Hints can help make picnics less messy

Dear Heloise: With the pleasant weather, I'm thinking picnics, and I know three very good hints, one of which you published on my birthday years ago:
If you're transporting breakable glasses to drink out of, slip a sock over each. It will keep them from rattling around, and will absorb the condensation from the glass later. (A clean sock! -- Heloise)
An umbrella with no handle is the ideal thing to rest over the picnic-table goodies to keep the bugs away.
For transporting a long-pronged fork when traveling to picnics and barbecues, take a toilet-paper or paper-towel tube and flatten it. Tape one end shut and use the flat tube as a & quot;sheath & quot; for the fork. My mother and I do this with hot-dog tongs, too. Savannah in Alabama
These are all good hints for a picnic, barbecue or camping. Another helpful hint is to keep a list with the supplies of all the things you brought so when you pack up for the return, it helps prevent leaving something behind. Heloise
Dear Heloise: I cook a lot of frozen food in the microwave, and often the instructions call for wrapping it in a paper towel. I have found that many things, like the frozen breakfast sandwiches that I like so well, can be put on a plate and covered with a coffee filter. It's cheaper and gets the job done, and sometimes you can get multiple uses out of one filter. Jim in Springfield, Ill.
Dear Heloise: For those very ripe bananas that I always seem to have, I keep several prepackaged zipper-top bags of the dry ingredients for banana bread in my cupboard (premeasured flour, baking soda and powder, sugar and salt). When I have the ripe bananas, I add the bananas, butter and eggs to the bag, knead them in the bag, cut a hole in the corner of the bag and squeeze the mixture into a loaf pan and bake. I don't have to take all the ingredients out each time, and cleanup is less, with no bowls or spoons. Lindy Ross, Escanaba, Mich.
Dear Heloise: My friend of 68 years visited us here in Florida. When she saw how I used my flour sifter and had stored it away, she suggested I send the idea in to you.
I use the thin, bendable paper plates instead of wax paper. I keep two or three of these paper plates and the sifter in a 13-inch-by-15-inch plastic bag. I can use them over and over. Goodbye to wax paper and a messy counter. Babe Larsen from Florida
King Features Syndicate