Another e-mail from my Mom. This one contains random bits of wisdom for a variety of topics ranging from the best way to peel a banana to how not to burn your house down via your clothes dryer. Enjoy!

Peel a banana from the bottom and you won’t have to pick the little “stringy things” off of it. That’s how the primates do it.

Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.

Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!

Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating. Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.

Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.

To really make scrambled eggs or omelets rich add a couple of spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and then beat them up.

For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed. Melt Andes mints in double broiler and pour over warm brownies. Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.

Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste of garlic and at the end of the recipe if your want a stronger taste of garlic.

Leftover snickers bars from Halloween make a delicious dessert. Simple chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!! Serve alone or with vanilla ice cream. Yum

1. Reheat Pizza
Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.

2. Easy Deviled Eggs
Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done easy clean up.

3. Expanding Frosting
When you buy a container of cake frosting from the st ore, whip i t with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and calories per serving.

4. Reheating refrigerated bread
To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.

5. Newspaper weeds away
Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers, put layers around the plants overlapping as you go cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.

6. Broken Glass
Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards of glass you can’t see easily.

7. No More Mosquitoes
Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.

8. Squirrel Away!
To keep squirrels from eating your plants sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn’t hurt the plant and the squirrels won’t come near it.

9. Flexible vacuum
To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.

10. Reducing Static Cling
Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and — ta da! — static is gone.

11. Measuring Cups
Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don’t dry cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.

12. Foggy Windshield?
Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car . Wh en the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth!

13. Reopening envelope
If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Viola! It unseals easily.

14. Conditioner
Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It’s cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It’s also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn’t like when you tried it in your hair…

15. Goodbye Fruit Flies
To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass fill it 1/2″ with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid, mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!

16. Get Rid of Ants
Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it
“home,” can’t digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works & you don’t have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!

17. INFO ABOUT CLOTHES DRYERS
The heating unit went out on my dryer! The gentleman that fixes things around the house for us told us that he wanted to show us something and he went over to the dryer and pulled out the lint filter. It was clean. (I always clean the lint from the filter after every load clothes.)
He told us that he wanted to show us something; he took the filter over to the sink, ran hot water over it. The lint filter is made of a mesh material - I’m sure you know what your dryer’s lint filter looks like.
Well,…the hot water just sat on top of the mesh! It didn’t go through it at all! He told us that dryer sheets cause a film ov er that m esh that’s what burns out the heating unit. You can’t SEE the film, but it’s
there. It’s what is in the dryer sheets to make your clothes soft and static free — that nice fragrance too, you know how they can feel waxy when you take them out of the box, well this stuff builds up on your clothes and on your lint screen. This is also what causes dryer units to catch fire & potentially burn your house down with it! He said the best
way to keep your dryer working for a very long time (& to keep your electric bill lower) is to take that filter out & wash it with hot soapy water & an old toothbrush (or other brush) at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long! How about that!?! Learn something new everyday! I certainly didn’t know dryer sheets would do that. So, I thought I’d share!

Note: I went to my dryer & tested my screen by running water on it. The
water ran through a little bit but mostly collected all the water in
the mesh screen. I washed it with warm soapy water & a nylon brush & I had it done in 30 seconds. Then when I rinsed it — the water ran right thru the screen! There wasn’t any pudding at all! That repairman knew what he was talking about!

Ugh - I hate to put up a post that is a reaction to a television show, but after watching tonight’s The Biggest Loser I had to put something up. Maggie and Brittany are a bunch of crybabies and complainers. These stupid asses don’t realize that this show is a golden opportunity. You do NOT go on this show, break your ass for a week in the gym, and then lose no weight like Maggie did tonight. It just doesn’t happen - the laws of nature don’t function that way. At one time I lost well over 100 pounds (before I consciously put it all back on because I got very lazy). I know the disappointment of not losing weight after a week of breaking your butt. But I also know that the reason why that happens is largely because you get horrible sleep during the week and you pig out when people aren’t looking.

These two fools aren’t getting away with anything - the entire world is watching and we know what the deal is!

Unfortunately, NBC is milking this show for everything that it’s worth so we didn’t get the opportunity to see who was last night’s biggest loser, but do we really need to know? Both Maggie and Brittany are the biggest losers on all of television right now. I don’t know who put the idea in Brittany’s head that a woman’s metabolism cannot, fundamentally, work as well as a man’s metabolism, but a slim, tone Ali threw that mindset into the can by winning the whole thing.

Week in and week out I watch this show and I wonder how much more overly dramatic these two dummies could possibly get, but then I remember that there needs to be some type of drama in this show or else some of the viewers will refuse to watch. For my part, I can’t wait for both of these complaining losers to get off the show.

And in case you’re wondering (probably not) - I’m hoping that either Roger, Kelly, or Dan wins this season.

For those of you that don’t know, Nintendo Wii has something called a Virtual Console. This is essentially a purchase and download service where you can buy old games, store them on the Wii, and play them whenever you want. First of all, this is ingenious. Nintendo found a way to charge us $20 - $40 for these games when they first hit the market 10, 15, and 20 years ago. Now they’re charging us $5 - $10 to buy the game again. Brilliant.

But more importantly, the Virtual Console gives a 1980’s Nintendophile like myself the ability to download games that I used to love and play them today. Recently I’ve downloaded the original Legend of Zelda (for both myself and my Mom - she loves this game), Super Mario Brothers 3, Mario Kart 64, the original SimCity, Punch-Out featuring Mr. Dream (apparently Tyson was cut off from the franchise) and Super Mario 64. These games are awesome. I’ve definitely invested (wasted?) a bunch of time playing these games lately.

The best part is that Nintendo releases new games each Monday. Here’s hoping that some old Final Fantasy games get released as well as some more updated SimCity games! And for those of you who have a Wii and haven’t looked at the Virtual Console yet - take a look. For those of you who don’t have a Wii…go out and start looking for one!

My apologies, folks. I started writing this post two weeks ago and I just didn’t have a chance to finish it. Two weeks ago Howard Stern and his crew went on vacation (again). This was the week of President’s Day. I was shocked - what was the reason for the vacation THIS time?!

It is absolutely amazing how much these guys go on vacation! It’s funny because Howard Stern used to be a show that was about people trying to make it in the real world. Now it’s a show where the crew has every Friday off - how many folks in the working world get that? Not many… Now it’s a show where the staff has some 8 weeks of vacation each year (if not more). How many people have THAT luxury at their job?

Listen, I understand that Howard and the gang have earned these perks at this point in their legendary careers. But when they ask me to pay thirteen bucks each month to listen to a show that has 10 minute commercial breaks (mostly filled with smutty commercials) when he advertised the satellite service as being “commercial free” during his last year on terrestrial radio (check the tapes), I sort of expected more. I understand the need for commercials on satellite talk radio since they have more listeners than the music channels - fine, no problems there. But why do the commercial breaks have to be ten minutes (or more!) long?

But I digress…

What WAS the reason for the vacation two weeks ago? Did the crew celebrate President’s Day for an entire week? Seriously, does anyone know what the deal was with this vacation?

Why is it such a big story that Will Ferrell’s latest movie is a huge bomb? This guy is one of the biggest “no talents” in recent history. How can anyone find a guy funny who plays the same shtick in every movie? All he does is overly exaggerate every few words in each sentence or play the role of someone who is just bewildered at the obvious.

Not only has he not made a good movie since Anchorman (in which HE was so-so at best, but the rest of the crew was alright), but he hasn’t played a new character since he was a cheerleader on Saturday Night Live. Speaking of which, the article linked above makes a good point in that Ferrell hasn’t invited Cheri Oteri to star in one of his movies yet.

Seems like now would be a good time, huh you dummy?

The current season of Lost is turning out to be pretty decent. This is definitely not the same show that started in September 2004 and I think that is rather obvious to anyone who has watched every episode. As one of my roommates said the other day, the first season of Lost has to be considered one of the best seasons of any television series ever - it was that good. Since then we’ve had the survivors from the tail end of the plane each come to the other side of the island and each die (except Bernard), a half-look into the history of the island that left more questions than anything else, and a freighter somewhere out in the ocean that is sending people onto the island. Anyway, Lost is still a decent show to watch and it has quickly become “must see TV” on Thursday nights.

I’ve also started watching The Biggest Loser on NBC. Sometimes I wonder what the deal is with the people on this show. You have folks who are literally given a golden opportunity to change their lives and some of them complain and DARE to go off of the diet? See, this is the problem with putting major weight loss on a national television network - they have to bring in a few people who may have inherently weak character to create drama for the viewers. I would rather just watch the entire starting cast stay with the workout program and lose as much weight as possible. This whole being voted off thing is weird.

One of the bad results from this set-up is what we saw last week. I forget the name of the guy, but he and his ex-wife are/were part of a team with three younger people. Well, it’s obvious to anyone watching that the younger folks have made a conscious decision to vote off the two older people whenever the opportunity comes up. And for the one guy who is in that younger group, I’m sure he knows that he’s going to be cut off when it comes down to just the two girls and him.

This added dramatic element is something that, as a viewer, I’m really not interested in watching. In fact, I’ve taken to DVRing the show so I can fast forward through the overly dramatic parts.

Smallville was back for a while and now it’s gone again. What’s the deal? I hope that we just had a one week hiatus and not a long-term vacation. For what it’s worth, the story between Clark and Lex has to pick up and begin to be something more than a teenage-level bitch fight every few weeks. I mean, how long can Clark be Superboy and continue giving up opportunities to put Lex in his place? We need something more from this show and I have a feeling that it’s on the way.

That’s been the extent of my television viewing over the last few weeks. I’ve been avoiding the political coverage on the news channels because it is completely boring at this point. All of the wrestling shows are a bore (with the exception of Jeff Hardy wrestling once in a while on RAW). There’s not been much good to watch on the regular channels these days. Maybe the end of the writer’s strike will bring some fresh shows to the boob tube!

The following article comes courtesy of the folks at New York Jersey Boys Tickets.

Sandwiched between Pennsylvania and New York, the state of New Jersey also known as the garden state has often been likened to a tapered barrel open at both ends. Overshadowed by the hustle and bustle of Manhattan, New Jersey is often not given its due by visitors, though it is a wonderland in its own right. Coasts, mountains, national parks, the arts, sports, Theatres, amusement parks and casinos, New Jersey has them all.

Home to approximately 40 museums on themes as diverse as arts, aviation, military, children, agriculture, golf, mining and what not, New Jersey does not disappoint a knowledge crawler. Add to this, the 15 major theatre companies and concert halls that compete with the theatrical magnificence of Broadway across the bay and have over the years held fort. Evita, Cats and Annie are all there for the culturally inclined.

42 Parks, 11 forests, 3 recreation areas and over 50 historic sites and districts are enough to satiate your activity urge and keep you away from home and your nagging wife / husband long enough. New Jersey was a hotbed of revolutionary unrest during the American civil war days and there are many well preserved historical sights of American importance.

Keeping up to its promise of something for everybody, the state packs about 10 amusement parks including Fantasy Island, Clementon, Hurricane Harbor and the land of the make believe. Camden waterfront, sky lands and Cape May all add up to one big family adventure. Roll up your fishing rods; dig out your camping gear and get the RV ready for that long promised trip with the kids.

But any mention of NJ entertainment is incomplete without the mention of Atlantic City, which truly lives up to its slogan of “always turned on”. Atlantic City is much more than just a humongous Casino; it is NJ’s answer to Vegas. With events, nightlife, spas, golf, fishing and water sports vying with slot machines and roulette tables, it is a fantasy land, a “must experience” in any NJ entertainment plan. It’s a place where the high and mighty shake a leg with the wannabes, where dreams are born and hopes shattered at casino tables. Where the gambler and the rationalist in you shamelessly expose the multiple personalities we all have inside us. Bally’s, Trump Plaza and the famously infamous Trump Taj Mahal are all inviting you to roll the dice, coaxing you to stake, ready to seduce you with its glamour.

And towering above all this is the grand lady, the symbol of America to the rest of the world, the famous Statue of Liberty. Entertaining in its own ways with the loads of trivia surrounding it, for example, how many of us Americans are aware that the statue was made in France? And gift from the republic of France to the great new hope called America? Now that is entertaining, isn’t it?

Al is the author and webmaster of a New York Jersey Boys resource website.

Will Smith’s latest movie, I Am Legend, will go down as a movie with some of the best previews and trailers in recent history. And, for my part, I have to say that it will go down as a major bore for all of the people who had the pleasure/displeasure of sitting through it. This one didn’t just miss the mark, it fired the gun in the opposite direction!

In truth, I hate to give this movie a bad review because there was so much potential in the concept and the original story is pretty entertaining. Yet, as a viewer I found myself wanting to care about the characters, but it just wasn’t possible. You get vague hints of the back story (though I imagine that most people know it thanks to the power of the internet) and the ending is impossible to care about (it’s too rushed, too out of line with 90% of the film, and too “easy”).

Will Smith does the best that can be expected in a role where he plays opposite a dog for most of the movie. The use of rabies-infected zombies is only marginally scary in the movie and the filmmakers missed a major opportunity to explore the zombie world during the middle of the film. Not good planning at all.

It looks like I Am Legend has grossed about $34 million to date (probably more once the Christmas numbers are added). I don’t think the movie has much drawing power left in it - almost every word-of-mouth review that I heard has been negative. Most of them go something like this, “Yeah, it was alright - not what I expected. It wasn’t that good.”

I agree. It was alright - not the worst movie ever, but not really a good movie either. My recommendation is that if you really want to see this movie, make it a Blockbuster night this spring.

Two articles were published today that I found interesting. The first is from TheStreet.com and it focuses on how Nintendo’s publishers are not seeing the windfall that Nintendo is seeing with respect to the incredible demand for Wii systems. The second is from PC World which relays information recently released by Nintendo regarding their market research, which happens to be the exact opposite of what TheStreet.com says!

Now, I know that many folks are not interested in reading about this aspect of the video game industry, but I had to get these articles out there. To me, these are fun reads because you have a somewhat serious issue (3rd party profits) being debated between two different entities. How exciting is that?!

Sorry, I’m a professional student at heart. The thought of two opposing arguments gets me excited - even if it has to do with video games! As a side note, Nintendo’s study marks the average Wii gamer at 29 years old. I’m 26, so I’m actually too young for the system!

Anyway, check out New Jersey Carpet Cleaning for the best carpet cleaning in the Garden State!

The Chief Executive Officer of Square-Enix made the comments below the other day. For me, these are really dumb comments made by the CEO of a really great company:

“The Wii is the antithesis of the Xbox 360,” he adds. “Xbox 360 is strictly for hardcore gamers. The attachment rate for the Xbox 360 is much higher than for the Wii. People who buy the 360 really like games.”

Regarding Sony, Wada believes they need to position the PS3 explicitly as a game machine instead of a supercomputer that also plays Blu-ray movies.

For those FF fans out there, this has got to be concerning. Sure, the CEO’s comments about Sony and the PlayStation 3 are pretty dead-on, but doesn’t reality prove his Wii and XBox comments to be false? Aren’t Wii owners completely infatuated with the younger, less-powerful system because it is strictly “fun to play?” Further, aren’t many XBox owners aggravated that they are paying a great deal of money for nothing more than a PC in console’s clothing and the always-feared “red ring of death?”

I’m not sure if my younger brother gets on to my blog too much any more, but he purchased an XBox 360 a few months ago and it has since had a bunch of technical problems. I brought the Wii home for Thanksgiving and I thought it was a hit. I think the CEO of Square-Enix may need to re-evaluate his definition of people who “really like games.”

And bring Final Fantasy back to Nintendo already, damn it!