#now whats the easiest thing to make in my fridge that requires no preparation

[ziekkfreak2-0]

What a wonderful hour to wake up

[thessalian]

Thess vs Self-Worth Spirals

Bananas are in the dehydrator, refrigerator pickles are chillilng in the fridge, and I’m taking a break (sort of; there’s some uploading shit to do because I’m determined to get this all done this week) between that and boiling up my beets. I didn’t sleep well because apparently either the floors are way thinner than they need to be or my upstairs neighbours are unspeakably loud during sex. So I got treated to about a half-hour of that. Which, I mean, cheers to the stamina, I guess, but please, for my sanity, get a carpet. And I can’t go take a nap now because a) the expected pain flare from last night’s Great Vanilla Fudge Experiment has caught up with me, and b) one of my neighbours on this floor (next door or across the hall; I can’t tell) are doing some quite loud home maintenance. Yay.

My brain is weird. Not bad, not even particularly inefficient, but weird nonetheless. I was slicing bananas and going kind of Zen about it, thinking about the comments I get from mutuals who are enjoying reading about my forays into kitchen and garden experimentation, combined with the people at my office being like, “Oh, but that sounds like so much effort, though”. Somehow, those thoughts collided to actually answer the question of why I spend so much time and effort on stuff like this, and why I started in the first place.

Answer: “I’m having to make an insane effort to feed myself anyway; might as well have some fun with it”.

Because, seriously, all of this started after the fibromyalgia diagnosis. I mean, even before that, food was more of a chore than it is for a lot of people. Not all people, but a lot of people. Because dietary requirements. Dairy I can just about do with proper preparation and the right supplements - that or very small amounts. (Butter on a potato won’t upset me too badly; a bowl of ice cream will.) Gluten? Thaaaaaaat’s a problem. It doesn’t take much at all to set me off, and so much convenience food has wheat flour in it somewhere, either as a base ingredient or as a thickener. While you can get ready meals and the like that are gluten-free, the range is very narrow and it’s expensive for what you get. Hell, even getting things like gluten-free pasta is tricky, since every brand has a different recipe and some aren’t bad while others are awful, so it’s a crap-shoot at best. (So far Sainsbury’s wins for gluten-free pasta. I will no longer touch Tesco gluten-free pasta, because it is really gross.) So effectively I was living on a fairly limited menu.

And then the fibromyalgia came along and made things worse. Couldn’t work full time anymore, so reduced wage. A lot of money was going on painkillers, and the price of prescriptions went up. Brexit plus Covid meant a lot of shortages and higher prices. (That’s not even going into the mess we have now.) Most of all, everything hurt. Every activity just hurt, and was going to, forever.

This, you can imagine, got depressing. Still is, sometimes. But somewhere along the line I guess I thought, “Well, if I’m going to cause myself pain, it’s going to be for something inventive, something fun, instead of just whatever seemed easiest”. So I started my garden - yeah, watering the plants every day is a struggle sometimes, but strawberries and herbs and tomatoes! I knew that fruit was a good idea but it always went bad on me before I could finish it all, and buying bags of dehydrated fruit was expensive, so I got the dehydrator and it’s still one of the best investments I’ve ever made. I got my baking dish and learned to make lasagne and pasta bakes and cottage pie, because that meant one evening’s effort in the kitchen would feed me for almost a week instead of just a day or two, which meant less effort and pain in the long run. Kind of like buying in bulk, but for physical pain instead of sticker shock.

Not only is all this fun, but it also gives me a sense of ... accomplishment and self-worth, which are two distinct things in this instance. The accomplishment is easy - “I made that! Go, me!”, but the self-worth doesn’t have anything to do with having to make these nice things to be worthy of the space I occupy in the world. See, I’ll make this kind of effort for others without a thought, but the fact that I’m willing to make this effort for myself? For my own comfort and enjoyment and happiness? It’s basically me saying, “I am worth this effort. My long-term happiness is worth a little pain, effort, and inconvenience”. I guess if I can think that about myself, I can accept it better when others think it about me. And I have examples of it almost every day. I can sit down to a lasagne full of fresh herbs from my own garden, or go to the fridge and snack on some refrigerator pickles that I made just because I don’t like how most pickles in this country taste, or pack a work lunch that includes a dried fruit mix tailored exactly to my tastes. Yes, it’s nice when others enjoy these things, and I will always try to share when I can. But at the end of the day, I made these things for me. I thought I was worth it. For me, that’s new, and it matters.

Honestly, it’s nice when the self-worth spiral is going upwards, instead of the usual downward trajectory.

[takonei]

Beta AU - Main story: Chapter 2, deadly life (Part 5)

Note of the author: It’s time to end this! And answer the final questions of the trial. Boi this was long. But I’m glad I finished this trial.

Oh and if you’re not comfortable with graphic descriptions of violence, just ctrl+f and put “was dead”. That’s the sign the execution is over.

Chapter 2: The wolf and the lamb - Daily life

...

Shuichi didn’t want to believe this.

“Maki... Even if your target wasn’t Kaede... Why?”

She didn’t respond.

“Hey! I know I’m not exactly innocent in all of this but why?” Miu exclaimed.

“...”

“I think we deserve at least some explanation on your part.” Kirumi said.

“...”

She sighed. “...It’s true. I killed Kaede.” she muttered. “Out of all the people who could have taken the drink it just had to be her- I’m just...”

Her voice cracked. “Why...?”

“Even if your intention was to kill someone else... What pushed you to do this?” Keebo asked.

“I was desperate!” she yelled at him. “My siblings need me! Kaede has family and friends out here waiting for her! I knew she was too pure to try to do anything by herself, even in this situation! She felt so helpless I-” She paused.

“I had to help her. I didn’t want her to get her hands dirty... So I acted alone. I knew she would try to stop me if I told her about my plan. But if I didn’t act quickly someone else would have taken advantage of her kindness and potentially tried to kill her.”

She paused. “... And I ended up killing her. I’m... I’m a monster.”

“... And you didn’t care about who the victim was supposed to be?” Rantaro asked.

She let out a dry laugh. “What’s the use of choosing a victim in the first place? If I won this trial everyone would be dead by now.”

“I didn’t think about it this way...” Kaito looked away.

Miu flinched. This was also what she had in mind when planning the murder.

“But I have to say, there is something wrong in what you said about the killing method.” she admitted.

Shuichi blinked. “Huh?”

“I never knew about Miu’s murder attempt. It was pretty much a windfall. Having someone to blame without even asking for it.”

Miu jumped. “You didn’t know?? But why did you poison the drink then??”

Maki shook her head. “I learned about it at the same time as you all. And the drink was the easiest to sabotage, I saw it in the fridge and it didn’t require me to prepare anything, so that was the best option.”

Rantaro glanced at Tsumugi. “So all of this could have been avoided.”

Tsumugi didn’t flinch. “Don’t look at me like that, it was a theory that could have helped us.”

Miu raised a hand. “No, it’s fine. At least I got this off my shoulders. And I’m deeply sorry this ever happened.”

Kirumi changed the subject. “May I ask, Monokuma...”

She turned to him. “Why were Maki and I’s motive videos exchanged? Supposing we’re the only two in that situation.”

The Monokubs started sweating. “W-Well-” Monotaro was shaking.

The black and white bear took out his claws. “Yes, why indeed, when I asked you to give them to their respective owners, did those two get switched?!”

Monophanie couldn’t form a sentence before puking on the ground.

Monosuke fixed his glasses, looking away. “I-it was an accident I’m sure-”

“Geez! Monosuke! You should clean your glasses more often!” Monotaro put his paws on his sides.

“So a pure accident then...” Rantaro muttered.

“You all talk about feelings and everything but that’s boring! I want to tell you all a lil’ something!”

Monokuma interrupted the silence.

“What do you want?” Ryoma glared at him.

“Well, it turns out that someone here knew who the culprit was and didn’t even bother saying anything during the entire trial!”

Almost everyone jumped at the bear’s declaration.

“Wait, I thought Kaede was supposed to be the one being the indirect accomplice!” Kaito exclaimed.

“I don’t have anything to do with this! I didn’t tell anyone about my plan!” the tailor countered.

“Kirumi~” Angie tilted her head to the side. “You knew a lot about this, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t know Maki was the one who did it. I was only confident when the main suspects were only us two.” she replied.

Miu was confused. “But why didn’t anyone say anything??”

Shuichi glanced at everyone, hoping to get an answer...

When his eyes landed on Kokichi.

He was abnormally pale, and slightly shaking. There was guilt written all over his face.

“Kokichi... Do you know something about this?” the blue-eyed teen asked.

The smaller boy jumped at the accusation “I-...”

All eyes were on him now. Maki was probably the most confused one. It’s clear the two never talked about this.

“It’s my fault. It’s my fault Kaede died i-it’s my fault Miu was accused and-and it’s my fault e-everything went wrong it’s m-my fault-” he started rambling, dropping to his knees, hands on his head.

Himiko went down and put her hands on his shoulders. “Kichi!-”

“DON’T TOUCH ME!”

He violently shook Himiko off and took a few steps back. He was breathing heavily, tears in the corner of his eyes. If Shuichi had to guess, he was probably doing a panic attack.

“Kichi...?” the red-haired girl didn’t seem angry, just worried.

“It’s always my fault when something like that happens! If I wasn’t there everything would have been perfectly fine! I’m always the one ruining everything!” he yelled.

“But if Maki did it, how exactly is this your fault?” Shuichi asked.

Kokichi looked at him for a few seconds, then nervously laughed.

“B-Because... You all forget that my very own existence is problematic... I tried to warn you all but... T-This always end up with death and suffering, i-it’s my fault...”

Rantaro pondered for a moment then seemed to get it. “Are you talking about your talent?”

Miu frowned. “What does his talent have to do with anything?”

Kokichi hid his face in his knees, trying to make himself smaller. “Maki poisoned the bowl and left the victim to chance, right? It’s only natural the one she tried to protect would end up being the one dying...”

He paused.

“... That’s the ultimate karma for you.”

Kaito raised an eyebrow in confusion. “Wait, so you’re saying that because Maki tried to kill one of us... You simply existing made her plan fail and made Kaede the victim...?”

He nodded, refusing to look at the biker in the eyes.

Kiyo looked at Shuichi. “So that’s what you wanted to tell us about during the investigation?”

Shuichi’s eyes widened in realization.

---

“Wait, Kiyo, Shuichi…”

The two turned around.

“What is it, Kokichi?”

He looked like he was wondering something. “I… Think I’ll tell you two, but please don’t tell anyone else.”

He took a few seconds to compose himself. He took a deep breath but…

“Nevermind. Forget it.”

Kiyo noticed his breathing was heavier than usual. “Are you su-”

“Kichiiiiiiiiiiiiii Kiyo and Shuichi! We’re waiting for you guys!” Himiko yelled from just outside the lab.

“We’ll discuss it later. Let’s go.”

---

He silently nodded.

“I realized the moment Maki looked at Kaede’s body. I knew she had tried something and it ended up going against her. I wanted to believe that wasn’t the case but...” he paused.

“...That’s just how things are. I’m a parasite always ruining people’s lives and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.” he muttered, his voice muffled.

“I know I should just stop existing for the sake of everyone... But I never had the courage to actually end it all.”

The group stayed silent. Maki didn’t even say anything. She didn’t even look like she was blaming him, which was a good thing, considering his current state.

“You’re wrong.” Himiko stood up and approached Kokichi. “You’re not a parasite at all and you can’t say all those things about yourself! Your talent is the ultimate karma but you didn’t choose it! You don’t have to feel bad for people being punished for their bad actions! I know you feel responsible since your talent is about indirectly punishing bad people...”

She extended her hand to him. “... But as long as we don’t do bad actions, nothing can stop us, right?”

He lifted his head and looked at her.

“And if we do good actions, that’s double the reward!” she smiled brightly at him.

He looked at the ground for a moment and slowly approached his gloved hand to Himiko’s. He hesitated for a moment, but took it. 

After standing up, Kokichi brushed the dust off his hoodie. He turned to Maki but couldn’t look her in the eyes for long. “... I’m sorry. I’m not stupid, I know it’s my fault Kaede ended up the one dying. But... No one can say that one life matters more than another... At least that’s what I think.”

Maki couldn’t even say anything. She clenched her fists but let it go shortly after, and crossed her arms under her coat, looking away.

“It seems like our blackened hasn’t got anything else to say!” Monokuma broke the silence.

The girl in question lifted her head, her back turned to Monokuma and his podium.

Shuichi could see fire in her eyes. She looked determined... To do what?

The remaining monokubs commented, saying that it was their favorite moment.

It was time for Maki to get executed.

“I... Refuse to die.” she muttered.

“What’s this? I didn’t quite hear you!” Monokuma tilted his robotic head to the side.

“I will survive no matter what. Even if Kaede is dead because of me... She wouldn’t have wanted me to die.” she continued.

“You know the rules! The blackened must get punished!”

“AND I SAID I WILL SURVIVE!!!” she yelled desperately.

Everything went so fast.

Maki ran towards Monokuma. The bear didn’t have much time to react when-

She took out scissors from under her coat and stabbed him in the red glass eye.

The robotic bear started beeping and Maki threw the bear across the room before he exploded, shattering the stained glass.

The ground started shaking, the spotlights from behind the glass and huge rocks falling in the courtroom.

The Monokubs were panicking, much like everyone else.

An alarm suddenly went off, the lights started flickering and the giant screen which had indicated Maki’s guiltiness earlier turned on.

“Puhuhuhuhu... It looks like we’re having a few technical difficulties! Everyone, please calmly exit the room using the following stairs!” Monokuma said through the screen, and a green light next to the elevator started flickering, reading “Emergency exit”.

So many questions ran through Shuichi’s head, but his attention was caught by the Monokubs.

“This is bad- blurughrugh!” Monophanie puked.

“But we can’t let the blackened escape, this is punishment time!” Monosuke yelled.

“Papa!” Monotaro was still focused on the spot Maki threw Monokuma at.

“WE-MUST-FOLLOW-THE-RULES.” Monodam said.

“Maki!” Himiko yelled when she saw the girl running towards the stairs and climb them 3 steps at a time.

“I’m not dying here! I will escape!!” she yelled through the noise.

“LET’S-GIVE-IT-EVERYTHING-WE’VE-GOT. IT’S-PUNISHMENT-TIME.” Monodam jumped on Monokuma’s seat, taking the toy hammer and pressing the small red button with it.

GAME OVER

Maki has been found guilty.

Time for the punishment!

Maki ran up the stairs, finally reaching the exit, right next to the elevator in the shrine of judgement.

(BGM -Yes it’s not a DR execution theme I know-)

While she expected outside to be dark because it would have been nighttime by now, she actually could see nothing but darkness, and not even the night sky. It was like she wasn’t even outside, just in another room that wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

Her vision was limited to only a few meters around her. The rest of her surroundings were pure darkness.

Suddenly an arrow was shot out of nowhere, slightly cutting her thigh.

Kagome Kagome Ultimate tailor Maki Harukawa’s execution: Executed

She ran as fast as she could.

More arrows were shot out of nowhere, most of them missing but some of them cutting her in various places.

The adrenaline rushed into her body. She couldn’t stop running, even though she had no idea where she was going. There were no walls anywhere, she could just feel the grass beneath her feet.

As Maki kept running, she felt an arrow piercing her left palm. But she remembered that taking it off would only make things worse, so she left it. She felt another arrow piercing her right wrist.

She desperately kept running. More arrows cutting her the more she slowed down because of her injuries.

Once she felt two arrows piercing her ankles, the pain was too much and she fell to the ground.

Maki tried to crawl to move, but another arrow shot her in the back.

Panting, on her knees, she put her right palm to the ground to breathe, but felt something on the ground.

Something thin she hadn’t noticed.

It was a string, connected to one of the arrows that pierced her. That was the case of all of the arrows in her body.

Before she could reach for the arrow in her left hand, she felt tiny spikes stabbing her where the arrows had been.

They weren’t arrows, she realized. They were grappling hooks.

Maki felt her body floating, dragged backwards into the darkness, before abruptly stopping. Her body was now a puppet floating, and she felt an immense pain in every single part of her body.

A spotlight turned on from above, illuminating her injured body.

Now at the mercy of whoever was directing her execution, giving up was the only option.

Maki felt like her body was being cut into pieces, with sharp scissors slicing her everywhere, but she also noticed her outfit being changed as well.

Black boots, purple stockings, a dark purple skirt, a purple jacket on a black, long sleeved shirt, an orange tie and a different hat on her head...

She was wearing Kaede’s usual outfit.

Maki felt tears rolling down her cheeks, and before falling into eternal unconsciousness, felt one last arrow piercing her heart.

Back in the shrine of judgement, the others all came out of the stairs, waiting for something to happen.

The door opened, and in the courtyard was floating the mangled body of Maki, cut from all sides and positioned like a broken marionette.

The students stared in horror at the girl’s corpse, blood dripping from all parts.

Maki Harukawa, the ultimate tailor, was dead.

Tenko’s execution was brutal, but this... This was beyond insane. Shuichi felt sick looking at her.

“Good grief! That woman was a pain to keep in control! Kids these days...”

Monokuma’s voice was heard from behind.

Everyone stared at him.

“Now now! The trial is over and it’s...” he looked at his wrist even though he had no watch. “... 10:20 PM! Now shoo! I have important matters to take care of!”

The was a moment of silence as the students kept staring at the bear.

“What? I said shoo! Shoo! Go to sleep!” he said, gesturing at everyone.

“I thought there was a mastermind among us who needed to create another one of you by themselves!! But we’re all here and you were destroyed?” Himiko exclaimed.

The bear took out his metal claws. “Excuse me! I’m a very autonomous bear and I don’t need some stupid humans to function correctly!”

Everyone stared at each other.

“... Although he is right. We should go to sleep for now. Today has been... Long, to say the least.” Kiyo said, looking down.

Shuichi nodded.

The walk to the dormitory was silent. Shuichi glanced at everyone to see how they were doing.

Himiko had her hood on the head, Kokichi walking next to her as an attempt to confort each other.

Miu and Kaito were walking next to each other, Miu looking at the ground and Kaito patting her shoulder.

“Hey.”

It was Rantaro’s voice. It was low, as a sign Shuichi was the only person he was talking to.

“Hmm?”

“You feeling alright?” he asked.

The boy looked at the ground. “It’s just... Maki didn’t deserve to be killed so... Horribly.”

Rantaro nodded. “... Unfortunately this is the world we live in right now. If we kill someone we must accept what’s coming to us. We have to get together to make sure not let our emotions manipulate us and let another incident like this one happen ever again.”

As much as he hated it, it was the truth.

They reached the dormitories and some of them exchanged a few ‘good nights’ before going to their respective rooms.

Shuichi closed the door and let his body slide down against it. He couldn’t even shed a single tear.

Kaede had put her entire trust into Maki, and Maki ended up accidentally killing her in an attempt to escape together.

Maki did her best to escape, she even managed to get rid of Monokuma for a few minutes.

Why did she still get executed? Was the mastermind behind all of this? They thought it was one of them but was it, really?

He didn’t know, and he didn’t have the energy to think about it.

Shuichi went to sleep as an attempt to forget.

They were going to get through this.

They had to, for their deceased friends.

They had to keep on living.

[kanexin436-blog]

The Best (and Easiest) Ice Cream You’ll Ever Make

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I attempt to keep a reserve of disintegrated treats, brownies, and different treats in the cooler so I can throw in a couple of small bunches at whatever point I'm making a new cluster of frozen yogurt.

Try not to miss our Ice Cream Maker Review for all the data you require to locate the BEST Ice Cream Maker for your necessities! Spoiler alert – our top of the line machine under $50 could very well shock you. It sure astonished me!

Natively constructed ICE CREAM

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Instructions to Make Homemade Ice Cream

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Natively constructed Vanilla Ice Cream

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Frozen yogurt Recipes

When you have a frozen yogurt creator in your kitchen, prepare for all the frozen yogurt plans you can deal with.

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Hand crafted Ice Cream Recipe

Pour 1 cup of the cream into a pot and add the sugar, salt. Scratch the seeds of the vanilla bean into the pot and afterward add the vanilla unit to the pot.

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At the point when prepared to beat, eliminate the vanilla case, whisk combination again and fill frozen yogurt creator. Agitate as indicated by the maker's guidelines.

Move the completed frozen yogurt to a hermetically sealed compartment and spot in the cooler until prepared to serve.

[rockmiyabideusexmachina]

2019 Megaman Valentine’s Day Contest Rules Post

It’s year number 12 of lovey dovey-buku contest art, and I’m back at it again. No secret categories, no surprise themes. These are just the two options you all voted on the most, this time around. Let’s do it!

Two categories, in which you are allowed to submit one entry for each category, if you would like. If you place in one category, you will be automatically disqualified from the other, for reasons of fairness, and to give other people a chance to win a prize.

CATEGORY 1:  The Way To A Mega Man’s Heart Is Through His Stomach (Talent)

Content Requirements:

        * A pinup category focusing on Mega Man characters who are cooking, baking, eating, feeding their partner, lounging on or around supersized pieces of food,  or creatively wearing clothing that appears to be made out of aesthetically appealing food products. Basically, some sort of delectable food must be drawn along with at least one character.

        * As this is the talent category, judging will be based primarily on the overall composition of your piece and your artistic skills. How well can you bring delicious, appetizing food to life, along with your delicious, appetizing character(s)?

Who says robots can’t enjoy food? Certainly not Fully Charged Guts Man. XD

A popular proverb has long held that one can often fall deeper in love due to their partner preparing their favorite food or sharing a romantic meal with one another. There have been many instances of Mega Man characters who would likely operate in a similar fashion, due to their love for their fave dishes. Netto has his insatiable craving for curry, while his papa Yuuichirou’s palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, as he holds his fork waiting for mama’s spaghetti. Megaman Volnutt wants his sweets so badly, he’d kick a vending machine to pieces to get them, or bug the lady at Jetlag Bakery for those yummy confectioneries. Kelvin Stelar went a more healthy route and loved carrots as much as his wife’s homemade carrot gratin. And don’t forget the delicious cake waiting for Ashe or Grey in the fridge of Hunter’s Camp 4.

So, your task for this category is to draw the Mega Man character(s) of your choice tempting their Valentine with some delicious food. Some sweets for their sweetie, if you will. But the character you draw can be pretty tempting themselves, to go along with their treats. Create a tastefully seductive combo meal that will leave our mouths watering for more!

Now remember, as much as some of you out there might have first thoughts to draw some melons, bananas and glazed honey buns, this category is not meant to get explicit. No frontal nudity is allowed. So please follow tumblr brand censorship guidelines™ when creating your art, or it will be flagged, hidden from the public and not included in the competition. ;p

CATEGORY 2: Princess Sigmia Returns (Humor)

Content Requirements:

           * A Megaman character who takes the primary form of another, opposite gender Megaman character due to a magical crown/mystery tank/navigator’s headset/biometal/battle chip/etc. This character is looking for love this Valentine’s Day. How they attempt to obtain a date/partner is up to you.

           * As this is the humor category, judging will be based primarily on how funny your piece is. Consideration will also be given to a lesser degree on your creativity in combining your characters into a hybrid, and your overall design for them. But the point of this category is to make us laugh!

Following 2018’s hottest videogame art trend, that of the genderbent transformation of Bowser and crew into Princess Peach-looking alternate forms of themselves, it’s time to continue that spin with more Mega Man characters.

Looking to clean up real nice in the ultimate battle body for a night of love and romance, Princess Sigmia is ready to hit the club/restaurant/park/etc., and this time she’s brought friends.

Your goal for this category is to create the funniest romantic scenario this hybrid character can get into on Valentine’s Day. What made them use this magical, transformative item? What are the reactions of other characters to this newly made up character, who resembles someone they thought they knew? Let your imagination run wild, and draw most hilarious creation you can come up with!

There are no restrictions on what characters you merge, and no, you don’t have to stick with my combination of Sigma and Alia. You can base your transformations off of heroes or villains, minor enemies or main characters. It just has to follow the similar format of gaining the appearance of a familiar character of the opposite gender, while still retaining some characteristics of the original character. So, whether you create Mistress Ashebert, Mega Man VolBonne, Rainbow Cieldevil, Prince Praika, or Crimson Akane, the combinations are all up to you!

PRIZES:

It’s the usual, ‘get-what-you want’ option, for the top 3 artists in each category. As always, if you prefer a cash prize through Paypal, and just need the money, that’s typically the easiest and quickest option to get your reward.

But like normal, I will be flexible and work with the winners to purchase Megaman-related prizes, if there’s something you’ve really had your eye on and would like ordered. Be it a Roll Caskett 4-inch Nel, Fully Charged figures, artbook re-releases, Mastermix issues, or some other trinket. If I can find it within your prize price range and order it to be shipped straight to you, I will do all I can to make it happen!

The winners for both the Talent and Humor categories will receive the following:

          *1st Place: $100 USD or an item(s) up to that value.

          *2nd Place: $50 USD or an item(s) up to that value.

          *3rd Place: $25 USD or an item(s) up to that value.

PARTICIPATION PRIZE RAFFLE:

Since they have gone pretty well in the past, I once again will be offering participation prizes. Some might say a few of these are quite X-cellent prizes, in honor of X’s 25th anniversary this year. In order to be eligible for the participation prizes, all you need to do is enter a pic for either the Talent or Humor Category!

Like previous years, if there is a prize here you are NOT interested in, please note that when you send in your submission(s) to me. Otherwise, you will be automatically entered in the raffle for a chance at each of these items.

If you draw a pic for both the Humor and the Talent Categories, you can double your chances to win! (Odds of course, depending on how many others enter and also draw two pics.) You will be able to add your name into the drawing a second time for just 1 of these prizes.

Raffle Prize #1 – Rockman 8 Anime Cel (with Genga)

Name a more iconic Duo. I’ll wait. This cel of Duo is a tight headshot from the midgame cutscene. After waking up, Duo sees the vial of Evil Energy by Doctor Light’s computer, crushes it, and proceeds to say “HE STILL LIVES!” before screaming in this frame and blasting off through the ceiling of Light Labs.

This is almost quite certainly your last chance to win a Rockman 8 cel from me, so best of luck to all who want to take it home!

Thanks to a generous donation from @silentally, there are also 3 other pairs of raffle prizes (*pictures to be edited in and added soon):

Raffle Prize #2 – Set of Mega Man X Official Complete Works Artbook and a beaded Zero keychain

Raffle Prize #3 – Set of a framed 3D sprite art piece of X’s iconic Vile battle, as Zero comes to the rescue, and a handmade Zero plush

Raffle Prize #4 – Set of Tamashii Buddies Zero figure and a Zero emblem wristband

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

When you submit, I would prefer you to include the following information in this format, along with your entry:

•   (Your name/preferred alias) – As much as I usually know who you are, there’s always someone new or somebody who has a different preference from what their email name says.

•   (Category this entry is for) – You can either say 1 or 2, or Talent/Humor

•   (Participation Prize Eligibility) – Just write “All” if you are interested in the chance to win anything. Write: “Exclude from # __” if you do not have interest in winning a particular participation prize.

In the event you are submitting your second entry, please specify which prize # you would like your bonus chance in the raffle to be put towards.

Only submit your own work, as usual. Any character, major or minor, from any series is allowed. Pairing characters from different series is totally allowed. Same-gender pairings are completely fine. OCs are allowed, as long as your art contains at least one canon Megaman character.

As always, participants are allowed to submit from all over the world. It’s easier for me to get prizes to US entrants, because international shipping is complicated and pricey, but I’ll do what I can for you guys who aren’t in the States.

Paypal is still the preferred method for cash prize payouts. Please have a valid account to receive your winnings.

Youngin's, get your parents permission before entering.

Entries do not need to be colored, but it is preferred. The more effort put into things as always, the better chance you have!

Entries can either be e-mailed to me at rock2125[at]hotmail[dot]com, or you can just PM/note me a link to your pic.

DO NOT post your pics in this journal, your dA galleries, Twitter, tumblr blogs, other sites, etc. until the contest is over. This is the fairest way for competitive reasons. I prefer to keep them all secret until the deadline has passed.

I'll edit a confirmed entry list in this thread when I receive them. So you won't be in the dark about whether or not I've received your entry.

DEADLINE:

The deadline for this contest will be Tuesday, February 12th, 2019 by 11:59PM CST. *EXTENDED!* New deadline is Wednesday, February 27th, 2019. This gives you a little more than 5 weeks to finish your entry!

MISCELLANEOUS INFO:

As usual, If you don't plan to enter, but would like to help me judge, please let me know through DM or mention so here. Never hurts to have extra opinions on all the entries.

Bug me with questions if you have any. Please join in, and good luck to everyone who enters!

CONFIRMED ENTRIES:

Cat. 1 (Talent) - @prar-draws, @larytello, @drewblossom, @bracedshark, subzeroiceskater, @irischroma, @papillonthepirate, SockMonkii

Cat. 2 (Humor) - @drewblossom (x2), @bracedshark, subzeroiceskater, 

[notbecauseofvictories]

Re: your tags - Any tips on planning a good dinner party?

The first step is to decide what kind of dinner party you want to have. A dinner party where everybody brings something, potluck-style, and you sit on the floor eating off paper plates is still a dinner party! So too is inviting everybody over to an apartment-warming party so you can show off the fact that you have actual glassware now, like a real adult, or even putting in the table leaf and planning an elaborate menu so your mother will stop talking about your cousin’s dinners.

Deciding the kind of dinner party you’re up for requires stepping back and looking at how much time you have to plan it, how much money you’re willing to spend, and what your space can accommodate.

Time. Planning and executing a dinner party takes a truly ungodly amount of time. It takes time to pull together a guest list, time to collect RSVPs (whether that’s via text, fb group, invitation, etc.), time to plan and then shop for the menu, clean your space (not just the dining room, but also where your guests will sit, and the bathroom they’ll use), prepare your space for guests (set the table, clear away any clutter), and then actually cook the dinner you’ve decided on.

And that’s all before your guests show up. 

The more elaborate the plans (and the more people you’re inviting) the more time you’ll need to prepare. For a casual sit-down dinner party I’d want at least 5 days lead-in time to prep; probably more to give people a chance to block off that night in their schedule. For something more formal, I’d want two or three weeks. 

Money. Another major factor in deciding what kind of dinner party you’ll have is budget. An elaborate home-cooked meal for any size group of people is expensive—an American-style sit-down dinner is typically a salad, a main dish (usually a meat of some kind), and 2-3 side dishes. Ingredients for just that can cost around $200, easy, and without taking into account appetizers, dessert, or drinks.

If you’re working on a budget, hosting a potluck is the easiest way to share out the cost among you and your guests. I’ve also hosted appetizer parties to great success—people love bite-sized stuff, and you can use the same ingredients in several different dishes, mixing in impressive, costly recipes with easy, less expensive ones.

Finally, consider your space. If your table only sits two, or live in a cramped studio apartment, you should take into account those limitations. If people will be sitting on couches you need to consider your capacity and what kind of food that means serving; even if people will be sitting on the floor, you need to consider how you’re going to make that happen. People in any space want to crowd around each other in a vague circle shape, and I’ve definitely lived in apartments where you couldn’t make that circle comfortably.

Additionally, your space also means the stuff in it. If you only have two wine glasses for four people, serving wine is probably not a great idea. (Though, tip from someone who has been refurbishing their apartment, Salvation Army/St. Vincent de Paul/Habitat for Humanity resale stores have crazy amounts of very attractive glassware for extremely cheap.) 

Once you decide what the party will look like, then you can get onto the real business:

PLANNING THE MENU

The best part of a dinner party is, of course, the dinner. Whether you opt to go for something simple, lavish, or quirky, the menu is something of a centerpiece. 

The most important part is to take into account your guests’ needs. The best pasta primavera in the universe is still the wrong meal to serve to a gluten-free crowd. I have a steak marinade that’ll blow your socks off, but the vegetarians and the no-red-meat-thanks people will leave hungry and dissatisfied if that’s all that’s served. 

Still, the typical American formal dinner party menu does allow you to extend in several different directions, and hopefully please as many different palates as you can. For example:

Appetizers—Appetizers are by no means required, and it’s totally normal to have guests over for dinner without offering appetizers beforehand. However, I think this is a fool’s errand, because appetizers are super easy to make (e.g., baby carrots and veggie tip, olives, cheese and crackers) and if people eat them, they’re less hungry for the dinner. Which, depending on how you feel about your main course, might be a pro or a con.

Salad—First course, nowhere near as many people will eat it as you think, but vegetarians and the healthy people will. If you just want something to throw together, most grocery stores now sell bagged salads, complete with toppings and dressing. If you want to prepare something unique, more power to you.

Can also be substituted for soup, though people have stronger feelings about soup and you’re less likely to please everybody. Whereas salads are basically the same dead leaves, with different kinds of sauce.

Main Course—A typical midwestern main course involves chicken or beef of some kind. However, the main course can also be seafood, pasta, or really any kind of food “substantial” enough to be the main fixture of the meal. 

Depending on the size of the party, it may be worth it to make several options; barbecue for one half and grilled chicken for the other. People are always happier with a choice, even if they choose the one that would be have available anyway.

Side dishes—I think sides are the best part of a meal, and really the opportunity to expand the palate of the dinner. If you’re serving steak with a traditional marinade, then the sides are an opportunity to expand into vegetarian or vegan territory; if you’re serving a cayenne-rubbed whitefish, then serving it with mild roasted cauliflower will let people catch their breath.

It’s also an opportunity to make dishes that you know people will like. For example, I made waldorf salad for my mother’s birthday, and she loved that more than the steak—but it was because I knew she liked waldorf salad. Sides are a kind of deliberate gesture to the people you know will enjoy them. And also, pair well with whatever the main is.

Dessert—Much like appetizers, dessert is optional. It is especially optional given the fact that by the time you get to it, people have been eating for at least an hour, and are generally not hungry. Something light, even just ice cream, will usually work work well. And if your showstopper is a dessert, make sure you plan a lighter dinner, so people still have room for the “main event.”

……none of these needs to be homemade, mind you. I actually think that you’ll have the most success if you combine complicated recipes with simple ones; a frozen appetizer and homemade sides, or a pre-made dessert with chicken you baked yourself. That kind of combo allows you to balance your time better, and effectively carry out your dinner plan.

OTHER TIPS

Think about your guest list before sending out the invitations. A dinner party is an opportunity for your guests to talk and get to know each other, but that’s hard if you invite people who can’t, don’t, or won’t get along. When you’re planning your guest list, think about whether this group will gel, who knows who already, and whether you’ve invited talkative people to balance out the quieter ones. (A dinner party of introverts who don’t know each other is going to be awkward.)

Prep your space as much as you can ahead of time. If you do a really thorough cleaning of your space on Thursday for a dinner on Saturday, then Saturday afternoon you’ll just have to do some spot-cleaning and set the table. Buy groceries before the day-of, unless you’re cooking with something like fresh-that-day fish or just-baked bread. Do not just be planning a menu the day of the party, that way lies ruin and madness.

Prep as much of the food as you can ahead of time! Chop all vegetables the night before, make your marinades and casseroles, shred your cheeses, etc. and then store them covered in the fridge. Some things will have to wait—salads shouldn’t be tossed until it’s almost time to serve them; freshly-cut fruit bruises and browns pretty quickly; anything with a lot of milk in it will separate and have to be re-mixed in the morning; unless you’re dealing with a very tough piece of steak, you shouldn’t marinate overnight. However, do as much as you can ahead of time. This also helps cut down on mess the night of, because my next piece of advice is to…

Clean as you cook. I know cooking generates a lot of dirty dishes and pans, especially as you get into more complicated recipes. However, at the ideal dinner party, your guests should arrive to a clean and empty sink, where the only dirty dishes are the ones in the oven. The only way to make this happen is to clean as you cook. I always add in a couple hours’ lead-time so that I can have everything in pans and ready to pop into the oven even as I clean up the chaos.

Something will go wrong, just roll with the punches. You will realize an hour before the party that you forgot to get napkins, or burn a side dish, or awkwardly offer a drink to a friend who doesn’t drink. People may butt heads at the party, and require intervention. (I once went to a dinner party where the table broke. The host was mortified, but I have very fond memories of trying to rescue food and dishes from the wreckage. We sat on the floor afterwards, laughing and eating off paper plates.)Something will go wrong, so roll with the punches and don’t let yourself spiral over some little thing. You can use paper towels as napkins and apologize for any faux pas. Pizza delivery was invented for a reason. At the end of the day, the important part is to give your guests a nice night, some food, and conversation---and those will exist even if you’re sitting on the floor, eating off paper plates because the table broke.

[unwritrecipes]

Classic Focaccia

Thinking it’s too hot outside to turn on the oven and make fresh bread?!! Read on and let me convince you why Classic Focaccia is the perfect bread for summer!!

Before we get to the reasons why you should absolutely make this ASAP, let’s just talk a bit about what focaccia actually is—an Italian sort of flat-bread, similar in looks and texture to pizza crust. It’s usually flavored with olive oil and salt or other herbs and veggies and it is super duper delicious and versatile. You can simply rip off a piece to eat just as it is, serve it on the side with soup or salad or slice it in half to make the best sandwiches!

Now let me explain why it makes so much sense to tackle this when temps heat up rather than say, scarfing down a pint of ice cream while binge-watching your favorite Netflix show (who me?)😘

First off, focaccia is light and airy and won’t weigh you down. Think golden brown crust with a soft pillowy interior. When you bite into a fresh piece, there’s that satisfying crunch but it’s not at all dense which makes it perfect for warm-weather eating!

Second, while there are a couple of risings, making focaccia is fairly easy and doesn’t require any shaping or making a starter. Plus, for this particular recipe, the whole thing comes together in your stand mixer too, so you don’t even need to knead!

Third, focaccia lends itself perfectly to all sorts of seasonal toppings. I’m such a minimalist (read: boring eater) that I like it best with just olive oil and a little flaky sea salt but I know it would be great topped with fresh herbs, like rosemary and thyme or maybe some sun-dried tomatoes, chopped garlic, Parmesan etc. Your imagination’s the only limit!

Finally and maybe most importantly, especially in terms of me winning my case, focaccia only bakes for a total of 25-30 minutes! Which means very little hot-oven-in-the-kitchen-time for you!!

So…crossing my fingers that by now you’re on board, let’s get this focaccia-making party started:

Mix up a very wet and sticky dough, let it rise and eventually transfer it onto a generously olive-oiled, rimmed, half-sheet pan—

Now stretch that dough to fit the corners as best as you can

And let it rise again until it’s completely covering the pan and nice and puffy.

Now, press the dough down with your fingertips and see lots of bubbles form. Sometimes I get a ton like this

And sometimes the bubbles are more subtle and the bread comes out just as great, so no worries.

Drizzle on more olive oil so that it pools in the little fingertip craters,

Sprinkle with the flaky sea salt (or other herbs) and bake!

What emerges just a mere ½ hour later is a huge wondrous tray of light airy bread with a golden crunchy top and bottom and tons and tons of flavor!

Try this once and I’m pretty sure you’ll resign yourself to turning your oven on again and again this summer, all in the pursuit of this delightful bread. I know I will!!

Classic Focaccia

Makes one half sheet pan—many, many servings

It’s easiest to make this with a stand mixer and dough hook—you can do this by hand but it will take a lot longer.

Prep Time: Several hours, but much of this is hands-free rising time; Bake Time: 25-30 minutes

Ingredients

½ cup warm water, about 105-110ºF

2 ¼ teaspoons active dry yeast

2 ½ cups room temperature water

6 cups bread flour

2 tablespoons Kosher salt (if you’re not using Diamond Crystal, cut down on the salt)

Scant ½ cup extra virgin olive oil, divided

Flaky sea salt for topping (I used Maldon)

The Recipe

1. Pour the warm water into the large bowl of the electric mixer and sprinkle the yeast across it. Whisk the two together and let stand for about 5 minutes, until the mixture looks a little frothy.

2. Attach the dough hook to the mixer and add the room temperature water in, followed by the flour (all of it) and the salt. Mix on the lowest speed for about a minute, just until a dough begins to come together. Scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula if needed and then turn the mixer up to medium and mix for another 5 minutes or so, until the dough is smooth and sort or wrapping around the dough hook. It will look kind of sticky still. Cover the bowl with a clean damp kitchen towel and let the dough rest for 10 minutes. Then uncover the bowl and mix again on medium-high speed until the dough is very smooth and elastic, another 10-15 minutes. It should be pulling away from the sides of the bowl. It will still look pretty sticky but don’t be tempted to add more flour.

3. Pour ¼ cup of the oil into a clean large bowl and swirl it around to coat. Use a rubber spatula to scrape the dough into the oiled bowl. Dab some of the pooling oil across the top of the dough. Now cover the bowl with the damp kitchen towel and let it sit somewhere relatively warm until it has doubled in size, about 1 ½ hours.

4. Drizzle enough of the remaining oil onto a standard rimmed half-sheet pan and spread it out so it just coats the pan. Use a little of that oil to coat your hands. Uncover the bowl and use your oiled hands to loosen the dough from the sides of the bowl. Slide your hands to the bottom of the dough and lift it up out of the bowl, letting the weight of the dough pull itself downward, and let the dough fold over onto itself. Turn the bowl ¼ turn and repeat the stretching and folding process. Repeat 2 more times for a total of 4 dough stretches. Place the dough onto the prepared pan and start to stretch the dough in all directions evenly to fill out the pan. It will spring back so just gently coax it as best you can into the corners. Cover the dough with one or 2 lengths of oiled plastic wrap and let rest for 15 minutes.

5. Remove the plastic wrap but don’t throw it out. Use your fingers to evenly stretch the dough that has shrunken back all the way to the corners and sides. Recover with the plastic and let it sit for another hour or so until the dough has nearly doubled in height. Meanwhile, arrange one oven rack in the highest and one in the lowest position in the oven and preheat to 450ºF.

6. Once the dough has risen, uncover it and oil your hands a bit. Now, press your fingertips down into the dough all over, through to the bottom, making lots of dimples across the dough. You should see some big air bubbles form. Drizzle the top all over with the remaining oil and sprinkle with the sea salt.

7. Bake the focaccia on the lower rack for about 20 minutes, until you see the dough pulling away from the sides of the pan. Then move the pan to the top rack and bake for another 5-7 minutes, until the dough is very well browned. Let the focaccia cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10-15 minutes, then loosen and transfer to the rack to finish cooling completely. Serve as is, as a sandwich or however you want. This is best on the day it’s made but also pretty wonderful reheated or even toasted. Store leftovers well wrapped in the fridge for up to a week.

Enjoy!

Note: Recipe adapted from Dessert Person by Claire Saffitz. I cut down on the oil and simplified some of the techniques too.

[frozenfruitdrinksnejt059-blog]

Getting My Frozen Passion Fruit To Work

Everything about Fresh FruitsFrozen Fruits Healthy - The Facts

Icy fruits are ideal for essentially any occasion: breakfast, a snack, in a shake, a healthy and balanced treat ... the opportunities are really countless. While many nutritional experts claim that nutrient damages from cold is extremely minimal, it is very important to note that (depending upon the water web content of the fruit) the loss of certain antioxidants like beta-carotene is possible during the freezing procedure.

Freezing fruits yourself at the optimal of perfection may really reduce the ripening or decay procedure, preserving the levels of particular healthy nutrients, like vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals. In truth, the pre-packaged frozen version might be no even worse than the fresh, which will certainly frequently experience some nutrient loss throughout its trip from farm to supermarket.

Throughout the cold process, the water inside the fruit's cells broadens as it freezes, which often causes cell membranes to swell or break, causing a softer structure when the fruit is defrosted. The remedy? Eat the icy fruit when it's still icy (so rejuvenating), layer it in chocolate or pop it in a blender, in which case the texture won't make a distinction.

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Try out these six, and also you'll be well on your method to frozen fruit bliss. Katherine Carroll Water web content: 74% Icy bananas are not just scrumptious, yet are likewise a fantastic way to protect and get extra use out of excessively ripe bananas. If you're trying to find a healthy and balanced treat choice, attempt banana "wonderful" lotion, an easy version of "gelato" that has just one active ingredient: icy bananas.

Get rid of the peels prior to freezing to make them a lot easier to consume once iced up. Anika Mian Water web content: 81% Admittedly, I'm not a significant fan of routine grapes, but when frozen, they transform, becoming much sweeter as well as taking on a nearly ice cream-like appearance. Grapes are notorious for being a high-sugar fruit, yet at only 62 calories per cup, they fade in contrast to a "little" late-night snack, like a single cup of Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough Ice Lotion (540 calories).

Anika Mian Water web content: 85% I didn't think anything can be extra revitalizing than blueberries till I uncovered the Holy Grail: icy blueberries. Stick to the frozen range, as well as never again will certainly you have to suffer with the discomfort http://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=frozen fruits of out-of-season berries (read: mushy or tasteless). You can buy them in gallon bags, however I directly advise freezing them right in the container.

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Table of ContentsHow Frozen Fruit Drinks can Save You Time, Stress, and Money.A Biased View of Frozen Fruit DeliveryFascination About Frozen GreensBuy Frozen Strawberries - Questions

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When frozen, every bite tastes like a less-artificial Dreamsicle. Comparable to bananas, get rid of the peel before cold so that you have simple accessibility to the freshly iced up goods. Water content: 87% Frozen raspberries melt in your mouth like a Hershey's kiss. Pop them in a mixer with a little sugar as well as a sprinkle of almond milk as well as you've obtained yourself a remarkably very easy raspberry sorbet.

Truthfully, there are few things far better than coming home to the view of a fruit-filled fridge freezer. Frozen fruit is pass on the easiest, healthiest as well as most delightful means to #treatyoself. Remember, though, to stick to low-water-content fruits for much better taste, structure and also general nutrient content.

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Whether your grocery store runs out your favored fruit and vegetables or you're trying to limit your journeys to the grocery shop, icy fruits and also veggies are a wonderful choice. They can be a lot more nutritious than their fresh counterparts, as they're flash-frozen and also will certainly retain nutrients without ruining. And they're fantastic to have on hand when you wish to include some healthy aspects right into your dishes.

They're nutrient-rich and also will work in countless various recipeswe've even included some recipe suggestions to obtain you began. Polina Prokofieva/ShutterstockStrawberries are a breakfast (as well as treat) traditional for a factor. They're high in vitamin C as well as are delicious in baked products, mixed into healthy smoothies, or offered atop yogurt or oat meal for a hearty morning meal.

The smart Trick of Frozen Greens That Nobody is Discussing

Ekaterina Kondratova/ShutterstockIf you can discover frozen butternut squash at your neighborhood grocery shop, it deserves a buy! You can include the cubes to baked mac as well as cheese for a nutritional boost, or roast the dices as well as serve them atop a salad. The most effective part? You don't have to do the work of slicing the squash yourself.

Here are 20 Hard-to-Find GroceriesAnd Where to Find Them. ShutterstockFrozen peas are good for even more than calming your pains and also discomforts! Adding peas to your dishes will certainly give you an added protein increase as well as supply you with even more than 3 grams of fiber, too. Appreciate them in stir-fries or included in soups.

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ShutterstockYou do not need to burst out the spiralizer each time you desire a pasta replacement. Brand Names like Trader Joe's and also Green Giant sell spiralized zucchini, carrots, as well as more. Throw them with pasta sauce or stir-fry them for a low-carb dinner. Try your spiralized veggies in this dish for Zucchini Spaghetti with Turkey Meatballs.

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8 Simple Techniques For Frozen Strawberries Smoothie

Table of ContentsFrozen Fruit Salad Things To Know Before You BuyThe Greatest Guide To Frozen BlueberriesSome Of Fresh Frozen Fruit

Diana Taliun/ShutterstockWhatever way you purchase itcanned, iced up, or freshcorn is a delicious means to include even more taste and also nutrients to your dish. Use icy corn in homemade salsas or white chili dishes. We enjoy these 20 Corn Recipes That Crush It. ShutterstockBroccoli is a great resource of vitamin C, vitamin A, and vitamin K.

Try roasting it with garlic or sauting it stovetop for an easy side dish. For a super-easy recipe, attempt these Broccoli-Cheese Eggs in a Cup. ShutterstockFresh cherries can be pricey, so maintaining the frozen variety on your shopping checklist is a should if you're trying to save money. Put the fruit to great use in this Wonderful and Luscious Chocolate-Covered Cherry Healthy Smoothie Dish Dish.

More About Fruit

Use it in any kind of recipes where you 'd make use of routine rice! These 20 Cauliflower Rice Recipes are a great location to begin. ShutterstockNo, you can not most likely to your favorite sushi area during quarantine, but you can still make a tasty bowl of edamame at residence. Just microwave some icy edamame, add a little salt, and you're good to go.

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George Dolgikh/ShutterstockYou do not need to wait up until Thanksgiving rolls around to appreciate a tasty side dish of Brussels sprouts. If you buy them iced up, they're wonderful at any time of year! Attempt cooking them with bacon for a yummy addition to any type of dish. Attempt the veggie in this Brussels Sprouts Garnished With Bacon as well as Almonds Recipe.

The Only Guide for Frozen Strawberries

They do not need to be baked right into a casseroleyou can prepare frozen environment-friendly beans for a straightforward side meal to any chicken supper. Try these 17 Good-for-You Eco-friendly Bean Recipes. ShutterstockAs with bananas, you might not find frozen grapes in your grocery shop. However you can freeze fresh grapes for a fast and simple reward! You can even use them to cool down your a glass of wine without sprinkling it downall of these usages are why grapes are one of the 50 Foods You have actually Been Eating Wrong Your Whole Life.

The 2-Minute Rule for Frozen Greens

Registered Dietitian and Nutritionist Ilana Muhlstein lost her weight and also maintained it offand in You Can Drop It!, she'll show you how to lose it, also. More than 240,000 customers have actually chosen her programand now it's yours to maintain.

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Table of ContentsThe Facts About Frozen Fruit Bags UncoveredWhat Does Fruit Do?

The potassium in cherries additionally makes them an excellent workout recovery snack (considering that potassium is an electrolyte), so Cascio says including them in a post-run or post-virtual exercise smoothie mix can assist nourish muscles. One study published in the European Journal of Sports Science found that cherry concentrate cause much less muscle mass pain post-workout. "Another fun reality regarding cherries is that they have melatonin, which is linked to better rest," Cascio states.

Associated Stories Okay, so you possibly aren't going on any tropical vacations anytime soon, yet a minimum of you can get a preference of somewhere beachy with this frozen fruit. "Even when fresh papaya is hard to obtain, virtually every supermarket has actually frozen papaya," Cascio states. She's a follower of this fruit due to the fact that of its fiber, vitamin C, as well as beta-carotene (a forerunner to vitamin A) web content.

" It has more than 200 percent of the quantity of vitamin C you require for the day." Take that, oranges. Cascio claims that papaya can also aid with irregularity as well as bloating because of the enzyme papin, which helps digest proteins. This makes it a terrific after-dinner snack. Try it by making vegan nice-cream; just utilize your blender or food Find more info processor or food cpu to mix your icy papaya with the plant-based milk of your option.

The 9-Second Trick For Frozen Fruits For Smoothies

The Best Guide To Frozen Greens

( Or, follow this dish. It utilizes fresh papaya, yet frozen papaya functions simply as well.) Mango is another exotic fruit that isn't constantly simple to find fresh, however is available iced up at nearly every food store. Similar to papaya, Cascio says it additionally aids with digestion since it has plenty of probiotics and also fiber, both of which are essential completely digestive tract wellness.

Buy Frozen Fruit Online

[lizardinspace]

One of the interesting--and liberating--things about starting to think of myself as depressed in a medical sense (even if I don’t have a diagnosis yet) is the permission I feel to start treating myself like it. 

I went to the grocery store to pick up food, because I know that I need to eat and nourish myself. I’ve been struggling lately to care about food preparation, which has led me to eating bowls of cereal instead of proper meals. For me, this is fine as a one-off, but I don’t want it to be a persistent pattern because it’s not helpful for me nutritionally. Regularly eating that much sugar and milk is bad for my own body (this is to say nothing of how it fares for other people, I’m just speaking to my own experience). 

So now I can go to the grocery store and start thinking about, what’s the easiest way to get nutrients into my body? So I grab some bananas because they’re easy to pack in my purse for lunch. I grab an avocado and a baguette because avocado and egg on toast is something I can eat for dinner that I know I’ll be able to tackle, prep-wise, at the end of the day. I grab some goat cheese because goat cheese on toast with a sliced apple is also something I can definitely put together at the end of the day. Canned sardines. Sliced green pepper. Minimal dishes required. Salads are hard, they require a lot of steps. Get those veggies into me in the easiest way possible. I can do this. 

Nutella makes an appearance, because it’s calories and I’ll actually enjoy eating it in the morning. It’s okay, I just need to feed myself. 

Cucumber because I can slice it and keep a big jug of cucumber water in the fridge. Vitamins and shit. Roughage if I feel like eating it. 

A jar of sun-dried tomatoes? I can turn that into a spread I can put (again) on toast. Easy enough, just eat something. It’s better than realizing at 9 pm that I haven’t eaten in eight hours and wolfing down something that disrupts my sleep, which only exacerbates the problem. 

Instead of continuing to wonder at my own inability to care about preparing full meals, I’ll just make sure I’ve got nutritious, easy-to-prepare things available. 

I also bought myself flowers, because I deserve some goddamn flowers. 

[themclbird]

Halloween - Part Four

In this piece we still only have Zaina and Ashley (@judailover and @vrael-mcl‘s candy’s respectively). But don’t worry, the others slowly begin to trickle in after this part.

Only a few minutes passed before Ashley let herself back into the house (pumpkin pie in hand this time) and made her way into the kitchen. Phoebe was in the middle of decorating the last of the cupcakes as the cake cooled on one of her cooling racks off to the side. At the sound of footsteps coming towards her Phoebe looked up from her worked, a wide smile appeared on her face, “That looks delicious.” Putting down her piping bag, she gestured to a clear space, “Just put it down on the counter over there.”

Immediately, Ashley moved over to area that Phoebe had pointed out, “Alright,” Once the pumpkin pie was safely on the kitchen counter Ashley asked, “Okay, how else can I help?” She was here to prepare and she wasn’t going to waste a single second. Not when there was still so much to be done.

Before Phoebe could start giving Ashley a long list of things that she could work on, someone entered into her line of sight leaning against the entryway of the kitchen. Turning her head to properly look at them, Phoebe smiled at them. Her smile resulted in Ashley also turning her head to see what was happening. As she did, she saw Dominic in the doorway, seeming equal parts uncomfortable and at home. “I told you it would look better if I fixed, Dom.” Phoebe said, the smile on her face never wavering.

Dominic resisted the urge to touch his newly redone skull makeup as he responded, “And I never doubted you.” Turning his attention away from Phoebe, he greeted Ashley, “Hey, Ashley.” The two of them weren’t exactly close, but they’d met enough times for them to know a few simple things about one another.

Giving Dominic a small half-wave, Ashley greeted him back, “Hey, Dominic.” And then immediately turned back to Phoebe, “So, Phoebs…” She wasn’t trying to ignore Dominic, she was simply all too aware of how many things needed to be done before more guests started arriving.

Snapping to attention, Phoebe thought for a second about what it was that she wanted Ashley to help with. It was obvious when she thought of something, because her eyes lit up like she’d just had the greatest idea on the planet, even if she really had only just thought of something somewhat minor in the grand scheme of things. “Right, you can help Zaina with decorating the living room. Maybe move the couches a little to make some more floor space. Sort of like at my last party?”

Ashley may not have helped to set up that party, but she had been there and knew exactly what it was that Phoebe was thinking of, “Oh yeah, I remember that. Sure thing.” Wasting no time, Ashley began to head in the direction of the living room.

Phoebe called out to Ashley as she left, “Thank you!” Then pointed a finger at Dominic as she told him what it was he was to be doing, “And Dom, you’re staying here and helping me with the drinks.” She gestured over to a large bowl that had various drink cartons and bottles surrounding it.

Scrunching up his face as he walked over to the bowl he asked, “What are you making?” She’d already started putting different liquids into the bowl, and Dominic was already worrying for the safety of anybody who chose to drink out of it.

Phoebe shrugged, “I don’t know… A punch of some kind.” When it came to baking, Phoebe was a natural. She could make nearly anything without following any sort of recipe. But when it came to making drinks… Well, you really couldn’t say the same. Even if she believed that she could make a drink that tasted great without having to think about it, she was wrong.

It was difficult resisting the urge to rub his forehead as he disappointedly looked into the bowl, but he had to. If he messed up even a millimetre of the makeup that Phoebe had put on his face he’d have hell to pay. Still, that wasn’t going to stop him from showing his disappointment through his voice, “You’re just mixing whatever you want, aren’t you?”

Biting her lip, Phoebe sheepishly responded, “Maybe...” She walked over to the bowl where she picked up the nearest bottle to her and popped off the lid.

With a sigh, Dominic began to remove his jacket, “Oh my god, don’t touch it.” Rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, he took the bottle off of her and began instructing her, “You go back to baking.”

Doing as Dominic said, Phoebe moved back over to her ‘decoration station’ and finished decorating the cupcakes. Once they were done she checked on the few things that she had in the fridge as well as the cookies that had been cooling off to the side for a while now. It would be at least another half hour before the cake was ready to be decorated, but the cookies were all set to become… something. She hadn’t gotten that far just yet.

Hopefully everyone liked sweets, because that’s the main thing on the menu.

Back in the living room, Zaina and Ashley were working away to make the living room look as perfectly spider nest-y as they possibly could. With Zaina standing on a chair to reach higher up on the walls, and Ashley moving the pieces of furniture that she could into a corner. They were working like productive ants in a comfortable silence. That is until Ashley reached the biggest piece of furniture in the room.

After staring at it for a few minutes, attempting to figure out just how she was going to go about moving it, Ashley turned to Zaina and asked, “Zaina, help me with the couch?” Having two people moving it was going to be the easiest (and safest) way to go about getting it across the room. Trying by herself was sure to end in something breaking, whether that was a piece of furniture or herself was a mystery that Ashley didn’t feel like discovering.

Jumping off of the chair that she’d been using, Zaina dropped the fake spider webs that she’d been holding on the ground, “Sure.” She happily answered. There was no use waiting. It needed to be moved so they may as well move it as soon as possible.

The moving of the couch wasn’t too difficult with the two of them working on it. It did, however, require a bit of communication that was easily heard in the kitchen. When the couch was halfway across the room, Dominic’s head popped in as he watched them work. The two girls were doing a fairly good job of creating what was a little sitting area in the corner of the room which in turn created more room for anyone who wanted to dance. Dominic stayed watching in case they needed any help, but once the couch was placed against the wall, he slinked back into the kitchen to continue making his different concoctions.

With the sitting area created, Ashley began looking through the plastic bags that hadn’t been touched yet. The contents were shocking to say the least. “How many plastic pumpkins did she buy?” Ashley asked as she pulled plastic pumpkin after plastic pumpkin out of the bags.

Laughing at the sight of the growing collection of pumpkins on the floor, Zaina responded, “Enough to create a plastic pumpkin army.” Her response issued a laughed out of Ashley and it wasn’t long before the two of them were marvelling at just how many pumpkins were emerging from the bags.

After a few minutes of laughter, Ashley finally pulled out the last pumpkin, “Well, we should probably put at least some of them out.” She mentioned. They’d put them all over the floor, they may as well actually make them look good. “How about you decorate the mantelpiece, while I decorate that display table thing that they have?”

Zaina agreed almost immediately, “Sounds good.” Picking up a small armful of plastic pumpkins, she moved over to the mantelpiece where she began attempting to set them up in a way that didn’t look like a store’s halloween section hadn’t just vomited everywhere. Ashley was quick to start to do the same on the other side of the room.

[easyfoodnetwork]

If You Literally Never Cook, Start Here

Photo by Maciej Toporowicz, NYC / Getty

How to get started on your cooking journey, from frying eggs and saucing pasta to roasting chickens and making soup

So you’re really, really into food. You also have no idea how to cook it. I get it, I’ve been there. There are more of us than you might think: Younger Americans grew up in a system awash in convenience foods, while our parents were working longer and harder and had less and less time to cook. Then, when we became adults, time and money were scarcer still, and restaurants became the places we gathered with our friends.

When I taught myself to cook at home, I immediately discovered most recipes aren’t written for anxious beginners. Instead, they assume the cook is already competent and looking to level up or add another dish to their repertoire. The rewards and demands of social media virality have only supercharged recipes’ emphasis on novelty and visual beauty. As someone who now knows how to cook, I love reading about a hack for cooking short ribs or a surprising use for my rice cooker. But back when I barely knew how to boil water, recipes telling me which tweak or technique yielded ideal results made turning on the oven feel high stakes. All that emphasis on aspiration and perfection made it way too hard to get started.

I’ve been cooking at home for a decade now, and to be honest, I’m still pretty basic. I sometimes feel embarrassed that I haven’t moved on from roasting chickens and simmering beans, but right now, basic-ness isn’t a crutch — it’s useful. With that spirit in mind, I’ve put together a series of recipes, and notes on recipes, that get really, really basic. Think of it as a roadmap to kitchen competence, a few pages from the grammar manual of home cooking from the dialect I speak.

The most important thing about learning how to cook is to resist perfectionism, and redefine what a home cooked meal is. That was true before we were sheltering in place and limiting our grocery outings to the bare minimum, and now it’s essential. Chicken thighs roasted with salt and olive oil, alongside some root vegetables cooked in the same pan? Highlight of the week. Rice and an egg and maybe some kimchi from the back of your fridge? Delicious. Cheesy pasta? Hell yes. Beans on tortillas or over some toasted stale bread? Dinner once a week for me.

How to Read (and Pick) a Recipe

Every guide like this starts out with the same advice: Read the recipe all the way to the end before you start cooking anything. That’s because even if it feels like kind of a cop move to read and follow the recipe, actually doing so removes much of the stress you might associate with cooking — which often happens when the pan is searing hot and you realize you need soy sauce right that second. Read the ingredients list too! It tells a story, and all-too-often hides some of the prep, like chopping onions or grating cheese or even entire sub recipes (maybe skip anything with sub recipes). If there’s a term you don’t understand, Google it. Almost every mysterious recipe term has been clearly defined online now.

Do your best as a beginner to follow the recipe, but also give yourself permission to deviate if the current situation means you don’t have an ingredient or piece of equipment on hand. Every recipe not written during World War II or in spring 2020 assumes a certain American bourgeois abundance. There’s been a run on garlic? Your tomato sauce will lack some pleasure, but it will still be tomato sauce. Only a few things will utterly wreck a non-baked-good: burning it, undercooking it, over-salting it, or, in certain cases, depriving it of moisture. Under-salting will make things taste flat and disappointing, but you can still eat them. Oil plus salt plus fire is as basic as cooking gets, and if you have those things and something you can cook, you have a meal.

The internet is chock full of free recipes and advice, but the cooking internet stuffers from misinformation as much as any other. A good rule of thumb is to use recipes from publications with test kitchens and bloggers who have proven the test of time, though you may have to pay for those recipes. A few publications have also made serious investments in teaching the fundamentals (though all of them mix in somewhat fussier recipes with the true basics): the New York Times’ How to Cook; the Washington Post’s round-up of recipes and techniques; the LA Times’ ongoing recipe series How to Boil Water; Bon Appetit’s Basically vertical; and Serious Eats’ coronavirus cooking guide. (Your local paper really could use those subscriptions right now if it has a cooking section.)

If you’ve got the money, order a cookbook or two or ten. You don’t have Salt Fat Acid Heat? Buy or borrow Salt Fat Acid Heat. No cookbook explains better the whys and hows of cooking, and the fundamentals of technique, while being refreshingly empowering. Thanks to that book, I (mostly) salt my food appropriately, and in friends’ eyes I became a 50 percent better cook.

When to Cook

Assume it will take you sixty to ninety minutes to prepare and clean up after any meal that’s not scrambled eggs. I don’t care if the recipe says thirty minutes. You’re new to this, and some of us are just slower in the kitchen. Play some music, catch up on a podcast, and, if you’re not sheltering solo, make a roommate or loved one help. If you don’t want to spend an hour cooking, choose a recipe that takes a long time but requires little from you, like baked potatoes or a pot of beans, so you can get other things done.

Equally important is knowing when not to cook. More than half my social distancing meals are not meals I’ve cooked, but repurposing of leftovers I cooked previously. I wouldn’t try to cook three meals a day from scratch right now (or… ever?). Trick yourself into thinking something is a different meal by plopping an egg on it or putting it in a tortilla instead of over rice.

Assemble Your Tools and Stock Your Pantry

Need a definitive guide to stocking your pantry and refrigerator for a week or two of cooking from home? Eater has that for you right here.

Not sure where to buy groceries right now? Restaurants are turning into markets, and lots of farms are offering CSA boxes. Fresh produce and meat and eggs from small producers taste more like themselves and make simple meals tastier, and if you can afford to support small producers right now it’s a great way to help the entire food system.

And as far as tools go, head over here for some products that make your kitchen an easier place to cook.

What to Cook

Roast Vegetables

You know what you can do with any type of vegetable you wouldn’t eat raw, and some that you would? Toss it with olive oil and salt, drop it on a sheet pan, and roast it. The only important thing is not to crowd what you’re roasting, so every piece gets nice and crispy. I like to roast at 425. Don’t want to chop? Roast a potato or sweet potato whole.

The Kitchn: Emma Christensen’s “How to Roast Any Vegetable”

New York Times: Melissa Clark’s “Roasted Vegetables”

Lucky Peach: Peter Meehan’s “Roasted Sweet Potatoes”

Stir Fry

Vegetables that don’t make sense for the oven, and even a few that do, are also great cooked super hot in a pan or wok. There’s all sorts of ways to saute, and stir-frying is one of the best for achieving flavor, both in terms of hitting the food with tons of heat and making the pan sauce part of the dish. This is also a simple way to use up ground meat and leftover rice (fried rice!).

LA Times: Genevieve Ko’s “The Easiest Way to Stir-Fry Vegetables”

Serious Eats: J. Kenji López-Alt’s “Wok Skills 101”

The Woks of Life: How to Make Stir-Fry the Right Way

Greens

You will never be disappointed to have a batch of cooked greens in the fridge. “Greens” is a broad category, ranging from chard to kale to dandelion to bok choi; they can be added to every type of meal for a shot of color and pleasant bitterness. There’s a few basic ways to cook them:

For leafy greens, Lukas Volger’s recipe for braised greens from his new book Start Simple is great and versatile.

If your pantry is a bit better stocked, try the Grandbaby Cakes recipes for collard and mustard greens.

This LA Times story on greens mania from 1986 (!) has a variety of braising options (time to bring back creamed kale?).

World’s Best Braised Cabbage from Taste is not lying.

If you don’t have time to cook the greens, try Toni-Tipton Martin’s recipe for wilting them.

Eggs

If you put an egg over roast vegetables or cooked greens, or drop it into soup, or plop it on top of rice, it becomes dinner. The two easiest ways to make the egg are to fry it up all crispy, or boil it until its yolk is still slightly soft. Cannelle et Vanille has an olive oil fried egg recipe from 2014, which likely helped kick off the trend. It’s a good one. The LA Times has two ways of looking at the ubiquitous jammy egg; Bon Appetit’s recipe calls for an ice water bath, which is super useful for quick peeling.

Rice

I rely on a rice maker; they can be pretty cheap and are usually easy to buy at grocery stores — at the moment I’m sure it’s much less predictable. If you can’t get a rice maker or don’t want one, it’s very possible to make rice on the stovetop. Also, rice in its creamy porridge form is another great platform for a meal or turning leftovers into a meal.

NY Times: Tejal Rao’s “How to Make Rice”

Tasty: “How to Cook Perfect Rice Every Time” [Video]

Serious Eats: Shao Z’s “How to Make the Silkiest, Most Comforting Congee”

Just One Cookbook: Nami Hirasawa Chen’s “Japanese Rice Porridge (Okayu)”

Beans

Cooking dried beans is maddeningly simple. The recipe can be as minimal as: Put the beans in a pot, glug a generous glug of fat on top, cover with water, add salt, and simmer for an hour or two. There’s a lot of tinkering and competing wisdom and differing culinary traditions behind this simple recipe, and it’s worth reading up. Warning: not all these recipes agree with each other. Pick one that works for you. Or keep cycling between them and cross referencing, because that’s what I do. I’m sure having a clay pot is great; I promise you don’t need one. Canned beans are always worth having around, and easy to doctor up.

Washington Post: Joe Yonan’s “Beans are good for the planet, for you and for your dinner table. Here’s how to cook them right.”

Rancho Gordo: “Cooking Basic Beans in the Rancho Gordo Manner”

NY Times: Tejal Rao’s “Cannellini-Bean Pasta with Beurre Blanc”

Isabel Eats: Isabel Orozco-Moore’s “Easy Refied Beans”

Roast Chicken

Beautifully burnished birds have become fetish objects on restaurant menus, and wrangling a whole four- or five-pound carcass might feel like more trouble than it’s worth. But don’t let the $70 ‘for two’ chickens of the past fool you; a roast whole chicken is an economical leftovers machine much greater than any sum of chicken parts. There are perfect and less perfect ways to do it, but you don’t need a cast-iron pan or string for trussing or butter under the skin. You just need a chicken, some salt, and a hot, hot oven.

NY Times: Mark Bittman’s “Simplest Roast Chicken”

Epicurious: Thomas Keller’s “My Favorite Simple Roast Chicken”

Taste Cooking: JJ Goode’s “How to Roast a Chicken? The Answers Are Horrifying.”

Salt Fat Acid Heat: Samin Nosrat’s Buttermilk-Marinated Roast Chicken

Can’t find whole chicken? Bone-in chicken thighs roast up even easier. Bonus: The chicken can be roasted in the same pan as hardier vegetables like potatoes or turnips.

Stock and Soup

Homemade stock is another dish that sounds intimidating but is dead simple and tastes so much better than canned. The only major investment is time. The recipes below call for a few more ingredients or using chicken wings (also great), if you can get them, but basic techniques here will work with whatever you have on hand, including only the picked-over husk of that chicken you roasted. Vegetarian stocks are easy to make with the root vegetables in your fridge or dried mushrooms. Pick up dried kombu, a type of seaweed, and bonito flakes at an Asian grocery store, and you can make dashi.

The Kitchn: Emma Christensen’s “How to Make Homemade Chicken Stock”

Smitten Kitchen: Deb Perelman’s “Perfect, Uncluttered Chicken Stock”

China Sichuan: “Basic Chinese Chicken Stock”

Just One Cookbook: Nami Hirasawa Chen’s “How to Make Dashi”

The Kitchn: Emma Christensen’s “How to Make Vegetable Stock”

101 Cookbooks: Heidi Swanson’s “10 Minute Instant Pot Mushroom Broth”

Now that you have stock, you have yet another way to use up that leftover chicken, beans, greens, rice, and whatever still needs cooking in your fridge. Clean-out-the-fridge soup is definitely a thing.

Pasta

There are many, many pasta recipes out there. The thing I wish someone had told me about pasta much sooner is how to sauce it. If you ever wondered why dumping some marinara sauce or butter on noodles always felt a little disappointing, it turns out there’s a very simple way to fix it! Toss the noodles hot in the sauce. Check out Serious Eats’ guide to saucing for more details.

Baking

I bought a box of brownie mix on a recent grocery store run, and I think you should too. That said, if you think baking from scratch will cheer you up, here’s a few ways to get started.

Taste Cooking: Odette Wiliams “A Cake to Snack On (and On and On)”

King Arthur Flour: “Chilling Cookie Dough”

Eater: Dayna Evans’ “Everyone’s Making Sourdough Now — Here’s How to Get Started”

Cook Safely

A word on kitchen safety: Much of it is common sense, but it’s good to brush up on. Here are the FDA guidelines, and here’s a good rundown on how to deal with all those sharp objects and open flames. That expert hand washing and disinfecting you’re doing will help you keep your kitchen and food safe, too. There is currently no evidence of foodborne transmission of the novel coronavirus; here’s how to grocery shop safely. If you are afraid of cooking meat, here’s how to conquer those fears.

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Photo by Maciej Toporowicz, NYC / Getty

How to get started on your cooking journey, from frying eggs and saucing pasta to roasting chickens and making soup

So you’re really, really into food. You also have no idea how to cook it. I get it, I’ve been there. There are more of us than you might think: Younger Americans grew up in a system awash in convenience foods, while our parents were working longer and harder and had less and less time to cook. Then, when we became adults, time and money were scarcer still, and restaurants became the places we gathered with our friends.

When I taught myself to cook at home, I immediately discovered most recipes aren’t written for anxious beginners. Instead, they assume the cook is already competent and looking to level up or add another dish to their repertoire. The rewards and demands of social media virality have only supercharged recipes’ emphasis on novelty and visual beauty. As someone who now knows how to cook, I love reading about a hack for cooking short ribs or a surprising use for my rice cooker. But back when I barely knew how to boil water, recipes telling me which tweak or technique yielded ideal results made turning on the oven feel high stakes. All that emphasis on aspiration and perfection made it way too hard to get started.

I’ve been cooking at home for a decade now, and to be honest, I’m still pretty basic. I sometimes feel embarrassed that I haven’t moved on from roasting chickens and simmering beans, but right now, basic-ness isn’t a crutch — it’s useful. With that spirit in mind, I’ve put together a series of recipes, and notes on recipes, that get really, really basic. Think of it as a roadmap to kitchen competence, a few pages from the grammar manual of home cooking from the dialect I speak.

The most important thing about learning how to cook is to resist perfectionism, and redefine what a home cooked meal is. That was true before we were sheltering in place and limiting our grocery outings to the bare minimum, and now it’s essential. Chicken thighs roasted with salt and olive oil, alongside some root vegetables cooked in the same pan? Highlight of the week. Rice and an egg and maybe some kimchi from the back of your fridge? Delicious. Cheesy pasta? Hell yes. Beans on tortillas or over some toasted stale bread? Dinner once a week for me.

How to Read (and Pick) a Recipe

Every guide like this starts out with the same advice: Read the recipe all the way to the end before you start cooking anything. That’s because even if it feels like kind of a cop move to read and follow the recipe, actually doing so removes much of the stress you might associate with cooking — which often happens when the pan is searing hot and you realize you need soy sauce right that second. Read the ingredients list too! It tells a story, and all-too-often hides some of the prep, like chopping onions or grating cheese or even entire sub recipes (maybe skip anything with sub recipes). If there’s a term you don’t understand, Google it. Almost every mysterious recipe term has been clearly defined online now.

Do your best as a beginner to follow the recipe, but also give yourself permission to deviate if the current situation means you don’t have an ingredient or piece of equipment on hand. Every recipe not written during World War II or in spring 2020 assumes a certain American bourgeois abundance. There’s been a run on garlic? Your tomato sauce will lack some pleasure, but it will still be tomato sauce. Only a few things will utterly wreck a non-baked-good: burning it, undercooking it, over-salting it, or, in certain cases, depriving it of moisture. Under-salting will make things taste flat and disappointing, but you can still eat them. Oil plus salt plus fire is as basic as cooking gets, and if you have those things and something you can cook, you have a meal.

The internet is chock full of free recipes and advice, but the cooking internet stuffers from misinformation as much as any other. A good rule of thumb is to use recipes from publications with test kitchens and bloggers who have proven the test of time, though you may have to pay for those recipes. A few publications have also made serious investments in teaching the fundamentals (though all of them mix in somewhat fussier recipes with the true basics): the New York Times’ How to Cook; the Washington Post’s round-up of recipes and techniques; the LA Times’ ongoing recipe series How to Boil Water; Bon Appetit’s Basically vertical; and Serious Eats’ coronavirus cooking guide. (Your local paper really could use those subscriptions right now if it has a cooking section.)

If you’ve got the money, order a cookbook or two or ten. You don’t have Salt Fat Acid Heat? Buy or borrow Salt Fat Acid Heat. No cookbook explains better the whys and hows of cooking, and the fundamentals of technique, while being refreshingly empowering. Thanks to that book, I (mostly) salt my food appropriately, and in friends’ eyes I became a 50 percent better cook.

When to Cook

Assume it will take you sixty to ninety minutes to prepare and clean up after any meal that’s not scrambled eggs. I don’t care if the recipe says thirty minutes. You’re new to this, and some of us are just slower in the kitchen. Play some music, catch up on a podcast, and, if you’re not sheltering solo, make a roommate or loved one help. If you don’t want to spend an hour cooking, choose a recipe that takes a long time but requires little from you, like baked potatoes or a pot of beans, so you can get other things done.

Equally important is knowing when not to cook. More than half my social distancing meals are not meals I’ve cooked, but repurposing of leftovers I cooked previously. I wouldn’t try to cook three meals a day from scratch right now (or… ever?). Trick yourself into thinking something is a different meal by plopping an egg on it or putting it in a tortilla instead of over rice.

Assemble Your Tools and Stock Your Pantry

Need a definitive guide to stocking your pantry and refrigerator for a week or two of cooking from home? Eater has that for you right here.

Not sure where to buy groceries right now? Restaurants are turning into markets, and lots of farms are offering CSA boxes. Fresh produce and meat and eggs from small producers taste more like themselves and make simple meals tastier, and if you can afford to support small producers right now it’s a great way to help the entire food system.

And as far as tools go, head over here for some products that make your kitchen an easier place to cook.

What to Cook

Roast Vegetables

You know what you can do with any type of vegetable you wouldn’t eat raw, and some that you would? Toss it with olive oil and salt, drop it on a sheet pan, and roast it. The only important thing is not to crowd what you’re roasting, so every piece gets nice and crispy. I like to roast at 425. Don’t want to chop? Roast a potato or sweet potato whole.

The Kitchn: Emma Christensen’s “How to Roast Any Vegetable”

New York Times: Melissa Clark’s “Roasted Vegetables”

Lucky Peach: Peter Meehan’s “Roasted Sweet Potatoes”

Stir Fry

Vegetables that don’t make sense for the oven, and even a few that do, are also great cooked super hot in a pan or wok. There’s all sorts of ways to saute, and stir-frying is one of the best for achieving flavor, both in terms of hitting the food with tons of heat and making the pan sauce part of the dish. This is also a simple way to use up ground meat and leftover rice (fried rice!).

LA Times: Genevieve Ko’s “The Easiest Way to Stir-Fry Vegetables”

Serious Eats: J. Kenji López-Alt’s “Wok Skills 101”

The Woks of Life: How to Make Stir-Fry the Right Way

Greens

You will never be disappointed to have a batch of cooked greens in the fridge. “Greens” is a broad category, ranging from chard to kale to dandelion to bok choi; they can be added to every type of meal for a shot of color and pleasant bitterness. There’s a few basic ways to cook them:

For leafy greens, Lukas Volger’s recipe for braised greens from his new book Start Simple is great and versatile.

If your pantry is a bit better stocked, try the Grandbaby Cakes recipes for collard and mustard greens.

This LA Times story on greens mania from 1986 (!) has a variety of braising options (time to bring back creamed kale?).

World’s Best Braised Cabbage from Taste is not lying.

If you don’t have time to cook the greens, try Toni-Tipton Martin’s recipe for wilting them.

Eggs

If you put an egg over roast vegetables or cooked greens, or drop it into soup, or plop it on top of rice, it becomes dinner. The two easiest ways to make the egg are to fry it up all crispy, or boil it until its yolk is still slightly soft. Cannelle et Vanille has an olive oil fried egg recipe from 2014, which likely helped kick off the trend. It’s a good one. The LA Times has two ways of looking at the ubiquitous jammy egg; Bon Appetit’s recipe calls for an ice water bath, which is super useful for quick peeling.

Rice

I rely on a rice maker; they can be pretty cheap and are usually easy to buy at grocery stores — at the moment I’m sure it’s much less predictable. If you can’t get a rice maker or don’t want one, it’s very possible to make rice on the stovetop. Also, rice in its creamy porridge form is another great platform for a meal or turning leftovers into a meal.

NY Times: Tejal Rao’s “How to Make Rice”

Tasty: “How to Cook Perfect Rice Every Time” [Video]

Serious Eats: Shao Z’s “How to Make the Silkiest, Most Comforting Congee”

Just One Cookbook: Nami Hirasawa Chen’s “Japanese Rice Porridge (Okayu)”

Beans

Cooking dried beans is maddeningly simple. The recipe can be as minimal as: Put the beans in a pot, glug a generous glug of fat on top, cover with water, add salt, and simmer for an hour or two. There’s a lot of tinkering and competing wisdom and differing culinary traditions behind this simple recipe, and it’s worth reading up. Warning: not all these recipes agree with each other. Pick one that works for you. Or keep cycling between them and cross referencing, because that’s what I do. I’m sure having a clay pot is great; I promise you don’t need one. Canned beans are always worth having around, and easy to doctor up.

Washington Post: Joe Yonan’s “Beans are good for the planet, for you and for your dinner table. Here’s how to cook them right.”

Rancho Gordo: “Cooking Basic Beans in the Rancho Gordo Manner”

NY Times: Tejal Rao’s “Cannellini-Bean Pasta with Beurre Blanc”

Isabel Eats: Isabel Orozco-Moore’s “Easy Refied Beans”

Roast Chicken

Beautifully burnished birds have become fetish objects on restaurant menus, and wrangling a whole four- or five-pound carcass might feel like more trouble than it’s worth. But don’t let the $70 ‘for two’ chickens of the past fool you; a roast whole chicken is an economical leftovers machine much greater than any sum of chicken parts. There are perfect and less perfect ways to do it, but you don’t need a cast-iron pan or string for trussing or butter under the skin. You just need a chicken, some salt, and a hot, hot oven.

NY Times: Mark Bittman’s “Simplest Roast Chicken”

Epicurious: Thomas Keller’s “My Favorite Simple Roast Chicken”

Taste Cooking: JJ Goode’s “How to Roast a Chicken? The Answers Are Horrifying.”

Salt Fat Acid Heat: Samin Nosrat’s Buttermilk-Marinated Roast Chicken

Can’t find whole chicken? Bone-in chicken thighs roast up even easier. Bonus: The chicken can be roasted in the same pan as hardier vegetables like potatoes or turnips.

Stock and Soup

Homemade stock is another dish that sounds intimidating but is dead simple and tastes so much better than canned. The only major investment is time. The recipes below call for a few more ingredients or using chicken wings (also great), if you can get them, but basic techniques here will work with whatever you have on hand, including only the picked-over husk of that chicken you roasted. Vegetarian stocks are easy to make with the root vegetables in your fridge or dried mushrooms. Pick up dried kombu, a type of seaweed, and bonito flakes at an Asian grocery store, and you can make dashi.

The Kitchn: Emma Christensen’s “How to Make Homemade Chicken Stock”

Smitten Kitchen: Deb Perelman’s “Perfect, Uncluttered Chicken Stock”

China Sichuan: “Basic Chinese Chicken Stock”

Just One Cookbook: Nami Hirasawa Chen’s “How to Make Dashi”

The Kitchn: Emma Christensen’s “How to Make Vegetable Stock”

101 Cookbooks: Heidi Swanson’s “10 Minute Instant Pot Mushroom Broth”

Now that you have stock, you have yet another way to use up that leftover chicken, beans, greens, rice, and whatever still needs cooking in your fridge. Clean-out-the-fridge soup is definitely a thing.

Pasta

There are many, many pasta recipes out there. The thing I wish someone had told me about pasta much sooner is how to sauce it. If you ever wondered why dumping some marinara sauce or butter on noodles always felt a little disappointing, it turns out there’s a very simple way to fix it! Toss the noodles hot in the sauce. Check out Serious Eats’ guide to saucing for more details.

Baking

I bought a box of brownie mix on a recent grocery store run, and I think you should too. That said, if you think baking from scratch will cheer you up, here’s a few ways to get started.

Taste Cooking: Odette Wiliams “A Cake to Snack On (and On and On)”

King Arthur Flour: “Chilling Cookie Dough”

Eater: Dayna Evans’ “Everyone’s Making Sourdough Now — Here’s How to Get Started”

Cook Safely

A word on kitchen safety: Much of it is common sense, but it’s good to brush up on. Here are the FDA guidelines, and here’s a good rundown on how to deal with all those sharp objects and open flames. That expert hand washing and disinfecting you’re doing will help you keep your kitchen and food safe, too. There is currently no evidence of foodborne transmission of the novel coronavirus; here’s how to grocery shop safely. If you are afraid of cooking meat, here’s how to conquer those fears.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3dPHANy via Blogger https://ift.tt/2UYkgVf

[magzoso-tech]

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/diet-autopilot-thistle-raises-5m-for-health-food-subscriptions/

Diet autopilot Thistle raises $5M for health food subscriptions

What if it was easier to eat salad than junk food? Most diet routines take a ton of time, whether you’re cooking from scratch, making a meal kit, or seeking out a nutritious restaurant. But on-demand prepared food delivery companies like Sprig that tried to eliminate that work have gone bankrupt from poor unit economics.

Thistle is a different type of food startup. It delivers thrice-weekly cooler bags customized with meat-optional, plant-based breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks, sides, and juices. By batching deliveries in the less-congested early morning hours and optimizing routes to its subscribers, or by mailing weekly boxes beyond its own geographies, Thistle makes sure you already have your food the moment you’re hungry. Whether you heat them up or eat them straight out of the fridge, you’re actually dining faster than you could even place an Uber Eats order.

The food on Thistle’s constantly rotating men is downright tasty. You might get a sunrise chia parfait for breakfast, a chicken tropical mango salad for lunch, a microwaveable bulgogi noodle bowl for dinner, with beet hummus and kale-cucumber juice for snacks. Thistle’s not cheap, with meals averaging about $14 each. But compared to competitors’ on-demand delivery markups and service fees, wasting ingredients from the grocer, and the hours of cooking for yourself, it can be a good deal for busy people.

“We see Thistle as part of a movement to make health convenient rather than a high will power chore” CEO Ashwin Cheriyan tells me. What Peloton did to shave time off getting a great workout, Thistle does for eating a nourishing meal. It makes the right choice the easiest choice.

Thistle COO Shiri Avneri and CEO Ashwin Cheriyan with their daughter

The idea of button you can push to make you healthier has attracted a new $5.65 million Series A round for Thistle led by its first institutional investor, PowerPlant Ventures. Bringing the startup to $15 million in funding, the cash will expand Thistle’s delivery domain. Dan Gluck of PowerPlant, which has also funded food break-outs like Beyond Meat, Thrive Market, and Rebbl, will join the board.

Currently Thistle delivers in-person to the Bay Area, LA metro, San Diego, and Sacramento while shipping to most of Washington, Oregon, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona. Thistle actually held off on raising more since launching in 2013 to make sure it hammered out unit economics to prevent an implosion. It’s also planning broader meal options, additional product lines, and fresh distribution strategies like getting stocked in office smart kitchens or subsidized by wellness plans.

“The reasons that so many food delivery companies have failed likely fall into two buckets: one, a lack of focus on margins and unit economics, and two, premature geographic expansion before proving out the business model” says Cheriyan. “Thistle makes money similar to how a well run restaurant would make money – by having strong gross margins, efficient customer acquisition costs, and solid customer retention / lifetime metrics. We currently deliver tens of thousands of meals on a weekly basis to customers on the West Coast and our annual average growth rate since launch has been 100%+.”

It’s nice that Thistle hasn’t gone out of business because I’ve been eating its salads 6X a week for three years. It’s been the most efficient way for me to get healthier and lose weight after a half-decade of ordering takeout sandwiches and then feeling sluggish all day. I legitimately look forward to each one since they often have 20+ ingredients and only repeat every few months so they’re never boring.

It’s helped me keep my work-from-home lunches to about 20 minutes so I have more time for writing. Thistle is one of the few startups I consistently recommend to people. When asked how I lost 25lbs before my wedding, I point to Peloton cycling, Future remote personal training, and Thistle salads — none of which require me to leave the house.

Cheriyan tells me “We wanted the better-for-you and better-for-planet choice to be the default choice.”

Growing Out Of On-Demand

Thistle has already pivoted past the business model burning tons of cash across the startup world. The company started as an on-demand cold pressed juice delivery service, sending hipster glass bottles of watermelon and charcoal extract to doors around San Francisco. It was 2013, yoga was booming, and people were paying crazily high prices for liquified lemongrass. Health made simple seemed like a sure bet to the founding team of Alap Shah, Naman Shah, Sheel Mohnot, and Johnny Hwin, some of whom run Studio Management, a family office and startup incubator. [Disclosure: Hwin and Shah are friends of mine but didn’t pitch or discuss this article with me.]

Thistle eventually straightened things out with a shift to subscriptions and batched delivery under the leadership of the hired executives, Cheriyan and his wife and COO Shiri Avnery. “I came from a family of physicians – both my parents, brother, and enough aunts, uncles, and cousins are doctors that they could start a small hospital” Cheriyan, a former corporate attorney in M&A tells me. “A common point of frustration was about patients suffering from diet related illnesses who were unable to make a lifestyle change because it was too hard.”

Avenery, a PhD in air pollution and climate change’s impact on agriculture, had become exasperated with the slow pace of policy change and the inaction of governments and corporations. The two quit their jobs, moved to San Francisco, and searched for a point of leverage for positively influencing people diets and interaction with the environment. They teamed up with the founders and launched Thistle v1.

A lack of experience in logistics led to the initial detour into on-demand. But rather than trying to fix the problem with VC money, Thistle stayed lean and discovered the opportunity nestled between UberEats and BlueApron: sending people food they don’t have to eat now, but that takes low or no time to prepare when they’re peckish. Through its app, users can customize their meal plans, ban their allergens, pause deliveries, and see what they’ll eat next.

A sample of Thistle 8 meal plans

“The unit economics problem most heavily plagued the early on-demand food companies. Food / labor waste and inefficient deliveries were likely the biggest reasons why the economics were unsustainable without venture life support. We know this personally as Thistle started our delivery service as an on-demand company before quickly realizing that the unit economics couldn’t sustain a healthy business” Cheriyan explains, regarding companies like Sprig, DoorDash, and Grubhub. Beyond unsold food, “the margins very likely did not support ordering a $12-$15 single meal for immediate delivery when average hourly driver wages reached $18-20.”

Meal kits were supposed to make dining healtheir and cheaper, but they proved too much of a chore and led customers to boxes of ingredients piling up unused. Munchery and Nomiku went out of business while giants like Blue Apron have incinerated hundreds of millions of dollars and seen their share prices sink.

“The meal kit companies fared a little better from a gross margin perspective (due to preorders and more efficient deliveries) but suffer most from an easy-to-copy business model. This led to a rise in copycats, and, as a result, heavily rising customer acquisition costs, low switching costs and poor retention” Cheriyan tells me. “Fundamentally the meal kit companies face another challenge, which is that people have less and less time to cook and are increasingly looking for ready-to-eat options.”

Push-Button Health

A slower, steadier approach with less overhead, more convenience, and fewer direct competitors has helped Thistle grow to 400 employees from culinary to engineering to logistics.

Still, it’s vulnerable. It may still be too expensive for some markets and demographics. Logistics experts like Amazon and Whole Foods could try to barge into the market. Cloud kitchens without dining rooms are making restaurant food more affordable for delivery. And another startup could always take the gamble on raising a ton of cash and subsidizing prices to steal market share, especially where Thistle doesn’t operate yet.

Thistle could counter these threats would be further eliminating delivery costs by selling through partners like office smart fridges where employees pay on the spot, or equipping gym lobbies with more than just Muscle Milk.

“One opportunity we’re excited to test is attended and unattended retail – it would be great to be able to pick up Thistle products at your local grocery store, gym, or coffee shop” Cheriyan says. As for offices, “Today’s corporate lunchtime solutions often require a tradeoff between health and convenience: either wait in line for 30+ minutes at your favorite salad spot for a healthy option, or opt into catered restaurant meals that leave you feeling sluggish and unproductive.” Thistle could help employers prevent the 3pm energy lull.

The startup’s focus on plant-forward meals also centers it in the path of another megatrend: the shift to environmentally-conscious diets. Almost 60% of of Americans are trying to eat less meat and 50% are eating meat-alternatives like Impossible Burgers. That stems both from interest in the humane treatment of animals and how 15% of green house emissions come from livestock. But 45% of Americans say they hate to cook. That’s why Thistle makes pre-made meals where meat and egg are optional, but the food is healthy and delicious without them.

In the age of Uber, we’ve acclimated to an effortless life. The new wave of ‘push-button health’ startups like Thistle could finally take the hassle out of aligning your actions in the gym or kitchen with you intentions.

[femchef]

Okay So How About Some Chocolate Mousse

If you ever wanted to know how to make chocolate mousse at home, this is the post for you! 

So - chocolate mousse. A mousse can be sweet or savory, and typically employs whipped cream or egg whites to give an otherwise rich and heavy food a light and more appealing texture. Mousses are quite clever - you can take an ingredient with a hefty price tag, say fois gras or chocolate, and increase the useable volume AND serve a large meal while 1) not overwhelming guests with a single super heavy dish and 2) not sacrificing the flavor or the richness of the featured ingredient. The history of chocolate mousse isn't super well-documented, but sweet mousses were showing up in French kitchens in the latter half of the 19th century and savory mousses have been around since at least the mid-1700′s.

Now! A few things before we get started. FIRST: if we have to scale the technical difficulty of making chocolate mousse, let's call it an Intermediate Level Dish - in other words, someone with time management skills, equipment, and basic baking experience at home can put this together successfully. Just keep in mind that you will require a few special tools and ingredients. That brings us to the SECOND point!!! Special tools and ingredients! 

There aren't a whole lot of ingredients required to put this recipe together, but two of the big ones are chocolate and gelatin. 

DO NOT USE CHCOLATE CHIP MORSELS OR BAKING CHOCOLATE. If you do your project will end in tears and regret. AND FOR THE LOVE OF ST. HONORÉ, do NOT use candy melts. 

Let’s be real - chocolate mousse is a splurge, it's not an everyday dessert. You need a couple days, three at most, to put this thing together. The chocolate is the featured ingredient here. Morsels are specifically made to NOT MELT in your cookies, baking chocolate is best left for fudge and brownies, and melts are just cocoa butter and some additives to help them set back up into hard candies. And ALL of these items will ruin your recipe if you use them here. So go ahead and get the nice stuff - this recipe will call for a semi-sweet. Look for a chocolate that falls between 60%-76% cocoa. The one I've used here is Cacao Barry 64% Extra Bitter:

Barry makes a lot of nice products, and they don't all come in 11lb bags, so no worries. If you're ordering online, I would recommend checking amazon, but if you have a Whole Foods nearby, they generally carry a selection of Valrhona (the fancy expensive super special brand of chocolate) if you just want to grab and go. 

Gelatin. Please do yourself a favor and order some silver-grade sheets. Chances are you won't use them too often but you will have them for when you need them. The powdered gelatin is not that stable, and better used in sauces. Sheets come in grades - the short is, bronze is mostly a step up from powdered, and even most kitchens don't need the gold standard sheets. Gelatin sheets are a bit harder to find in stores, so again, pop over to amazon or a local kitchen supply if you have one. 

Silicone Mold. Okay, this mousse recipe is designed to be piped into molds. If you would rather spoon it out over meringues, frost a cake or fill glasses with it, then go for it! That is totally fine. But for impressive (and best, tbh) results, go ahead and invest in a flexible silicone mold. silikomart is a very affordable Italian brand, and one sheet of molds ( 8-10 individual servings, depends on the shape you pick out) runs a very reasonable 14$ USD. Just make sure that if you DO invest in a silicone mold, that it is food safe grade silicone! I cannot emphasize that enough - please don't poison yourself or your diners. Buy it from a reputable dealer and double check the brand before you purchase. 

Other stuff: you will probably also want to have a hand or stand mixer with whisk attachments, a scale (the entire recipe is measured by scale), and piping bags, which you can find at the craft store now, usually 5$ for a box of 10 bags. You will also want to invest in a set of biscuit/ring cookie cutters if you haven't already. 

OKAY all the weird stuff out of the way!! Awesome.  Now, let’s say you have all your necessary equipment and ingredients. Now. You didn't go to all this trouble just to make a dessert that will stick to a plate - you want to eat ALL the mousse. ALL OF IT. 

So you need a base for your mousse. A foot rest. A pillow. This is why you should give yourself 2-3 days of time to prepare. 

Most molded mousse desserts at restaurants will be sitting on either a very thin biscuit, or will have a slice of cake pressed to the bottom before freezing. I would say go with cake - it is the easiest solution. So, the day BEFORE you plan to make your mousse, go ahead and bake off a small single layer of your cake of choice. I used banana nut cake in the pictures below (we had a lot of scraps hanging around the bakery the other day) but use what your heart tells you. To make it easy on yourself and just go with vanilla or chocolate to compliment but not overshadow your mousse. Be sure to chill your cake in the refrigerator overnight. 

MOUSSE DAY:

Alright! So you are making your mousse. Before I get in to the recipe, a couple (more!?) things: make SURE you have all your ingredients ready to go in to your recipe. Once you start your caramel things will happen pretty quick. 

Also be prepared to use a lot of dishes. That is just part of the mousse process, unfortunately. 

One other thing - this recipe, which is possibly the easiest, least troublesome chocolate mousse I have ever made, is adapted from the recipe we use at Etch in Nashville. Credit where it's due - this recipe is from Megan Williams, who is the head pastry chef and also my boss (and also a lovely human being, thank you for being a great boss!). All I've done here is reworked it to better suit at-home baking. 

Just Chocolate Mousse

Semi-Sweet Chooclate: 13.6 ounces

Kosher Salt: 1/2 teaspoon

Scalded Heavy Cream: 8 ounces

Granulated Sugar: 3.5 ounces

Egg yolks: 5.8 ounces

Gelatin: 4 sheets, bloomed

Chilled Heavy Cream: 26 ounces, whipped to medium-stiff peaks

The Set Up

Let the chocolate and salt melt together in a double boiler (or in a steel/glass bowl over a pot with a scant two inches of water) on med-low heat, stirring occasionally until smooth and melted (Set aside for later). 

While that's going, pour out the first cream in a sauce pot and as soon as it begins to boil remove from the heat and set aside. 

To bloom your gelatin, fill a container with cool water and a handful of ice cubes, and submerge the sheets in it. Leave them in the ice water for about four or five minutes, then wring them out gently, pour off the water and ice, and set them aside in the container until you're ready to use. Have your egg yolks in another mixing bowl set aside for when you are ready to use them. If your kitchen is warm, you may want to take the mixing bowl you will be using to whip your cream in, and stick it AND the cream in the fridge together until you're ready to whip. 

In yet ANOTHER sauce pan or pot (see what I mean about the dishes?) measure out your sugar. When the chocolate is melted and cream is scalded and both have been set aside, set the pot of sugar on the stove on medium heat. You are about to make what is called a dry caramel - literally just burning your sugar on a controlled temperature. Make sure the sugar is spread evenly over the bottom of the pan before you turn on the heat. Stir it gently with a heat-safe rubber spatula (in other words don't melt your favorite plastic spoon been there 0/10 recommend) until all the sugar is melted and has darkened to this color:

(Not actually sugar - this is my tea from this morning, but the color is exactly correct). 

There may be a little smoking, but as long as you aren't burning black crud onto your pot you're good, just don't leave or step away and keep gently stirring. 

When the caramel reaches this color REMOVE IT FROM THE HEAT IMMEDIATELY and pour in all of your heated cream! It will steam up so don't lean over the pot, and just keep gently stirring until the cream and sugar are combined. 

 Now, toss in your gelatin and with a whisk, stir it into the caramel. Take the caramel mixture, and, with one hand whisking your egg yolks, slowly pour the caramel from the sauce pot with the other hand as you whisk. What you are doing is tempering your egg yolks so that they slowly cook and come up to temperature to make a nice creamy substance instead of a curdled paste. 

Congratulations! This was the hardest step! If you've gotten this far you're good! Now, add the caramel cream to the melted chocolate and whisk it all together. You will want to take a spatula and scrape the sides down very well so that the chocolate mixture cools evenly. Set it aside but be sure to stir with the spatula occasionally to keep the chocolate from getting a skin on top. 

Now is a good time to whip your chilled cream and move some of your dishes to the wash. 

When the cream is whipped to medium-stiff peaks (should look fluffy and soft, but hold a nice shape), and so long as the chocolate mixture is at body temperature (lukewarm, not hot or cold, around 90-98F), you can begin folding the two together. Take a third of the cream and mix it in to your chocolate. You can be a bit rougher with the first third of the cream, since you're using it to loosen up the chocolate mixture and make it more receptive to the rest. Add in half the remaining cream and gently combine it. It's okay if it's a little streaky, but make sure you are scraping the bottom of the bowl with the spatula as you lift the mixture to the top of the bowl. Fold in the remaining cream. Your finished mousse should look something like this: 

(Basically, it should look like mousse.)

So remember that cake you baked the day before? Take it out of the fridge. Grab your biscuit cutters and choose the size that is slightly smaller than the mold you are piping the mousse into. Now, cut out the number of pieces you need. 

You will want the cake layer to be thin, not taller than a centimeter, so if the cake is tall, just cut your circles in half. 

Now. - if you've invested in a mold for this, go ahead and whip it out. Hopefully you've rinsed and dried it out at least once before using it for your mousse. Now. You've come this far, it would be a shame if your mousse had weird pockets or air bubbles - and that is why it needs to be piped into the molds. Scooping or spooning it in isn't going to do you any good if you want the mousse to have a nice, even shape when you pop it out, and the pressure from your hand squeezing it out of the bag will fill in any air pockets. So you know. Don't skimp. 

Once you've piped your mousse nearly to the top of the mold, take your cake circles and press them firmly but gently into the mousse. This will fill up any lingering space and also create a rim of mousse around the cake, so you don't see it when it's on the plate! 

Now, pop those babies into the deepest darkest pits of your freezer and leave them there overnight. Yup. Give it a whole night. You want them to be entirely frozen before you pop them out of the silicone. Once they're frozen you can pop them out of the molds and store them in the freezer for a month or so. Which is great if you want to whip out amazing dessert at the last second for a dinner thing OR just eat them, because chocolate mousse is awesome even when it's frozen. 

THE NEXT DAY:

The mousse should be nice and hard, and you should be able to quickly peel them out of the silicone

go ahead and either put them straight on to plates to serve or on a sheet in the fridge to pull out later. 

Because of the cake on the bottom you can easily move them around with a spatula or fork onto dishes! If you are serving out of the freezer, let the mousse sit out at room temperature for about 10 minutes before you serve them, otherwise you can serve them straight out of the fridge. 

And that's it! There are a lot of steps in the process, but it's actually pretty easy to do! I hope this post encourages someone out there to try it on their own! 

[pestheart6-blog]

Creepin' It Real-A Hallowe'en Party To End Them All!

Hello my pretties! It's time for this year's annual Halloween party and this year's was a doozy and the best yet! Held at a historic Cemetery Lodge the atmosphere was pure electric- from the wild thunderstorms above to the spooky 13 items to the party guests that dressed like it was the last hurrah! And check out some of these easy last minute Halloween food ideas for the big day tomorrow!

For the last 10 years worth of Halloween parties, it has never rained for my Halloween party - ever. But this year the rain would prove to be my nemesis as well as a blessing. If you were in Sydney at the time, chances were you were drenched in the rain or at least hiding from the flash foods and lightning.

It was all happening at Cemetery Lodge where I was holed up decorating and putting out food. There was a fire that blocked up the main street, the royal visit had closed off the harbour tunnel and the thunder grumbled outside the spooky little cottage.

"What if everyone cancels?" I said to Mr NQN. My phone buzzed constantly. Friends giving me weather updates-I'm sure trying to be helpful but only adding to the stress because I had been checking the forecast every 10 minutes myself.

Bloody eyeball punch

The messages read:

"Looks like rain...And thunder"

"We are running really late and Garth just dropped all the beers on the kitchen floor so now he has to clean it up"

"Headed your way! Had a bit of costume issue"

"I can't eat anything as I'm on an elimination diet" (that was an Elliott ;) )

Tarantula Cheese Ball

Voodoo doll hand pies

I pictured myself sitting in my outfit with Mr NQN at my side, just the two of us waiting for guests for an hour. But then people started arriving - early no less!

Werewolf cupcakes (recipe here)

Serpent Sandwich

Guests marvelled at lovely little cottage attached to cemetery. It was built in 1848 and was where the cemetery worker and his family lived-the side door is even where the bodies would be wheeled in to his office!

Ouija Board Cake (recipe here)

It has now been transformed into a cosy home by the lovely tenants and it is warm and full of colours. There's a community garden to the side and chickens that lay eggs as well as the world's oldest bunny.

Frog spawn drink

It has a kooky charm to it and I was honoured to have my party there. I transformed the space to become spooky with decorations from The Party People, my favourite party shop because their Halloween selection is incredible!

Face pie (recipe here)

Scared tacos

Food-wise, because I was warned that the oven was a bit dodgy, I kept to things that could be made ahead of time and didn't need to be heated.

Skull sandwiches that can be made and frozen ahead of time

Brain chocolate peanut butter truffles

I get so excited every year to make Halloween food that I have a little draft of items that I add to throughout the year. I've already got 3 Halloween food ideas for next year!

Marzipan teeth

This was my costume this year. I decided to match with an item that I had made and came as a voodoo doll. The added bonus is that the makeup was super quick to do and required just 5 minutes with eyeliner and eyeshadow. I drew on stitches with the eyeliner and made one button eye and I was done!

The first to arrive were the Day of the Dead family with Viggo, Louise and baby Henry. He was born on Halloween last year so we dubbed him Halloween Henry!

Then came Araluen and her daughter Aura who came as Miss Havisham and Estella. Araluen loves dress up and had most of the outfit already-the skirt she found at the local Vinnies shop!

Tuulikki arrived with them (by the way they caught a bus dressed like this and she reported no odd looks). She came as an eccentric witch. She, like her son Mr NQN hates photos and liked being behind a mask!

Oh and here is Mr NQN! He was a bit worried that nobody would recognise his costume. Can you guess who he is? Here's a quote to help you, "Oh hi Mark!"

My sometime vegetarian friend Laura came as a Day of the Dead skeleton and brought me some gorgeous dark red roses. She knows the way to my heart!

And then Ivy and Ryan arrived. I thought that they might come as Donald and Melania (because terrifying!) but she came as Carrie and he came as Pennywise with an absolutely terrifying mask that freaked out a lot of people. What is it about clowns?

Then JY and Ben arrived as Crazy Rich Asians-how inspired and current pop culture!

Then we had not one but two Egyptians arrive. The first was Tania who came as a regal Nefertiti. And then I got a message from Queen Viv. Now cemetery lodge isn't the easiest to find so I gave everyone a map and everyone found it just fine but you know who is going to be the person that gets lost finding it? Yup our dear Queen Viv.

"Lorraine, where are you?" she said worriedly on her voicemail. She entered wearing her home made mummy outfit that she made using strips of painting sheet. Hers was the outfit that everyone wanted to own and when she told people that she was taking it to the Salvos afterwards there was a mini stampede for who would get it.

One of the most spectacular entrances was Amaya, Laporello and their kids Jett and Finn who came as Star Wars characters. They always make such an effort for Halloween and I was so impressed at how much effort they had gone to. Finn's RED2 even had light up buttons and sound!

Nina and Garth were not too far behind. She came as a Evil Countess and he came as the Joker-because she loves anything Batman related and I think she liked the costume more than he did!

The last to arrive were Girl Next Door and Baz who came as Instagram hashtags. There were some notable absences-Miss America has started a new job doing shift work and he was upset that he couldn't make it because he was even more prepared with this costume than ever.

Others like Julie and Lou and her family couldn't come due to health reasons but I was so excited to have my nearest and dearest and most fun friends and family with me on the night.

Time really flew-it was as though it was going at warp speed. People devoured the food and talked-there is one common element to this Halloween party and that is everyone is so much fun and easy going and friendly. People that come alone still have a great time because everyone is so welcoming.

It then came time for Halloween charades, a tradition at these parties. We split into two groups and wrote our list of terrifying things which was a mix of horror films, current affairs and scary people (eg shirtless Putin riding on horseback). It was so much fun that JY started to get an asthma attack from laughing so much but Laura had a ventolin inhaler on her so that fixed it up straight away! Phew!

The Finn piped up. Could he have a go at charades? I think we might have a little ghoul in the making here!

Then the last hardcore people all adjourned to the nearby cemetery. It was perfectly still, traces of the earlier thunderstorm gone. It was deathly and surprisingly quiet given that busy King Street was just a couple of streets away. Laura took out star shaped sparklers and Tania told us stories about the first fleet graves that lay here.

It was almost midnight when Queen Viv said "I must disappear back into my crypt!" And with that we bid her and each of the party guests goodbye only to learn later that some of my gruesome party guests had to escape the cemetery by climbing over the walls (a sight which I would have loved to have seen!). Queen Viv reported the next day: "Passersby barely interested. So Newtown!"

And without further ado here are the recipes below!

So tell me Dear Reader, are you terrified of clowns? And could you guess Mr NQN's costume? And would you be scared if you saw someone scary climbing over a cemetery wall?

Brain Truffles

All Original Recipes by Lorraine Elliott

These were one of my favourite Halloween treats. They were easy enough to make but could sit shelf stable so they didn't always need to be refrigerated. I used cranberries as the sweetener instead of jam to make them shelf stable but also because the white chocolate was sweet enough as it was.

Makes a dozen brain truffles

Preparation time: 30 minutes plus chilling time

Cooking time: 20 minutes

700g/25ozs. pink candy melts

1 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup dried cranberries

Red icing gel pen

Silicone brain chocolate or ice cube mold

Step 1 - Melt the candy melts in a microwave at 50% power in 30 second intervals stirring. Spoon some into a brain chocolate or ice cube mold. Coat the inside thickly with chocolate as shown above. Chill until completely set.

Step 2 - Spoon in peanut butter and cranberries. Spread some chocolate on top and smooth over the top, making sure to remove any chocolate around the outer edge that may prevent them from coming out of the mold cleanly. If it is very hot where you are, you can always put it in the freezer between each step.

Step 3 - Place in the freezer for 15 minutes or until set. Unmold and repeat with the remaining chocolate and filling.

Pop out of the silicon mold

Ta-da!

Tarantula Cheese Ball

This cheese ball is super easy and effective to make and makes for great party food especially if you have vegetarians. You can use your favourite cheeses as long as you have a cream cheese base that will bind it all together.

250g/8.8ozs cream cheese (full fat, low fat isn't stiff enough)

50g/1.7ozs. gorgonzola dolce

1 cup cheddar cheese grated

1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated

2 teaspoons onion powder

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 cup poppyseeds

4 pipe cleaners for legs, cut in half

2 Pimento olive eyes

Crackers to serve

Step 1 - Blend all ingredients together until you get a smooth paste. Have a piece of cling film and empty out the cheese onto this and shape it into a ball. Place in the fridge for 20 minutes or so.

Step 2 - Place poppyseeds in a plate with a rim and remove the cheese ball from the film and roll around in the poppyseeds covering on all sides. Place on serving plate and add eyes and legs and surround with crackers.

Scared Tacos

These were a vegetarian and gluten free option that I also thought looked adorably cute. These are best made just before serving as the taco shells need to be heated in the oven but the rest can be made ahead of time. We served these around 8:30pm once people had snacked on the other food as I like brining out a hot option and everyone seemed to love them.

12 piece taco shell kit

Oil for frying

1 onion, peeled and diced

425g/15ozs. tin refried beans

salsa from kit

Taco seasoning from kit

Lettuce leaves

1 cup shredded Cheese

340g/12ozs. cherry bocconcini

Pimento olives, sliced in three for eyes

Step 1 - Heat oil in a frypan and then add the onion and saute until cooked. Add the refried beans, salsa and taco seasoning and stir until well mixed and cooked through.

Step 2 - Heat taco shells in the oven according to directions. Add some lettuce, refried beans and cheese to the taco. Then top with two cherry bocconcini eyes topped with sliced pimento olives.

Pâté Skull Sandwiches

Super easy and effective, not to mention delicious, these pâté skull sandwiches require minimum equipment and ingredients. These can be made a day or two ahead of time and then stored in a container and frozen. Thaw when needed.

1 loaf white bread

150g/5ozs. chicken liver pâté

A small amount of cranberry sauce or berry jam

Step 1 - Use a skull cutter to cut out the shape in the bread and divide into two even numbered piles of skulls. Use a large straw or an apple corer to cut out eyes in one half of the pile.

Step 2 - Spread the other pile of skulls with the pâté. Then spread the sauce around the eye area. Cover with the other half with the eyes cut out.

Slithering Serpent Bagel

This isn't a recipe so much as a guide as to how you might want to make this!

3 bagels, cut in half

Tuna salad or ham and cheese

Red capsicum forked tongue

Pimento olive slices and 2 slices cucumber for eyes

Step 1 - Arrange bagels in a S shape pattern alternating them but making the head at one end with 1/4 bagel. Top with tuna salad and ham/cheese and place olives for eyes and capsicum for the tongue.

Frog Spawn Drink

This drink was a real hit mainly because my friends are foodies and when I ask them if they like "slimy" things they answer yes. Basil seeds are similar to chia seeds-they swell up on cooking but the added advantage of these is that they look like eyes. This drink is similar to falooda which uses basil seeds. It's sweet, milky and delicious and I love the extra texture that the basil seeds give it.

1/4 cup basil seeds

500ml/2 cups water

500ml/2 cups milk

4 tablespoons matcha powder

Pandan extract

Sugar to taste

Buyer's tip: you can find these basil seeds at Indian and Asian grocery stores. They are called "wild starch pearl" but thankfully have a helpful pic. Pandan extract or flavouring can also be found at Asian grocery stores.

Step 1 - Firstly cook the basil seeds. Place them into a pot of boiling water and allow to expand for a couple of minutes. Drain and chill.

Uncooked basil seeds

Cooked basil seeds

Step 2 - Take 1/2 cup of water and mix with the matcha powder. Put the rest of the water and milk onto boil and then mix with the matcha mixture and some pandan extract. Dissolve sugar into this mixture (how much according to your taste). You can serve this hot or cold-I served it cold with the basil seeds on the side.

The pandan extract gives it the bright green colour

Eyeball Blood Cocktail

The real feature of this cocktail is the eyeball which is easily made with radishes. Keep the radish tail on so that it looks like the optic nerve that attaches the eyeball to the head!

500ml / 2 cups cranberry juice, chilled

100ml/3.5ozs. vodka

6 radishes

6 pimento olive slices

3 toothpicks, cut in half

Step 1 - Mix the cranberry juice and vodka together. Cut the ends off the radishes at the green end and cut out a hole to fit the pimento olives. Peel down the sides of the radishes.

Step 2 - Fit the olive into the hole and secure it with a toothpick and drop the eyeballs in the drink.

Source: http://www.notquitenigella.com/2018/10/30/halloween-food-party-ideas/

[harborstock0-blog]

Creepin' It Real-A Hallowe'en Party To End Them All!

Hello my pretties! It's time for this year's annual Halloween party and this year's was a doozy and the best yet! Held at a historic Cemetery Lodge the atmosphere was pure electric- from the wild thunderstorms above to the spooky 13 items to the party guests that dressed like it was the last hurrah! And check out some of these easy last minute Halloween food ideas for the big day tomorrow!

For the last 10 years worth of Halloween parties, it has never rained for my Halloween party - ever. But this year the rain would prove to be my nemesis as well as a blessing. If you were in Sydney at the time, chances were you were drenched in the rain or at least hiding from the flash foods and lightning.

It was all happening at Cemetery Lodge where I was holed up decorating and putting out food. There was a fire that blocked up the main street, the royal visit had closed off the harbour tunnel and the thunder grumbled outside the spooky little cottage.

"What if everyone cancels?" I said to Mr NQN. My phone buzzed constantly. Friends giving me weather updates-I'm sure trying to be helpful but only adding to the stress because I had been checking the forecast every 10 minutes myself.

Bloody eyeball punch

The messages read:

"Looks like rain...And thunder"

"We are running really late and Garth just dropped all the beers on the kitchen floor so now he has to clean it up"

"Headed your way! Had a bit of costume issue"

"I can't eat anything as I'm on an elimination diet" (that was an Elliott ;) )

Tarantula Cheese Ball

Voodoo doll hand pies

I pictured myself sitting in my outfit with Mr NQN at my side, just the two of us waiting for guests for an hour. But then people started arriving - early no less!

Werewolf cupcakes (recipe here)

Serpent Sandwich

Guests marvelled at lovely little cottage attached to cemetery. It was built in 1848 and was where the cemetery worker and his family lived-the side door is even where the bodies would be wheeled in to his office!

Ouija Board Cake (recipe here)

It has now been transformed into a cosy home by the lovely tenants and it is warm and full of colours. There's a community garden to the side and chickens that lay eggs as well as the world's oldest bunny.

Frog spawn drink

It has a kooky charm to it and I was honoured to have my party there. I transformed the space to become spooky with decorations from The Party People, my favourite party shop because their Halloween selection is incredible!

Face pie (recipe here)

Scared tacos

Food-wise, because I was warned that the oven was a bit dodgy, I kept to things that could be made ahead of time and didn't need to be heated.

Skull sandwiches that can be made and frozen ahead of time

Brain chocolate peanut butter truffles

I get so excited every year to make Halloween food that I have a little draft of items that I add to throughout the year. I've already got 3 Halloween food ideas for next year!

Marzipan teeth

This was my costume this year. I decided to match with an item that I had made and came as a voodoo doll. The added bonus is that the makeup was super quick to do and required just 5 minutes with eyeliner and eyeshadow. I drew on stitches with the eyeliner and made one button eye and I was done!

The first to arrive were the Day of the Dead family with Viggo, Louise and baby Henry. He was born on Halloween last year so we dubbed him Halloween Henry!

Then came Araluen and her daughter Aura who came as Miss Havisham and Estella. Araluen loves dress up and had most of the outfit already-the skirt she found at the local Vinnies shop!

Tuulikki arrived with them (by the way they caught a bus dressed like this and she reported no odd looks). She came as an eccentric witch. She, like her son Mr NQN hates photos and liked being behind a mask!

Oh and here is Mr NQN! He was a bit worried that nobody would recognise his costume. Can you guess who he is? Here's a quote to help you, "Oh hi Mark!"

My sometime vegetarian friend Laura came as a Day of the Dead skeleton and brought me some gorgeous dark red roses. She knows the way to my heart!

And then Ivy and Ryan arrived. I thought that they might come as Donald and Melania (because terrifying!) but she came as Carrie and he came as Pennywise with an absolutely terrifying mask that freaked out a lot of people. What is it about clowns?

Then JY and Ben arrived as Crazy Rich Asians-how inspired and current pop culture!

Then we had not one but two Egyptians arrive. The first was Tania who came as a regal Nefertiti. And then I got a message from Queen Viv. Now cemetery lodge isn't the easiest to find so I gave everyone a map and everyone found it just fine but you know who is going to be the person that gets lost finding it? Yup our dear Queen Viv.

"Lorraine, where are you?" she said worriedly on her voicemail. She entered wearing her home made mummy outfit that she made using strips of painting sheet. Hers was the outfit that everyone wanted to own and when she told people that she was taking it to the Salvos afterwards there was a mini stampede for who would get it.

One of the most spectacular entrances was Amaya, Laporello and their kids Jett and Finn who came as Star Wars characters. They always make such an effort for Halloween and I was so impressed at how much effort they had gone to. Finn's RED2 even had light up buttons and sound!

Nina and Garth were not too far behind. She came as a Evil Countess and he came as the Joker-because she loves anything Batman related and I think she liked the costume more than he did!

The last to arrive were Girl Next Door and Baz who came as Instagram hashtags. There were some notable absences-Miss America has started a new job doing shift work and he was upset that he couldn't make it because he was even more prepared with this costume than ever.

Others like Julie and Lou and her family couldn't come due to health reasons but I was so excited to have my nearest and dearest and most fun friends and family with me on the night.

Time really flew-it was as though it was going at warp speed. People devoured the food and talked-there is one common element to this Halloween party and that is everyone is so much fun and easy going and friendly. People that come alone still have a great time because everyone is so welcoming.

It then came time for Halloween charades, a tradition at these parties. We split into two groups and wrote our list of terrifying things which was a mix of horror films, current affairs and scary people (eg shirtless Putin riding on horseback). It was so much fun that JY started to get an asthma attack from laughing so much but Laura had a ventolin inhaler on her so that fixed it up straight away! Phew!

The Finn piped up. Could he have a go at charades? I think we might have a little ghoul in the making here!

Then the last hardcore people all adjourned to the nearby cemetery. It was perfectly still, traces of the earlier thunderstorm gone. It was deathly and surprisingly quiet given that busy King Street was just a couple of streets away. Laura took out star shaped sparklers and Tania told us stories about the first fleet graves that lay here.

It was almost midnight when Queen Viv said "I must disappear back into my crypt!" And with that we bid her and each of the party guests goodbye only to learn later that some of my gruesome party guests had to escape the cemetery by climbing over the walls (a sight which I would have loved to have seen!). Queen Viv reported the next day: "Passersby barely interested. So Newtown!"

And without further ado here are the recipes below!

So tell me Dear Reader, are you terrified of clowns? And could you guess Mr NQN's costume? And would you be scared if you saw someone scary climbing over a cemetery wall?

Brain Truffles

All Original Recipes by Lorraine Elliott

These were one of my favourite Halloween treats. They were easy enough to make but could sit shelf stable so they didn't always need to be refrigerated. I used cranberries as the sweetener instead of jam to make them shelf stable but also because the white chocolate was sweet enough as it was.

Makes a dozen brain truffles

Preparation time: 30 minutes plus chilling time

Cooking time: 20 minutes

700g/25ozs. pink candy melts

1 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup dried cranberries

Red icing gel pen

Silicone brain chocolate or ice cube mold

Step 1 - Melt the candy melts in a microwave at 50% power in 30 second intervals stirring. Spoon some into a brain chocolate or ice cube mold. Coat the inside thickly with chocolate as shown above. Chill until completely set.

Step 2 - Spoon in peanut butter and cranberries. Spread some chocolate on top and smooth over the top, making sure to remove any chocolate around the outer edge that may prevent them from coming out of the mold cleanly. If it is very hot where you are, you can always put it in the freezer between each step.

Step 3 - Place in the freezer for 15 minutes or until set. Unmold and repeat with the remaining chocolate and filling.

Pop out of the silicon mold

Ta-da!

Tarantula Cheese Ball

This cheese ball is super easy and effective to make and makes for great party food especially if you have vegetarians. You can use your favourite cheeses as long as you have a cream cheese base that will bind it all together.

250g/8.8ozs cream cheese (full fat, low fat isn't stiff enough)

50g/1.7ozs. gorgonzola dolce

1 cup cheddar cheese grated

1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated

2 teaspoons onion powder

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 cup poppyseeds

4 pipe cleaners for legs, cut in half

2 Pimento olive eyes

Crackers to serve

Step 1 - Blend all ingredients together until you get a smooth paste. Have a piece of cling film and empty out the cheese onto this and shape it into a ball. Place in the fridge for 20 minutes or so.

Step 2 - Place poppyseeds in a plate with a rim and remove the cheese ball from the film and roll around in the poppyseeds covering on all sides. Place on serving plate and add eyes and legs and surround with crackers.

Scared Tacos

These were a vegetarian and gluten free option that I also thought looked adorably cute. These are best made just before serving as the taco shells need to be heated in the oven but the rest can be made ahead of time. We served these around 8:30pm once people had snacked on the other food as I like brining out a hot option and everyone seemed to love them.

12 piece taco shell kit

Oil for frying

1 onion, peeled and diced

425g/15ozs. tin refried beans

salsa from kit

Taco seasoning from kit

Lettuce leaves

1 cup shredded Cheese

340g/12ozs. cherry bocconcini

Pimento olives, sliced in three for eyes

Step 1 - Heat oil in a frypan and then add the onion and saute until cooked. Add the refried beans, salsa and taco seasoning and stir until well mixed and cooked through.

Step 2 - Heat taco shells in the oven according to directions. Add some lettuce, refried beans and cheese to the taco. Then top with two cherry bocconcini eyes topped with sliced pimento olives.

Pâté Skull Sandwiches

Super easy and effective, not to mention delicious, these pâté skull sandwiches require minimum equipment and ingredients. These can be made a day or two ahead of time and then stored in a container and frozen. Thaw when needed.

1 loaf white bread

150g/5ozs. chicken liver pâté

A small amount of cranberry sauce or berry jam

Step 1 - Use a skull cutter to cut out the shape in the bread and divide into two even numbered piles of skulls. Use a large straw or an apple corer to cut out eyes in one half of the pile.

Step 2 - Spread the other pile of skulls with the pâté. Then spread the sauce around the eye area. Cover with the other half with the eyes cut out.

Slithering Serpent Bagel

This isn't a recipe so much as a guide as to how you might want to make this!

3 bagels, cut in half

Tuna salad or ham and cheese

Red capsicum forked tongue

Pimento olive slices and 2 slices cucumber for eyes

Step 1 - Arrange bagels in a S shape pattern alternating them but making the head at one end with 1/4 bagel. Top with tuna salad and ham/cheese and place olives for eyes and capsicum for the tongue.

Frog Spawn Drink

This drink was a real hit mainly because my friends are foodies and when I ask them if they like "slimy" things they answer yes. Basil seeds are similar to chia seeds-they swell up on cooking but the added advantage of these is that they look like eyes. This drink is similar to falooda which uses basil seeds. It's sweet, milky and delicious and I love the extra texture that the basil seeds give it.

1/4 cup basil seeds

500ml/2 cups water

500ml/2 cups milk

4 tablespoons matcha powder

Pandan extract

Sugar to taste

Buyer's tip: you can find these basil seeds at Indian and Asian grocery stores. They are called "wild starch pearl" but thankfully have a helpful pic. Pandan extract or flavouring can also be found at Asian grocery stores.

Step 1 - Firstly cook the basil seeds. Place them into a pot of boiling water and allow to expand for a couple of minutes. Drain and chill.

Uncooked basil seeds

Cooked basil seeds

Step 2 - Take 1/2 cup of water and mix with the matcha powder. Put the rest of the water and milk onto boil and then mix with the matcha mixture and some pandan extract. Dissolve sugar into this mixture (how much according to your taste). You can serve this hot or cold-I served it cold with the basil seeds on the side.

The pandan extract gives it the bright green colour

Eyeball Blood Cocktail

The real feature of this cocktail is the eyeball which is easily made with radishes. Keep the radish tail on so that it looks like the optic nerve that attaches the eyeball to the head!

500ml / 2 cups cranberry juice, chilled

100ml/3.5ozs. vodka

6 radishes

6 pimento olive slices

3 toothpicks, cut in half

Step 1 - Mix the cranberry juice and vodka together. Cut the ends off the radishes at the green end and cut out a hole to fit the pimento olives. Peel down the sides of the radishes.

Step 2 - Fit the olive into the hole and secure it with a toothpick and drop the eyeballs in the drink.

Source: http://www.notquitenigella.com/2018/10/30/halloween-food-party-ideas/

[movingagainau]

Moving tips and guides to make the big move easier.

Interstate Removals Planning and Moving Advice

Trying to organize an interstate removal is pretty tough.

We know that it's hard, its a pretty big thing to do, and can take weeks or months of organizing to get everything to line up together. However, through our years of experience moving people across Australia, we've seen it all, we've been asked every question, and we're heard of every bizarre scenario. Hopefully we can provide you just a little slice of our knowledge, and it helps your move run smoother, either a little or a lot, every tip helps. Whether its a backload, or a full blown removal, saving yourself stress, time and money wherever you can is always a plus. The first thing you'll be doing is sending through your quote list. Hopefully seeing as you're on our website, you'll consider us for your furniture removal. If you haven't already, send us your inventory, I'm sure you'll be surprised with our price. If you're looking for something a little more specific, just click below to be directed straight to the relevant information: Decide what items you are moving! How many cartons or boxes are needed for my furniture removal? Making A Removalist Inventory Allowing for Access Issues for Removalist Our best Moving Tips Countdown Towards Moving Day Choosing The Right Moving Cartons Want Advice on Packing Boxes Ready Box Need Help with the kids Moving Into Your New Home Do I Need Insurance Dangerous Items Storage Transporting pots and plants? Quarantine Requirements.

Getting your Inventory together:

The inventory list of what you're moving is a key aspect of the cost of your removal, so don't just throw it together without thinking about it. A poorly put together inventory list can end up costing you hundreds unnecessarily, where a well thought out inventory can help save you money. Decide What You are Moving Important Moving Tip!! Sell, give away, dump, anything that you no longer need or want. We've lost count of the number of customers who have paid for items to be moved interstate, then when we get them to the new home they decide they didn't even want them, and ask us to throw them away! If you no longer need or want these items, now is the perfect time for a clear out. Remember that most removalists will not carry dangerous goods, such as paint, chemicals or petrol as we do not wish to inflict damage on the truck, or any customers belongings. Begin by working your way through your house and figuring out what major pieces of furniture you do not need to take. Don't worry about moving things in to relevant piles just yet, just list it all on paper for now. However I do suggest that you finish reading these instructions before you start entering your list, as there are many things we suggest later on that will bring things to your attention.   How many cartons or boxes are needed for my furniture removal? This is one of the harder parts of calculating your quotation. Unless you have moved previously or are already packed and raring to go it can be difficult to estimate exactly how many cartons or boxes you will need. We have found that the best way to do this is to estimate your cartons on a room to room basis, as opposed to attempting to make a 'guestimate' at the end. By this we mean as you are walking around your home and listing your furniture and belongings try to visualise contents of cupboards and loose items in piles and then count how many piles you think there will be for each room. Whilst removal cartons are definitely the best way to transport smaller items, they're not a requirement by any means. They are just the optimal storage method as removal cartons are designed to be used while moving. Random boxes you find lying around or from local stores are ok, but professional removal cartons are definitely ideal. A standard removal carton is approximately 435 x 410 x 600mm. We have compiled a list of the most commonly used boxes, which are available through most self storage facilities. If you're really not sure, then just leave it blank for now. We can help you work out an estimation if you need, or we can work it out at a later date once you start the packing process. Don't put too much thought into the exact number of boxes for now, the main priority at this stage is being accurate with your furniture. We can adjust the total number of boxes closer to the 'Moving Day.' If the total only changes by one or two that is fine, but if the number increases or decreases by more than 5 or 6 boxes please inform us as soon as possible so we may adjust your quote accordingly. This is especially important if the number increases as we will have to ensure there is sufficient space on the truck or container for all your goods.   Making A Removalist Inventory OK you have printed off your inventory form, or you have decided to just note everything down on a sheet of paper. What happens next? We suggest you walk from room to room listing every item in your home that you wish to transport. This may seem like a daunting task but as long as you take it steadily you will find you progress through quite quickly. The easiest way is to have one person walk around and call everything out, and the other sat down writing everything down. Then swap roles and repeat everything to make sure nothing is missed. What are you taking with you? Whilst you are preparing your inventory try to bear in mind that us removalists haven't actually been into your home, yet. You need to tell us everything as you see it. If you have any over sized items, such as large wall units or Americana style fridges, please make sure that you note this down on your inventory. Don't forget any outdoor furniture and contents of any sheds or garages. Remember that even though you know the contents of your wardrobes/cabinets/sheds etc, we don't. We need to be told that they have mops/brooms/vacuums/tools etc inside them. If they're going inside boxes then don't worry, but if they're freestanding items then tell us about them.   Are there items you don't need in your new home? Important Moving Tip!! Remember what we said about selling , giving away, or dumping anything that you no longer need or want. Also please consider your new home when preparing this inventory. For example does your new home have built in wardrobes in which case do you want to take your freestanding ones with you. Remember I said to make a list of all the items you don't want? Generally people take a little time to decide whether to throw away/sell furniture. So when you're putting your list together make a second section with "maybe" items. Then send through your list and advise us that items 1-10 are maybe items, so you can get a price with and without those items. The saving you'd make by not sending them might just be the reason you decide (or decide to send them.) Things to consider when deciding on "maybe" items are things like: Does your new home have an outdoor area as big as your current home? Are you moving from somewhere with room for a 7 seat lounge to somewhere with room for a 3 seater? Do you have a spot for a second fridge and freezer and won't in your new home?Remember the more you take the more it costs!   Allowing for Access Issues for Removalist Ok, you have prepared your inventory and either calculated your boxes or estimated what you think you will have, and you now want to send us this information. When you do this, you'll be asked for some information regarding accessing the properties at each end. Do you live in a high-rise unit that has lift access? Are you moving somewhere with a 1km driveway? All these sorts of things impact your price, so tell us in advance so you can know the costs involved. Be aware that if you do not advise your removalist of this information in advance, you might be looking at additional costs on top of the normal rate for the access. This is because normally removalists follow a tight time schedule, and if surprise us and we take longer, which causes delays, and angry customers, and we might run into issues with log hours, etc.   You wouldn't like us being late for your removal, so keep us informed so we're not late for the next customer. Questions you may need to answer are outlined below: Any access problems? How close can a truck get to your home? When you want to move? Did you want any storage?. Did you want any packing done? We all hear about the stories of people having removalists turn up on the day and then trying to charge extra for A,B,C etc. Nobody likes this happening, not the customer, nor the removalists. However the customer never actually tells you the real reason behind why this happens most of the time. It is either the fact that the inventory is not as it should be, or the information provided about the house is incorrect. Things like using a lift to access your furniture, may not seem a big deal to you, but consider this. The guys carry your furniture into the lift, they then put it down, then they travel down in lift, pick items back up and walk to truck. In general this takes a lot longer than simply walking out your front door with an item, and admittedly if you only have one thing to move, then the time difference is minimal, but for a whole unit full time ticks away, and time is wages etc. The best way forward is to tell them everything in advance, and even send through the address for delivery / uplift so we can view it on Google maps, to be sure. If you answer all the questions correctly, and have created an accurate inventory then there will be no nasty surprises for anyone come moving day. SEND YOUR INVENTORY Generally once you've figured out your lists, there are a few options to get the information into your removalists hands. 1. Household Inventory. This is the form to complete if you are moving out of a house, a unit, or a townhouse etc. It lists all the items that appear on a very regular basis, if you've got a pretty standard home then this is the best way to send the information through. Complete an Inventory 2. A moving estimate "Quick Quote" . This form is the simplest form to submit, it requires very little information, but in return can only offer a guideline for removal prices. Estimate of Moving Costs 3. Enter a cubic meterage. This form is great if your belongings are already in storage, and you know the cubic meterage of your move. Important Moving Tip!! I don't want to say something stupid, but square meters and cubic meters are not the same. Square meters are flat, so you only need the length and width of the area. So LengthxWidth. Cubic meters are verticle as well, so you need LengthxWidthxHeight. Sounds simple but trust me every removalist has been asked to give a quote on square meters a million times. I do suggest clarifying this prior to entering this measurement. If in doubt ask the storage facility for the CUBIC CAPACITY of your storage shed. Moving Quote based on cubic meters 4. Copy and Paste a list into a form. This has been designed for people that already have a list prepared and rather than type it into an online form, this allows you to simply copy and paste the list into our website Send Removalist list of items to move If for whatever reason you cannot use our quote form, then please send your quote to us via email at service@movingagain.com.au Please bear in mind, that unless you say anything to the contrary we will base your quote on you having good ground floor access at both uplift and delivery. Hopefully you have found this useful and can now get your moving quote How To Save Money When Moving Interstate? By ensuring that you only move items that you need, we are all guilty of holding onto stuff that is no longer in use, this is the ideal opportunity to do a big clear out

Can you be over prepared for an interstate moving experience

Basically the answer to that is a big no! Its time to make a coffee and read through some great moving tips compiled to make sure that you are ready and willing come the big day Some Basic Tips to help with your move httpss://youtu.be/vHmH4D_eZSQ Make sure your cartons are packed tightly and securely sealed with tape Write your surname and any booking reference number on all moving cartons and number them from 1 – 10 etc. Ensure all items to be dismantled are ready prior to the arrival of the furniture removalist. Have a checklist with the manufacturer of your ‘white goods’ i.e., fridge, washing machine, dryer etc, and be guided by their advice regarding securing bowls/motors etc Remove hooks from fishing lines. Drain fuel and oil from lawn mowers, edger’s, Whipper-snippers etc. Thoroughly clean and dry inside of fridges, freezers and dishwashers Seek manufacturers advice regarding computer drive, video drive etc. Dispose of all un-sealed liquids. Dispose of all aerosol cans, flammable fluids, matches etc. Empty gas cylinder from your BBQ, In fact the best thing to do with Gas bottles is to take them to the nearest Swap & Go Clean BBQ. surface and surrounds of grease etc Dismantle swing-sets, play-gyms, trampolines etc,(put nuts and bolts in a safe place). Wash out rubbish bins and wheel barrows. Drain garden hoses. Remove pumps, water bottles, batteries etc from bicycles. Clean and spray dog kennels, empty and clean fish tanks, bird cages etc. Ensure all loose items are placed in bags or boxes Empty and defrost fridge/freezer. It is advisable to do this 24 hours prior to the day of your removal Be on hand the day of removal or authorise someone to act on your behalf to answer any queries from the removalist. Have an advance plan for the placement of your furniture Be on hand or have someone authorised for un-loading at your residence, directing the placement of furniture. "When choosing an interstate moving company, please be sure that they always have a back up plan if something goes wrong on moving day." Moving Again How to proceed after a quote. Once you have sent us your inventory, you will receive an obligation free quote. These quotes are emailed to you, along with a copy of the inventory that you completed, which you should check prior to booking. Once you have considered our quote and would like to accept it the simplest way to do this is via our online booking form located here. If you need to discuss anything in particular about your quote, or have some questions you need answering before you book, just give us a call to discuss your move with our customer support team, or reply to our quote to discuss via email. Once you have booked your move we do recommend checking out your insurance options transit insurance options. Some people need to know about others experiences to know that they're in safe hands. If you would like to see what previous clients have had to day about our service, you can read our testimonials here.

Tea Chest or Standard Cartons -Ideal for clothes, light items, linen, crockery, glassware etc. 435 x 410 x 600mm

Book or Wine Cartons – Ideal for books, cd’s, breakables, crockery, etc. 410 x 300 x 435mm

Picture Cartons – Designed for large paintings, pictures, etc. 1040 x 800 x 75mm

Portarobe – Sturdy large carton designed for ‘hanging’ clothes 600 x 475 x 1100mm

Right Box For The Job

We are often asked how we would prefer you to pack you boxes, below is a basic description of what boxes or cartons should be used for most items

Hanging Wardrobe or Port A Robe

A Port A Robe box can be used for hanging clothes and even shoes. Fold down the flaps on the bottom of the Port A Robe box and tape down using crossing pattern, and one circular tape strip around the vertical edges. Affix metal bar on the top of the box in the slots. Use regular hangers to hang the clothes from the metal bar across the top of the box. Place shoes on the floor of the box Close the top flaps and seal the box with tape in the same manner as you tapped the bottom.

Clothes from dresser drawers and linen closet

Depending on how many clothes you have and your space availability, use a standard removal carton for these items. Fold down the flaps on the bottom of the linen box and tape down using crossing pattern, and one circular tape strip around the vertical edges. Perhaps line the bottom of the carton with clean paper Fold clothes and place into box Close the top flaps and seal the box with tape in the same manner as you tapped the bottom.

Small hard items, books, CDs, video tapes, electronics

Use small boxes such as book boxes for these types of items. It is vital that you do not overload these boxes as they will be too heavy for anyone to move if you do. Fold down the flaps on the bottom of the linen box and tape down using crossing pattern, and one circular tape strip around the vertical edges. Perhaps line the bottom of the carton with clean paper Pack books and items into box Fill the box with clothing from drawers or other loose items. Ensure box is completely full, maybe by topping off with crushed paper Close the top flaps and seal the box with tape in the same manner as you tapped the bottom.

Packing Pictures and Art Works

Valuable artwork can easily be packed into a small or large picture box depending on the size of the frame using simple packing material such as moving blankets, furniture pads, bubble wrap, and white packing paper. Fold down the flaps on the bottom of the linen box and tape down using crossing pattern, and one circular tape strip around the vertical edges. Place large bubble wrap on the bottom of the box with the bubble side down. Generously wrap white packing paper or moving blankets and furniture pads around the pictures. Stack pictures vertically, on the edges. Fill up spaces between walls and pictures with more white packing paper or moving blankets and furniture pads. Close the top flaps and seal the box with tape in the same manner as you tapped the bottom. For pictures of popular boxes please click here Packing Boxes Like A Pro Like everything concerned with your removal preparation is the key... Lay out a wad of paper on a flat surface, at a comfortable working height, from experience packing boxes is harder on your back than lifting and carrying them. Place the carton to be packed at a comfortable height, on top of a previously packed carton is a good idea, again protecting your back so you don't bend over so far Yes I know you want to know how to pack the very first carton, as you can't place it on top of another carton, well I am sure a chair or sturdy table would do if necessary!!!!! Select the right carton for the right job. For heavy items like books, wine, and tinned food use small cartons such as book cartons. Tip carton upside down to gain ready access to flaps on bottom of the carton. Fold opposite flaps of cartons. DO NOT interlock flaps. Tape bottom of carton securely. We recommend two thickness of packing tape. Line bottom of carton with padding - scrunched up paper, towels and linen may be used. . Wrap all china and glassware pieces separately - then stack in carton on their ends or ends. . Breakable items, such as glassware, crockery, etc. should be wrapped individually in butchers' paper. Ensure that the whole item is totally wrapped After each layer of china or glassware place another layer of padding - ensure there is also sufficient padding on the sides of the carton and finally on the top. Save all your Tupperware and the like to fill the top half of a carton, then the carton is not too heavy and also there is not too much weight on top of your breakables. When placing layers of items within a carton, always use butchers paper (or equivalent) between each layer. . Fill all gaps between items with either butchers paper or some form of cushioning, this will decrease movement within the carton. A good rule of thumb, every one carton should have two-thirds china, one third padding. For ease of carriage, pack a mixture of light and heavy items in large cartons. Pack cartons right to the top or fill right to the top with padding. BUT DON'T OVERFILL. Keep in mind that the final weight of the carton should not exceed average adult strength (i.e.. a good weight is around 23kg.) Remember your removalist is only human not Arnie Fold the top flaps of the carton in the same manner as the bottom flaps and tape up securely. Label each carton with name, room and brief description of the goods, to enable easy placement of the carton at delivery. (Remember that felt pen you bought) By stacking your packed cartons in a single area, but not so as to block entrances or access to furniture, this will make your removal day run smoother. Beer O'clock Packing a Priority Carton Items that you may consider to pack in this carton would be. Leads for TV's Stereos and computers Nuts and bolts from any items that you or your removalist may have Dis-assembled. Kettle, Coffee, Tea, Sugar, Mugs and Teaspoons ( For you and the removalist at delivery). Small First Aid Kit for any unexpected emergencies. (This should probably contain any regular medication your family needs, just in case.) Any last minute items that are found under furniture etc as you clean up Once completed, ensure that your carton is well marked with “Priority” and notify the removalist on the day of your move. . Tell him this cartons holds the Kettle and coffee and this will ensure that your carton will be last on and first off when unloading the removal truck.

Keeping the kids happy when moving home

Moving house can be an emotional experience for adults, so imagine how much more unsettling it can be for children who don't really understand what's going on. There are many things to consider when relocating, none more important than the impact of moving on your children. REMAIN POSITIVE: The secret is to remain positive. Most often the reason for moving is a happy one, such as a new home or job promotion, which generates excitement and compensates for the inconvenience of packing up and relocating. However if the move is associated with an unhappy event it can be hard to keep a positive attitude in front of the children. Children feed off the emotions of their parents. If you are not happy the chances are they are not happy either and will need more reassurance and attention to ensure the move is a positive experience for all of you. TALK TO YOUR CHILDREN: Explain to your children what's happening, why you are moving, where you are moving to and what they can do to help so that they feel a part of what's happening. Listen to them. Let them express how they are feeling, and empathize with them, even if some of their feelings are negative. It is only natural they will be concerned, leaving familiar surroundings and friends. Leaving the known for the unknown can be pretty scary. Most importantly be honest with your children. Reassure them that they are an important part of the family, and can help make the move a positive family experience. TEARS AND TANTRUMS: Children express their anxiety in a number of ways. Tears and tantrums are the most common. If your children have moved before, and the experience was not a happy one, they may show signs of depression, withdrawn behaviour, or signs of aggression such as tantrums. Once again, the answer is lots of reassurance and a positive attitude. THE AGE DIFFERENCE: Different aged children react differently to news of an impending move: Infants: Very young children will be affected least, providing their normal routine is not disrupted greatly. Pre-Schoolers: Children of this age worry about being left behind. Especially when they see their favourite toys being packed and put away, and their parent's attention being diverted from them and their normal home routine. Instead of getting them out of the way by sending them off to Nana's or a baby-sitter, let them stay with you and help you pack up their possessions and toys. Never throw out any of these prior to the move, regardless of their condition as having familiar things around is of great comfort to young children. Primary School Children: Children of this age look forwarding to discovering the world around them. Therefore relocating is generally exciting to them, with lots of new experiences and making new friends generally comes easily to children in this age group. Their main concern is fitting in to their new school. Teenagers: Deep vital friendships are very important to older children. By this age social activities and friends have overshadowed the family as sources of identity. Talk to them openly and frankly about the move. If they're interested in sports or activities, help them find clubs and organisations in the new area. If practical, encourage them to invite friends to visit or stay overnight at your new address. Forget about whether your home is not as presentable as you would like - your children's happiness is priority at this stage. TIMING - PITFALLS & MYTHS Although it may seem more convenient to relocate during school holidays, experience shows that this timing can be more upsetting for children. School is a major source for making friends. So if you move during the annual school holidays, your children will be placed in new surroundings at a time when the opportunity to make new friends is at a minimum. Come the first day of school in the New Year, they will enter the class as a stranger - a new student who may not be recognised as such by a teacher facing a new class for the year. On the other hand, a move during the school year would allow your children to go directly from one group of friends to another. Transferring from one primary school to another is relatively easy, as the curriculum is fairly flexible. Transferring from one secondary school to another may cause some transitional problems as the curricula is more structured and can change from state to state. Therefore, do consider the social problems that will almost certainly result from a move during the annual school holidays. USEFUL TIPS: Here are some useful tips to make your move a happy one. BEFORE THE MOVE: Involve the children. If possible take them with you when you go house hunting. Do some research? Get your children excited about where they're going? Find out about the history and attractions of the area you are going to. Allow them to give you ideas of how they will want their new rooms to be decorated. Make time to visit favourite places and people. Give them a small address book and encourage them to exchange addresses and phone numbers with their friends. Extend invitations to their friends to come and stay once you are settled in your new house. Caution your children if you are moving to a radically different environment, such as moving from the city to the country or vice-versa. The more they know what to expect the more confident and optimistic they will be. ON THE DAY: Moving Treats - Pack a few of your children's favourite toys, books and snacks to enjoy during the move. Safety First - Check your own home for potential accident producers, such as loose steps, builder's rubble, dangerous areas such as unfenced pools and unlocked gates. Time Out - Don't try to get everything done the minute you arrive. As soon as the major unpacking is done, take a break with the family. Packing a picnic for this purpose before you leave is a great way to unwind for a while with your children. AFTER THE MOVE: Time In - Spend as much time with your children as you can, and let them tell you everything about their new school and friends Some children may not find it easy to begin with. Follow their progress closely, and if you detect any concerns that do not fade away, do not hesitate to visit their teacher. You may find it a good idea to accompany them to school for the first few days. Be aware of the signs - Younger children may revert to baby behaviour. Be reassuring rather than scolding and they should soon revert to normal behaviour. Consult your doctor if any unusual behaviour continues, such as loss of appetite, insomnia, and constipation. And advise your doctor that you have recently moved house. What To Do When You First Move In A house full of moving boxes can be overwhelming. Make a plan before you start unpacking. Know where you want to put things you'll be using, and what will go into storage. Unpack first the things your household needs to function: sheets and towels, kitchen gear, clothes. Here are some other tips for making your arrival as smooth as possible: Arrange for the telephone and utilities to be switched on the day you move in. If you are having any contracting work done before you move in, you may want to have them switched on as soon as the previous owners vacate. Arrange for special services. Such services may include cable television service, or local newspaper delivery. Change the locks on all entry doors. This ensures that only you and your household will have access to your house. Collapse boxes for storage or recycling. Save any boxes you need to repack items for storage. Settle your children into school. If you're moving to a new school district, you'll need to enroll your children if you haven't already done so. Be sure you have their medical records with you; most schools require immunization and physical records before they will accept a student. Complete any changes of address you may have postponed. This may mean sending notices to family and friends, magazines, professional , or any other group you belong to. Change your driver's license and car registration. Different rules apply in different states. Check your state's requirements. Change your voter's registration. Start a log of repairs, remodeling, and major maintenance projects. It may seem premature, but it's a good habit to get into.

What other things do I need to think about?

Moving takes a lot of consideration, there are so many factors to consider. We have people ask us for advice on all sorts of things, and when they do we get the information we give them, and load it onto our website so we can help future customers.

Removals Insurance, need it or not?

Furniture removal insurance is something that we do recommend that you consider on all long distance moving. Due to the logistics of moving furniture and belongings over large distances, it is not always possible to protect your furniture and belongings from damage that may occur. We cannot emphasize enough that insurance is needed and recommended, whoever you move with please ensure that you have adequate cover. You can obtain a quote direct via the link below Moving Insurance online Alternatively Google "Moving Insurance"

Dangerous Items not transported by removalists

What cannot be transported by the removalist Fuels, fertilisers, acids, ammunition, paints, aerosol cans, corrosives and/or flammable liquids will NOT be carried by any removalist as it may invalidate their insurance. It's probably a good idea to dispose of these items in an environmentally friendly way (i.e.. give them away) Under no circumstances should you dispose of these items in waterways and/or drainage systems. Not only would you be polluting the environmental surroundings, but it is also against the law. Lawn mowers, wiper snipers, etc. should be emptied of any fuels or gases well before transportation. Again dispose of these sensibly. With gas bottles we now suggest giving the Gas bottle away as they should not be transported. All removalists will refuse the transportation of any and all items they feel fit into the “dangerous goods” category. If you are unsure what is classed at any time just Contact Us for more information.

Locating Self Storage

One of the distinct advantage of Self Storage over Removalist Storage is that you always control access to your furniture. Another advantage is that most Self Storage facilities are open 7 days a week, and some allow you or your removalist, access 24 hours a day. I would suggest that you always shop around for the "Ideal" storage facility, and some points you may want to consider are as follows: Accessible 7 days a week Close to your final destination Opening Hours Security Removalist Friendly Helpful Staff Please consider your choices, as Self storage is becoming more and more popular, there are more facilities springing up. The list below is by no means complete, and if you have had any good experiences with a Self storage facility anywhere in Australia, then please let me know and they will be added to this list Storage Options SELF STORAGE ASSOCIATION MEMBERS DIRECTORY https://www.selfstorage.com.au/australia/ You can search most areas for Self Storage here. NSW STORAGE Storage King https://www.storageking.com.au/nsw.html Kennard Newcastle https://www.kss.com.au Kennard's Sydney https://www.kss.com.au National Self Storage https://www.nationalstorage.com.au/nsw.html QLD STORAGE Storage King https://www.storageking.com.au/ Kennard's https://www.kss.com.au/ National Self Storage https://www.nationalstorage.com.au VICTORIA Storage King https://www.storageking.com.au Kennard's https://www.kss.com.au/ Fort Knox https://www.fortknoxselfstorage.com.au/locations National https://www.nationalstorage.com.au/ ACT LOCATIONS Kennard's https://www.kss.com.au/ U Stow It https://www.ustowit.com.au/ SOUTH AUSTRALIA Kennard's https://www.kss.com.au National Self storage https://www.nationalstorage.com.au/ WESTERN AUSTRALIA National Self storage https://www.nationalstorage.com.au/

Transport Pot Plants Interstate

We would prefer not to transport pot plants but will if they are important to customers. Please note we can only transport plants if they are included in a house move, we can not transport plants alone.

Preparing Plants

Please do not water prior to moving It is your responsibility to ensure that if you are moving pot plants all certificates are obtained in advance from the correct State department. We are often asked where do you find out if pot plants can be transported interstate This is normally dependent on the State you are moving to or from The rules for quarantine Restrictions apply to each state and territory for the movement of these items to protect Australia’s valuable local and overseas markets. These restrictions operate under state and territory legislation. For up to date info and advice please visit the website below https://www.interstatequarantine.org.au/ Read the full article