For circular crust, form, chill pie dough before rolling evenly

Q: Do you have any tips on how to get pie crust to roll to a circle? Whatever I do, it ends up some funky shape. Or should I stop worrying about it and just patch it before transferring it to the pie pan?

A: Form the pie crust into a disc before chilling it, then work from the center outward, turning the disc a quarter turn, rolling out, and so on.

Q: I refuse to buy bagged lettuces, but my kids really miss the shredded lettuce on tacos.

I got the great idea to use my food-processor slicing blade to shred a beautiful head of organic iceberg lettuce. This worked great for dinner, but when I went to make my lunch, the shredded lettuce had become wilted and browned on the edges.

How do manufactures keep the prepackaged shredded lettuce from getting like that?

A: Using a metal knife has been thought to cause cut lettuce to brown, but when the testers at America's Test Kitchen tried it out, they found that a plastic lettuce knife bought only an extra day before the lettuce started to brown — and that none of it started to brown on the cut edges before 12 days anyway.

Tearing instead of cutting bought an extra two days because it ruptures fewer of the lettuce's cells.

Manufacturers often remove oxygen and add carbon dioxide to prevent this in bagged salad mixes. But at home, one thing you can do is try to reduce extra moisture by layering your cut lettuce between paper towels.

Q: Is there a particular brand of pita bread that doesn't fall apart when you try to fill it?

A: I usually feel for the thickness of the pita through the bag... if it's particularly thin at the center, it's more susceptible to tearing.

Q: We love split peas. I usually go by the 30-to-40-minutes rule for cooking the peas, but a recent batch took about 2 hours to cook. Were they a bag of old peas?

A: Yes, it sounds as if they were very old. I can’t think of any other reason that they would take so long to cook.