In the Kitchen : Keep Pasta in the Pot

Pasta is one of the easiest dinners you can make, except when you leave it unattended and your pot boils over. You'll have a mess all over your stove and you'll end up spending more time cleaning up the mess than eating the pasta.

Take a regular ashtray (makes sure it's clean!) and put it face down in the pot before you begin to boil the water. The bubbles won't be able to reach the top.

The reason that a pot boils over is all based in the bubbles. When they have trouble popping, they stack up. The starch in the pasta makes the bubbles last even longer, so they continue to stack up on the surface instead of popping and dissipating. The ashtray at the bottom of the pot holds the bubbles and forces the air together creating larger bubbles that are less durable and rise to the surface more slowly to pop.