Buying fresh herbs can get expensive rather quickly, but when it comes to freshness of flavor, there really is no compromise. Growing your own herbs is a great way to maximize savings, but if you lack a green thumb (or don’t lack overzealous cats), getting the little sproutlings to grow up nice and tasty can be a difficulty. Any way you harvest your herbs (at the store or in the garden), you are going to need a way to store them.
Come to the dark side. We have cookies… — V
Really I don’t see that there really is a choice; everybody knows the dark side has the best cookies. Unless of course, the dark side is where George Lucas keeps his lawyers ready to pounce on any dubious unlicensed goods from Star, er, Stir Wars. Ol’ George may let the Come to the Dark Side Apron pass (just who exactly is ‘V’?), but just be extra careful when making a C-3PO shiny gold or R2-D2 short and squat version — droid is a registered trademark of LucasFilm.
Peanut butter and jelly not sweet enough for ya? Instead of topping it with sugar, try using cake instead of bread. Sure, good ol’ white bread might as well be made with sugar, but sometimes it’s best just to cut to the chase. The Cakewich from Fred & Friends is a silicone baking pan shaped to look like sliced bread. Bake, slice and fill with your favorite sweet treats. Just be forewarned if you have a penchant for chocolate cake… somehow I don’t think adding turkey will too well mimic a turkey on dark rye.
It’s National Get Rid of the Tree Week, but before you do, make sure you safely pack up all those little ornaments and stuff them away for another year. While it’s generally not recommended to file away meat products for a year, I think you’ll be OK with keeping this Prosciutto Ornament under wraps. The hand-painted glass meat ornament was made in Poland, and while they were recently half price at Sur La Table, the decoration is currently unavailable. Just like real prosciutto, you got to get to it fast. Good stuff.
***UPDATE 12/2/2013*** The above ornament is still out of stock, but here are some replacement meat ornaments ready for the tree (or really any shrubbery all year ’round).
***UPDATE 12/6/2017*** Looks like Sur La Table made a new ornament instead. This time it’s prosciutto with melon. (I still think the older one is cooler!)
***UPDATE 10/16/2024*** Here’s a Prosciutto di Parma Vintage-Inspired Glass Blown Ornament that rivals the original!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. – Clarke’s Third Law
Of course, you are not going to be fooling anyone if you don’t have a magic wand. Everybody knows that magic requires a magic wand. That’s like Magic’s First Law. But in a pinch, a thing that looks like a magic wand will do. Especially when faced with a case of beer.
The UTILO Deluxe Bottle Opener with Black Handle by Blomus is a uniquely styled bottle opener. Similar in styling to a classic magic wand, the bottle opener may not fool anyone into believing you magically opened the beer, but open enough of ‘em and they just might.
The best part of a s’more is pushing it together. There is nothing more barbaric than seeing a full-figured marshmallow that hasn’t been smushed into s’moredom. Right out of the microwave (or campfire for you s’more purists), the first thing to do is to smush that sucker together. It is a satisfaction that should be shared amongst all foods; it is pure enjoyment on an instinctual level. (Perhaps that’s why clamshell-type grills and panini presses are so popular.)
Unfortunately, the cold, modern, technological world has given us the Micro S’Mores Maker, a damnable machine that automates the s’more-smushing for us. Worst of all, it does this in only ten seconds. The world may never again see an unsmushed s’more, except out in the wild. Which might not be such a bad thing — back to nature as it were.
(Originally via Geekalogie)
