Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 1:07PM 
A bag of rice saved my iPhone a few days ago. I am often klutzy, sometimes dumb and occasionally very unlucky. On Sunday I hit the trifecta, managing to be all 3 at once. There’s a happy ending to this story and this may be the most useful piece of advice you ever get from this site, so read on.
2 Comments | Rice, advice, computer, iPhone Sunday, September 11, 2011 at 4:02PM Saturday morning at the farmers’ market was supposed to be a quick trip for fruit and vegetables. I had errands aplenty and an evening baseball game. (Fast forward to evening activity - "my" Washington Nationals got creamed by the worst team in major league baseball, the Houston Astros, by a score of 9-3. Ouch!) But as often happens when I see great stuff at the farmers’ market, I ended up with an impulse purchase. This time it was 2 huge bunches of basil - 1 green and the other purple. I'm surely not the only impulse buyer, but I am always chiding myself afterward, for not sticking to my shopping list.
Purple basil is beautiful. It has a stronger, less sweet taste than the green type.
The basil only cost $1 per bunch, so it wasn’t a major budget-buster, but I did need to figure out what to do with them. I realized my predicament standing in front of Anthony’s farm stand and he suggested drying the herbs.
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 9:59AM I bet you use a microwave oven. It’s nothing to be ashamed of – 90% of American households have one. Whether you use it for heating up packaged meals, popping popcorn, defrosting frozen meat, or cooking “real food”, a microwave can save you time and even sometimes do a job better than other cooking methods.
Before I started blogging I used my microwave for limited, rather uninventive tasks - defrosting, reheating, melting chocolate, and cooking vegetables. But I got more inventive this summer. I experimented with single serving microwave cheesecakes and my taste testers judged them to be a success. (Husband and darling daughter happily ate them up and I found my daughter looking forlornly into the fridge for another one a few days later.) And I discovered that one of my cooking gurus, Harold McGee, found that cooking vegetables in a microwave is actually healthier than boiling or steaming them.
Here are 3 tips for microwave cooking success. (For other tips, see Microwave Cooking 101.)
