Assorted lifehacks and oddities. NO KINGS
Jul 25, 2024 by HTV9
This cheese plate builds on the original cheese plate https://abrandnewbookofdays.com/2024/07/25/simple-cheese-plate/ with some toast, honey, applesauce, crackers, olives, a pickle and a can of soda. This one really was a “let’s clean out the fridge” plate
Jul 25, 2024 by HTV9
This is an affordable and tasty cheese plate that’s relatively easy. The hardest part is figuring out what goes well with other stuff. I like the notion of doing this kind of thing to clean out the fridge and that’s what I did for this one.
Jul 16, 2024 by HTV9
This was a bit of an experiment. I mixed the usual electrolyte mix that I shake up with water with a little bit of bottled lemon juice and poured it into an ice cube tray to freeze. Several hours later, the cubes are in the glass of water at my elbow. And it’s spectacularly good. Way better than expected. Easier to drink than plain electrolyte mix too.
For stricter measurements I used (let’s go with this) 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, bottled, in 2 cups of electrolyte liquid.
Jul 9, 2024 by HTV9
This is a pepper plant. I ripped up paper sandwich bags to top the soil and covered that with some mulch. You could probably use grocery bags and ripped up cardboard instead but oddly, I had none. The real heat of the Texas summer hasn’t hit yet but so far it seems to be helping me space out how often I need to water, so instead of watering about once every couple of days I can go with maybe twice a week. It seems to be working well so far.
Update 1/23/25: This did not work out how I’d hoped. Texas summers are infamous for a reason and I spent a lot of last year schlepping outside to water, and water. Therefore despite my efforts at water conservation it makes more sense to set up sprinklers and a timer system this year. Plus use a whole lot of mulch if I can get it and some way more drought resistant plants. That’s the plan.
Jul 9, 2024 by HTV9
This black plastic pot liner thing is my version of a birdbath and water feature. It fills with rain, and sometimes I dump it out and wash it with the hose by jamming my thumb in the hose end to create more pressure from the hose. When it dries out for weeks or a month the sun kills off germs as well as it can, which in Texas I assume is decent. Practically speaking aside from ensuring the neighborhood cats get water it’s has no real obvious purpose but it has one I really like which I also put a plate on the outdoor table for. I get to see what the wind and weather is like at a glance. No need to look around the backyard or garden that much, just peer at the surface of the water and see how much it’s moving, how bright the light reflecting off it is, or whatever. Plus it reflects the sky at all times so it’s nice.
Jul 9, 2024 by HTV9
This is what a microwaved vegan cheese sandwich looks like. The cheese is a brand I choose not to name, as I suspect many will behave like this one. As you can see, it’s melted. I’ve had experience with vegan cheeses in just about everything else, and they often refuse to melt, particularly in a sandwich. I’ve sauteed them, panini pressed them, tried to cook them in a lidded skillet, whatever. No dice. But one minute in a microwave and it’s completely gooey. Maybe it’s one synthetic abomination playing nice with another, but whatever, it works. The bread, however, is another story and is a gummy sacrilege.
For your synthetic abomination and gummy sacrilege sandwich, may I suggest a jarred pasta sauce dipping sauce? It is:
About a cup of pasta sauce, warmed in a lidded saucepan on low heat while you create your microwaved… thing
Hefty sprinkling of garlic powder
Smidgen of italian seasoning
Mix well
Now you could warm up the sandwich in a lidded skillet and get less cheese meltage and more sandwich bread flavor but where’s the fun in that
Jun 19, 2024 by HTV9
This might not be the most accessible post but it is what it is. Here was my idea: what if I cleaned up the washcloths already in the kitchen, sterilized them, then kept them in the kitchen and used them only to clean said kitchen and its surfaces, cleaning them in the dishwasher in between? That could cut down on paper towels. I thought. So what I did was this.
1. Wetted down the towels with dish soap and warm water and squeezed it out a few times under running water. This would be more effective if I had filled the sink first to squeeze the rags in, but I didn’t care.
2. Stuffed the kitchen sponge and the rags in two bowls and a mug, boiled water, and poured it over. Used the opposite side of a wooden spoon to push the rags and sponge under the water a few times.
Here’s where it started to go wrong. First, I didn’t boil enough water the first time so it got all lukewarm before I could add more. Drat. Waited a few hours then dumped the gross water out. I then completely forgot about these in the sink overnight. The next day, or was it two days later, I fixed my original mistake and boiled a whole bunch of water in the kettle, which took a while, then poured it over. And then promptly forgot all about them, again. One day later I dumped all the water out, wrung out the washcloths, draped them over the sink and decided they’d just go in the dishwasher next time. And then I forgot to put them in there. So that was um, not very effective, but I think they’re probably good to go. Now if I had had a non-jerk brain I would’ve shoved the still-lukewarm damp washcloths in the dishwasher with the dishes, then wrung it out and let it dry til use. That would’ve ensured they would actually be disinfected before contacting well, dishes. As it is I’m gonna use them anyway.
Jun 4, 2024 by HTV9
The other day my husband tripped on all the cords coming out of this octopus type multi-charger thing. Not for the first time. Since that’s a safety hazard I decided enough was enough. Here’s what I did:
1. Grabbed a pair of scissors and a small serrated blade knife
2. Cut the box down along where the edges met to roughly equidistant levels on all 4 sides, using the writing listed on the box to help figure out how far down to cut. Halfway through I figured out that you can use the scissors to cut on the outside a little to mark where you’re going to cut to. This is faster than marking with a pen.
3. Push down the sides, starting with the thinner ones, and not folding yet
4. Fold the thin bits and then the fat bits, adjusting to make the sides roughly the same height, then fold down well.
5. Cut a hole in one of the sides for the charge cord portion of the octopus charger using a cooking knife. Trash the cardboard bit from that.
6. Unplug the octopus charger from the main charge cord then re-plug it in the box; I noticed that this left some of the cords at an awkward angle and bent some of the charge cables so that’d put pressure on the usb ports one way or another, so
7. I got a reusable battery container about the size of a deck of cards and put that on the bottom, then twisted the octopus thing on its side.
8. Cram all the excess cords in there except the one you’re using and pull it up to a desktop. Done.
This is probably a fire hazard, but considering that this was a. a trip hazard and b. collecting a lot of dust it was probably a fire hazard as it was anyway. Maybe next time I’ll build something like this out of modular building toys or something.
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cardstock organizing
May 14, 2024 by HTV9
The original idea here was to fill up ice cube trays with undiluted lemon juice and sugar mix but the ice cube trays aren’t clean now so that’s out. So here’s what’s going on. This contains the juice of 1 lemon freshly squeezed, about 2 tablespoons of sugar, some tap water to fill up to an inch below the top of this container, and two tea bags with the paper pulled off. I put the top on there and stuck it in the fridge to retrieve after like 8 hours. You could probably make this in a mason jar too as long as you left enough room up top for reason of: after a day of brewing this is going into the freezer. Then, I’ll be thawing it for 20 minutes and putting it in a pitcher of tea to see if it improves the flavor. Will try this with lukewarm or cold tea since I don’t want to crack the pitcher.
May 16, 2024 Update: After fishing out the teabags with a fork, then freezing this for a couple days, then taking it out and making it thaw til it could come out of the container, which took 40 minutes not 20, and plopping it in the pitcher, which created a splashback mess, I was anxious to taste this stuff. This was a royal hassle to make, so today with great anticipation I took the first sip and… Absolutely pointless waste of time! Don’t make this.
New Book of Days 