Shared posts

14 Jul 17:36

Alfamo Cooling Towel

by mark

Used the Alfamo cooling towel during last year’s ridiculously hot summer. Get it wet with cool water, wring it out, and snap it – then put it around your neck (or on your head, for us bald guys)… and you’re much, much cooler. When it starts to feel less cool, you don’t have to wet it again until it’s completely dry, just snap it again. It uses pretty much no energy, is completely re-usable (and washable), and works like a charm. It made living without A/C bearable in 105F degree heat.

-- Steven Coallier

Alfamo Cooling Towel

Available from Amazon

25 May 04:52

Quizlet

by mark

Quizlet is used almost daily by 12 million people but you’ve never heard of it unless you have a high school student. It’s a cloud-based flash card app. Here’s how my highschool son explains it.

Quizlet is what I and all my friends use to study vocabulary or anything else we have to memorize for class. It is super easy and super fast to add a card. No paper, auto-define buttons, lots of keyboard shortcuts make the process of creating a Quizlet quick and painless. Because Quizlets are all stored in the cloud, I can access them from anywhere and not worry about losing track of it. I usually type the cards on my laptop and then review/test on my phone. I can easily share my Quizlets with friends. There’s built in gamification for testing myself which makes memorizing a million words less of a daunting task. Quizlet also has a lot of other features which I haven’t yet tried; to me it is mostly a practical memorization aid. The best feature of all though is that it’s completely free!

quizlet2

-- Tywen Kelly

Quizlet
Free

27 Mar 22:22

Now

This image stays roughly in sync with the day (assuming the Earth continues spinning). Shortcut: xkcd.com/now
19 Mar 07:11

Slow Cooker Beef and Barley Soup {Plus Two New Menu Features}

by Mel

Slow Cooker Beef and Barley Soup

By now I hope you know that my recipe posting philosophy is pretty simple: I only post recipes that are the best of the best. Be assured that for every recipe that makes it here, there are at least five or six I’ve made that just don’t make the cut. Brian has this look he gives me when we are eating dinner and I know that he knows that I need to know that the recipe probably isn’t worthy of the blog and most definitely should not go into our personal meal rotation (but bless his heart, that man eats whatever I put in front of him, good or bad). Usually The Look is accompanied by whining children and/or gagging. I’m nothing if not adept at picking up on subtle cues like that.

But even with my posting philosophy firmly in place, I still wondered if I should share this one. Don’t worry, it didn’t induce The Look or gagging (far from it). It’s just…well…not very exciting. Beef and barley. In the slow cooker. It kind of makes me sleepy just thinking about it. However, this soup’s homey, comforting flavors with basic ingredients are incredibly delicious and left me craving more. When I made it for the third time, I figured you might want it in your life, too. Plus, the slow cooker feature means you can fix it and forget it and that is never a bad thing.

Slow Cooker Beef and Barley Soup

Ever since converting this fabulous Southwestern Chicken and Barley Chili to the slow cooker, I’ve fallen in love with barley even more. It’s nutty and soft but still slightly chewy, and in this soup, the tender bits of meat and carrot (reminiscent of the amazing, tasty carrots that come out of beef stew – my favorite part!) and the rich, hearty broth bring everything together perfectly.

So yeah, this may not be the most trendy recipe on the internet but I can promise you, it isn’t because of flavor and taste. It’s just because those viral recipes have sprinkles on top and this doesn’t.

Ok, now for the two new menu features! Starting today, I’ll be adding a What to Serve With This section for each main dish post (see below). Not to say you are forbidden to eat this soup without, say, a dinner roll, but it’s just a way to help you pair side dishes with main dishes. A little extra boost after the Side Dish Planner I introduced earlier this week. And 99% of the time, I’ll literally be telling you what we actually did eat with the featured recipe. I’m slowly working my way through the archives to add this feature to all the main dishes on my site, but for now look for it mostly on new posts.

Finally, if you glance down there in the footer, you’ll see a Weekly Menu which will be updated with a new menu each and every week. I know you already have access to these downloadable menus, but this is meant to be a one-glance option for menu planning. And yeah…I think that’s it. Thanks for sticking with me.

What To ServeA really, great dinner roll (for homemade, I’d suggest French Bread Rolls or Buttery Cornmeal Crescents)
Fresh fruit or a light fruit salad like this Honey Lime Fruit Salad
Sliced cheddar cheese

One Year Ago: Fudgy Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
Two Years Ago: Coconut Tres Leches Hot Chocolate
Three Years Ago: Heath Bar Cookies

Slow Cooker Beef and Barley Soup

Yield: Serves 6

Slow Cooker Beef and Barley Soup

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon oil
  • 1 1/2 pounds sirloin tips, flap meat or chuck roast, cubed
  • Salt and pepper
  • 3/4 cup 1/4-inch sliced carrots, about 3-4 medium carrots peeled
  • 8 ounces baby bella mushrooms, wiped clean and diced
  • 1 cup chopped onion, about 1 medium yellow or white onion
  • 2 cloves garlic, finely minced or pressed
  • 1 tablespoon tomato paste
  • 1 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 3 cups low-sodium chicken broth
  • 3 cups low-sodium beef broth
  • 2 teaspoons low-sodium soy sauce
  • 2/3 cup pearled barley (not quick-cooking)

Directions

  1. In a 12-inch nonstick skillet, heat the oil until rippling and hot over medium heat. Season the beef with salt and pepper and add to the skillet in a single layer (you may need to do this in batches), cooking for 1-2 minutes, browning on all sides. Repeat with the remaining meat if needed.
  2. Scoop the meat into the slow cooker, leaving as much oil/liquid behind in the skillet as possible. Return the skillet to medium heat and add the carrots, mushrooms, onion and garlic. Cook for 4-5 minutes until the carrots and mushrooms start to soften. Stir in the tomato paste and thyme and cook for 1-2 minutes.
  3. Whisk in the chicken broth and simmer for a minute or so. Pour the mixture into the slow cooker. Add the beef broth, soy sauce and barley. Give the soup a good stir and then cover the slow cooker and cook on low 7-9 hours. Season with salt and pepper to taste, if needed, before serving.
Schema/Recipe SEO Data Markup by ZipList Recipe Plugin
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http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2014/03/slow-cooker-beef-and-barley-soup-plus-two-new-menu-features.html
Printed from Mel's Kitchen Cafe (www.melskitchencafe.com)
Recipe Source: inspired by a soup recipe in America’s Test Kitchen Quick Family Cookbook (I basically changed up the ingredients and converted it to a slow cooker recipe)
19 Mar 06:53

Mary Blair gallery show at Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco

by Cory Doctorow
staticantics

Dani!


San Francisco's Walt Disney Family Museum is running an exhibition on the art of Mary Blair, one of the all-time greats of Disney history and modernist illustration and color. I've covered her work here before (for example, there's a gorgeous collection of Blair's Golden Books, and, of course, the amazing Alice in Wonderland edition featuring the rejected concept art she produced for Disney's psychedelic Alice in Wonderland animated film), and I've been lucky enough to see some of it in person while I was working at Disney, but this exhibit, called "MAGIC, COLOR, FLAIR: the world of Mary Blair," looks extraordinary.

MAGIC, COLOR, FLAIR: the world of Mary Blair features some 200 works and explores all phases of Blair’s work by examining her artistic development in three major areas: “Learning the Rules”—her student days at Los Angeles’ legendary Chouinard School of Art, and her fine art regionalist watercolors exhibited in the 1930s. “Breaking the Rules”—her artistic breakthrough with boldly colored, stylized concept paintings for classic Disney animated features during the 1940s and 1950s, including Saludos Amigos (1942) and Peter Pan (1953); and “Creating New Worlds”—freelancing in the 1950s in New York where she became a popular illustrator for national advertisements, magazine articles, clothing designs, window displays, theatrical sets, and children’s books.

The exhibition includes Blair’s rarely exhibited student art, which was influenced by the illustrations of her mentor Pruett Carter, and her mid-to-late artworks from the 1930s as a member of the innovative California Water-Color Society which reveal an essential humanism and empathy for her subjects. The exhibition also showcases The Walt Disney Family Museum’s extensive collection of Blair’s conceptual artworks in gouache and watercolor—some of which have never displayed outside The Walt Disney Studios—that reveal the artist’s inexhaustible creativity in design, staging of imagery, visual appeal, and unique color sensibility. Also featured are original illustrations from several of Blair’s beloved Golden Books including I Can Fly (1951).

An imaginative colorist and designer, Blair helped introduce a modernist style to Walt Disney and his studio, and for nearly 30 years, he touted her inspirational work for his films and theme parks alike. Animator Marc Davis, who put Blair’s exciting use of color on a par with Henri Matisse, recalled, “She brought modern art to Walt in a way that no one else did. He was so excited about her work.”

MAGIC, COLOR, FLAIR: the world of Mary Blair (Thanks, Hugh!)

    






19 Jul 06:12

Polar Bear Learning to Walk

Polar Bear Learning to Walk

Submitted by: Unknown (via Youtube)

Tagged: polar bear , cute , walk
19 Jul 06:01

Dog happy to see her human companion return after a six-month absence

by Mark Frauenfelder

[Video Link] (Via Doobybrain)

    


23 Jun 02:38

Photos of Space Mountain's construction

by Cory Doctorow


From the Imagineering Disney blog, a wonderful gallery of photos from the construction of Space Mountain at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. This is the original mountain, beating the Disneyland one to completion by two years:


Although the concept of Space Mountain was originally envisioned for Disneyland, the first Space Mountain to open was at Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. After the Matterhorn Bobsleds opened at Disneyland in 1959 and were hugely popular, Disneyland management asked for a second thrill ride. Walt was on board but the plans for this second coaster were delayed for another decade. Disneyland didn't get their Space Mountain until 1977, more than two years after Magic Kingdom got theirs in 1975.

Magic Kingdom's Space Mountain Construction

    


20 Jun 06:19

Ice Sheets

Data adapted from 'The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum' by A.S. Dyke et. al., which was way better than the sequels 'The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum: The Meltdown' and 'The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum: Continental Drift'.
29 Apr 03:26

Authorization

Before you say anything, no, I know not to leave my computer sitting out logged in to all my accounts. I have it set up so after a few minutes of inactivity it automatically switches to my brother's.
20 Apr 05:39

Viral Video of the Day: Worry about Yourself!

Good dad Ryan Hunley tries to help his baby girl August put on her seatbelt and the two-year-old tells him off in the most adorable manner.

Submitted by: Unknown (via ABC News)

18 Apr 03:21

Carnitas {Mexican Pulled Pork}

by Kate @ Our Best Bites

carnitas square1A few weeks ago, I posted a recipe where I mentioned carnitas and we got a bunch of requests for the recipe. And I totally get it because I’ve done a fair amount of hunting for the perfect carnitas recipes throughout the years. I’m not sure what’s so hard about getting a great recipe for carnitas, but everything I tried came out mushy or flavorless or one-note or too spicy or too fatty and I was frustrated.

In a last-ditch attempt, I checked my cooking bible, Cook’s Illustrated Cookbookto see if they had a carnitas recipe. And they did, but honestly, after all my unfortunate carnitas experiences, I was nervous. See, the ingredients they used really weren’t all that different than the other recipes I’d tried.

As I picked a piece of flavorful, crispy meat off the pan, I felt all sorts of guilt for my crisis of faith–they had not failed me.

As I’ve made it again and again, I’ve tweaked a few things here and there (I added a little red wine vinegar to brighten it up a little and a few cloves of garlic because I’m Kate and that’s what I do) and it’s become one of our family’s favorite meals.

You’ll need 3 1/2-4 pounds of boneless pork butt roast (sometimes called boneless pork shoulder or boneless picnic roast)… boneless pork shoulder roast 1 white or yellow onion, peeled and halved, 4-6 cloves garlic, smashed and peeled, lime juice, red wine vinegar, dry oregano, ground cumin, 2 bay leaves, salt and pepper, and an orange.Place the oven rack in the lower middle position and preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Now, pork shoulder can be pretty fatty, and that fat’s going to come into play later. But I still like to trim the pork of excess fat (mostly the big globs on the outside) before I cut it into 2″ chunks. Place the pork in a heavy lidded pot like a Dutch oven. IMG_1559 Add enough water to cover the pork and then add onion, garlic, lime juice, red wine vinegar, oregano, cumin, bay leaves, 1 teaspoon kosher salt, 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper, and the juice from the orange. After squeezing the juice from the orange, toss the rinds into the pork mixture and stir to combine. IMG_1568 Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Cover the pot and transfer to the oven. Cook for about 2 hours or until the pork falls apart when poked with a fork. When the pork is fork-tender, remove the pot from the oven. Remove the orange rinds, onion, and bay leaves. Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the pork from the liquid to the foil-lined baking sheet. It’s pretty much not appetizing at ALL. Have no fear. IMG_1572 Return the pot to the stovetop and bring the liquid to a boil over high heat. Boil for 8-15 minutes (longer or shorter if necessary) until the liquid is thickened and glaze-y and, when stirred, the spoon leaves a trail in the liquid (you should have about 1 cup of liquid).

Reduced carnitas cooking liquid

Use your fingers to pull apart the pork pieces, discarding any particularly fatty pieces (or removing the fat from them). Drizzle with the cooking liquid. pulled pork in cooking glaze Turn your oven broiler on high and place the pork in the oven for 5-8 minutes or until the pork starts to brown and the edges become crispy. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and use a spatula to flip the pork. Return to the oven for another 5-8 minutes, broiling until the pork is browned and crispy (but not charred, unless that’s your thing). Mine got a little blacker than I planned on, but it was still delicious. meat for carnitas in pan Serve in warmed tortillas with desired toppings. Makes about 12 servings. Pork carnitas from Our Best Bites!  

    Print This!    

Carnitas (Mexican Pulled Pork)
Recipe adapted by Our Best Bites from Cooks Illustrated Cookbook

Ingredients:

3 1/2-4 pounds boneless pork butt roast (sometimes called boneless pork shoulder or boneless picnic roast)
2+ cups water (enough to cover the pork in the pot)
1 white or yellow onion, peeled and halved
4-6 cloves garlic, smashed and peeled
2 tablespoons lime juice (about 1 lime)
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon dry oregano
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 bay leaves salt and pepper
1 orange
For serving: Small corn or flour tortillas, grated cheese (I like cotija cheese), pico de gallo, mango pico de gallo, mint-pineapple pico de gallo, guacamole, sliced avocado, sliced white onion, sprigs of cilantro, fresh lime wedges, etc.

Instructions: Place the oven rack in the lower middle position and preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Trim the pork of excess fat and cut into 2″ chunks. Place the pork in a heavy lidded pot like a Dutch oven. Add enough water to cover the pork and then add onion, garlic, lime juice, red wine vinegar, oregano, cumin, bay leaves, 1 teaspoon kosher salt, 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper, and the juice from the orange. After squeezing the juice from the orange, toss the rinds into the pork mixture and stir to combine. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally.

Cover the pot and transfer to the oven. Cook for about 2 hours or until the pork falls apart when poked with a fork. When the pork is fork-tender, remove the pot from the oven.

Remove the orange rinds, onion, and bay leaves. Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the pork from the liquid to the foil-lined baking sheet. Set aside.

Return the pot to the stovetop and bring the liquid to a boil over high heat. Boil for 8-15 minutes (longer or shorter if necessary) until the liquid is thickened and glaze-y and, when stirred, the spoon leaves a trail in the liquid (you should have about 1 cup of liquid).

Use your fingers to pull apart the pork pieces, discarding any particularly fatty pieces (or removing the fat from them). Drizzle with the cooking liquid. Turn your oven broiler on high and place the pork in the oven for 5-8 minutes or until the pork starts to brown and the edges become crispy. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and use a spatula to flip the pork. Return to the oven for another 5-8 minutes, broiling until the pork is browned and crispy (but not charred, unless that’s your thing). Serve in warmed tortillas with desired toppings. Makes about 12 servings.

24 Mar 08:20

Sen Chuck Schumer took $100K from private prisons, now gets to help decide whether to send undocumented immigrants to jail

by Cory Doctorow

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is one of the key figures in the political wrangle over whether undocumented immigrants in the USA will be legalized or deported. He's also the recipient of over $100,000 in campaign contributions from the private prison industry, whose profits would skyrocket if his push for prison for all those people is successful.

Chuck Schumer is the lead Senate Democrat working on immigration reform--he gets to decide whether millions of undocumented immigrants will be imprisoned or legalized. Yet he’s also taken over $100,000 in campaign contributions from the private prison industry. Is it any surprise he’s pushing for billions more dollars spent on increased enforcement and detention of immigrants?

We can’t trust Sen. Schumer to push for fair legislation when he’s accepting money from private prison companies that have a strong interest in jailing as many immigrants as possible. How much of an interest? The two corporations from which Sen. Schumer took money, GEO Group and CCA, made $296.9 million in profits from the jailing of immigrants last year.

Tell Sen. Schumer to return this money immediately.

If 15,000 people sign, we'll personally deliver your petitions to Sen. Schumer and demand a response.

Sen. Schumer: Give back the money (via Making Light)