If you're the type who looks to get the most out of your trips, then you probably try to experience things from a native's perspective. Once you've decided where to travel next , here are some tips for creating as authentic a local experience as possible.
Getting all of your kids out the door in the morning can be hectic. Save some time in the morning by having your kid's outfits planned ahead of time and organized with these dividers.
Whether you're trying to keep your outdoor plants happy or you just want to keep the kids busy in the yard, if you don't have a sprinkler that'll water a large area at once, all you need is a plastic soda bottle, some tape, and your garden hose.
The first slice of pie is always a mess. It's difficult to get out and usually looks awful when you do. There's an easy fix: Make the first slice a tiny "sacrificial" slice. That first sliver will give you enough of an opening to cut additional slices cleanly and get a knife or tool under so you can remove it easily.
We've known for a while that your smartphone is a better PC than your PC ever was . It can't replace everything your computer does, but there are some things that are actually better to do on your phone, rather than your computer.
Do you keep your butter in the refrigerator? You do? Stop it. Stop it right this second. You're ruining your butter experience and making your toast taste like failure. Let me tell you why.
Dear Lifehacker,
I have a few remodeling projects I want to get done soon, but I'm not sure how I'm going to pay for it all. Are the "zero percent interest" loans or credit card offers right for this? Or should I apply for a new home loan, like a home equity loan or line of credit? What's the difference between all of these financing options?
Breaking into a new career doesn't usually come with a roadmap. While there isn't always one "correct" way to get a particular job, LearnHowToBecome helps give a framework for many popular careers.
A good resume can land you that job interview, so you want to stand out. If formatting a resume isn't your thing, Hloom has 275 free Microsoft Word templates to download.
A great cup of tea starts with the right leaves, of course, but how you prepare your tea matters too. You can get fancy with special kettles, or go basic with a simple strainer, but we want to build a list of the best solid tea-brewing gear you gear you should have at home. Let's get started.
We've shared countless ways to pack clothes effectively , but here's another one of my favorite methods. The skivvy roll compactly bundles basic clothing items such as socks, t-shirts, and underwear in one easy-to-grab ball.
Knowing to how to properly pan flip is an essential skill for any sauteing sorcerer or sorceress. Practice makes perfect, and using dried beans lets you practice without fear of making a mess.
The face value of $100 is the same in all 50 states, but when it comes to actual purchasing power, your mileage may vary depending on where you are. These are the states that offer the biggest bang for your buck.
RogertEbert.com's Matt Zoller Seitz has penned an excellent piece on what white privilege really means, in response to all the horribleness that has been happening in Ferguson. He reminds us that there's a very big difference between knowing something and truly understanding it.
![He ate all this stuff so you wouldn't have to. [via AdWeek]](https://consumermediallc.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/taco-bell-dollar-feast-hed-2014.png)
He ate all this stuff so you wouldn’t have to. [via AdWeek]
Thankfully, AdWeek’s David Griner was willing to put his stomach on the line for the sake of humanity, taste-testing each of the 11 items on the new bargain-basement menu and living long enough to write up his thoughts.
After investing his $12.99 in science, Griner headed home with, “two satisfyingly hefty sacks of warm, damp, processed food.”
Oh yum.
Feel free to read his entire story — sure to be a James Beard award nominee — but we’ve got the highlights here:
On the Spicy Potato Soft Taco:
“It tastes like breakfast, but with lettuce.”
On the Cheese Roll-Up:
“It’s the kind of thing my 2-year-old would order, unroll out of curiosity and then slowly push toward the center of the table… This is the toast sandwich of Taco Bell cuisine.”
On the Cinnamon Twists:
“I’ve always liked these more in theory than in practice, and sure enough, they’re basically just packing peanuts dusted with sweetness.”
On the Caramel Apple Empanada:
“[Y]ou’d get more for your money with a fruit pie from a nearby gas station. (That might be the saddest sentence I’ve ever written.)”
On forcing himself to eat the Spicy Tostada despite being full:
“It’s earnestly good, but I’m officially in pain.”
It’s worth noting that Griner did not get the chance to test the one thing that vaguely interests me on the cheapo menu — the Cinnabon Delights 2-Pack, which he paid for but which mysteriously never made it home.
Several months after workers at one of its dairy suppliers were charged with animal cruelty after being caught on camera abusing cows, Nestle says that it is taking steps to ensure that the animals in its supply chain are treated properly.
The world’s largest food and beverage company unveiled a number of new animal welfare standards that its 7,300 suppliers – and their suppliers – must meet, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Under the new guidelines, Nestle’s suppliers of dairy, meat, poultry and eggs are required, among other things, to provide more space for farm animals, minimize pain in veterinary practices and welcome independent auditors.
Officials with Nestle say the Responsible Sourcing Guidelines extend to the companies that suppliers buy from, as well; meaning the new standards will reach “hundreds of thousands of farms around the world.”
“We know that our consumers care about the welfare of farm animals and we, as a company, are committed to ensuring the highest possible levels of farm animal welfare across our global supply chain,” Benjamin Ware, the company’s Manager of Responsible Sourcing, said in a news release.
In order to ensure that new standards are being met, Nestle commissioned an independent auditor to visit suppliers.
If a violation is found the company will work with suppliers to improve the treatment of animals and ensure standards are implemented correctly. If the supplier can not meet the requirements despite Nestle’s assistance they will no longer provide goods to the beverage and food maker.
Nestle teamed up with the World Animal Protection NGO to craft the tighter requirements.
Over the past several years, several companies, including Wendy’s, McDonald’s and Safeway, have pledged to take animal welfare seriously. In most cases, the commitment came in the form of vowing to phase out pork suppliers that use gestation crates.
Nestle announces new animal welfare standards [The Los Angeles Times]
(Great Beyond)
The chain has been trying more brand synergy, selling Kenmore and Craftsman appliances in Kmart stores if you can find one. Whether this is a good thing depends on what type of appliance you’re looking for. Our colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports test items from a wide variety of companies, including house-brand items at Sears. They recently made a handy list of things that you should consider buying, and things that you should stay away from. No, “Sears stores” are not one of those things.
Of course, these lists only include hardlines items that you can test in a lab: it’s harder to objectively test a sweater or a bracelet. Also, many of our readers complain about the service they receive in support of products they buy at Sears, not necessarily the products themselves.
Not surprisingly, the items that did well on tests are merchandise that Americans have traditionally bought at Sears. Consumer Reports recommends DieHard car batteries for some makes of cars (Ford trucks and SUVs in particular) but not others. They’ve also been impressed with the performance of washers and dryers, refrigerators, snow blowers, and vacuums in the house-brand Kenmore and Craftsman brands.
Items that they can’t really recommend include house-brand leaf blowers, ranges and ovens, Sears-brand paints and stains, push lawn mowers, and leaf blowers.
Sears Holdings is still looking to sell its stake in Sears Canada, which until recently was actually making money, and is also looking to sell the entire Sears Auto Center business, perhaps not realizing that it’s the first word in the name of the brand that’s really holding it back.
Manifesto-writing CEO Eddie Lampert insists that better days for Sears will come any time now. “In the next 6-12 months, we intend to work with our lenders and others to evaluate our capital structure with a goal of achieving more long term flexibility,” he told reporters and analysts in a pre-recorded conference call. If you want to rent out part of a Kmart for some reason, apparently now is your chance.
Sears posts loss for 9th straight qtr as sales fall again [Reuters]
What to get at Sears and what to forget [Consumer Reports]
(Artnchicken)
While I suppose there could be a worse name for a pasta dish, “Long Live the Nazis” is pretty much as horrifying as it gets. Yet the manager of an Italian restaurant in Taiwan says they had no idea the moniker for menu items featuring a German sausage would be a bad idea. Or just completely offensive.
“When we were deciding on a name for this pasta dish, it never occurred to us that the word Nazi would stir up such controversy,” the 24-year-old manager of the restaurant tells the Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time blog, along with an apology.
She explains that the motive behind the name was to make the connection in customers’ minds between the German ingredients in the dish to the country.
There’s also a pizza under the same name, or there was until a local TV station featured the restaurant’s dish last week.
But before that segment brought on an onslaught of complaints, the manager says no one had anything bad to say about it.
“In fact, it is considered one of our most popular dishes,” she said.
Unsurprisingly, both Israeli and German officials in Taiwan are not pleased with the name and its connection to the murder of 11 million people, saying they’re shocked at the lack of understanding about history and mass killings at the hands of the Nazis, according to the European Pressphoto Agency.
The WSJ reports that the new name of the pasta and pizza dish is “Long Live Purity,” because, “We hope from now on, customers who eat this dish will enjoy it in sheer joy,” the manager said.
Maybe it’s better to just call it “German sausage and pasta.”
Taiwan Restaurant Apologizes for Pasta Dish Called ‘Long Live the Nazis’ [Wall Street Journal]
The L.A. Times writes about the University of Denver’s Relationship Development Study, which has been looking at hundreds of recently married people over the last five years.
Among the various findings of the study are some curious numbers about the number of people attending a couple’s wedding and the quality of their marriage.
The couples in the study who said “I do” before a crowd of at least 150 people had high-quality marriages, according to the researchers. On the other end of the scale, only 31% of couples with relatively cozy weddings of 50 or fewer guests had high-quality marriages. For the group in the middle of those two extremes, the stats weren’t much better, with just 37% having high-quality marriages.
Likewise, only 28% of couples who eschewed formal weddings entirely fit into the the high-quality category, compared to 41% of those who went the formal wedding route.
What’s the connection? The researchers think there might be some impact of what I (not the researchers) have dubbed “The Biggest Loser Effect,” meaning someone might be more willing to commit to something unpleasant if they know lots of people are paying attention.
“There is some reason to believe that having more witnesses at a wedding may actually strengthen marital quality,” write the researchers, who also speculate that the success disparity between informal and formal weddings could be because “couples who are struggling or less happy in their relationship may be less likely to want to celebrate getting married.”
But the real demon lurking in these numbers is that even the best success rate didn’t even crack 50%, meaning a majority of couples in the study are not in high-quality marriages.
So you can invite all the people you want to your wedding, but you may still have better odds of winning at the blackjack table than you do at marriage.
This is as good a reason as any to listen Gram Parsons’ greatest song:
Is caramel apple the new pumpkin spice? It could be: when Americans reach the level of pumpkin spice fatigue, they’ll be looking for new, non-orange but still fall-themed snacks. Starting today, you can pick up Caramel Apple flavored Oreos…only at Target.
We learned about the product launch from the Twitter feed of Target Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Jones, who shared the above photo. Of course, our readers already knew that Caramel Apple Oreos were on their way, since we discussed them in our post on Monday about the cookies’ Halloween-themed cousins, Pumpkin Spice Oreos.
Exclusive new flavor arrives tomorrow! Thanks oreo #newfavorite instagram.com/p/r46OsAH72a/—
Jeff Jones (@jjones) August 19, 2014
While the package has clearly been opened, Jones has nothing to tell us about the flavor of the cookies. We can assume that they will taste like “natural and artificial” apple and caramel flavors with vanilla cookie wafers, but will the apple and caramel flavors match up with the green and brown coloring in the Oreo creme? We’ll just have to wait to find out.
Or never find out at all. We’ll be fine either way, I guess. Some food bloggers got to preview the Pumpkin Spice flavors, but we operate by rules that prevent us from accepting freebies from companies, so no cases of strangely-flavored cookies for us.
The new cookies will have lots of exotic Oreo company on the shelf: recent Oreo flavor launches have included root beer, limeade, peanut butter cup, cookie dough, and Rice Krispies that are not, for legal reasons, called Rice Krispies. They’ll also have at least one flavor buddy on store shelves: Candy Apple flavored M&Ms also hit shelves this fall.
Exclusive new flavor arrives tomorrow! [Instagram] (via Brand Eating)
Back in the 1930s, the Continental Baking Company factory in Schiller Park, IL, gave birth to the first Hostess Twinkie. The plant was one of many that shut down after Hostess filed for bankruptcy in 2012, but reopened the summer of 2013 to once again crank out super-sweet, creme-filled treats under the new Hostess Brands LLC.
But the company’s new owners say there isn’t as much demand for Twinkies thanks to the apparent flood of impostors that rushed in to steal the snack’s sugary crown. Thus the Schiller Park plant, which currently employs around 400 workers, will close in October.
“While the old Hostess company was in bankruptcy, many competitors took over the shelves and are tenaciously defending their business and thus we must be highly efficient and technologically advanced to compete,” explained Hostess Brands CEO Bill Toler in a statement to the Chicago Tribune. “As a result, we have invested in more efficient production capabilities and need to streamline our manufacturing infrastructure and protect our ability to compete.”
