigerated as is.

Baggies and the variations that followed made it easy to transport food and keep it moist. But flash forward to the present: Every day, more than 20 million sandwich bags from school lunches alone end up in landfills.

Three green moms with a mission designed an alternative kids’ lunch bags. Their solution, LunchSkins, are a fine work of engineering: The plastic-lined bags are made from pastry bag material and go straight into the dishwasher for cleaning. The colorful designs have a velcro closure. There’s even a place to write the owner’s name with a permanent marker.

Reduce landfill waste: Pack sandwiches
and snacks in LunchSkins.

Find more of our favorite kids’ products.

Make your ice cubes special for July 4th. It’s easy!

Just freeze 2 blueberries and a raspberry in each compartment of your ice cube tray.

For an extra-special presentation, make “star” ice cubes.

You can order a star-shaped ice cube tray from Amazon.com.