Shipping with Popcorn

I thought I'd stop in today with a easy tip before everyone heads off to the post office to send out their Christmas packages. For several years now, I've used freshly-popped popcorn for cushioning and it works beautifully.


(Shipping out the custom stamp for the contest winner.)

The only thing to remember is that you have to make it in an Air Popper
because all other methods will add oil or butter, which obviously is not a great thing.



The first time I made popcorn this way as an adult was a revelation. It's even faster than in the microwave and you don't risk filling your house with that scorched popcorn smell.

What I love about using it as packaging is that it's cheap and environmentally friendly. And once they've opened their gift, the recipients can even use it to string up garlands for the birdies.



And you get to eat any leftovers.

How to Clean Vintage Pyrex

So in addition to Mason jars, I also have a bit of a thing for older Pyrex.

If it's a reasonable price, I will buy it no matter how grotty it looks.

I know that there's a good chance I can clean it up with a cleanser called Bon Ami. I've seen this stuff for sale at the grocery store and the health food store and even the hardware store, so there's no need to buy it from Amazon. I just needed a link to show you what it looks like. It has a baby chicken on it. Who, apparently, is your good friend. And also French.

We've used this stuff for years (for the sink and the stove and pots and pans) and I thought I was so clever to have figured out how well it works on marked up Pyrex and other plates and dishes. I honestly didn't even notice the endorsement by the Pyrex people until I took this picture.

Because I am just that observant.



This bowl was pretty bad and I wasn't actually one hundred percent sure I could save it. But you can see the part of the bowl that I did clean compared to the part I left alone.


(And yes, after I took this picture, I actually went back and cleaned the whole thing. Why do you ask?)

What about all of these darker lines on my favoritest green bowl? They look like scratches, don't they? Oh, but they're not.





Like magic I tell ya.

One note- I would recommend that you rub very gently and not make a habit of this because even though I haven't noticed any problems while using it, I can't imagine that these glazes could stand up to maniacal scrubbing.

OK, one more picture (this time of a halfway cleaned bowl) because I'm diggin the infomercial-type vibe I've got going here.



But not the kind of commercial where they cut to the black and white video of the totally inept cook who can't even manage to flip a pancake... oh, if only she had some kind of device that could hold the top of the pancake as she flipped it... that would make her life ever so much better... only 19.95 (plus shipping and handling).

I may be inept, but I can flip a pancake.

Wait, what are we talking about?

I Think I May Have a Problem.

Hello, my name is Wendy, and I’m addicted to Mason jars.

They are just so handy for so many things. Every time I see them on sale (and they’re always on sale at this time of year), I pick up another dozen.

-I prefer using Mason jars for leftovers in the fridge because they don’t get all stained and grotty like plastic does. And the glass never absorbs smells. Even if they’ve harbored some science experiment gone horribly wrong, I can actually sterilize them in boiling water. Also, everyone can see exactly what is in them, which actually encourages them to eat it. After a couple of days in the fridge, if it doesn’t look like it’s actually going to get eaten, I pop the freezer-safe jars directly into the freezer.

-Whenever I buy a bunch of fruit on sale, or for some other reason end up with lots of it about to go bad, I freeze the excess for smoothies.



I've found that it's best to lay the fruit out flat on a cookie sheet and freeze first, then put the already frozen fruit in the jars- it’s much easier to remove this way. You can use as little or as much as you need.



-It’s also great for storing particularly stinky items in the fridge, like pieces of onion or opened cans of wet cat food. Those lids really keep the smells contained.

-I love to store things in the freezer that would otherwise go bad because I use so little of it at a time. Most of these are ingredients that I use as flavoring when I cook. I keep whole ginger (that I grate on a rasp as I need it), rolls of bacon (3 strips stacked together, rolled up and frozen flat), cubes of chipotles in adobo sauce, cubes of tomato paste, left-over Parmesan rinds (to add to soups) and left-over wine for deglazing pans (which never completely freezes, so you can spoon out the slushy stuff as needed).


-I always use Mason jars to freeze liquids like soups and stocks. Whenever I have left-over stock (homemade or out of the can) I put it directly in a jar and into the freezer. The soups I put in half-pint jars for lunches remembering to leave an inch or so of headroom because the water they contain expands when frozen. Note- It's important to make sure to use freezer safe jars because the expanding liquid can easily crack the glass otherwise.

-They're great for storage, both cold and at room temperature. I keep dry goods that tend to go rancid (like brown rice, nuts and shredded coconut) in mason jars in the top shelf of my fridge.


And I have several shelves in my kitchen with things like beans and lentils and grains.


I also use the tiny mason jars to store the extra whole spices (that aren't on the door) in the cupboard.


Seeing all of these beautiful ingredients can sometimes get me going when I’m in a cooking funk.

Sometimes.

Museum Wax

Subtitle- How to foil an itty, bitty, shitty kitty.

Actually, our kitty is incredibly sweet. She doesn't bite or scratch. Well, she did lay down 3 pretty decent claw marks about a month ago, but it was only because she's rather clumsy and was falling off the computer desk, scrambling for purchase when she found my forearm. I don't hold it against her.

She does, however, love to knock over vases and cups of water, which is more irritating than you can possibly imagine. Seriously, all the sweetness in the world doesn't matter when you find a soaking wet library book in a puddle of water next to an empty cup on its side.

So we've become super conscientious about leaving out cups of water. But I was still left with the fact that I couldn't have vases of flowers, which made me very sad.

Luckily, one day I found this at the art supply store.



Museum Wax is made to prevent expensive museum pieces from tipping over, even in an earthquake.

But it works just as well for my purposes.



I attach the vases to plates instead of directly to the table because it's difficult to completely remove from the surfaces without running hot water over them. I have seen the Museum Putty and Museum Gel which look like they might be easier to remove, but haven't tried either of them.

And, yes, I'm sure most of you don't have the same kitty problem that I do. However, this stuff holds so well that I'm positive you can find other uses for it. I've been thinking of letting Joey use it to attach shells and rocks vertically to the back of a shadow box.

I mean really, what *can't* you do with something that does this?

Pronounce This

Jeff recently installed a pretty nifty little Firefox add-on. It’s called Pronounce This. It will pronounce most words on any web page. After you’ve installed it, you can highlight the word, right click it and then choose the Pronounce option.

It’s super helpful for Joey to have access to this. She learns quite a bit on the internet and especially for scientific sites like this one, it can be pretty handy. It doesn't have all the words we've come across, but it can handle the majority of them, including Lagrangian.



Also, here’s a relevant shortcut that I love to use... To highlight a particular word, double click on it. If you triple click, it will highlight the whole line.

Getting More from Netflix

We've had a Netflix account for years. Recently, I created a couple of different user profiles on the Your Account page. I use one of these for educational type programs (they've got all kinds of Nova shows along with documentaries and stuff on science and math and music) and the other is for exercise videos (yoga, tai chi and dance).

Obviously, I could just add these types of shows to our main queue, but I like to ensure that there's always one exercise video and one educational video around most of the time.

Jeff, my love, I would ask here that you don't chime in with how long I actually keep these movies at our house. Thanks.

If you don't already have Netflix, I'm not suggesting you sign up just for this because the library is also a fantastic (and free) source of this type of material, but if you already have an account, it's pretty handy. There's lots of good stuff there if you look around a bit.

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Sun Salutation Update- I've done 4 of these for yesterday's comments.

Stopping the Multiplication of Cups and the Spread of Cooties

At any one time, we usually have at least 8 or 9 cups in various locations around the house. As you could guess, we don't have that many people actually living here. Inexplicably, our dirty cups multiply like bunnies.



So this weekend, I instituted a new rule in our house. If you're drinking something, you need to have your own personal rubber band on the cup in your hands. If you can't find your rubber band, it's time to search the house for it and wash the cup it's attached to (or better yet, re-use it) before getting anything clean out of the cupboard.

So far, it has worked like a charm.

I, honestly, can't believe that I'm the first person to think of this. And I doubt I even need to describe it. See the stuff in the picture. Get it and make them. Though, I guess I should mention that rubber bands are hard on the permanent markers. Keep a scratch piece of paper nearby to occasionally doodle on, which wipes off the rubber band build up.

And this method will help cut back on the transfer of cooties, too. If that's an issue at your house.

Kill Your TV, or at least turn it down

We have been doing NOTHING around here lately. Like, really and truly, nothing. When our family visited on New Year's, Jeff and I cooked from scratch (me- chili, Jeff- Boston Cream Pie) but that's about it.

I won't bore you with the details of the nothingness, but suffice it to say that it has involved way too much TV. I discovered Heroes, a show which I never saw when it aired, but Sean (our oldest) got on DVD for Christmas. I watched the entire 16 1/2 hours of the first season in about 3 days. I am not proud of this fact, but, there it is. (That show is like a soap opera, but with more interesting problems. The characters aren't very well developed, but they're likable.)

So, if your family has been lounging around in front of the TV like ours and you'd like to unstick everybody (or at least help with their reading skills), maybe this little trick will work…

Mute the volume and display the closed captioning. I used to do this all the time when the kids were younger. It works best when they're early readers, though I did start doing it long before Joey could read.

This does one of either two things…
-They become better readers.
-They choose to turn off the TV and do something else.

For my kids, I think it did a little bit of both.

Of course, you could get rid of the TV completely. Which is exactly what Jeff and I have been talking about doing.

Wish us luck if we go that route. We may have a full scale riot on our hands.