2012 – Thanksgiving “Luxury” Revisited

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

Here it is, one year after the original “Luxurious” Thanksgiving post, so we have the opportunity to revisit the list of things about Thanksgiving that we here at AL especially love. It’s a holiday devoted to thinking about what you’re thankful for, so here goes:

1. You Could Host Thanksgiving Dinner for 20 – Yes, that can absolutely be a good thing. We figured out how to fry turkeys safely and now we don’t have to drive anywhere in the holiday traffic. The menu is fairly standard: turkey, stuffing, potatoes (mashed and sweet), cranberry sauce, pie, etc., etc. Dinner for 20 is basically dinner for 2, only times 10.

2. It’s a Little Vacation –  Always at least one day off, and since it’s always on a Thursday, your boss might feel generous and give you Friday, too.

3. It’s Not Christmas Yet – … so there’s no pressure for last minute shopping. Just need to show up for Thanksgiving dinner.

4. All Kinds of Football – If you’re like us, you might not be lucky enough to live in Houston or Atlanta and have good NFL teams. Your local pro football team might be … struggling, as they say. If that’s the case, cheer yourself up by watching some college football this weekend or maybe some of the pro teams that might actually make the playoffs.

5. You Have a Month Left To Get Ready for Christmas – You still have plenty  of time to think about what people would like to get, and even more time to actually go shopping.

6. Holiday Shopping Begins Even Earlier This Year – If you didn’t want to wait until midnight after Thanksgiving dinner to catch the early holiday super-discounts, this year you are in luck.  Some stores are beginning their sales at 9 p.m. Thursday, which not only could give you an opportunity to get out and back to sleep at a relatively reasonable hour, but also could give you an excuse to remove yourself from your holiday guests — you may have had enough of them by then, anyway. Longer hours spread out the crowds, too. Theoretically.

7. High School Marching Bands Perform – Really, how many chances do you get to see that, complete with baton-twirlers?

8. The Leftovers Are Yummy – One of our local lunch restaurants — an upscale fast-food place, let’s call it — serves hot roast turkey, cranberry sauce, and stuffing year-round.  Thanksgiving is your chance to overdose on it and to enjoy the food coma it produces (see “Little Vacation,” above).  Since we’re having Thanksgiving this year, we’ll control all the leftovers.  Lucky us . . . 

9. You’re Expected to Get Together with Family and Friends – and just enjoy their company.  Judging from the line at the wine shoppe and the number of bottles being purchased, lots of you are expecting a fairly large crowd.  This is good, just what the holiday is all about. Everyone at least tries to be on their best behavior.

10. You Don’t Need to Second-Guess Your Holiday Greeting – “Happy Thanksgiving!”  That’s it.  No need to think about it, make it non-denominational or secular.  It already is. Thanksgiving is the “All-American holiday,” for all Americans. 

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Fry Your Thanksgiving Turkey Indoors Or Out

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

The idea of frying Thanksgiving turkeys is gratifying on so many levels: holiday revelry, fried food and the dramatic possibility of fire or explosion, just for starters. Like fireworks, only legal everywhere and you can eat them. Really, if frying something as small and simple as a sliver of potato works so well, why not think really big and fry a gigantic piece of poultry? Will frying scale up without some scary complication?

Is it something you should try? Is it difficult? Dangerous? Expensive? What does it involve? Well, there are two basic ways to go about it – over a propane tank and burner in the backyard or with a dedicated electric turkey fryer in the kitchen. Both methods seem to involve having a fire extinguisher close by, but that’s always a good idea.

Our choice was easy, since we don’t have a backyard, but getting an electric fryer and using it outside on the deck seemed like a good compromise. The one everybody buys is the Butterball – available for about $100 from Amazon or Home Depot. After that the instructions seemed simple enough:  get the right size turkey — we got the XL fryer, costs more but large enough for a 20 lb. bird — brine it for most of a day (or get a pre-brined one, see photo above, for a few dollars extra), inject it with marinade, and then drop it into A LOT (about 3 gallons) of sizzling oil for 3 minutes or so per pound, plus five minutes.

How does it compare to the traditional oven roasting method? Well, I never tried the old way (ask Daisy), but here are the pros and cons we came up  with:

Pros:

  • Cooks much faster — Instead of spending three or four hours in the oven, a deep-fried turkey cooks in about an hour or less.
  • Moist turkey — Probably because it isn’t in the oven for several hours, a deep-fried turkey is much more moist and succulent than a roast turkey.  Of course, that succulence may also be the result of the injected marinades recommended by most fried turkey recipes.
  • Frees up the oven — Turkey is probably not the only part of your Thanksgiving meal that ordinarily is cooked in the oven.  Deep frying your bird frees up your oven for sweet potatoes, hot dinner rolls, and pie.  Yum!
  • It’s fried!  What could be bad about that?

Cons:

  • Need to get a frier — You probably don’t have one sitting around.  Once you get one, though, your annual turkey preparation will be much simpler.
  • Need to store a frier 364 days a year — unless you want to fry chicken, shrimp, doughnuts or Milky Way bars all year ’round.
  • Need lots of oil — Really, have you ever picked up a 3-gallon jug of oil?  The good news is that the oil will be reusable.
  • Oil gets VERY hot — see need for fire extinguisher, above

Given everyone’s dread of a dry turkey and the amount of time one devotes to cooking it, a turkey fryer seems like a good investment.  If you like it, you will be ready to fry your Christmas turkey in it, too.

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Fatwood Firestarters Make Fires Easy to Light

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

It’s cold out, and now it’s time to put the fireplace back into service – move the Boston fern out of the way, or take the candles out – but maybe you forgot what a hassle they can be to get going. You put the logs in, and you know you’re supposed to have kindling: small twigs and then larger twigs that progressively catch until there is a small fire that the logs themselves can catch fire from. Or, as I used to, you can try crumpling up inky balls of newspaper, shoving them under the logs and see if that works. It probably won’t, so you crumple up more inky balls and try again, creating an inky, ashy mess.

Especially in the city, kindling can be hard to come by and the newspaper method is way too messy and unreliable. If you want to make it easy on yourself, pick up a box of Fatwood Firestarters and give them a try. They are made from the resinous stumps of pine trees, and they light easily, then burn hot for a long time. Stack the logs in the fireplace, then slide two or three Fatwood Firestarters under the front and light them. They work every time, and they smell great, giving the whole house that cozy pine fireplace aroma. That’s what it is, too: no added chemicals or fragrances.

They’re sustainable; the company gets them from existing stumps and has pledged to plant three trees for every one they consume. Starting a fire in the fireplace with Fatwood Firestarters is almost as easy as lighting the candles on the table.

Get a small box to try, and if you like them (which you will), get a bigger bundle and use it all winter. They make great presents for people with fireplaces (and/or people who camp), and the company makes some nice gift buckets and arrangements.

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IPad With Keyboard … Is It Still a Tablet?

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Daisy B

I know, I know – a tablet is a portable computer without a keyboard. If you wanted a laptop, say the skeptics, why didn’t you just buy a laptop? Well, because I didn’t want another laptop. I wanted an iPad to take with me to listen to music, play games, watch videos, read magazines and maybe check my emails and Facebook page. But I’m a blogger, and I need to write things for YOU to take with you and read …

After living happily for over a year with my tablet and its swiping, pinch-to-zoom features, I began to realize that the hunching of my neck as I tapped, pointed, swiped, and tried to type, was literally giving me a headache. I had to come up with a solution that didn’t require the purchase of another expensive laptop (no matter how much I could have used an excuse to buy one).

Logitech IPad Keyboard

Tablet keyboards are pretty easy to find.  They connect wirelessly, by Bluetooth, and some come in tablet cases to be paired with your tablet much like an actual laptop, some roll up into a cylindrical case for maximum portability, some are full-sized, and some are only the width of your tablet in landscape orientation. Apple makes its own for the iPad. The Logitech Tablet Keyboard, though it is nearly full-sized and therefore won’t fit into an iPad-sized case with your iPad, is the best I’ve found and among the least expensive.  First, it works reliably.  Once you’ve paired it with your iPad (and/or iPhone — it works with those, too), leave the iPad Bluetooth on and every time you turn on the keyboard it will connect automatically.  Powered by four included AAA batteries, the keyboard has an on/off switch so you can turn it off when you’re not using it. Its function keys enable you to control music or video media and to perform the basic typing commands found on a typical Apple keyboard. Its case folds easily to create an easel stand for your iPad that you can place anywhere within 30 feet of the keyboard while still maintaining a connection (how’s your eyesight?). After you’ve connected it, just type. The Logitech keyboard feels exactly like a traditional keyboard — the keys feel firm under your fingers, and their spacing is nearly identical to that of a traditional laptop keyboard, the ultimate man/machine interface.

Once you’ve begun to use the real keyboard, you’ll wonder who ever thought it was a good idea to put a fake keyboard on a tablet screen in the first place. You might even be inspired to use it instead of the touchscreen — for example, by turning on the “VoiceOver” function on your iPad to allow your keyboard to scroll through and manipulate device apps. Try it at least once, just to see what you think. On the other hand, you might hate that feature and simply be pleased that you can finally type traditionally on a computer that has a touchscreen, converting your tablet from a device made primarily for the consumption of content to one that enables the creation of content — which is really what we all want to do with them, anyway. Not only that, it makes a perfect gift – because some people just won’t buy one for themselves …

Available from Amazon for about $50.

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Fresh Apple Cider, Hot Cider, Mulled Cider … Yum!

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Daisy B

Apple cider is the price we pay, such as it is, for the mountains of perfect apples in the produce section. The apples that may not be so good to look at can be pressed into the extremely fresh apple cider that you see for sale everywhere in the fall. Apple cider, that is, as opposed to the filtered apple juice that some people (especially children) drink all year round.

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away” is the old saying that reminds us of the health benefits of eating apples, and it is true of apples in any form, including clear apple juice. Cloudy fresh apple cider, however, has been shown to be especially high in strong antioxidants like resveratrol (as in red wine) and polyphenols.

So go ahead, take a drink and let the cider capture those free radicals.

Remember, though, it’s starting to get cold outside and cider is kept in the refrigerator. You may not relish the thought of taking it out and pouring a frosty glass on a chilly, damp fall night. In that case, there’s hot mulled cider — apple cider simmered with spices like cinnamon (fairly obvious), ginger, allspice, cloves and nutmeg. You can find pre-packaged mulling spices in nearly every grocery or specialty gourmet store, or you can make your own from any combination of these spices, and you can add lemon and/or orange peel for extra kick.  You don’t need a recipe and you don’t need to measure each spice; you need about a tablespoon of spices combined per eight ounces of cider, and if you add them until the cider smells good to you, your drink will taste as good as it smelled, or better, once it has reached the perfect temperature. As a bonus, the smell of spiced cider will scent your whole kitchen like a fresh-baked pie.

Finally, for an extra-special seasonal beverage, add a shot of rum or brandy to your cider, spiced or not. Or start with hard cider to begin with — maybe a post for a later day.

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Suspension Trainers Can Help Get Less of You Through the Holidays

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

Suspension trainers are deceptively simple products: a set of two adjustable nylon straps with anchors, handles and loops for your feet. Hang them over a sturdy door, close the door, and then what? By changing the length of the straps, and the distance and angle of your body position, you can do an amazing number of exercises that work out every part of your body with a little or a lot of resistance.

No need to drag yourself to the gym in the evening post-DST darkness. You can store a suspension trainer in the smallest of apartments; in fact, they are very popular with travelers who put them in their carry-on bags to use in hotel rooms.

Resistance training gives you a triple advantage in staying (or getting) in shape: it burns calories, lowers your body fat percentage and increases the rate you burn calories at rest. Plus it moves the needle on the toned/flabby scale.

Several brands of suspension trainers are available. They all work on the same principle, using your body weight and position to increase or decrease resistance. Because the effectiveness of each exercise depends on the precision of your body position, each exercise also works your core muscles, which must be engaged to stabilize your body and maintain proper form through each series of repetitions. As we’ve all sadly learned with age, core strength was what you used to build and maintain naturally as you hoisted yourself up trees, across playground jungle gyms, and over the various obstacles you climbed rather than avoiding as a younger person. They also seem to be the first to go, and with their demise go your formerly flat abs and willingness to be seen in a swimsuit, while along come back pain and other joint strain that make ordinary activities more stressful. Since suspension trainers work your core with each exercise from multiple angles, they provide a more effective core workout than simple crunches — which everyone hates, and which aren’t really that effective, anyway.

The popular brands of suspension trainers come with DVD instructions to watch and a printed guide to post nearby as a workout reference. The Jungle Gym XT comes in a tasteful shade of Ferrari red and costs about $99 (maybe the price of 3 or 4 months of gym membership). The TRX is yellow and costs about twice as much — $200 (or maybe the price of 6 or 8 months of gym membership). Take a look and decide for yourself.

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How To Stay Plugged In After the Big Storm

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

You knew it was coming – you went to the store to get necessary food and batteries, and you saw everyone else there, too. Then the storm came, and you hoped you’d get lucky this time, but you didn’t. The TV and the lights went off, and there you were – back in 1912. It’s dark, it’s cold, the phone’s dying, the food in the refrigerator is starting to go bad, and worst of all, you have no idea whether the power will be back on in 7 hours or 7 days. You don’t feel like packing up and staying with family or friends (and maybe you didn’t hear anyone invite you). You can’t let this happen again. You don’t have to. You just need a way to restore that plugged-in feeling.

AC Inverter for the Car

AC Inverter – These are handy devices that you may never have heard of, if you’re not a limo driver or an RV person. You can take advantage of the fact that your car already has a motor, a gas tank, a 12-volt battery and a way to keep it charged. Connect the AC inverter to your car battery with VERY thick copper wires, plug in a long 3-prong extension cord and you’re back in the 21st century. As a practical matter, you’ll still need to run the motor to charge the battery, but for about 2 or 3 hundred bucks, it’s a clean and easy option. You’ll need at least 1600 watts; 2500 is better. Also, your car has one other key feature: a muffler, so you avoid the racket of a …

Gas Powered Generator

Generator –  Generators are big, expensive, heavy and LOUD, but they are really handy to have in case you lose power for an extended period of time. They are made for the job, with the right circuits and breakers and plugs and switches to do it right. They can power refrigerators, sump pumps, space heaters and lamps – all at the same time. If your neighbors aren’t too close, and you have room to keep it somewhere, they can’t be beat. You never know when civilization may start to break down …

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If You Get A Quality Umbrella, You Won’t Leave It Behind

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

As I write this, eastern North America is bracing for a wallop from yet another hurricane with a girl’s name that is tearing up the coast, having somehow gone rogue and escaped from her natural home in the Caribbean. So rain and lots of it is very much on everyone’s mind.

After (and unfortunately during) a major rainstorm, public trashcans tend to have pitiful, broken umbrellas sticking helplessly out of the top. Presumably, the former owner continues on after the catastrophic umbrella failure and gets very wet without it. You won’t mourn the loss or breakage of a $6 umbrella too much, but you’ll still have to get another one. How about a durable, high-quality umbrella that you like a lot and won’t forget?

Perhaps the first question should be: what would the Queen of England do? After all, it rains there all the time. She has people to carry her umbrellas for her, so she’s not going to lose one, so she buys hers from Swaine Adeney Brigg in London. They are beautiful objects, with wooden shafts, handles in bamboo or the wood of your choice and canopies in either nylon or silk. They are most definitely not affordable to most of us, starting at about £250, or a little over $400 US. So let’s keep looking.

If the Wright Brothers were still around in the 21st century, I could see them coming up with something like the Dutch Senz, an asymmetrical wing-shaped design that is darn near windproof. It turns itself around to head into the wind; you can still see under it and the long trailing edge keeps the rest of you dry. It is a great high tech design, but they do look a little odd.

Davek Solo Umbrella

Davek of NY is an American company that makes a line of strong, well-designed umbrellas. It looks as if the gearshift from an Audi TT was grafted directly onto a round, ultra lightweight  version of the convertible top, made to open quickly and easily. If it turns inside out in the wind, you can just press a button and it uninverts itself. Best of all, it has a lifetime warranty and they will pay half the cost even if you screw up and lose it.

I think the Senz is the way to go. Maybe someday all umbrellas will look like that.

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The Pumpkin Gutter Takes the Yuk Out of Pumpkins

Posted on October 25, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

I used to look forward to carving pumpkins the week before Halloween (and I still do), but from year to year I always forgot how much I did not enjoy scooping out the cold, slimy, seedy, stringy insides. The scooping needed to be complete before the fun of carving the pumpkin could begin. No matter what hand tool you used — tablespoon, serving spoon, ice cream scoop — it still took too long and wasn’t part of the fun. Life is short, the life of a pumpkin even shorter, and children can have short attention spans, so why waste time?

Pumpkin gutting tool

The $10 Pumpkin Gutter adds machine power. Chuck it in your household electric drill, and the pumpkin-destroying process starts with the dramatic roar of an electric motor. It helps to have 2 people, so one can hold the pumpkin steady while the other one goes to work attacking the pumpkin’s insides. It’s perfectly safe inside the pumpkin, and while it has five edges, it’s not sharp enough to cut anyone. Move it around vigorously inside, and every so often dump out the loose orange stuff. If the strings get wrapped around it, just take it out and let them slide effortlessly down the handle end. You’ll have it cleaned out in no time at all.

Even better, the Pumpkin Gutter can cut into the pumpkin itself and make the walls as thin as desired. If you want to take your pumpkin carving art to the next level, where you carve away the skin and let the light shine through, it’s great to have a tool that controls the amount of that light.

The Pumpkin Gutter has a nice long handle, so you can use it to carve the largest jack-o-lantern you want, and it’s dishwasher safe, which makes an inherently messy task that much tidier.  Having one might even inspire someone like Daisy, who doesn’t necessarily share my enthusiasm for Halloween and power tools, to carve a pumpkin of her own.

Available from Amazon

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Ten Most “Luxurious” Things About Halloween

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Daisy B

I’ve thought for a long time that “the holidays” are what helps us North Americans (and others in the Northern Hemisphere) fight back against Seasonal Affective Disorder – the holiday lights keep us from getting depressed after the summer sunshine is gone. The holidays start with Halloween, and that’s one of the things I like about it (although there are at least ten more):

Halloween luxury

1. Jack o’ Lantern as an art form – Here’s an art genre for you: carve a hollow vegetable into a work of art that involves light from the inside and typically has a theme of horror, and will start to rot within a week or so. I like to use power tools, like a jigsaw and an electric drill, to add an element of drama (and loud noise).

Children in Costume for Halloween

2. Children in costumes – Halloween is most definitely a holiday for children, but they will come right to your door to show you their costumes (whether you want them to or not).

3. Costumes as an art form – Those of us who have children, or are invited to masquerade parties, get another opportunity to express our creativity. My idea for an adult costume, a bicycle racer with syringes and blood bags hanging off of his arms, has not gone over too well …

4. Candy – Yes, candy.

5. Halloween videos – Can’t, absolutely can’t write this post without mentioning “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” Just can’t. On the big screen, there are movies like “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

6. Seasonal beers – For those of you who are fans of craft beers, you can be almost 100% sure that your local brewery will have a seasonal pumpkin ale or something similar to get you in the holiday spirit.

7. No gifts.  Even department stores haven’t yet started pre-pre-pre-holiday sales, or mounted holiday decorations before you’ve gotten the artificial cobwebs out of your trees.  Your only obligation, should you choose to accept it, is to dole out piles of candy to those sweet little goblins, Avengers, and Spidermen that appear at your door.

8. It’s ecumenical.  Like Thanksgiving, Halloween is a holiday that can be celebrated by everyone.  Though some consider it Satanic, I fail to understand how streets or parties full of children and adults dressed, often badly, as their favorite superhero or Presidential candidate could possibly reflect the worship of evil to any serious person.  Halloween is all in fun.  Try to take it that way.

9. There’s no snow on the ground — at least, not usually.  Hallow’en is celebrated while the air is crisp but, typically, still mild enough not to require a parka or boots.  Leaves are still on the trees, you can just begin to smell wood burning in neighborhood fireplaces.  It offers no lyrical waxing about sleigh bells, silver bells, or jingle bells — just hayrides through scarecrow-guarded fields and an occasional bob for apples.

10. Haunted houses, prisons, or mental hospitals.  Halloween provides innumerable opportunities to have the bejeezus frightened out of you.  If you like to be terrified, now’s your chance, and you can often do it in the most unpleasant surroundings imaginable.  Creaky old mansions, converted penal institutions, places with straightjackets and handcuffs and maniacs — oh, my!  — have been repurposed into sites where ordinary people dress up as zombies, monsters, vampires, and mummies to frighten other ordinary people for a small fee.

 

 

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