Generally, to keep foods fresh longer, we wrap them up and place them in the refrigerator. Sometimes, we don't give much thought to how things should actually be stored or whether we're doing it properly. As a result, you are more likely to get food poisoning at home than when eating out at a restaurant where health codes are strictly enforced. Some of the biggest food safety violations have to do with the refrigerator, the catch-all of food storage. Here are a few tips to keep you, and your family, a little safer.

• The refrigerator should be kept at, or below, 40°F. Keep in mind that the temperature can rise when the door is opened frequently and if the fridge is overcrowded and air cannot circulate.
• Store raw meat that you won't be eating right away in the freezer, not the refrigerator. Defrost it in the fridge.
• Milk is good for about 10 days past its "sell-by" date, although if it is left out to warm up, it can go bad before that time. It is better to keep it in the main part of the refrigerator than on the door.
• Fruits and vegetables can be stored at the same temperature they are stored in the store, though cut produce should be refrigerated and eaten within a few days.
• Hard cheeses can be stored, wrapped, for several weeks. If mold develops, the affected area and about 1/2-inch around it should be removed; the rest is safe to eat. Do not eat soft cheeses or dairy products, including cream cheese and yogurt, that have molded.
• Fresh eggs will last at least 3 or 4 weeks in the fridge, but hard-cooked eggs will only last one week. You can always check your eggs for freshness if in doubt. Eggs blend better with other ingredients in recipes for baked goods and get more volume when beaten if they are held at room temperature for 20 or 30 minutes before using.

The expression that "it's hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk" is a common one, but have you ever heard of someone baking cookies in their car? A woman in New Hampshire did just that, taking advantage of the extremely high heat that her area had been experiencing. With outdoor temperatures in the mid to upper 90s, the temperature in her RAV4 reached about 200F. She placed trays of prepared dough on her dashboard and went inside to wait with her coworkers for the cookies to be done.

The chef, Sandi Fontaine, has actually been doing these car cookies for about 3 years now, whenever the temperature climbs about 95F. She notes that an additional benefit of in-car baking is that the fresh cookie smell lingers in the car for many days after a batch has been completed.

Update: View photo here.

Do you have a container of liquid nitrogen laying around your house and are not sure what to do with it? Probably not. Liquid nitrogen is a clear liquid that has some unique properties and many uses, though its primary property is its extreme cold. Its boiling temperature is -196C, so it will evaporate immediately if you simply place a drop on your hand. It will also evaporate when exposed to just about anything, which means that it is safe to use with food because no nitrogen will be left by the time you go to eat it. You can still suffer some serious freezer burns from liquid nitrogen if you are not careful, so make sure to handle it safely.

It is very inexpensive to purchase at medical and laboratory supply stores, but you do need a special container to store it. Fortunately, you can often rent one from the supply store. The most popular culinary use for liquid nitrogen is ice cream because it freezes the base so fast the ice crystals are very tiny, making the ice cream very smooth. Heidi, of 101 Cookbooks, recently tried an ice cream made in this way, but she isn't the first nor the last, as this is a reasonably popular (and tasty) experiment in science classrooms. If ice cream isn't enough, there are many more fun things to do with the stuff once you have it.

[Photo 101 Cookbooks]