What to Buy People for Christmas and Birthday Presents

Shopping, ,

So we often struggle to know what to buy people for Christmas or for their birthdays. Coming up with gift ideas can be a tricky thing at the best of times. Well there is a possible solution that will help you out if you are stuck for ideas.

Most people (well I guess maybe only in a certain age group – you may struggle with the older generation) will be users of Amazon. And as you may know yourself, Amazon have a service called ‘wish list’. You can add things to your own wish list for other people to buy for you but the great thing is that if you want to find out what to buy someone, you can search their own wishlist. You can find an Amazon wishlist either by searching with the person’s name or with their email address. if they have a unique name then this can be easy enough to do but if they have a common name then that may not be a great way to search. So, best bet is to use their email address.

Once you have found a wishlist for someone you can see when they put stuff on their wishlist, so it may be better to buy them something that they have added recently so that there is less likelihood that they have already bought it for themselves and forgotten to take it off their wishlist.

The other great thing is that if you buy something through their wishlist then it is then removed from the list so that if someone else goes to look at their list it is no longer on there so they do not get duplicate presents.

Both Amazon US and Amazon UK have the wishlist service and you can check them out here:

Amazon US Wishlist Search

Amazon UK Wishlist Search

How To Make the Best Pork Crackling

Food & Drink,

If you are a fan of pork crackling but struggle to get it as crispy as you might like it then, having tried various experiments, we have come up with a couple of key ways to get your pork crackling well, crackling rather than breaking your teeth with a dull crunch or worse still a chew.

The key to getting the skin to crackle is to have it as dry as possible before putting it in the own. This can be done in a number of ways but one way to give it a head start is to take the pork joint out of it’s wrapping the night before roasting  and leaving it open in the fridge overnight.

The next day pat the skin down with a paper towel to take any extra moisture off, score the skin with a very sharp knife (but don’t cut down into the flesh) and rub with sea salt. Then the joint is ready to go in the oven.

When first cooking, put the oven on to a high setting (240 degrees or so) and cook for 20 minutes at that setting before turning the oven down to 160 degrees. Whilst the oven is cooling take the joint out and rub with fat (we used left over chicken fat) and more salt. Return to the oven for cooking slowly (35 minutes per 500g). Leave the joint to rest for 15 minutes after cooking.

Cheap Bottled Water

Food & Drink, Health, Shopping, ,

It is important for people to drink enough water but unfortunately some people can be against drinking tap water – whether that be from the taste or the fact that we may not know exactly what chemicals go into our tap water which can be slightly worrying. Although all tap water in the US and UK must meet certain standards, there are some people who, for their own reasons, prefer to drink bottled water. Whether or not bottled water is better for us can be disputed but it looks like bottled water is here to stay for the time being at least.

Personally I have different preferences depending on which country I am in at the time, as tap water tastes different in each country. I would prefer to drink tap water wherever it tastes OK, but maybe in some countries where I am not aware of what is being added to the water I feel like it is advisable to be a bit cautious on this.

However, there is a solution which means that you can drink tap water and filter it while you drink it, so that it tastes and is as ‘clean’ as bottled water, but without the waste of throwing away the empty bottle, and I will give details of this below.

Bottled Water – Too Much Waste

However, I do have an issue with bottled water in that it just produces far too much waste. Bottled water is amongst the highest rising beverage in terms of sales over the last few decades. Although the bottles are recyclable, the incidence of people recycling water bottles is quite low in the USA in particular, but also in other countries. This means that the build up of plastic waste is excessive. Over 50 billion bottles of water are consumed in the US every year and this figure is rising and not enough of these bottles are being recycled. So it is important that we find a way either to recycle more water bottles or to use less of them.

Drinking Filtered Tap Water

So here is a revolutionary new way to effectively drink bottled water, but to drink it out of your tap, and not have the problem of having to keep recycling the bottles, or producing lots of plastic waste.

This new product is called the Bobble and it is an FDA approved, BPA free, refillable, reusable and recyclable bottle that you can use as much as you like.

To use the Bobble, you just fill it up with tap water – it is like a sports water bottle and whenever you drink out of it, it automatically filters the water as you drink it. The filtered water meets all of the FDA standards for drinking water and the filter eliminates toxins and chemicals such as chlorine as well as other organic contaminants.

Each filter lasts for around 2 months or 300 fills of the bottle and is fully recyclable itself. The Bobble comes in 3 sizes, and for around $10 or under you can get the equivalent of 300 bottles of water – so effectively a price of under 4c a bottle, so this also makes financial sense if you are used to buying bottled water.

Check out the links for the Bobble in the UK and the US below:

          

How Can I Replace My Broken Fridge Door Handle?

Home & Garden

If you have somehow managed to break your fridge door handle, whether that be by pulling it a bit too vigorously or snapping the plastic connector when changing the direction that the doors are facing, you may feel at a loss as to how you might replace the broken handle. However, fear not, as you can actually buy replacement door handles for your fridge for many popular makes including Bosch, Beko, Hotpoint, Ariston, Whirlpool, LEC, Zanussi and many other popular makes.

You can check online on some of the sites that sell electrical spare parts or else you can check on places like eBay and Amazon. Spare fridge handles only cost around £20/$30 to replace so they are really not too expensive to get your fridge looking like new again.

Click through either the US Amazon or the UK Amazon links to see more options on replacement fridge handles.

  

Window Seat or Aisle Seat?

Travel

As someone who travels a lot I often think about my choice of airline seat and which one I should opt for! My staple choice is to choose an aisle seat on the left hand side of the plane that is about half way back.

But which one is the best one to choose? Well it does depend on a number of factors. If you want to see the view and get some nice pictures then you should obviously choose a window seat. What you do need to do though if you are really bothered is to check which will be the best side of the plane to be on as the window seat on one side may have way better views than the window seat on the other side of the plane.

Aisle Seat?One reason though that I choose an aisle seat is that when you are in an aisle seat you can choose to get up and walk around as much as you like without bothering anyone else. And it seems that research supports this theory as more people suffer from DVT who are situated in non-aisle seats. I would imagine that this is because when you need to ask for one or two people to move every time you want to get out of your seat, you are most likely to do this as little as possible. DVT has a higher incidence when you are not moving around so those in the aisle seats that get up more often are going to be less at risk.

Window Seat?

If you are on a short haul flight (say below 4 hours) then you are less likely to be affected by this so the choice between aisle seat and window seat may be less clear. Maybe then it will depend on how well you sleep on a plane and what time of day it is. Maybe if you are on a short flight that goes of an evening or night time, you may just want to sleep. So if you choose a window seat you are not going to be bothered by anyone else.

However, on longer haul flights with a higher risk of DVT then an aisle seat may be a better choice and may even give the chance to stretch your legs into the aisle every now and again. Even better, if you can get a bulkhead seat then you can get even more legroom. However, beware on the bulkhead seats that you may be sat next to a screaming child!