MollyNYC's Profile

I see that two of their criteria are commute time and taxes.
Of course commute time isn't a consideration if you actually live in the city in question--it's for people who live in the 'burbs. So why pretend that's about these cities?

As for taxes--this may reflect the portion of Forbes readership who believe paying taxes is like enduring something from a Stephen King novel [1]. I live in NYC, the highest-taxing city in the country; it's a few hundred bucks a year, which, among other economic advantages, is more than offset by not needing to own, insure and feed an automobile.

Also, a cynical person might suppose that these ratings were less influenced by whether a city was interesting or stimulating, or if its residents were actually happy, than by issues of race and class.
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[1] Some may remember Stephen Forbes' short-lived run in the GOP primary a few presidential elections back; his platform consisted almost entirely of a plan to decrease his own taxes, which he apparently felt was a matter of national importance.

This is good. There's no skill that makes being broke as endurable as being able to cook. Being able come up with a tasty, nourishing meal at the end of a hard day makes a HUGE difference in quality of life.
Two considerations:
1. Braising, as a technique. Takes tough, cheap cuts of meat and makes them delicious. In fact, foods that are cooked for long periods at relatively low temperatures (soups, stews, etc.) USUALLY favor cheap ingredients. [1] [2]
2. If you can teach these guys (or get them started so they can teach themselves) to cook eggs reliably--not just the way they like them, but the ways most people like them, plus home-fries, toast, bacon/ham/sausage and pancakes, they'll have most of the skill-set to work the breakfast shift in most diners.
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[1] Here's my trick: Bear in mind that if you BOIL your food in a container with a lid on it for at least two minutes or so, you knock out all the bacteria--it's like autoclaving it. That being said, what you do in the morning while you're getting ready for work (or maybe the night before--this works overnight, as well) is put together one of these long-cooked dishes. (I'm assuming none of these guys has a crock-pot.) Bring the liquid to a boil for a couple of minutes with the lid on, and put it in a REALLY hot (preheated) oven. Then turn the oven off. The residual heat will cook the food. The food won't go bad (no bacteria) and the oven isn't a danger (it's off).
[2] Homemade soup. Mostly water--the cheapest ingredient there is. With a nice hunk of bread, it's a dinner that a king wouldn't scorn. Moreover, it can be made with stuff you find when you clean out your vegetable bin at the end of the week (plus maybe an over-gnawed chicken carcass, etc.), which means it's close to free.

REALLY IMPORTANT: If you haven't done all the shopping for your Thanksgiving dinner, do it right away, as soon as you've decided on your menu. Grocery stores get increasingly and unpleasantly crowded during Thanksgiving week.

Somewhat OT, but this spaghetti looks like a very pretty method of coloring neurons in transgenic lab animals called Brainbow ( http://cbs.fas.harvard.edu/science/connectome-project/brainbow ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainbow ).

If you've ever been arrested, I wonder if you can get your actual mugshot for something like this--or y'know, for a cherished family keepsake.

There's always boarding school.

Okay, not funny, but for years, I wondered why a rather tony west-coast shelter magazine had so many ads in the back for schools that specialized in "troubled" or "rebellious" kids--what was it about the mag's readership that led to them having bratty offspring? Eventually realized that those kids were being shipped out, not because they were worse than other kids, but because the mag tended to attract the sort of parents who would (and could afford to) banish them for not being "trophy" kids. Basically, the kids didn't go with the curtains.

AnnieDownUnder: Here's my system. Multiply the number of kids you're traveling with by the number of hours you'll be in the plane (including delays). Then accumulate at least that number of things that will divert your kids a bit: little toys, little treats, little books or comics. Produce one item per kid per hour.

If you want to win the gratitude of other parents sitting nearby, bring extras.

Just spit-balling here, but is there something one could do in anticipation of the snow plow (or for that matter, the snow itself) to keep the path clear?

Possibly some sort of temporary barrier that can be put up quickly (a walk-through tent made of painters' tarps, e.g.) ?

I love real vaseline glass, but the cool thing about it isn't the color itself. It's that the color comes from uranium in the glass. So when you shine a UV light on it, it glows.

I'm with Mona D on this. 120 feet may be smaller than the average American kitchen if you count freestanding houses, but for most people who live in city apartments (and who I'm guessing are the main Apartment Therapy demographic), it's huge.