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November 2024
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Kitchen Tips Roundup

Time for another random kitchen tips links post!

How to boil potatoes

Does the color of beef determine if the meat is still good?

Before opening a new package of bacon, roll it up and unroll it. When you open up the package, your bacon won’t stick together as much

Get ketchup out of the bottle by inserting a straw all the way to the bottom of the bottle to allow air to flow out as well as the ketchup

Before cutting marshmallows or dates in half, coat scissors with oil

To help milk stay fresh longer, add a pinch of salt when you open it. This will not affect the taste in any way.

Wilted Lettuce – Don’t throw away the wilted outer leaves of lettuce. Use it to wrap up your leftover meat. The lettuce leaves, though wilted, still contain a lot of water, by wrapping meat in it, the meat will retain it’s moisture.

Before handling fish, wash your hands in cold water and they will be less apt to be fishy smelling

If you keep bananas in a closed plastic bag, they will keep longer on your counter.

Rice Cooker Bread

I saw this amazing video on how to cook bread in your rice cooker and I just had to share:

Here are the instructions on wikihow. I read that the bread is more chewy than normal bread…sounds yummy to me! I can’t wait to try it.



Also, if you’re a fan of the no knead bread recipe…here’s a speedy version of it that can be done in 5.5 hours TOTAL (including resting time!)

I love fresh bread.

Denim Therapy

I really wish I had discovered this website a few years back. It’s a website called Denim Therapy that will fix your tattered jeans for less than the cost of buying a new pair. You know how you have a favorite pair that you wear so much it starts getting holes in it to the point where it’s just not safe to wear it anymore? I had a few of those pairs that I ended up throwing out and as a short girl, you have NO idea how hard it is to find a great pair of jeans. I was so sad when I threw out those pairs. No more!



Monday Brain Dump: Roughin’ It

Nothing feels better than a shower after 3 days without one.

Nothing feels better than your own nice, soft bed after sleeping on the hard, cold ground.

Does that mean I would take the weekend back? No way! This past weekend was our annual camping trip that we go on with our friends. Each year a different couple organizes it and this year it was at Sequoia National Park. Despite the horrible, rainy weather on saturday…the place was BEAUTIFUL! We had the best campsite ever too! Right next to a picturesque stream and a whole corner to ourselves. It felt so private.

Saturday we hiked to the General Sherman Tree which is the biggest tree in the world (volume wise). It was quite impressive. The hike was also really nice and the weather was cool and perfect for hiking.

Another cool thing about the trip was the amount of wildlife we saw: a bear, coyote, and a deer! One morning we woke up to find bear poop near our tent, which means a bear was in our campsite while we were sleeping!! Creepy!

The best part of the trip was the FOOD. We have a really cool friend that always goes camping with us named Paul who always handles the food. This year was the best ever. We had the usual hamburgers and hot links but also bratwurst, carne asada and chicken tacos, eggs, bacon, sausage, and even pancakes! Everything was SO YUM! Some people also made brownies and rice crispies treats and not to mention the gazillion snacks we had. And nothing beats the banana boats and smores we make over the open fire.

I think despite this being the worst weather-wise camping trip I feel like I truly love camping now. I’m not scared about “roughing it”…well at least for less than 3 days ha ha. I can’t wait for the next one!

(Pictures to come later since I’m waiting to get them from friends)

Friday Links

Palin Bingo – hilarious…I wish I had known about this before the debate!
1000 awesome things – a blog counting down 1000 awesome things
Mrs. O – a fashion blog following Michelle Obama’s outfits. I love how she shops at normal stores like H&M.
Spider eats snake – I dont’ know why I keep posting spider links hehe
Man decorates basement with $10 worth of sharpies – check out the 360 degree view..it’s pretty cool
The marriage of an asexual couple – wow, very interesting story.
Taste tripping – Karen blogs about her experience trying that fruit that got famous on the internet…the one that after you eat it makes sour food become sweet. I need to try this!

This picture is really cool. Some photographers shaped a sand bank into a flamingo and this picture is all of the flamingos standing on the bank to stay out of the water:



Lost In Translation: Bill Murray’s Whisper Revealed

In case you were wondering…

What’s In Season: October Recipes

*This is part of an ongoing series in which I highlight the foods that are in season for the current month and some yummy recipes

Here are the fruits and veggies in season for October:

Vegetables

* sweet potatoes
* pumpkins
* winter squash
* broccoli
* spinach
* lettuce

Fruits

* cranberries
* apples
* pomegranates
* grapes

Baked Sweet Potato Fries by Dani Spies


Roasted Winter Squash and Apple Soup by Albion Cooks


Broccoli and Sausage Cavatelli from Allrecipes


Spinach, Onion, and Feta Quiche by Baking Bites




Beef and Lettuce Fried Rice
by Cooking With The Single Guy


DIY Cranberry Jam from The Kitchn


The Truth About The Bailout

Man if you’ve been watching the news, you know what’s happening. It makes me so sad to look at my 401K. Good thing I’m young!

September Madness chart by Techcrunch – this is funny…it’s modeled after the march madness basketball brackets but is replaced with banks and government. The taxpayer isn’t on there…I guess that means there’s no way we’re going to win no matter what they do. bah!

Peter Schiff, economic adviser to Ron Paul predicts the economic situation we’re in now while the other guests on the show laugh at him. Btw, it was recorded less than 2 years ago.

Why the bailout bill failed

Why the bailout SHOULD happen

I know the average american doesn’t understand what’s happening. It just looks like we’re bailing out these rich bankers from their mistakes but there is a bigger problem here.

Here is a great comment that I read on another blog that explains it pretty well for all of the naysayers:

The rest of you seem to think that because you have been responsible, you’ll be OK no matter what. So you are suggesting doing exactly what was done in 1929 — let investors lose their money and banks fail. You are essentially saying that Hoover policy – drive all the “rottenness out of the system” was correct even though most analysts agree that this is what caused The Great Depression. It took over 20 years, all the way to the 50s for the market to reach the same level it was at in 1929. Just the same level, no gain. Or have you all sold your stock two years ago? Do you think your job is secure and immune to this crisis?

I heard an old commentator on TV tell “when the market crashed in 1929, my father said ‘it serves them right’. A year later he had to close his business”. This is exactly what you are saying. Well, I hope a year from now you aren’t going to lose your job.

Even if you don’t work for banks, you are likely to be affected. Your company needs credit too. Oh yes, I know, according to some of you nobody is supposed to use credit. So do you think the companies shall just keep piles of cash lying in a vault earning nothing or just have it broken up in nice chunks of under 100K in multiple banks? No business can afford to do that. The cash is invested in the business. When a business needs to pay your salary it takes short term loans, then when it gets its revenue, it pays the money back. Without loans all business except for maybe some large cash-rich corporations (like the one I work for) can survive. But these corporation may be producing products that banks used to buy e.g. computers or furniture…. Without banks buying it, these companies will suffer to, laying off people and adding to unemployment. Currently there is almost total credit freeze – nobody lends money to anybody else. Many smaller businesses are having pretty hard time – businesses that had nothing to do with real estate or mortgages.

I also just love this “There is no reason to believe that these companies will change their ways”. What exactly is a company? Is it a single monolith? Is it one person? What percentage of the employees of any of these companies were involved in this type of decisions? Is a teller at a bank responsible? How about a database administrator? A network administrator? A computer programmer? Or a secretary to some manager? Think about thousands of people that were employed by some of these companies. How many of them do you think actually made the decisions that got us into this mess?

You are willing to “punish” thousands, maybe millions of people so that a few of those can “learn a lesson”? Newsflash. Those responsible for this crisis have already made millions and probably can retire nicely. You, on the other hands, may lose your jobs because the company you work for may have trouble getting credit it needs. Or because with so many unemployed people, there will be not many left who can afford to buy its products. Then you may have trouble finding another one because there are so many unemployed people around.

Oh right, all of these people were supposed to save money. Enough to live in for a few years of unemployment. What about young people? Those who graduated a year or two ago and still have student loans? They’ll be unemployed too.

Incidentally, unemployed people don’t pay taxes. What exactly do you think will happen with government budget with so many unemployed people? And how do you think FDIC will be handling bank failures after it runs out of reserves? Print more money? Here we go.

What about the real estate market? With the credit freeze as it is now, it’ll be extremely difficult to take mortgages. It already is. So the prices will fall. Good, right? Except for it’ll cause more foreclosures and more bank failures.

As Foobarista has already pointed out, the Great Depression had other effects as well. It spread to other countries. One of the countries it hit the hardest was Germany. Remember what happened next? Hungry people are ready to elect any charismatic leader who promises to feed them. Has anybody here ever experienced real hunger?

Yes Preston, your IDEALS are great – let thousands, maybe millions suffer just so we can punish a few wrong-doers. Are you sure you will not be affected?

– made by a person named Kitty (she did not leave a website or contact info)

Monday Brain Dump: Photos From Toronto/Niagara Falls

These are from a awhile ago but I’m testing a new wordpress plugin so I thought this would be a good time to try it out!

[flickr album=72157607593168088 num=20 size=Square]

Friday Links

Star Simpson’s first interview since the airport sweatshirt scare – I completely missed this story the first time but it was still an interesting read
The 88 fast food items highest in trans fat – a lot of the menu is Burger King and Jack in the Box but I do see my beloved mcdonald’s french fries on there :(
One dollar diet project – 2 teachers try to survive on $1 worth of food a day. I can only eat so much oatmeal and peanut butter!
Chuckys invade NY to celebrate the 20th anniversary DVD – this is totally creepy
10 speech writing tips from Lincoln – you never know when you’ll need to write a speech!