Baking Soda: The Jack of All Household Trades and Master of ... Well Most of Them

Common everyday baking soda is often overlooked by the modern world. After all, baking soda is just some old fashioned thing grandma used to use when she actually "baked a cake from scratch" right? We do not need it these days when we use pre-done mixes or, better yet, we simply buy a cake already baked just as cheaply as we could bake one for ourselves. We do not need to keep an old fashioned, individual ingredient such as "baking soda" around any longer. Do we?

Perhaps a few folks remember that an open box of baking soda will absorb odor in the refrigerator and they may keep a small box and change it out, from time to time. You may have picked that useful tidbit up from grandma, many years ago. You may even remember that, for some strange reason, your grandparents kept a big box of the stuff on hand. Why they did that you don't know, who can fathom the thinking of old folks anyway?

The older I get the more I wonder about some of the things my grandparents did and the more I go and research them. The more I look into what they did, the more I discover, "hey, they knew a thing or two," especially when it came to saving money. So it is with baking soda, this is some handy stuff and it is cheap too. Baking soda can do a whole range of chores around the house, which I used to buy costly, specialized products for.

Obviously it is useful in baking where it causes dough to rise. Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate which, when it reacts with other ingredients, releases carbon dioxide. This causes the dough to "rise". It can also be used as a safe, edible, fruit and vegetable scrub cleaner.

Baking soda can also be used as an anti-acid. You simply mix one half teaspoon of baking soda with one half glass of water and drink it. Since it is a base it will neutralize the acid in the stomach. You should remember that backing soda is a sodium bicarbonate and therefore a salt, in case you are on a low sodium diet.