Sunday, October 21, 2007
Sauce Your Pasta the Italian Way
11:00PM Gina Trapani | Foodie site Serious Eats features a video of chef Mario Batali sharing his secrets to saucing pasta the Italian way. The takeaway: Americans overdress their pasta 99.9 percent of the time. It should never be a bowl of soup. It should be noodles, with a little stuff. Mmm, pasta. Mario Unclogged: How to Sauce Pasta [Serious Eats] More »
How Do You Motivate Yourself To Exercise?
7:00AM Wendy Boswell | Finding motivation to exercise seems to be a common problem among anyone who’s looking to add healthy habits to their life. Self-improvement site Zen Habits has a list of 31 different ways you can find that exercise spark, including visualisation, endorphins, and success stories; however, I’d like to hear from you. What motivates you to get out there and just do it? What keeps you motivated, even when you just don’t feel like it? Let’s hear in the comments. 31 Ways to Motivate Yourself to Exercise [Zen Habits] More »
Break Out of Your Routine by Clearing The Decks
6:00AM Wendy Boswell | Routines are not necessarily bad things, but after doing the same thing day in and day out can dull your creative side. Web Worker Daily suggests that clearing your routine of everything you can spare to actually clear can serve to bring back some inspiration: Sometimes you may find that you’re slipping into your routine as a way to avoid focusing on a knotty problem. In that case, ask yourself how much of your routine you can simply skip for a day or two. Do you really need to read all those blogs today? Can the filing wait? Is instant coffee in the kitchen good enough? Slash your schedule to the bone and force yourself to spend time with the work that you’re avoiding, instead of letting the tedium expand to fill the time available. I find that simply walking away from the computer and doing something (anything!) else can really get me out of a rut. What’s your best routine breaker? Let’s hear in the comments. 4 Ways to Break Out of the Routine [Web Worker Daily] More »
Make Clear Ice
5:00AM Wendy Boswell | The secret to making crystal clear ice is made very simple in this demonstration video: just boil the water twice (cooling it in between) to get out any impurities, and your ice will come out clear instead of cloudy. Filtered water also seems to be a key factor, although it seems to me that water boiled twice would probably be good enough. More »
Get Yourself Out Of A Crabby Mood By Being Grateful
4:00AM Wendy Boswell | Got a case of the Mondays, Mr. Grumpypants? Self-improvement blog Dumb Little Man has compiled a list of things you can do to get yourself out of a crabby mood, one of which is counting your blessings. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Heard it before, right? Well have you done it? It works. List 50 things for which you’re grateful and without which your life would be worse. Go ahead. Try it! It’s true—gratefulness tends to shoot down those grumpy feelings pretty fast. What are you grateful for today? Let’s hear in the comments. 10 Surefire Ways to Kill Your Crabby Mood [Dumb Little Man] More »
Clean Your Oven With Ammonia
3:00AM Wendy Boswell | If you’ve got an oven you think might be tough to clean out, use ammonia. To remove grease from inside your oven when doing kitchen cleaning, put a small pan of ammonia in the oven in the evening, and then close the oven door. In the morning, remove the pan of ammonia. The grease inside the oven will wipe off very easily. This is similar to the old water in the microwave trick. Cleaning Your Oven [Cooking Life Tips] More »
Use WorldCat to Search Libraries
2:00AM Wendy Boswell | The next time you need to find something at your local library, try searching through WorldCat, a ginormous network of libraries, library content, and library services. You can use WorldCat to search for everything you would search for at your local library, find free content (downloadable audiobooks, for example), articles and citations, historical documents, and many more kinds of information from libraries all over the world. You can also use WorldCat to check out items directly from libraries you have an active membership with (this can vary by library). AU – I already posted about Worldcat here. WorldCat More »
How to Prepare for a Household of Guests
1:00AM Wendy Boswell | How do you get ready for an onslaught of people staying at your house and eating your food? Financial blog The Simple Dollar has three suggestions to address this problem. First, it’s all about prep. The more you can do ahead of time (i.e., freezing), the better. Second, use cooking methods that don’t require a lot of input from you—the crock pot works well for this. Last, focus on food and recipes that are simple to prepare, simple to eat, and simple to clean up after. You don’t want to be stuck in the kitchen preparing the latest gourmet repast while all your friends are chattering away in the other room, after all. Preparing Food in Advance for a House Full of People [The Simple Dollar] More »
