Home Sweet Homemaker

The subject of email forwards came up at book club this week, reminding me of an interesting post I read recently on Lifehacker. “Email Etiquette Pages Explain So You Don’t Have To” references several websites that you can direct your email-loving friends to in attempt to end the forwarding frenzy. Here is an excerpt from the article.

Why waste time schooling clueless email senders one by one when you can build a web site to do it for you? A recent trend among email-overloaded web developers who don’t want to explain the basics of email etiquette to frequent senders is to set up a web page that does it instead—then reply to senders with a link to the page, or just include it in their signature.

Website “responses” include comments such as: “Hi. The person who sent you this link is a friend who likes you a lot but who wants you to respect their email address, their privacy, and their time” and “The golden rule of sending an email to more than 15 people at a time is Don’t Do It. Seriously. Don’t.” Then there’s the five sentences rule, “a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be five sentences or less”.

It really would be helpful if everyone used BCC, and forwards could be so much shorter if I didn’t have to see the six degrees of separation between myself and the original sender. But the notion that forwards, exposed mailing lists or verbose emails could bother someone so badly that they would buy a domain name and host a website just for the purpose of saying “stop emailing me” is beyond belief. I don’t like the condescending attitude in which these websites are written. My approach is more along the lines of “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say it.” If you must expose the ignorance, try something like this:

• “Hi, friend. I noticed that your recent email was sent to lots of people. Do you mind using the BCC field next time so your mailing list isn’t visible? Thanks.”
• “My inbox has been really overloaded lately. I love getting personal emails from you, but could you keep the forwards to a minimum?”

Regarding long emails, a five sentence rule would be hard to follow. After writing an email, you should just read it, take out the unnecessary parts and hit send. We all ramble, but we should respect someone’s time enough to be succinct by editing our own emails before sending. Ironically, this is probably one of my longest posts of all time! Read the post and the interesting responses it sparked at Lifehacker.com.

I recently read an article about recipe deal breakers for cooks. It reminded me of my first attempt at Peanut Brittle which was a complete disaster. Here is an excerpt from the article by Kim Severson.

I was reading a recipe for apple strudel when I came to a sentence that stopped me cold: “If you don’t have a helper,” it began.

If a dish needs a helper, I need to move on.

Although I didn’t end up with a strudel, I did end up on a quest. I began asking good cooks I know about recipe deal breakers — those ingredients or instructions that make them throw down the whisk and walk away.

This article made me ponder my own recipe deal breakers. I don’t mind giving a recipe a chance, maybe even two or three. But my one deal breaker is this: I will not, under any circumstances, doctor up Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. I guess you could say I’m a macaroni purist. Kraft Food & Family is probably my most frequently used source for recipes. I understand that they are a fan of their own product, but they have dozens upon dozens of recipes that use “The Cheesiest” as a main ingredient. Recipes like Cheesy Mac with Snow Peas & Tomatoes, Mac-a-Taco and Tasty Tuna Casserole. No thanks.

Other things that cause me to reconsider a recipe are those that involve an excessive amount of time with the food processor, ingredients I can’t pronounce and having to manage several pots on the stove at once. Read the New York Times article in its entirety and share your own recipe deal breakers.

I’ve made chicken salad all of once. To me, it’s not worth the effort when I can go down the street and buy it fresh from the Ingles deli. I know there are many variations of chicken salad, but this one has served me well. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve transferred this stuff from the deli container to a pretty bowl and served it to guests.

It often saves dinner for my family when we don’t feel like cooking, or more accurately, when we have nothing to eat and are forced to go grocery shopping. I definitely don’t want to cook after I just went to the grocery store, so we buy some chicken salad for dinner. The extent of our cooking on days like these is to roll and bake the crescents to go with.

By the way, if you don’t already graze at the supermarket, you should. Those samples are there to be eaten. And you just might find something you really like. That’s how we got hooked. Find an Ingles near you or give your local deli a chance to impress you.

I’m not going into details about why I had to purchase Benadryl recently, but it has to do with an unidentified insect and a bad reaction. Regular Benadryl absolutely knocks me out but usually does the trick when it comes to my seemingly random allergic reactions. I asked the pharmacist if there was anything that wouldn’t put me to sleep. She recommended Claritin which I had already tried with no success.

I had a swollen foot and knew I had to get the good stuff. I decided on the Benadryl Quick Dissolve Strips. They were on sale at CVS, two vials (20 strips) for $7. I love that the packaging is small enough to fit unobtrusively in my purse. And I can take it immediately without needing water. It tastes good and it doesn’t seem to make me as sleepy as the traditional pink pill. My brother is allergic to certain insect bites as well. With this product, he can just keep a strip in his wallet for emergencies, which is what I’ll be doing from now on.

We had a family wedding this weekend. The wedding was beautiful, the bride was exquisite and the flatware was plastic. Forget the clear stuff. This was shiny. I had no idea until I physically held the fork in my hand that it wasn’t stainless steel. And of course, I pulled out my camera and snapped a photo, verifying everyone’s suspicion at the table that I am in fact a freakazoid.

If I had not been at such a formal function, I might have tracked down the caterer and demanded to know the source of their cutlery. But I settled for a picture and later googled “plastic flatware that looks real”. The brand is called Reflections and is available at Amazon.com through a third-party seller, in large quantities. This product is geared towards caterers, unless of course you have room in your pantry for 600 forks. With that said, I won’t be purchasing any. However, if I am ever having an event catered, I would definitely ask about this new item. Below is a excerpt from the product description from Amazon.

Through the art of technological innovation, elegance and convenience unite. Reflections cutlery combines the radiant styling of fine flatware and the ease of single use. Upgrade your service with a product that offers the same shine and silver sparkle as real stainless steel. Reflections single use silverware is the only solution addressing both the need for a formal presentation and the high costs associated with renting or owning (cleaning, transporting and replacing) permanent flatware.