Oh, Martha!

One of my favorite shows on NPR is "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me" If you haven't heard it before, you should check it out.  It's a very entertaining hour long news game show.  Chad and I listen to the podcast of it on Monday mornings during our hour long commute to work.  We try to test our knowledge along with the panelists to see if we are up to date on our current events.  One of the segments on the show is called "Not my job", where they invite celebrities on to the show and they have to answer three multiple choice  questions that have nothing to do with their profession.  I'm really not doing this show justice.  Just listen to an episode, you'll like it.  

This week they had Martha Stewart on, and in true Martha form she was giving us common folk advice on how to make our lives easier. 
Today's helpful tidbit was on garlic.
It was so unbelievable I had to go home and try it right away, regardless if I needed a whole head of garlic or not.
Martha told me that I could take one head of garlic:

Put it in a container: (Us Indians call these pots degchis- pronounced dhekshees. Chad hates these pots because they have no handles which make them a pain to cook with..but that's a story for another day...)

Place another container on top of it so it fits the opening perfectly(looks like a top hat): 

Shake for about a minute:

....And each clove will be peeled:

  

Well I'll be damned.  She was right.
I was a skeptic, but shame on me for doubting her tried and true methods.
I don't need all those garlic cloves, but I'll stick them in the fridge for another day.  The point is, it works, and I will never have to waste my time peeling garlic cloves again, and now neither do you.   Thank you Martha.  Thank you.

Pinterest vs Stumbleupon

I love Pinterest. It's such a great concept and really makes finding ideas and recipes a lot easier with the big pictures and ease of saving them into folders that you can create.
Initially when I joined pinterest, it was a few years ago, when it was "by invitation only" you had to ask them for an invite and then a couple of days later they would send you a link that you could log into.  It was just as fascinating when I first joined as it is now, but there were a couple of things that I didn't like about it that kept me from really utilizing it.  These issues have since been rectified, but if you are curious here were my issues:

The biggest issue I had was privacy.  It automatically logged me in through Facebook and I had all my Facebook friends following me on there and it would show up on my feed what I had "pinned".  I wasnt a fan of everyone on Facebook knowing my business. I have had dark circles under my eyes since I can remember.  Maybe every time I saw anything about how to prevent dark circles or how to lighten the circles I pinned it.  And maybe I was embarrassed that every time I hit "pinit" my "followers" also saw all the things I've pinned on reducing dark under eye circles.  To be honest, I've never actually pinned anything on dark under eye circles, but as I write about it I am actually really curious what would come up.  I think I'm going to go check it out.  But it does illustrate my point.  It just felt very invasive and I felt very vulnerable when everyone had access to the things I was pinning.
I actually deleted that account and opened another account with a different email address so my Facebook isn't connected to it. I don't mind my friends having access to my boards but when it's open to all Facebook those that aren't even that close to me for some reason I felt exposed. They also have started "secret boards" where you can have categories that even your followers don't have access too. Because not everyone needs to know that I have numerous pins on how to achieve the smoky eye look.

How DOES she do it?

Now that I've solved the problem and figured out how to get around the privacy factor I'm an avid pinner.

I'm also big fan of Stumbleupon.  This site also has categories that you can pick, and then when you hit stumble, it finds websites that only pertain to that particular category you picked.  And you can save the page for later as well.  It's not as user friendly as Pinterest, but it still does the trick.  I didn't understand why stumble upon didn't gain the same popularity as Pinterest did, then my brother made a comparison that unfortunately made sense to me: Pinterest is the Facebook of Stumbleupon's myspace.  Ahh, I get it.
It would be nice if you could personalize catagories and sort your "stumbles".


Chances are you are already addicted to Pinterest, which I completely stand behind.  But if you want to try something else, check out Stumbleupon,  it definitelyhas the potential to occupy you for hours as well.