Christmas trees, once decorated and brightly lit, are the penultimate holiday decoration, but authentic pines lose their brilliance fast without any nourishment. Plus, they are major fire hazards without regular hydration. But watering one requires a lot of sliding around on the floor, and it can be hard to tell how much water is in the bowl beneath the dark, prickly branches. These five hacks can help!
There are those who prefer Thanksgiving leftovers to the actual official meal, much like people who prefer cold pizza over hot. I'm definitely in the latter camp. There's something luxurious about enjoying your perfectly cooked turkey and stuffing while wearing sweatpants and not having to make small talk with your weird uncle who drinks too much.
When I was 12, for some mysterious reason, my dad put my little brothers and me in charge of cooking the Thanksgiving turkey. Naturally, my brothers and I spent the rest of the day playing hide-in-seek in the backyard and forgot all about the humble bird defrosting in the sink.
Okay, it's true: even the highest quality instant coffee is never going to replace really good fresh beans (and properly cleaning your coffee maker) when it comes to creating a great cup of joe. However, instant coffee does have all kinds of uses in the kitchen, as the smart folks over at Reddit observed.
It's a small but very real frustration: you want a chilled drink, but you open the freezer only to see nothing but empty ice trays. Fortunately, there's a simple way to make ice cubes quickly—use hot water. Yup, you read that correctly. Hot water freezes more rapidly than cold.
Who doesn't enjoy sitting down to a nice dinner with a cocktail in hand? After a long day, a drink is a great way to unwind. Yet your favorite spirits can do more than just help you relax after work. By utilizing alcohol in the kitchen, you can enhance everything from how food tastes to your health.
"Does bottled barbecue sauce even taste that bad?" a friend of mine asked. Well, truthfully, no. But it also doesn't taste that good, especially if you've had truly great barbecue or even your crazy uncle's homemade sauce at a holiday cookout.
I own two aprons—a cute one for company, and another for the hard-core cooking duties, like cutting up chicken and making stock. The sad truth is that I almost never remember to wear either of them. So, much of my clothing ends up spattered with grease, liquid, and bits of fruit and vegetable. While stain-removing sprays, sticks, and pens are all effective to a certain extent, they have two drawbacks—they're expensive and sometimes I need to use them in large quantity, like when a piece of eg...
Fresh salsa is so tasty. Who can resist the robust mix of spices, the mouth-watering heat of jalapeños, and the juiciness of fresh tomatoes? Alas, I don't always make my own and have to get the pre-made stuff.
A lot of people rely on the date on the packaging to tell them when food has gone bad, even with eggs, but the sell-by dates are often somewhat arbitrary and are not expiration dates. If you've been tossing your eggs based on the dates on your carton—you could be wasting perfectly good food.
While we've already covered several good ways to tame the itch of a mosquito bite, you're much better off preventing them from biting in the first place than dealing with the itchy aftermath.
I was just 16 when I poured my first beer. It was my first restaurant job and a customer ordered a pint while the bartender was busy. I'd seen her do it hundreds of times, and she made it look so easy. Besides, it couldn't be that different from filling a cup from the soda machine, right?
Since it's October and Halloween is fast approaching, it's time for a series of articles on how to make the coolest Steampunk Halloween decorations for your home! In this installment, we'll look at some jack-o'-lanterns, skulls, and a few other things that are easy to Steampunk, but will still keep that "spooky" Halloween feeling.
I have owned quite the plethora of electronics in my life. A commonality between most of these devices' screens is frozen or dead pixels. This is probably the most annoying thing about buying new hardware—your LCD, or worse, LED display has one or more pixels that continues to stay lit. Most of the time, this will appear in the form of a brightly colored pixel that never changes, or a pixel that never displays the right color. Once you notice it's there, you just can't stop staring at it. It ...
Beef wellington is a classic beef recipe. Watch this cooking how to video tutorial to learn how to spruce up your cooking skills with beef wellington. This beef steak wrapped in pastry dough is sure to impress all your friends at your next dinner party.
This video series takes you step by step through the process of making ganache which is liquid chocolate made with semi-sweet chocolate and cream. In the end of the series, you'll also see how to apply the ganache to some great desserts.
The iPhone XR has touched down alongside the XS and XS Max, and it utilizes tried and tested materials found on the iPhone 8, while being molded in the same vein as the iPhone X. The budget-friendlier flagship comes with its own set of design elements to set it apart from its more expensive brethren, but is powered by the same SoC, making it is a solid choice if you're thinking of upgrading.
Don't panic if you spill grease on your clothes or the couch. Start tackling it instead. Learn how to get grease stains out of fabric with this how-to video.
It’s called Urophagia—the art of consuming urine. There could be any number of reasons for having the desire to drink your own urine (or somebody else’s). There’s the so-called term “urine therapy,” which uses human urine as an alternative medicine. In urine therapy, or uropathy, it’s used therapeutically for various health, healing, and cosmetic purposes. There’s also those people who drink urine as sexual stimulation, where they want to share every part of each other. And then there’s the o...
Since launching its web-based AR platform in 2018, 8th Wall has continued to push the boundaries of what brands can do with AR experiences outside of native apps.
Once again, Samsung has certified its flagship Note series with an IP68 rating. With this rating, the Galaxy Note 20 and 20 Ultra have some degree of dust and water resistance.
This Black Friday, there are a lot of smartphone deals. Whether you're picking up a new phone or already have one, one of the first purchases you'll want to make is a protective case. And just like nearly every other item, there's plenty of money to be saved on some great phone covers.
Surprising? No. Exciting? Absolutely. After a grand introduction by at the Apple event on September 10, 2019, the iPhone 11 is finally here. We may have known nearly everything about this new iOS device ahead of time, thanks to the usual surge of reliable leaks and rumors.
With the new iPhones coming out, many see the current mobile market as just another epic battle between Samsung and Apple. But let's not forget there are many other phones that run Android. And when you start to sift through the specs, one stands out as a competitive alternative to the iPhone XR, the LG G7 ThinQ.
In iOS, Apple provides a few live wallpapers that you can use for the background on your iPhone's lock screen, but these animated options are just wavy color shifts and ink-in-water effects. To really customize your lock screen, you can use a Live Photo for your wallpaper. If you can't find the right Live Photo, GIFs are the next best thing, and experimenting with them feels like a game almost.
Infections with group A streptococcus, like Streptococcus pyogenes, claim over a half million lives a year globally, with about 163,000 due to invasive strep infections, like flesh-eating necrotizing fasciitis and streptococcal toxic shock syndrome.
During the millions of years they've been on earth horseshoe crabs have developed a trick that can save our lives even now — and may be especially useful in the fight against healthcare-associated infections.
Being a city dweller does not mean you cannot save the planet — or your food scraps. Climate change and resource management are big issues. Composting in any size space is not only possible, but it gives you a chance to reduce greenhouse gasses and reuse food scraps. Right now, about 40% of all food in the US goes to the landfill. In addition to planning meals and using your food in creative ways to reduce the amount that goes to waste, you can compost.
For some, drinking raw milk is a way to get back to nature, improve family nutrition, and hedge against asthma and allergies. However, according to public health authorities, drinking raw or unpasteurized milk is a big mistake—even fatal. So what's the story?
It won't come as a surprise to hear that your cell phone, tablet, and laptop are loaded with bacteria and other organic material. While most of these bacteria are harmless, there are good reasons to reduce the capability of your mobile devices to infect you—or other people.
After poor sales of last year's HTC 10 and the terrible reviews their first 2017 flagship received, HTC really needs the HTC U11 to succeed. But they're not taking things lying down, as they've come up with some interesting tech for their latest handset.
Even when no one is in your kitchen, it is crowded. The refrigerator, sink, and counters are all covered with microbes that are just hanging around. They are inadvertent remnants from the raw chicken you used in that recipe last night, brewing a bacterial cocktail in your Nespresso machine, or just growing their merry little colonies on your leftovers.
Yes, I know it's autumn and the trees are losing their leaves, but the seasons do not decide when I can or cannot enjoy ice cream. No matter how warm or cold is is outside right now, I will remain completely fascinated by rolled ice cream. Yes, rolled.
Watching an ice cream pro build you a custom frozen treat mixed with your favorite fruit, candy, and/or toppings makes buying a cone even more exciting. But why go out for ice cream when you can create your favorite combinations in your own kitchen? While you might not have an expensive frozen slab for ice cream topping your kitchen counters, you can mimic the creamy consistency and customizable options from Cold Stone Creamery and Marble Slab any time you're craving it. Best of all, you don'...
Within the gastronomic melting pot of America, pizza was first introduced in the late 19th century by Italian settlers in cities like New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. The slice-by -slice phenomenon gained popularity when immigrant street peddlers walked the sidewalks with aromatic, sweet-smelling pies held in metal washtubs.
Sometimes, you come across a recipe or a food hack and think, "That is the weirdest thing I have ever heard of; who would make that?" That was my initial reaction when I read Food52's piece about popcorn milkshakes.
When alcohol tastes bad, there's little you can do to save it—or so you think. While it might seem easier to toss your entire bottle of old, opened wine, or to give up and drink crappy vodka anyway, there are creative ways to turn a spoiled or just plain bad boozy beverage into one you actually want to drink.
The headline above may have some spice addicts shaking their heads, but, believe it or not, there are people out there who either don't like or can't handle a ton of spice.
Running out of any shower necessity is just a temporary annoyance, but it always seems worse when it's an empty can of shaving cream or gel. Sure, you could dry shave or use whatever liquid toiletry item is in hands reach, but if you want a truly smooth shave without irritation, you'll want to try one of the following alternatives. Some of them might even work better than your can of Barbasol or Skintimate.
En papillote may sound like a difficult French cooking method you'd never use at home, but don't be fooled by its fancy name—it's actually a really easy way to cook food that is moist and flavorful, and all you need is some parchment paper and your oven.
