10 Critical Ways To A Perfectly Food-Safe Kitchen
April 25, 2007
Food poisoning is related to unsafe food, a dirty kitchen, and dirty kitchen appliances. If you follow some safety rules, food poisoning will never occur.
Your Refrigerator
1. Freezing does NOT kill bacteria; it only controls their growth. Common bacteria grow rapidly at 60° F to 120° F. Keep the temperature of the refrigerator below 50° F. Keep the freezer temperature at about 0° F.
2. Don’t take foods out of the refrigerator until you’re ready to cook them.
Dishwashing
3. Clean well with hot water to kill bacteria.
4. If washing dishes by hand, leave them to drain rather than using a tea towel. If you use a tea towel, change it often. Paper towels are a better option.
5. Dishcloths are a prime spot for bacteria to grow and multiply. Wash them regularly with hot water or in the washing machine using the hot cycle with antibacterial products.
Cooking
6. Cook thoroughly to kill bacteria but don’t overcook to the point of charring. It may form amine compounds that may cause cancer. Don’t cook food partially and leave it to cook later.
7. Wash your hands thoroughly with an antibacterial soap before and after cooking.
Paint Your Own Musical Landscapes!
April 25, 2007
I don’t know why, but I find the idea of interpreting nature musically to be very appealing. Maybe it’s because I’m attracted to nature’s beauty, but the notion of communicating that beauty musically has always intrigued me.
Not being a very patient person, I wanted to find a way to capture a musical idea very quickly and sketch out an entire piece all at once. Visual artists do something called a thumbnail sketch and I wanted to do the same thing for music.
It then occured to me that if I just sketch out the first 8-bars of the piece, and write in the first 2-bars of melody, I could capture an idea that would be remembered weeks or even years later. It’s amazing but this actually works! The secret is the melody.
If you can’t read music and want to do this just do what I do. I write down the note values (quarter notes, half notes., etc.) and write the letter name of the note beside the note value. One of the most important things I’ve discovered over the years is that the note value (it’s time length) is what really captures the idea. Just think of Beethoven’s fifth symphony for a good example. Da Da Da Duh… These notes mark the whole composition.
6 Ways to Leverage Technical Articles
April 25, 2007
Technology vendors often contribute bylined articles to trade journals. The articles are great exposure for these companies but they don’t come cheap ? the trades rarely pay for these articles but the vendors spend time and resources to assign pieces, write them, approve them and submit them. Your PR agency can help your clients leverage their investment by wringing top value out of these articles. Here are some possibilities:
Reprints
It’s pretty galling to contribute a byline to a publication, only to turn around and spend major bucks for reprint rights. But reprints are good things: they significantly increase your client’s exposure to the market. Make sure you use the reprints anywhere you can, including press kits, presentation handouts and conference take-aways. Post them on your site too. Even if you haven’t paid for electronic rights you can probably link to the publication’s URL, assuming they’ve posted your article online. (It doesn’t hurt to ask.) If you’ve got digital reprint rights and are posting the article on your client’s site, avoid using a scanned hard copy of the printed article ? the resolution is poor and not very readable. Create a .PDF file and use that for posting and downloading.
Cozy Nooks: Creating a Secret Outdoor Place
April 25, 2007
Everyone seems to love a secret — and when the secret is a nook in your outdoor space, all the better. A nook is defined as a private or secluded quiet inner place. Any outside space, from a balcony to an acre estate can benefit from including a nook. Here are points to consider:
Purpose
It doesn’t make any sense to set up a secluded garden reading bench if you never have the time to pick up a book. But maybe you’d like to spend 15 minutes in the morning over coffee with your partner, or want to have a quiet spot for conversing with a special friend. Or maybe your nook will be an intimate dining space for four. Consider what you really want to do with your outside space and then make your nook available for that. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a space that’s lovely to look at but seldom used.
Mystery
Why The Horses Eyes Are So Important When Training Him!
April 24, 2007
They say the eyes are are the gateway to the soul. When it was said, they were referring to us humans. But the truth is, it also refers to horses.
Many horse owners don’t understand the importance and usefulness of the horse’s eyes while training. That being so, let me share with you some things you may find useful - some you may know…some you may not.
First, there’s the eye which reveals a little about the character of the horse you’re working with. It may have a kind eye. A kind eye indicates the horse will be agreeable to train and will readily respond to your aids while training.
One way to tell if the horse is nervous is by noting his eyes. Horses can be very expressive in their looks. And you can tell if a horse is a nervous horse by the eyes appearing sort of “worried like.”
Obviously, this nervous horse would require more thoughtful handling than would a non-nervous horse.
I have a horse that would get mad after a while of riding. She used to get what I call mad eyes. Her expression was actually a sort of angry expression. Mostly, the expression came from her eyes. Here eyes would get red after a while.
Dreading the Writing Assignment? Outlines to the Rescue
April 24, 2007
Writing technical articles is a challenge. There you sit, surrounded by reams of research, notes and interviews. Where do you start?
Remember 5th grade English? You start with an outline.
Outlining has fallen on hard times lately. Mind mapping and brainstorming are much more fashionable. These techniques are great when generating ideas, but once you’ve got your ideas germinating you’ve got to outline them. Without an outline, your article will:
Don’t let this happen to you ? outline. If it’s been a while since 5th grade ? or if your "progressive" school didn’t stoop to teach you actual English skills ? let me remind you why it’s important and how to do it.
Horse Training Facts And Maxims
April 24, 2007
To the uninitiated horse owner, there are timely facts about horses they should know. In fact, when someone first gets a horse these timely facts should be studied and learned.
These timely facts come from the Jesse Beery horse training manual. Jesse Beery was a famous horse trainer from the 1800’s. Interestingly, Beery’s training methods are as powerful today as they were when Beery was alive.
Timely Fact #1:
Make your horse your friend, not your slave.
Timely Fact #2:
Almost every wrong act of the horse is caused by fear, excitement or mismanagement. One harsh word will increase the pulse of a nervous horse ten beats a minute. Hoses know nothing about balking until forced into it by bad management. Any balky horse an be started steady and true in a few minutes. I never found one that I could not teach to start his load in fifteen minutes and usually in three.
Timely Fact #3:
Intelligent horsemen have learned that kickers, biters and balkers are natural results of abuse, that not one horse in a hundred is vicious until made so by cruelty; that whipping a horse is as mean and senseless as whipping a baby, and that the most useful, obedient and long lived horses are those treated from birth with kindness and common sense.
Saltwater Coral Reef Aquariums - 5 Tips for Success
April 24, 2007
Do you dream of watching the natural beauty of the undersea reef life while sitting in your living room?
Whether your goal is a nano reef tank or a 150 gallon aquarium with an ecosystem of coral and saltwater fish, the following five tips will lead you on your way to success.
1) Commit! Decide you are going to spend the $$ it takes to make a proper go of it. At a minimum, most tanks, (from 10 gal to 55 gal) take between $250 and $500 to get going. Can you do it cheaper? Yes, but usually not your first one. You have to know what you are doing and understand how things can and will go wrong before you can choose less expensive husbandry options and/or equipment. Save up if you have to, but count on that first tank being expensive.
Realize that this is not a short term commitment. And as much fun as it is to collect the coolest coral fragments out there and show them off to your friends, there WILL come a time when you are hauling all of those same ‘frags’ out of the tank and into temporary storage when your six year old cracks the side of the display tank with a pool ball or some other calamity occurs.
Fake Grass
April 23, 2007
The history of artificial or fake grass is to say the least an interesting one and arose out of the social desire to in-effect ward off what could be seen, as far back as the 1950s, as an increasingly unhealthy tendency by youngsters not to exercise.
History has it that birth of synthetic grass began through attempts by scientists trying to develop a type of grass that would not only allow children and adolescents to play on regardless of the weather condition but encouraged them to do so, in other words, a surface that they enjoyed using or a user friendly surface. Hence the advent of fake or artificial grass.
The result was one of the early prototypes of what we now know to be fake or artificial grass. The earlier types were not only hard under foot and made for impracticality especially where sports and children were concerned given the tendencies to fall but were very unpopular. Conversely, however, in terms of workability and endurance this surface proved itself worthy, with the originally playing field where the fake grass surface was installed lasting twenty years of solid wear.
The Hard Facts About Editing
April 23, 2007
Whether you’re interviewing for a new job, trying to woo a love interest on a first date, selling your work on the Internet, or submitting a query to an editor, you can never make a second first impression. It’s true. It’s just one of life’s hard facts.
To sell your article, novel, product, or yourself, you need to work on that very critical first impression–and a surefire way to make a bad impression is to present poorly edited work. All the hours of researching, outlining, and writing are squandered if the final version of your manuscript is not tightly written and error-free.
How can you possibly convince an editor, agent, or customer that you can produce a great product when there are errors in your queries, on your web site, or in your marketing materials? I don’t know about you, but I lose trust in what I’m reading once I’ve seen more than one error. In some cases (e.g., a web site for an editing service) even that one error is enough. I think it’s careless and it leads me to wonder if the creator is as careless with the quality of his products or services.
