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Like some humans, certain plants are more comfortable in pairs. Sure, they could survive on their own, but to really thrive, they need a special (plant) someone by their side.
Known in the gardening world as “companion plants” or “helpmates,” these pairs have FWB (foliage-with-benefits) relationships. Typically, it involves things like helping each other source nutrients or keep pesky garden pests away. Think of it has the horticultural buddy system.
If this sounds like something you might want to try in your own garden, Rachel Brougham at BobVila.com has some companion plant suggestions. Here are a few to consider.
Pairs well with: Tomatoes, potatoes, beets, cabbage, beans, asparagus, eggplant, chili, bell peppers, marigolds
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Beets
Pairs well with: Plants in the cabbage family, carrots, celery, corn, cucumber, garlic, strawberries, marigolds
Carrots
Pairs well with: Cabbage, leeks, lettuce, onions, chives, peas
Cucumbers
Pairs well with: Beans, corn, peas, tomatoes, radishes, vegetables from the cabbage family, marigolds, oregano, nasturtium
Lettuce (including romaine, Bibb and loose-leaf varieties)
Pairs well with: Beets, carrots, onions, garlic, members of the cabbage family
Melons (watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew)
Pairs well with: Corn, pumpkins, radishes, squash, marigolds, oregano
Peppers (spicy or mild)
Pairs well with: Carrots, eggplant, onions, parsley, tomatoes, basil
Potatoes
Pairs well with: Beans, cabbage family plants, corn, eggplant, peas, horseradish
Squash (butternut, carnival, other varieties)
Pairs well with: Corn, melon, pumpkin, marigolds, oregano
Tomatoes
Pairs well with: Asparagus, carrots, celery, cucumbers, onions, parsley, peppers, basil, dill, chives, mint
What next?
Enjoy your bountiful harvest(s)! And if you’re not sure what to make with your bumper crop of cucumbers and squash, there are plenty of recipes and other suggestions in Lifehacker’s Skillet vertical to keep you well- and healthily-fed all summer. In the event you grow more than you can eat or give away, we also have plenty of canning– and preserving-related content to check out.
I have some personal news: I went vegan about three or four months ago. Considering that I’ve written thousands of words about how much I love tofu and black bean burgers, this “news” is hardly shocking, but with meat discourse reaching furious new heights (or depths?) every day, it seemed too relevant not to share.
To be honest, this has been a long time coming. I’ve never been morally or ethically opposed to eating animals—I’m still not—but capitalism is another story, and at this point there’s no separating the two. You don’t need me to tell you that industrial meat production is an enormous contributor to global warming(and climate denialism) or that meat processing corporations are almost cartoonishly evil in their exploitation of an underpaid, often undocumented workforce. The facts are out there for the whole world to see, which is probably why more people are choosing to eat less meat.
But making the choice is easy; figuring out how to eat less meat is less so. What do you eat instead, especially when you’ve eaten meat your whole life? Whether you’re going fully vegan or just cutting back, these tips will help you find some answers.
Ask yourself the hard questions
OK, I lied a little—there are a few more questions before the answers. Big lifestyle changes should be cause for reflection, but if the idea of eating less meat still makes you uncomfortable, you owe it to yourself to ask why.
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What are the downsides? Well, you’ll eat less meat. That’s pretty much it. Meat will still exist, of course, but most of the time you’ll just eat other stuff. Is that really a dealbreaker for you? If so, why? You can get protein and fat from a zillion other foods—do you have to have meat? Once you’ve thought about it a little, you’ll find your personal reasons, or you might realize that you don’t need meat at all, or at least not all the time.
Do a little brainstorming
The easiest way to eat less meat is to eat more of everything else. A good first step is to sit down and make a list of non-meat foods you already love. Don’t be afraid to take this assignment extremely literally: Even a list of 10 vegetables you like is valuable, and it’ll make meal planning easier.
Your list should not include foods that could be meatless with the right substitutes. Known quantities are fair game—like your favorite frozen vegetable dumplings or a great vegan burger from a local pub—but don’t count on fake meat to save the day, especially if you’ve never had it.
Get an air fryer
Oh my God, I can’t believe I waited until the year 2021 to buy an air fryer. It makes short work of every roasted vegetable you can think of, plus a wide variety of goodies like crispy tofu, extra-crispy potatoes, fried bread, frozen gnocchi, leftover fries, crispy shallots, and of course, frozen tater tots—and that’s just off the top of my head. Please don’t be a dummy like me: Get an air fryer before you give up meat.
Get really into beans
You probably saw this coming, but beans are a cornerstone of a meatless diet. This will be great news to some and a real downer to others—but if you’re not a big bean guy, try to keep an open mind. The world of beans is wider and more delicious than you might think.
Beans don’t have to come from a bag or a can, and you don’t even have to eat them whole. Tofu and tempeh are wonderful examples of the humble soybean’s versatility; falafel is just chickpeas and herbs in a convenient, deep-fried package. You can even make pancakes and fritters entirely out of beans: In Indian cuisine, chilla (or cheela) are pancakes made from either besan (chickpea flour) or soaked legumes that have been puréed into a batter. (If you soak the legumes with some rice and let it ferment, you’ve got dosa batter.) Korean cuisine has nokdujeong (or bindaetteok), a mung bean-based fritter stuffed with kimchi, bean sprouts, and scallions.
Broaden your horizons
Beans are just the beginning. For the majority of our time on earth, human beings have eaten anything but meat—which means we’ve figured out about a billion ways to make plants taste good.
Every cuisine on the planet has a rich tradition of meatless dishes, and you don’t have to dig very deep to find them. Whether you get them from YouTube or cookbooks (my two preferred sources), homestyle recipes from pretty much any culinary tradition will never steer you wrong.
My go-to dinner is usually either some form of homestyle Mexican food—beans, tortillas, salsa, potatoes, the occasional soyrizo—or literally any recipe from Priya and Ritu Krishna’s Indian-ish, the best cookbook of the decade. As always, seek out recipes created by people who are actually part of the culture they’re representing. The recipes will be better and you’ll learn more.
Buy more food
My final tip for eating less meat is super obvious but rarely mentioned: If you’re used to a meat-heavy diet, you’ll need to eat way more other stuff to make up for it. I’m not talking about nutrient macros—I’m talking sheer volume. A big steak is still a big steak after it’s cooked, but an enormous head of cauliflower can shrink down to a single serving in a hot oven. When you go grocery shopping, err on the side of buying larger portions than you’re used to, at least until you get a feel for your new normal. Something tells me that won’t take long.
Amazon acaba de renovar su gama de altavoces inteligentes con pantalla. La compañía ha lanzado los nuevos Amazon Echo 8 y Echo Show 5, cuya principal diferencia, como se puede intuir por sus nombres, es el tamaño de la pantalla. El primero tiene una pantalla de ocho pulgadas y el segundo se queda con una diagonal de cinco pulgadas.
Sin embargo, no es la única diferencia entre ambos dispositivos, ya que el Amazon Echo 8 tiene una peculiar función en su cámara: se desplaza y acerca la imagen para mantenernos encuadrados durante una videollamada. A continuación los conoceremos mejor, no sin antes destacar que el precio del Echo Show 5 es de 84,99 euros (cinco euros menos que el modelo anterior), mientras que el del Echo Show es de 129,99 euros (el mismo que antes).
Amazon Echo Show 8: la cámara que nos sigue
Amazon Echo Show 8.
En lo que a diseño se refiere, el Amazon Echo Show 8 es muy parecido al modelo anterior. La principal diferencia radica en el espacio dedicado para la cámara, que ahora cuenta con una cubierta integrada para que podamos taparla cuando no queramos usarla. Es una de las formas que Amazon tiene de garantizar la privacidad.
El dispositivo monta una pantalla HD de ocho pulgadas con ajuste de color adaptativo desde la que podremos ver pelis en streaming, seguir recetas paso a paso, reproducir fotos para convertirlo en un marco digital e interactuar con la domótica. También incorpora altavoces estéreo y un procesador de ocho núcleos que le da vida a Alexa, el cerebro de la domótica desarrollado por Amazon.
Pero sin lugar a dudas, el punto más llamativo es la cámara. El Echo Show 8 incorpora una cámara de 13 megapíxeles que se desplaza y acerca la imagen durante las videollamadas, algo pensado para mantenernos siempre encuadrados. De esa forma, si nos movemos, la cámara se moverá para mantenernos en el centro. Es una función que viene del Echo Show 10, aunque no tan potente ya que no tiene una base giratoria.
La cámara, por cierto, no solo podremos usarla para hacer una videollamada con hasta siete personas, sino que también podremos usar el Echo Show 8 como una cámara de vigilancia. Desde la app de Alexa u otros dispositivo Echo Show podremos acceder a la imagen en tiempo real de la cámara del Echo Show 8 para ver nuestra casa en directo.
Nuevo Echo Show 8 (2.ª generación, modelo de 2021) | Pantalla HD inteligente con Alexa y cámara de 13 MP | Antracita
Amazon Echo Show 5: más pequeño y con mejor cámara
Amazon Echo Show 5.
El Echo Show 5, por su parte, es igual al modelo anterior. Tiene una pantalla de cinco pulgadas y está disponible en un nuevo color (azul marino). Por lo demás, y a priori, es similar al Echo Show 5 que teníamos hasta ahora. Desde la pantalla podremos acceder a contenido en streaming, a información de todo tipo y a Alexa para controlar la domótica.
¿Dónde está el cambio, entonces? En la cámara. El dispositivo tiene una cámara HD con el doble de píxeles, algo pensado para hacer videollamadas. Como el modelo anterior, también se puede acceder al feed de la cámara en tiempo real para ver cómo está la casa y que todo está en orden. Como el Echo Show 8, el Echo Show 5 también tiene cubierta para la cámara.
Nuevo Echo Show 5 (2.ª generación, modelo de 2021) | Pantalla inteligente con Alexa y cámara de 2 MP | Antracita
Versiones y precio de los Amazon Echo Show 8 y Echo Show 5 (2021)
Amazon Echo Show 5 y Amazon Echo Show 8.
El Echo Show 8 está disponible en color antracita y blanco, mientras que el Echo Show 5 lo está en antracita, blanco y azul marino. Se pueden reservar desde hoy y los envíos comenzarán a lo largo del mes que viene. El Echo Show 8 vale 129,99 euros y el Echo Show 5 se queda en 84,99 euros.
Nuevo Echo Show 8 (2.ª generación, modelo de 2021) | Pantalla HD inteligente con Alexa y cámara de 13 MP | Antracita
Nuevo Echo Show 5 (2.ª generación, modelo de 2021) | Pantalla inteligente con Alexa y cámara de 2 MP | Antracita
Summer was full of food deals, but not to worry—autumn isn’t falling behind when it comes to free and discounted eats. Though not as closely related to the season as apple cider doughnuts or candy corn, who doesn’t love a nice chicken sandwich to warm their hands as the temperatures drop?
Well, we’re in luck, because Popeyes has a deal that involves getting one of their signature chicken sandwiches for free for the remaining Sundays in 2021. Here’s what to know.
How to get free Popeyes chicken sandwiches on Sundays
This offer comes to us courtesy of Popeyes and Grubhub, and is valid every remaining Sunday in 2021 (the last being December 26th). To take advantage of this deal, place a Popeyes order of at least $20 via Grubhub on a Sunday, and select the promotional item (in this case, the chicken sandwich) on the menu before you check out. The discount will be automatically applied at checkout—no promo code required.
In addition to the $0 delivery fee, but you’ll receive a free chicken sandwich combo. Yes, you read that correctly: an entire combo, consisting of either the classic or spicy chicken sandwich, one regular side, and a drink.
Other offers at Popeyes
If you’re in the mood for some fried chicken (or seafood) on a day other than Sunday, Popeyes has some other deals you might find appealing. For instance, if you’ve never placed a digital order through the Popeyes website, you can get two free pieces of fried chicken with a minimum order of $10.
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The following offers are available for pick-up orders only:
Los alimentos fritos están deliciosos, pero comerlos en exceso no es recomendable si se quiere llevar una vida saludable por el exceso de grasas y calorías que tienen. Si te has planteado adquirir una freidora sin aceite pero no te decides, tus dudas pueden llevarte a ganar una Create Ikohs Fryer Air Pro totalmente gratis con este sorteo de Create Ikohs y Xataka.
Cómo ganar una freidora Create Ikohs Fryer Air Pro
Para optar a ganar una freidora Create Ikohs Fryer Air Pro debes hacer únicamente estas acciones en la red social Instagram:
Seguir a @Xataka en Instagram.
Seguir a @createikohs_es en Instagram.
Déjanos en los comentarios una pregunta sobre las dudas que tengas acerca de la Create Ikohs Fryer Air Pro en la publicación de Instagram.
Como veis, los pasos a realizar son muy sencillos. El sorteo estará vigente y podrás participar hasta el próximo día 9 de mayo (domingo) de 2021 a las 23:59 horas. El sorteo solo es válido para España. Tienes toda la información y las bases legales disponibles aquí.
La Create Ikohs Fryer Air Pro es una freidora de aire caliente con la que es posible comer nuestros alimentos favoritos con un resultado igual de crujiente que si se cocinara con aceite, pero, además, de una manera más limpia, sin humos y sana. Con una capacidad de 3,5 litros para cuatro raciones, es programable, viene con varias recetas preinstaladas y ofrece también la función de horno.
We tend to think of cucumbers as cool and crisp, best smashed and served in salads, or brined and pickled. But there is beauty in a cooked cucumber, especially a grilled one.
Cooked ‘cumbers are surprisingly sweet and fragrant, with a heady aroma that’s akin, but not identical to, a zucchini’s. Thanks to their extremely high moisture content, they stay firm over high heat, giving you a spear with a crisp, juicy interior and deeply flavorful exterior. I like grilled cucumbers far more than I was prepared to, is what I’m saying.
And high heat is key when grilling these babies—you don’t want to roast your cukes, you simply want to give them a little exterior color and char. The bigger your segments, the cooler and firmer they will stay on the inside. I’ve grilled cucumber halves and cucumber quarters, and both are good, though quartering will reveal extra surface area for browning (and browning equals flavor). In terms of the skins, you can leave them on or peel them off. I like the hint of bitterness they add, and they blister in adelightful manner.
Other than that little bit of knife (and/or peeler) work, grilled cukes require little preparation. Toss them with enough oil to coat—something neutral is preferable, but I used some cheap olive oil and they turned out great—and hit ‘em with a few generous pinches of salt. Grill over high heat until they are browned, blistered, and slightly softened. Let them cool to room temperature, then drizzle or douse with a salty, acidic dressing or sauce, or chop ‘em up and toss with a salad. I also think they’d make a killer tea sandwich. You know the kind—cream cheese and white bread could always benefit from a little dimension, and grilled cucumbers have at least five.
On one end of the parenting-style spectrum are the “helicopter parents” who hover in an ever-vigilant attempt to protect their children from basically everything. On the opposite end, we have the “free range parents” who let their kids roam—just like we all did in the good ol’ days, back when we only came home for the occasional sandwich or when the street lights came on at dusk. But there is a middle ground to be found between these two extremes, and as one pediatric neuropsychologist describes it, it’s the parents who mindfully meddle.
“We need to create more times we’re actually looking out for the best interests of the other person involved and not just on an impulse of wanting to get in there and fix things,” Allen says. “And as parents, we’re constant fixers; we want to fix these things.”
Instead of fixing every last problem for our kids the way a helicopter parent might do, Allen says it’s important to be intentional about why and how we get involved so that we’re helping our kids develop their own problem-solving skills.
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Let their goals guide you
As kids grow up, they’re working on one developmental milestone after another. When they’re little, for example, they might be figuring out how to manage their emotions or learning to use their words to say how they feel. So if you say they can’t have ice cream for dinner and they start kicking and screaming on the floor, knowing which goal they’re working on will help inform how you respond. If emotion-management is top of mind, you can help them practice taking deep breaths to slow their heart rate. If they’re working on naming emotions, you might talk through the words they can use to describe how they’re feeling (once they’ve calmed down).
“Once you know what your kids are working on, you can do this mindful meddling a lot easier,” Allen says, “because the idea is that you want to step back when it’s a goal that your child is working on.”
In her own home, she says, her son is working on developing his problem-solving skills, particularly as it relates to keeping track of his homework assignments. If Allen were to full-on meddle, she’d simply email the teacher and ask what the assignments are. As a mindful meddler, though, she talks through with her son how he can find the information he needs.
“And then that becomes an exercise for him in figuring out how to advocate for himself instead of me jumping in and calling the teacher and fixing the problem—that doesn’t teach him anything,” she says. “When you’re mindfully meddling, your objective is teaching.”
It’s helpful to remember that a parent who mindfully meddles guides rather than directs.
Mindfully meddling in their social relationships
One area where we might be tempted to meddle a wee bit more is in our kids’ relationships with their peers—particularly when there is conflict. It’s our instinct to jump in and tell them exactly what to do the next time their friends purposely leave them out during recess or when one kid calls another kid a mean name. We may even recognize that one of their friends isn’t a particularly nice friend, and we might want to point that out and suggest they spend that time with someone else. But when we direct them what to do, we deprive them of the experience of learning to manage their own relationships.
“I always encourage my parents to think, ‘What does this little brain need to learn, and what can I teach this brain?’” Allen says.
It’s important, over the long-term, to teach them how to address a situation themselves, so once they get older and are not sharing these things with you anymore, they have the skills they need to manage whatever situation they’re facing. In practice, that means asking reflexive questions that get them talking about how a situation made them feel, how they might communicate that to their friend, and what makes a person a good friend in the first place.
“You want them thinking about these relationships themselves because they’re not going to tell you everything [when they get older],” Allen says. “You want them to hear your voice in their head, because you can’t always be there. If you’re not teaching—if you’re not mindfully meddling, and instead you’re directively meddling—you’re going to run into problems, because they’re not going to have the skills [they] built themselves … to manage their own relationships in the future.”
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When the days are hot and you need a dessert and the last thing you want to do is turn on the oven and heat up the kitchen, then it's the time to set up and make your own no-bake cheesecake bar, and I'll show you how easy it is – no heating up the kitchen necessary.
First of all, I took 8 ounces of cream cheese, softened cream cheese, put it in a bowl, and I beat it up a little bit to get it a little bit creamy. Now, I'm going to add some sweetener, 1/2 cup of powdered sugar, and I did sift it before I measured it, and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla. Put that in with the cream cheese and just beat it up until it's nice and smooth and creamy.
If you have some pretty little saucers, this is a good time to bring them out and use them, but if not, just use a little dessert dish for each person. I also have a spoon for each person to use and you can demonstrate if you need to, but I don't think they're going to need instructions. Just take some of this cream cheese mixture and put it on your dish or in your dessert bowl, and then you're ready to top it with some berries.
You can use any fresh fruit of the season. Right now, the berries are plentiful and delicious, so I'm using raspberries and blueberries, and just put a few on top of that cheesecake filling, and then all you need is some graham cracker crumbs over the top, and there you've got your no-bake cheesecake: a yummy dessert, no oven required.
I'm Sue Doeden, sharing Good Food for Good Life, 365.
This week we’re kicking our butts into gear and developing a solid running habit with help from Strength Running founder Jason Fitzgerald. And just in time too, because Lifehacker’s very own Meghan Walbert, co-host of The Upgrade, has been working on learning to enjoy the workout herself for this month’s Lifehacker Fitness Challenge.
Listen to hear Jason’s expert advice on how to get started as a beginning runner, how to make running less boring, and what we can do to improve our form and avoid injuries.
On the fast progress that comes with running habitually:
[E]ven after a couple of weeks, you’re going to start experiencing progress. You’re going to start getting better. The metrics that we track as runners are going to start improving for you. And what I always loved about running was that no matter what, if you put in the work, you’re going to get better…it’s up to you. You have that control over your own progress in the sport. And I just think that is so exciting.
On what to focus on when you’re first starting to run:
I think it’s helpful to always have a purpose for whatever run that you’re going to be doing. And for beginners, almost all their runs are just going to be easy runs. That is literally the definition of the type of run that they’re doing…And really, your easy runs are not really done at a given pace. They’re really at a given effort. Those are easy runs. Should be easy. And how do we define easy? I like to tell runners, if you are meeting the three C’s of easy running, then that run is probably an easy effort. So let’s make sure the run is conversational. So if we’re running together, we can have mostly a full conversation… the run should also be controlled. Now, sometimes when you get to be a more intermediate-advanced runner, you’re doing a hard workout. You don’t necessarily feel in control the whole time you’re riding that line…So let’s make sure our runs are in control and then our runs should also be comfortable. Do you feel comfortable now? This is a little bit trickier for beginners, because when you first start running, none of your runs might feel very comfortable. So it is something that’s going to take a couple of weeks.
On the injury-prevention benefits of making a “run sandwich”:
[A] really helpful strategy that I promote all the time is this concept called making a run sandwich. We always want to sandwich our run in between a dynamic warm-up beforehand to ensure that you’re actually ready to run. And then we’re going to finish our run at the very end with maybe ten to 20 minutes of mostly bodyweight strength exercises. And so this sandwich method is great for so many reasons: You’re going to be building coordination, athleticism, flexibility, mobility with the dynamic warm-up, it’s going to reduce your injury risk, you’re going to go running, you’re going to feel better, too, especially for new runners. You know, doing that dynamic warm-up beforehand really helps you go from sedentary, maybe at work you’re sitting down at your desk, to running. It serves as that bridge, that transition point. And then when we follow our run with a 10 to 20-minute core or strength routine, we’re doing a couple of things: Number one, we’re getting stronger. Number two, we’re helping ourselves cool down. We’re going through a bunch of different ranges of motion, and that’s really going to help us feel better for the rest of the day, because I think anybody who’s gone on a longer run or maybe they do a hard workout and you get back at home and you’re tired and you sit down in a chair and you get your phone, you get distracted for half an hour, and then you get up from that chair. You know how you feel. You feel tight. You feel like you’ve just aged 50 years. And that’s because at the end of a workout, we’ve got to kind of come down from the higher intensity of running. And that 10 to 20-minute bodyweight strength routine can act as that bridge between running and being more sedentary.
To hear more of Jason’s tips on how to run more efficiently and enjoyably, check out the full episode.
Have any feedback or ideas for us? Want to be featured on the show? Leave us a voicemail at 347-687-8109 or send a voice memo to upgrade@lifehacker.com. Next week we’re talking about investing, so send us your questions or best advice on the topic!
Freeze! If you heat it up like this, you will dry it out.Photo: Vinicius Bacarin (Shutterstock)
In recent weeks, you may have seen a recipe for a salmon rice bowl making the rounds on TikTok. In this recipe, TikTok user Emily Mariko puts leftover salmon on a plate and covers it with day-old rice. She then places an ice cube in the rice, covers it all up with a parchment paper, and puts it in the microwave for a minute. During the minute it is in the microwave, the ice cube remains mostly intact, creating a steam that rehydrates the leftover rice.
As delicious as the salmon rice bowl is, Mariko’s technique with the ice cube is a hack that can be used in other ways, and it can be modified. It’s true that the microwave is a lifesaver when you want to quickly heat up leftovers—but it’s also true that it can turn certain types of food, such as rice, into a dry, tasteless mess. As Mariko has demonstrated, this doesn’t have to be the case. There are ways to heat up leftovers in the microwave without drying them out; you just need to find a way to add steam.
Using an ice cube to microwave leftover pasta
As you’ve seen with rice, putting an ice cube on top of your leftover rice creates enough steam to soften and rehydrate. This trick can alsobe used with pasta dishes. If you have leftover pasta, simply spread it out on a plate, place an ice cube on top and cover it up. If you don’t have parchment paper on hand, a paper towel will also do.
With pasta, if you need to microwave the leftovers for longer than a minute, stir it about once a minute, and keep an eye on that cube. It helps to spread out the pasta into a thin layer, which will help it heat evenly, while also cutting down on the amount of time it needs to microwave. When I tried this with some leftover spaghetti and veggie “meatballs,” a minute was enough, and the results tasted almost as good as fresh.
(I cut the meatballs into small pieces before microwaving to heat them more evenly, although another trick would be to reheat them separately in an air fryer until they are hot and crispy: 3-5 minutes at 350°F should do the trick.)
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Using a damp paper towel
An alternative to using an ice cube is to sprinkle a bit of water over leftover rice or noodles, and cover with a damp paper towel. The moisture will create enough steam to rehydrate the leftovers, and the paper towel will prevent it from escaping. Lifehacker’s Managing Editor Meghan Walbert recently reported to me that she tried this method with leftover Pad Thai, and the results were pleasing.
In the interests of science, I compared using the ice cube method versus the damp paper towel paper method by reheating two separate batches of leftover spaghetti. For this test, I used an equivalent amount for each batch, spreading a thin layer of pasta onto the plate, and then microwaved both for a minute.
Both methods worked equally well, although using an ice cube was definitely a little more fun (seeing that intact ice cube come out of the microwave is startling). Anecdotally, it also helps to let the leftovers rest for a minute under the cover after microwaving to really let the steam penetrate.
What I did not do for this experiment is microwave a control batch of spaghetti without any steaming method. That’s because I’ve reheated enough pasta in the past this way to know just how sad the results are.
How to reheat pasta with cream sauce
Reheating a pasta dish with cream sauce, such as Alfredo or macaroni and cheese, is more complicated due to the high fat content. When a sauce with a high fat content cools down, it separates into oil and water, so you will need to do a lot of stirring and be careful not to overdo the moisture. It can also help to add in a splash of milk to the leftovers.
I love cooking. I love eating. I love eating what I have cooked. I do not, however, like decorating my food. Don’t get me wrong, I love a theme, and am always delighted by playful seasonal fare, but I am severely lacking in artistic skills. I am also quite lazy, and easily frustrated by detailed work.
So while other food publications pump out slideshows and roundups of delightfully spooky Halloween treats, I have no choice but to watch with envy. I will never be the type of person who whips up green Frankenstein corn dogs, adorably decorated pumpkin cupcakes, or a dark and mysterious charcoal cocktail. I only have three spooky food tricks: Proscuitto, olives, and sliced almonds.
When in doubt, drape something in prosciutto
It’s impossible to look at prosciutto and not know that it is meat. It’s pink, streaked with fat, and unsettlingly sticky. Wrap it around a fake femur, drape it over a skull, or place it strategically on a creepy mask (like I did for the photo above), and you’ve got yourself the beginnings of a delightful char-spook-erie platter. (Just make sure you clean the mask and/or fake bones first.)
Make finger foods (complete with fingernails)
Photo: Claire Lower
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Fingernails are incredibly unsettling. Imagine finding one in your food. Terrifying. Sliced almonds, for better or worse, look a lot like fingernails. You should take advantage of this.
Carrots, breadsticks, and sausages are all instantly creepified with the addition of an almond nail. All you have to do is find a finger-shaped food, dab it with a bit of cream cheese, and press the almond nail on top. (If you’re using carrots, carve out a few slim pieces near the center to create a knuckle to make your snack scream “phalange!”)
Make some olive spiders
Photo: Claire Lower
A lot of people use olives to make eyeballs, but mine never look right, because, again, I’m very bad at decorating. But I am capable of slicing up some pitted black olives and arranging them so they look like a clunky, improbable spider. I once made 24 olive spiders to perch atop a batch of deviled eggs that I took to a Halloween party, and people were very charmed (though they may have just been charmed by the presence of deviled eggs).
All you have to do is grab a jar of pitted olives and slice one in half to make two spider bodies. Then, slice another into four rings, and cut those rings in half to make the legs. Place the body of the spider in a dip, or atop a cheese ball, or on some deviled eggs, then arrange eight little legs around the body. There, you made a charming little spider. (And now you get to eat some olives! It’s a win all around!)
If those three incredibly lazy food styling tips are too involved for you, you can always fall back on beets: Slice them up on a cutting board and use the board as a bloody display for horror d’oeuvres, serve pickled beets alongside a cheese plate, or blend them into dips and hummus. A beet will always look bloody, without any futzing on your part. (Thank you, beets.)
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If you missed the chance to grab the new Echo Show 8 during Amazon’s Prime Day event in July, you may want to check the smart display’s listing on Amazon. It’s currently on sale for $100, $30 less than its original retail price of $130. That’s only $5 more than what it was listed for during Prime Day, and it’s certainly not a bad deal for a relatively new device that was only released in June.
We gave the Echo Show 8 a score of 87 in our review. Between this device and its smaller 5-inch sibling, it received more upgrades from the previous generation, including a faster octa-core processor. It also has a 13-megapixel wide-angle camera that’s a huge improvement over the previous version’s one-megapixel sensor. The smart display uses digital panning and zooming to follow you around during calls, and it worked well enough when we tested it out. It even works with every video calling platform the device supports, including Skype and Zoom.
Aside from its faster processor and better camera, we praised the Echo Show 8 for its minimalist design and its 1,280 x 800-pixel resolution display. It lacks the 3.5 mm jack of its predecessor that will let you connect it to a speaker, but it already has a powerful bass and impressive volume. The device’s overall sound quality is also better than its smaller sibling’s, since it has two speakers instead of one.
We found the Echo Show 8 a great digital photo frame that’s capable of displaying current time and weather conditions during our tests. In addition, we found it helpful in the kitchen, thanks to its large library of recipes with step-by-step instructions from sources that include the Food Network and Allrecipes. And in case you want to use the smart display to watch videos, you can do so, as well, since it supports video streaming from Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu.
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“Gas station sushi” has become something of a punchline, a thing that one obviously should not eat, a thing that should not exist. But is sushi really any more likely to give you food poisoning than the ham sandwich sitting right next to it in the gas station cooler? And is it really that different from sushi prepared at a fancy restaurant?
To find out if anything really is fishy with gas station sushi, I asked Don Schaffner, a food safety expert at Rutgers University.
Is gas station sushi safe?
“If it’s not made with raw fish (i.e. California roll),” Schaffner says, “it’s probably the same risk as the ham sandwich. If it is made with raw fish I’d steer clear.”
Sushi is probably best known for its morsels of raw fish, but plenty of sushi dishes use seafood that has been cooked. California rolls are made with cooked crab (or, often, “imitation crab” that is actually made of fish). Eel (unagi) is always cooked. Shrimp, squid, octopus, and clam are often cooked.
California rolls are probably the most common type of prepackaged sushi (and personally, I love a Trader Joe’s spicy California roll), so that may be your best option next time you’re at a gas station and have a hankering for sushi. If the offerings only include raw fish, though, you may be better off waiting until you can get to a proper sushi restaurant.
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Where it comes from matters more when the fish is raw
Some lower quality sushi is made with tuna scrape, which is a raw fish product that has been linked with Salmonella outbreaks. It’s not necessarily unsafe, but the fact that it’s more highly processed means it has more chances to become contaminated.
Schaffner says he does eat raw sushi, but only at an actual sushi restaurant. “I don’t want that risk [from raw fish] to be handled by the lowest bidder on the gas station sushi contract or employee who is also selling gas and cigarettes too. I’d rather entrust that risk management to trained chefs and a staff that know what they are doing.”
