Bohemian Revolution

Red Velvet Cakes and Cupcakes Recipes

BohRev — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:40:12 +0000

When I say I love Red Velvet Cake, I feel like I need to be more specific because there are so many different recipes that what I’m thinking of may not be too much like what comes to your mind. This is one of those recipes people have really corrupted over the years, calling almost any baked good with some red food coloring “red velvet.” Done right, this cake is a completely different experience than when it’s done wrong.

Red velvet cake should be lightly sweet and lightly chocolatey (so lightly that it’s hard to identify the cocoa flavor) and very moist. The icing should also be lightly sweet, not coated with coconut shavings or powdered sugar, with either a light buttery flavor or a slight tang from cream cheese (like carrot cake frosting).

Here’s a recipe for red velvet cupcakes. Note that all the sweetness in the cake is coming from one and a half cups of sugar, and the icing – which is where a lot of recipes get too sweet – should be only lightly sweet (actually, I would use a bit less sugar than that, but you can taste as you add it in to get it just right for your palate). The big advantage of cupcakes is that you don’t have to ice the cake layer by layer, which can cause the icing to overwhelm the flavor of the cake.

Here’s another very similar recipe for red velvet cake. The icing here will be the lightly buttery kind I was talking about.

And here’s another recipe for the cream cheese based icing. This one uses white chocolate, but it won’t really taste like it.

Note that you can use food coloring to make the cake other colors. Without any food coloring, it’s yellowish. Some people put coconut shavings or pecans on top of the icing. There are a lot of ways to go to customize this cake.

Grocery stores “accidentally” charging higher prices?

BohRev — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:25:28 +0000

Am I the only one noticing a sudden upsurge in how often a grocery store charges more when you get to the register than it said on the shelf? Or you bring up ordinary produce and they try to charge you for a fancier version of your veg? Mistakes happen, sure, but the Department of Agriculture has caught more than a few stores overcharging at the register over the years. And everyone claims it’s just a mistake, even though they find stores are “3.5 times more likely to overcharge customers than undercharge.”

Oh, excuse me, I didn’t mean to hit you just now. Oh, whoops, I didn’t mean to hit you again. I’m just so clumsy. Oh, no, did I hit you a third time? Oh, dear, I almost got you again, but this time you ducked. Oh, there, look, now I’ve hit myself.

Scam or accident?

Here’s my most recent suspicious story. I went to a big chain grocery store and picked up some plain ol’ yellow onions that were marked $1.49/lb. I got home and checked my receipt, and found I’d been charged $1.99/lb for “Vidalia” onions. I went back to the store to quibble with them, and they happily returned the money, but here’s why I’m suspicious:

Vidalia onions have identifying stickers. My yellow onions did not.
The clerk didn’t ask me which type of onions they were. She just went with the most expensive option. Hmm.
It happened again the next week. With a different clerk.

Yeah, seriously. The next week, I got home and found I’d been charged $1.69 for Vidalia onions instead of $1.49 for yellow. Yet another trip to customer service. How many people would bother? I did it mainly on principle – it’s not like I can’t afford Vidalia, it’s just that’s not what I got.

It’s hard to imagine all the employees in the grocery store being in on a scam together. But when the same thing happens twice like that, with different employees, you tell me: it is an accident?

As I said before, I’m also noting an increase in how many times an item’s price just happens to be higher at the register than it was on the shelf. Can mistakes really be mistakes, when they almost always happen in the mistake-maker’s favor? Shouldn’t they “accidentally” undercharge about as often as they overcharge, if it’s really just a mistake?

How to record ideas you have while driving or in the shower

BohRev — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:12:22 +0000

We’ve all had brilliant ideas while driving, showering, or in the middle of the night, had no way of writing them down, and ended up forgetting them. With a little preparation, you can keep this from happening.

For the shower: Crayola Bathtub Crayons. These let you write something that won’t wash off while you shower, but can be easily washed off once you’ve had time to write it down somewhere else.
For driving: you need a voice recorder. Unless you get a stop light or can pull over, writing stuff down just isn’t safe when you’re driving. A voice recorder can be as simple as your hands-free cellphone (call your voice mail and leave a message if you don’t have a memo recording feature) or PDA, or you can buy a digital recorder. Now, two safety caveats: (1) whatever you do should be as hands-free as possible, and (2) I don’t care if you think you can orally write a novel while driving: you probably can’t. Most people can’t have their minds somewhere else and drive well. Just make quick notes, nothing more, while driving.
For ideas you get while sleeping, attach a pen to a pad of paper (just stick it through the spiral binding or use the pen’s clip to attach it) and have a small hands-free booklight available to illuminate it so you won’t have to fully wake up yourself or someone else with the lamp. The voice recorder idea can work here, too, even if you share a bed or bedroom – your whispers into the mic won’t be enough to disturb most people.

How to get transferred to a US call center with AT&T

BohRev — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:37:56 +0000

Mr. Peebles has had enough of AT&T's crap.

I recently spent five hours, spread over several phone calls, on the phone with AT&T trying to figure out why my DSL router needs to be recycled several times a day. At about the end of the fourth hour, I discovered that I’d been wasting the last two talking to a Philippine call center. I say “wasted” because they don’t know all the same tricks as the U.S. call centers. I was pretty sure we needed to go into the router’s settings, as we’ve done before, and tinker with channels and power settings in search of a combo that works for my exact location. (If your neighbor’s got some weirdly powerful device on the same channel, for example, your DSL service will get bumped, and bumped often. Don’t ask me what sort of stuff my neighbors would have to be into for this to be an issue. Don’t wanna know.)

The problem is, like millions of Americans, I can’t be home to call AT&T during regular business hours when you typically get a US call center. I have to call in the evening, and I almost always get an off-shore answering service instead of the real tech support. Some 24/7 support, I figured, if you can only get real help during certain hours.

Naturally, at the end of that four hours, half of it wasted dealing with people who can help customers who forgot to plug something in but aren’t equipped to handle actual connection issues and just want to send out a tech at your expense to waste time and money, I was feeling a bit homicidal. I decided tomorrow I would call my area’s cable provider and get phone and cable internet service from them, even though I prefer DSL because it’s faster. When it’s connected, that is.

You can always talk to a US call center

The next day, I decided to try one more time. It was Saturday, so maybe I’d get a US call center. No luck – after holding for eight minutes, I got India this time. I told the guy, “Never mind – you can’t do what I need.”

“But,” he said, “I can transfer you to a U.S. call center.”

Here’s what I wanted to say: “You what? Why don’t you people tell us this? Why have I wasted four hours talking to people who couldn’t help me when I could’ve been talking to someone who knows something? Arghhhh–” (banging phone against desk repeatedly, descending into incoherent babble).

Here’s what I actually said: “I… what?”

He said, “Oh, yes, anytime, twenty-four hours a day, you can be transferred to a US call center if you request it. Would you like me to-”

“Yes, please!”

And he did, and there you have it. Anytime you get an offshore call center when dealing with AT&T’s DSL service, you can ask to be transferred to a US call center. Believe me, they have much better training. It still took an additional hour to figure out the problem, but now I know how to change settings on my own and keep experimenting until I find something that works.

I’m still considering the switch to cable internet. Not that I think Time Warner is a better company than AT&T. I’m convinced once any company gets very big, its gravity inverts and it turns into a great blackhole from which nothing kind or decent can escape.

Natural ways to prevent eye strain

BohRev — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 15:59:14 +0000

Eye strain is prevalent thanks to the widespread use of computers and fluorescent lighting. There are several things you can do to prevent it.

Remember to blink

Blinking is very important for keeping eyes moist and clean, and we tend not to do it as often as we should when we’re concentrating. This leads to dry eyes and the feeling your eyes are so tired you need to close them even if the rest of you isn’t tired. You can change this by consciously blinking at least once every three seconds. Of course you won’t remember this all the time, but do it every time you think of it and you’ll gradually train yourself to blink like you should.

You could even set a reminder every few minutes if you’re at the computer. Annoying, yes, but not as annoying as miserable eyes. Workrave also helps with this.

Another option is to blink rapidly a couple dozen times in a row. Do this easily, without strain or pressure on the eyelid muscles. Then close your eyes for a few seconds to rest them. Repeat the whole cycle as needed.

Move your eyes and change your focus

Eyes get tired of being in a fixed position all the time. Look around at other things every few minutes. Be sure to keep your head still when you’re scanning text so that your eyes do all the movement.

Careful with daydreaming

You know how after a good daydream, your vision can be slightly out of focus and it takes a moment to blink the fuzzies away? That’s because as your brain imagines an image powerfully enough, your eyes will change their focus to match what you imagine you’re looking at. (Trippy, huh?) Too much daydreaming can wear our your eyes. The solution doesn’t have to be giving up daydreaming, though – just close your eyes when you’re doing it.

3 old food savings tips re-examined

BohRev — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 18:30:59 +0000

Food is pricey, but it’s also a part of your budget where you have a lot of choices. There are a lot of older tips for saving money on your food budget still floating around out there, and I’m finding some of them just aren’t true – at least not where I live, and not at this time.

I’m going to take a look at some of them and explain just how true and not-so-true they are, and how to figure out the best solution for your own household food budget. This article will apply to North America, since that’s where I live, but hopefully it will give everyone some, ahem, food for thought.

1. Don’t eat out

It used to be a general truism that you paid a lot more to eat at a restaurant than to cook groceries at home. It makes sense – the restaurant has to pay cooks and waiters, and at home you’re doing the labor yourself for free (just your time). But due to corporate farming and U.S. government policy weirdness, it’s no longer that simple.

Groceries are more expensive in some regions than others. If they’re cheap where you live, it’s probably still true that eating out is never a bargain, so the less you do it, the more you’ll save. (Of course, we’ve all seen the 99 cent meals at the fast food joints, which give even cheap groceries a run for their money. Like I said, weirdness.)
Some restaurants serve unbelievably huge portions. You can split one dinner amongst 2-4 people, order water to drink, leave a reasonable tip and still come out ahead. Or you can all order separately and spend quite a bit, but take the leftovers home and make four meals out of it. This is especially true in regions where groceries are expensive, but it can also apply where they’re cheap: many frugal families have found at least one restaurant where they can eat out once in a while without feeling like they’ve been robbed.
The way to determine how it is in your area: diligently write down exactly what you spend on dinner for a few nights in a row. I know it’s hard to determine to the penny, but a rough idea will do. Once you know the average you spend to cook dinner at home, look at restaurants in comparison to that. Remember to includes items like tips and beverages. (As a former server, I must say: never scrimp on the tip to be frugal. It’s bad karma that will bite you in the ass. Be fair about the tip and scrimp by ordering water, filling up on bread and skipping appetizers and dessert, which are usually the very worst value for the money.)

2. Eliminate branded treats

This one’s still true and no question: making a mocha at home and taking it with you in a travel cup or Thermos is going to be cheaper than buying one at Starbucks. You can make your own muffins, energy bars and other treats, too. Making your own salad dressings can save you a good bit of money compared to buying store dressings.

Let’s say you just don’t have the time for baking muffins. You can still buy a dozen muffins at the grocery store for less than what Starbucks charges you for twelve muffins, freeze them so they stay fresh, and microwave one every day to take with you to work. With convenience treats, there are always ways to economize that won’t make you miserable.

Have meatless meals sometimes

It used to be generally true that meat was pricey, and basing every meal on it cost a lot. Meat has always been a luxury in the world because it takes a lot of vegetation to feed an animal, so by the time you’ve, say, converted loads of corn into a chicken, you could’ve just eaten the corn for a fraction of the price. But we’re through the looking glass now, and the U.S. has somehow rearranged things so that meat is often cheaper than beans and rice (am I the only one who’s all “That can’t be right” just reading over this sentence?), while the opposite situation is still true in many other countries where meat is regarded as a luxury.

How to self-scan at grocery stores

BohRev — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:43:29 +0000

More and more grocery stores are providing those U-scan (and similar) stations where you can check yourself out instead of waiting in line (at least the scanners usually don’t have lines as long as the regular lanes). But a lot of people don’t make use of them. Why?

There were a lot of bugs when they first came out, and people have the impression they aren’t reliable. Some of these “bugs” were the store employees not being trained enough to keep them working; some of the bugs were just the usual glitches that happen with computer-based systems.
People are technophobic. Yes, in a world where people are still freaked out by the concept of email, of course they worry they’ll touch the wrong button and blow something up, or it will eat their money and leave no evidence they paid, or whatever.
They seem impersonal. From my experience, so do most of the checkers, but then I’m not a chit-chatter.
People assume they don’t take coupons. This is untrue, at least of any I’ve seen. Coupons have barcodes – you just scan ‘em in the same way the checker would.

Self-scanning can save you loads of time, especially on quick grocery runs (you know, the ones where you’re the only person with a handbasket with 10 items, the express lane is closed, and you’re in line behind 12 people with carts full of stuff, all paying by check). In the past year, I’ve had no trouble with self-scanners working. The screens are very easy to read – much like a TV screen – and the buttons and instructions are easy to read and learn.

If you’re afraid of something going wrong, pick a time when foot traffic at the grocery store is light. If something goes wrong, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting someone to help you. But once you learn how to do it, you’ll never go back.

Make PVC bows and arrows for kids

BohRev — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:40:36 +0000

You Craft Me Up! figured out how to make bows out of PVC (and the arrows are just dowel sticks with notches at the string end:

WARNING: These really work! The first time I made one, I tested it in my garage and put a dent in my garage door! These should NOT be used indoors! And instruct the kids to never point them at anyone, pets, or cars! So far my kids can’t really launch them far, so we haven’t had any problems. knock on wood!

Disclaimer: I am actually an archer and have some pretty strong opinions about archery safety, even with little kids wielding lightweight bows. I think this is a great project, but have to very strongly second her final suggestion: “If you want to make them safer, add a small piece of foam, or nerf arrows to the ends of the dowels.” Please definitely do this! The dowel arrows will still have some impact, but at least blunting the ends makes it much less likely they’ll hurt anything or anyone. As careful as your kids may be, pets and wild animals can still rush out unexpectedly into the line of fire.

You could also put suction cups on the ends so they might stick to some targets. You can even buy suction cup arrows for not much, but they probably aren’t as durable as dowel ones you make yourself.

And what should you have kids shooting at? The best option would be hay – what a lot of serious archers use. Stick a few bales of hay in the yard and put targets on them. The arrows can actually stick in the hay, so kids will enjoy that. You can google “free printable archery targets” and find plenty that will print on standard paper, which should be big enough for kids shooting from just a few yards/meters away.

Egg Whites to Treat Acne

BohRev — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:10:23 +0000

If you’re sensitive to store bought treatments for acne, looking for something cheaper, or just want to make sure you’re using natural, green products, you should know that some people find relief from acne by applying egg whites to the affected skin. It’s not a proven cure, but it will shrink your pores temporarily. Some people believe it does a lot more than that; given how cheap and easy it is to try, it’s certainly worth a shot.

There are several ways you can use egg whites.

“Paint” the egg white over your acne at bedtime and leave it on overnight (or for at least fifteen minutes). Rinse it off with cool water. This is the simplest method, and involves only one ingredient for sensitive skin to tolerate.
Make a mask out of honey and egg whites. Mix one egg white with a spoonful of honey and apply. Let it sit for 15 minutes or until thoroughly dry, then rinse off with cool water. Honey is a great natural moisturizer that will protect your skin’s moisture while the egg whites firm and tighten your skin.
Mix beaten egg whites with crushed oatmeal, coffee grounds or almonds. Again, slather it on and rinse after 15 minutes. Oatmeal is soothing for irritable skin; coffee grinds stimulate firming and toning; almonds are full of good fats and oils that will moisturize your skin.

Contact Paper Stencils

BohRev — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:21:22 +0000

The Little Green Bean has found a terrific way to make stencils: cut them out of contact paper with a Cricut:

I made an amazing discovery today. Did you know that you can make your own stencils with your cricut using contact paper?? Why it took me this long to figure out, I have no idea, but at least now I know! Much cheaper than using the vinyl for the cricut or spraying your paper to make it sticky!

Now, for anyone who doesn’t know, the Cricut is a machine you can buy that will cut paper into shapes and letters. It doesn’t need a computer – you use their cartridges to do everything electronically. It’s a very neat device.

But if you don’t have one and don’t want to invest in one just yet, you could cut your stencils the old-fashioned way – with an X-acto blade, knife or scissors. The Cricut gives you more exact results in less time, but to save money, you can certainly do something like this:

Print off the lettering you want on your computer, using a font size that’s the actual size you want on whatever you’re stenciling.
Cut the letters carefully out of the paper (jab scissors through the paper in the middle of a letter, then carefully cut up to the letter’s edge, then around). This leaves you with a piece of paper with the letters missing.
Stick that on top of your contact paper and trace the letters’ outlines with a pencil.
Carve them out of the contact paper – not too difficult, since contact paper’s easier to work with than traditional vinyl stenciling materials.
Now you have a stencil to paint through.