Category Archives: FYI

Thrifty Thursday

Things I <3 This Week

I’ve been behind. I’m catching up on my eating, among other things, and now I have a cold. So right now, I just want to share some things that are making me happy this week.

Grandma’s cooking.

Sunday dinner was just what I needed to ~~reverse,~~ um, ~~recover from~~ enjoy after my diet. Grandma didn’t disappoint and sent us home with dinner for the whole week (hence my lack of recipes).

This video my dad sent me.

I have a journalism minor, so I still say paper is not dead.

50 Lifehacks to Simplify Your World

This article reveals the little tricks to make life easier and it will blow your mind. I already do some of them (I thought I invented #9) but many of them will make you say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Bend a post-it note to catch dust from drilling.

No more mess from hanging shelves!

Suri’s Burn Book and SEO

This is one of my favorite blogs and it’s how I catch up on my celeb news. Today, fake Suri shared why Kim and Kanye will NOT be naming their baby “North.” I love a good Kardashian jab. Read it here.

Coursera

My friend Danielle introduced me to Coursera, a website that lets you take online classes on almost anything for free! Free knowledge for everyone!

Jon Cozart

…and his musical parodies. I loved his Harry Potter in 99Seconds, and now his After Ever After video is going viral. (Yes, I’m a Gleek.)

And finally, I’m so excited that Tom is working almost-normal hours again and our trip to California is 80% booked (the other 20% hopefully by the weekend). Signs that spring is coming? Well, I’m going skiing this weekend so probably not. But at least I have a lot to look forward to!

Some Fun for the Foodies

1 Reply

Remember Mad Libs? I had so many of those books, putting in random nouns and adjectives that never made sense when the story was over.

A friend sent me a grown-up version for us foodies, as featured in Food & Wine magazine. (Thanks Katie!)

I think it’s more fun to not peek, so I’m listing the words you have to come up with here first. Then, pop them into the story below and see what you came up with.

Food & Wine is also encouraging readers to tweet a photo of your filled-in page to @fandw using #FWWordGames and they’ll be posting some of them on their website!

Beverage
African Country
Mammal
Bird
Family Member
Piece of Furniture
Body Part
Vegetable
Number
Large Animal
Body Part
Cured Meat
Big-Box Store
Items of Clothing
Historical Era
Reality TV Star
Eastern-European Country
Zoo Animals
Packaged Food
French Pastries
Distant Relative
Foreign Country
Type of Boat
TV Chef
Number Below 10
Medical Device
Number Above Two
Musician
Supreme Court Justice
Classical Composer
Condiment
Number above Four

Got your words? Now fill em in here and have fun with it:

Food & Wine Mad Libs Word Game

I also came across a nifty wine guide as featured on theKitchn. Wine Folly created a great color coded-chart for wine and food pairings.

However, I have to admit that the one tip I inherited from my dad is you don’t drink white until you’re out of red.

Wine Folly’s Guide for Pairing Food & Wine

See more tips from Wine Folly here.

What food and wine tips have you learned/inherited?

Mealtime Monday: How to Dress Your Salad

1 Reply

Having a salad before a meal makes me feel healthier, especially when I’m eating something fattening like my favorite mac n cheese. Getting my daily veggie servings in completes a meal.

I like to get creative with some seasonal salads, like my Fall Apple Salad. But usually I like a traditional green salad as an appetizer. My favorite ingredients in a classic mixed green salad are tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, and fresh mozzarella. (And I recently discovered that tomatoes, onions, and several other vegetables should NOT be refrigerated – read this article for why.)

A simple healthy salad

To me, dressing can make or break a salad. Unfortunately, it can also make a salad super fattening and cancel out what you thought was a guilt-free meal. Some are too sweet and sugary and it’s just not how a salad should be dressed.

Lady in green – I stole this from Kiley’s college art project.

So, I recently started making my own dressings and now, I won’t go back to the bottled stuff. I know what goes into it and can be certain there is nothing artificial. The dressing is as fresh as the salad!

All it takes is a few simple ingredients: honey, Dijon, salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar.

Just mix the ingredients, and enjoy your homemade dressing – better, healthier, and cheaper than the store-bought stuff.

When I know I’ll have salad a few days in a row, I’ll make it in my homemade dressing bottle – available at Target, Crate & Barrel, HomeGoods, or pretty much any home store. This one even has some recipes on the side. Of course mine are better.

A glass salad dressing bottle makes it a convenient staple in your fridge – but it’s homemade!

And the left overs can go into my lunchbox for a healthy packed lunch.

Save some salad and dressing and pack it for a healthy lunch. These dressing containers are from Dollar Tree – 20 contains for $1!!

The best part about this salad dressing, is you can substitute the balsamic for anything to get different flavors. Sub it for lemon juice to get a healthy lemon vinaigrette. Or, use red wine vinegar for a lighter vinaigrette. Add extra Dijon and honey to get honey mustard. The possibilities are endless…

I’ll also leave you with a tip from Ina Garten: if you are preparing a salad in advance, add the dressing to the bottom of the salad bowl. When you are ready to serve, just toss the salad well and it will be fresh, not soggy.

Enjoy!

Homemade Balsamic Dressing

1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
pinch of salt
pinch of pepper
pinch of Italian seasoning (optional)
1/8 c. olive oil
1/4 balsamic vinegar

Mix honey, Dijon, and spices. Stir in olive oil, then add balsamic. Mix well and serve.

Refrigerate leftovers for up to 1 week.

Give Gift Baskets … the Right Way

1 Reply

With Christmas behind us, we have presents we have received that we love, like, and plan to regift later. But as a gift giver, we also have those gifts that we are proud of and plan to repeat, gifts where we just aren’t sure what the person thought, and a few where we know we could have done better.

But a safe bet – whether for Christmas, a housewarming, hostess gift, or any other occasion – is the classic gift basket. And I think, there is a right and a wrong way to do the gift basket (or bag/box/etc.).

The rule of thumb should be, baskets should contain items that people will use. I’ve posted before about wine packages which make an excellent present for any wino – it’s something thoughtful, consumable, and a little high-end. Personally, wine is the best hostess, grab bag, or thank you gift that I could get!

I’ve also mentioned Beecher’s of New York and their amazing cheese boxes which contain amazing homemade cheeses from their shop, paired with perfect sides. (We picked one up for my parents this Christmas – although you can order them online and have them shipped!)

But, I also want to call out my favorites from this holiday, all of which I gifted to some of my loved ones!

Coffee Baskets

A loaded coffee basket from Greene’s Beans in Hackettstown is usually my go-to when it comes to holiday and housewarming gifts. Everyone drinks coffee – and if they don’t they drink tea, or hot chocolate, or chai, or some type of hot beverage. Some specialty coffee from your local coffee shop is a great treat, especially when you’re visiting someone out of town. Our coffee shop does a great job of adding in teas, candies, and some little extras that fill the basket with useful – and delicious – goodies. And, unlike baskets from the chain coffee houses, they are local and unique. Plus, they aren’t stuffed with just filler – what you see is what you get in these gifts.

Coffee Basket by Greene's Beans

Plus, at my local shop, they offer different varieties depending on your needs; they come in coffee-lovers, tea-lovers, chocolate-lovers, and breakfast. You’ll see I chose the latter, which has an awesome mix of stuff!

Kitchen Baskets

This year, we wanted to give my grandparents something special, yet practical. So, we built our kitchen-loving grandma a basket full of goodies that she can use while cooking up her next meal for the whole family. Almost everything pictured – including the box – is from TJ Maxx (which could also be substituted for Marshall’s or HomeGoods). We wanted to get her a new cookbook since she’s been looking for some inspiration lately. And, as someone who is a little recipe-obsessed, I know a new cookbook is an amazing gift, even if it’s just to get a couple of fresh ideas.

So, we found Ina Garten, and wrapped it up with some Italian pasta, quality olive oil, spices, garlic stuffed olives, vanilla, and jam. Topped off with some dollar store cellophane, we built our own gift basket of gourmet – yet useful – ingredients for a fraction of the price.

Mason Jars

This is my original this Christmas – personalized gift jars. Mason jars are trending, and when I found them at the dollar store, I wanted to put together something special for my best friends for our gift exchange. We had a $15 price cap and I usually see that as a bargain hunting challenge rather than a limitation. So, I stuffed $15 worth of goodies into my mason jar, all with sentimental value.

The important thing for me was to add items that they could use, and would like, rather than little trinkets that are actually junk someone would throw out. I also added in a tea light in case they wanted to turn the mason jar into a candle once all of the mini gifts were in use. Some of the stuff I was able to buy in “value” packs (since I know I’ll be using some of these things anyway) so I had some huge cost savings per item. The Essie nail polish was my only splurge, but every girl needs a new color.

Here’s what I included:

Soft lips lip balm (Target, $2)
Palm Rabbit Wine Stopper (HomeGoods, $1.50)
Smirnoff mini ($2)
Essie nail polish (Target, $7)
Chai Tea (Green’s Beans, $2)
Lindt candy ($.75)
Tea Light Candle (HomeGoods, $.50)

And, to make it more sentimental, I dug up some old photos of the three of us and cut them to fit inside the jar lid. The mason jar ring frames and secures the photo perfectly and adds a little extra touch of nostalgia.

That’s Danielle, Nicole, and me in summer of 2002 on our school trip to Quebec. Funny to think that 10 and a half years later, we’re getting ready for Nicole’s wedding! Despite our horrible fashion sense at 13, I guess I should have known that we would be bridesmaids one day.

Topped off with some ribbon (also a dollar store find), I knew this was a gift worthy of memories with my childhood friends.

Doggie Basket

For the loved one who has a furry loved one, a pet basket will make them say “awwww.” We put this together which is a combination of a Christmas present for Olive and a “welcome home” present for our newest addition, Rosie.

Most of the items are from HomeGoods/Marshalls/TJ Maxx (noticing a pattern here?). This basket includes a dog bed ($15), dog bowl ($5), treats jar ($8), and gourmet dog cookies ($12) as seen on Urban Olive!

And of course, this gift got the ultimate approval from Olive herself (although Rosie and Lily forced her to share).

What’s the best gift basket you’ve given or received?

Nailed It

Food Tips: Q&A of those Bizarre Kitchen Questions

City Love After Sandy

1 Reply

It’s been a few days since the storm hit. The power has FINALLY returned, the TV has shows other than the news, the frantic Facebook posts have died down, and civilization is starting to resemble normalcy. Now it’s that point where we think about everything that has happened, assess the damage, and realize how lucky we are.

On Sunday, I sat in my Hoboken apartment thrilled that I could work from home the next day since all public transportation into the city was shutting down. I got all of the emails that basically said “leave now or you’ll regret it.” There was a mandatory evacuation of all first floor apartments. I live on the first floor, but I have a few porch steps, so I don’t count… I heard of neighbors getting phone calls encouraging them to evacuate, or locals who had volunteers knocking on their doors, asking them to get out now. We ignored them, like everyone else. It’s just a storm.

On Monday, the skies got darker and so did the warnings. We wondered if maybe we took everything too lightly and walked to the river to watch the storm roll in. It was worse than we thought. The roads were closing at 4:00, apparently, so we thought maybe there’s reason to worry. Not about the storm, but about the power going out – I didn’t want to be stuck without power. My dad finally agreed, better safe than sorry, and picked us up only hours before the roads closed.

The rest, as they say, is history, and we watched it unfold via Twitter, radio, and any scrap of news we could find through the darkness. At my parents’, we lost power and patience; at my home in Hoboken (yes, I finally think of it as home) everyone lost so much more.

There were a few days of worry and panic about my apartment. And I admit, there were a few tears as I watched Tweets and news stories recount how horrible the damage was in Hoboken which, as Hobokenite and Today Show reporter Natalie Morales put it, “it looks like Venice.” Even a Tweet showed Eli Manning assessing the damage of his uptown luxury apartment lobby, not immune to natural disasters. The infamous pictures seemed to all show the blocks surrounding my home; the drowned taxi cabs, the PATH station that looks like a scene from Titanic.

Hoboken Terminal – with caution tape draped like TP after Halloween.

But today, the water has almost completely receded, and we returned to assess the damage and at least give me piece of mind. Hoboken, a town usually filled with bustling 20-somethings – living by the work hard/play hard mentality and making their bar presence known – was a ghost town. The neighborly part of every person was showing as the few with power had set up charging stations for cell phones and the most popular restaurants – even the most expensive – handed out free food to anyone that wanted it.

And I walked by in amazement toward my apartment and then turned onto my street. We are so lucky. I was worried first about the water coming into my apartment, which had reached 4 feet in many places surrounding my block. Sandy missed us by inches…literally. I was worried about the looters, which had recently been reported. Everything was locked up safe and sound. All I lost was the contents of my refrigerator. (NOW I know why everything was on sale at A&P on Sunday – hindsight is 20/20.)

My apartment after Sandy – the water line missed us by inches.

And then I looked out my bedroom window, which was really the only source of light, and saw the neighbors across the street. They wore masks as they leaned out their first floor windows, scraping off molding filled with mildew, throwing their furniture onto the street. Couches, mattresses, furniture, even clothes were piled high, all to be taken out with the trash.

The clean up efforts across the street.

Even after my town made national news and my heart still aches for this place that I call home, I know we’ll be fine. New Jersey is the most stubborn state in the U.S. and Hoboken is the most stubborn city – we will be 100% fine. Areas of Staten Island are so much worse – houses completely leveled and a death toll that climbs. We are so lucky. And then there is the Jersey shore, that in addition to containing memories for all of us, had so much more tangible damage than any other area.

And through it all, as I followed closely on Twitter and the Hoboken Patch, and eventually on CNN and all of the news channels – I can’t write this without saying THANK YOU to the town. Anyone who says Hoboken didn’t warn us enough – that’s the stubborn Jersey in you talking. They warned us, we didn’t listen. I didn’t listen until panic set in and convinced me to evacuate. Anyone who criticizes Mayor Zimmer should try being mayor of a town in a natural disaster – in a town that never experience natural disasters – trying to rescue its stubborn residents, probably without sleep for days, while participating in countless live interviews, so that she could beg for the help we needed. The Mayor and the city swallowed their pride to get the National Guard, FEMA, and President Obama into our little mile square so that we could get help.

National Guard Trucks in Hoboken that rescued residents

FEMA in Hoboken

Hoboken, I love you, and I’m so proud to call you home. Now, let’s get back to normal so that I can keep bragging about you while I sip my coffee staring out at the NYC skyline. The view is just better here.

The view of NYC from the Hoboken Pier

Resources:

FYI: Facts about CHEESE!

1 Reply

I previously posted my recipe for Homemade Baked Mac n Cheese, made up of my favorite ingredients, pasta and cheese. I also raved about one of my new favorite NYC spots that serves only grilled cheese.

Cheesy. Image courtesy of Cornell University.

But I often wondered at what point does my beloved cheese go bad? Cheese gets expensive (I had to turn down a ball of Buratta because it was selling for $10!). And some cheese is made from mold, so if it gets moldy, does that matter? Even cream cheese looks ok past the expiration date, so should I throw it out?

As a result of my unimportant burning questions, I did some research. I came across a little reference guide courtesy of the Mayo Clinic, which is helpful for the kitchen rule book!

So here’s the scoop!

Soft cheeses (e.g. cottage cheese, cream cheese) should be thrown out when they begin to grow mold. The mold can send “root threads” throughout the cheese and harmful bacteria can grow along with the mold. The same goes for any kind of cheese that’s shredded, crumbled or sliced. To be safe, abide by the expiration date on these.

Semisoft cheeses (e.g. Cheddar, Colby, Swiss) aren’t as much as a risk as mold can’t penetrate very far with this consistency. Therefore, you can cut away the moldy part and eat the rest of the cheese. Cut off at least one inch around and below the moldy spot. Be sure to keep the knife out of the mold itself so that it doesn’t contaminate other parts of the cheese.

However, not all molds pose a risk, as some types of mold are used to make cheeses like Brie and Camembert. These molds are safe to eat but mold that’s not part of the manufacturing process is a problem. For advice about handling specific types of cheese, consult the chart.

You can also check out the Mayo Clinic’s guide for what’s safe and which require you to cut your losses.

But as always, when in doubt, throw it out!

And now you can say you learned something from this blog…