ponjeng's Profile

I have tryptophobia, so foods with lots of small clustery holes makes my skin crawl. Like when pancakes have lots of little holes on the underside after flipping. I'll still eat it, but I avoid looking at it. Heebie jeebies.

I have to have chips with sandwiches. Lay's salt and vinegar with tuna, White Cheddar Cheetos with peanut butter and jelly ... I feel so unsatisfied if I don't have chips. I get pretty whiny about it, it's shameful.

I dump out cartons of french fries and pick out all the crunchiest ones first.

I don't like thick pith, so I'll peel all of the white and eat just the juicy inside pulp of an orange. Only if the pith is thin (like with tangerines or clementines) will I eat the entire segment. I'll also sprinkle a little salt on oranges, grapefruit, and mangoes.

Mayo and mustard on hot dogs.

I can't eat soft, fluffy marshmallows out of the bag; the texture freaks me out a little. I worry that I will accidentally inhale it and choke or something. So they have to be roasted so the outside is nice and crisp and the inside is melted and gooey.

Obviously, I have an obsession with crunchy foods.

I prefer soda flat. I like the flavor but the carbonation makes my throat burn.

Ellabee, same here. Plates are first, then utensils wrapped in napkins at the end.

Also, you know how silverware sets come with large and small spoons? I use my larger spoons for serving (just stick one in each dish) and the smaller ones for eating. With serving spoons, I've found that I tend to take one giant scoop that ends up being too much. With regular spoons, you can get a little of everything, and yes, if you want more, you can just go back.

Shoot me, I like mirrored closet doors. They can open up a space that doesn't have a lot of light (*cough my old bedroom at my parent's house*) and, in my experience, the quality of the mirror is excellent - no "fat" or "skinny" bias. I'm like slobound above, maybe I'm just really vain.

I've said this on a similar post before - I have a stack of bright white Martex washcloths I keep in a basket next to the sink. They're super absorbent, fluffy, and much more pleasant to dry your hands with than a flimsy paper towel, which hardly even gets them dry in the first place. There is also a longer hand towel hanging from a bar, which is what I usually use. (Hell, I'll even wipe my hands on my bath towel that's hanging from the over-the-door rack.)

Guests have their choice - they can use the big hand towel or have their own fresh washcloth. The cloths even have their own bin next to the trash can. And I just toss them all in with the towels on laundry day.

This system is cheap, solved my worries of wasting paper, and is liked by my guests. Works for me.

I've been pretty much paper towel-less for the past two years. I still leave a roll of paper towels out, but it takes almost a year to go through one. I use them for drying meats and for cleaning up the occasional dog puke.

Wet hands and dishes are dried with pretty towels that hang over the oven handle. Pretty cloth napkins are used at dinner. Surfaces are wiped with rags that I use until they're falling apart, and even then I usually cut off the loose threads and run a quick zig-zag seam along the edges with my sewing machine to keep them together. These rags are labeled "Kitchen" with a Sharpie and are neatly folded and stored in a dollar-store crate underneath the sink, and dirty ones are put into a small step trash can in the pantry.

In the bathroom, I have nice Martex washcloths ($15 I think for a pack of 20 at Costco). There's also a dedicated can for tossing them after you dry your hands. When the "nice" washcloths start looking ratty, they are transformed into kitchen cloths.

On laundry day, I simply collect all the towel bins and dump them directly into the washing machine. Then I spray the inside of the bins with cleaner (water + vinegar) and wipe it with a rag (which I throw in the washing machine as well).

For those who are concerned with the increase in water usage, I think it's very small compared to the use of paper towels. In order to make paper towels, trees are cut down, a ridiculous amount of water is used to make pulp, chemicals and resin are added, it runs through multiple machines which require electricity, designs are printed ... whereas with reusable rags, I run them once a week in the washing machine, and they take so little space I can usually just add them to the pile of whites.

Oh yeah, and that makes everything easiest - use all white or light-colored cloths. Sure, they're not as fun, but you also don't feel as bad when a pretty tea towel gets permanently stained and you can bleach them to your heart's content.

I always kept my underwear filed but it didn't occur to me to apply the same principle to my t-shirts!

What sold me on the KitchenAid is the attachments. I have the ice cream maker and the food grinder and they're both fantastic. It's also nice to be able to dump ingredients into the bowl and just let it run.

1/4 cup creme de cassis and the juice of 1/2 an orange.

I used to put a wet rag underneath my prized wood cutting board to prevent it from slipping, but one night I forgot about it and woke up the next morning to it rocking on the counter.

I was able to unwarp it (put water in the concave side and let it sit for a day) but from now on, drawer liner it is.

7-11 has reusable straws for 99 cents each. They're meant for Slurpees (the logo is on the straw), so they're perfect for smoothies and iced coffee. I wash them by hand with soap and hot water.