Fit For Forty: RunPhones
Jan 9, 2013 Product Review
There are only six-and-a-half weeks until the Disney Princess Half Marathon. And while I’ve definitely been slacking off exercise-wise for the past month or so, I’m still very far ahead of where I was at this point before the last two races. Today I did three miles and while it was very hard, it was doable.
I took my new RunPhones for a spin. They’re a cross between a headband, earmuffs, and headphones. Training for the Princess Half kinda sucks if you live in the northeast, because you’re doing most of your training during winter. The RunPhones definitely helped.
Of course even in the cold I get sweaty while jogging, but these are easy to clean. You open up the little Velcro pouch holding the headphones and take them out, and throw the headband in the washing machine.
My only complaint about them is that they occasionally slipped back from my ears about a half inch. They were easy enough to adjust, but I feel like if they made the back of the headband a little thinner they would stay in place better. But still, this is a minor complaint – they worked very well, kept my ears warm, and sounded great.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Disney Princess Half Marathon, exercise, review, RunPhones
T-Fal Deep Fryer Review
Sep 4, 2012 Product Review
I’ve been talking a lot about what I’ve been frying so far in my new deep fryer. I posted pictures of my first attempt at veggie tempura (it was awesome), and I wrote a whole post about my three tries at making great French fries. I’ve done hush puppies and even battered bananas (they were to die for). The kids are begging to deep fry Oreos. My husband (who was initially against the fryer) is hoping for fish & chips.
But I haven’t written much about the fryer itself. It’s a T-Fal Ultimate EZ Clean. When I decided a few weeks ago that I wanted a deep fryer I checked out pretty much every single one on Amazon. I kept going back to the T-Fal for one simple reason: it claimed to easily filter and drain the oil for you, and just about all of the parts could go in the dishwasher. I know myself and what’s likely to relegate an appliance to the basement. A complicated cleaning procedure would do it for sure. Could this one really be that easy?
There were a lot of Amazon reviews claiming that the filtering and draining process really was spectacularly simple, but there were just as many claiming that after using the fryer for the first time and leaving it to drain, they’d come back to find the oil all over their kitchen!
WHAT?!?
How could I even think about buying a fryer that might leave me with that kind of mess? But something else had to be going on. How could so many reviewers love the thing and so many others have such a huge problem?
I read through every review, and a couple people had solved it. Under the fryer there’s a plastic reservoir that you’re supposed to drain the oil into. It has two openings: one in the front that slides open when you turn the fryer’s lever to the drain position, and one in the back to pour the oil back into the fryer. That second opening has a screw-on cap. If you leave that cap on when trying to fill the reservoir with oil, the air inside the container has no place to go. The oil bubbles up around the front opening as the air tries to get out, and most of the oil spills outside of the fryer, making an unimaginable mess.
And here’s the kicker: nowhere is this mentioned in the directions. They never tell you to leave the cap off while draining the oil.
Had I not read those reviews, it would not have occurred to me to take the cap off. The reservoir slides nicely into the fryer with the cap on. HUGE design flaw.
I tried this cap theory out using water before I ever put oil in the fryer. Even after proving it to be true, the first time I drained the fryer I put it on a baking sheet just in case. But not a drop was spilled. I’ve drained the oil three times now, and the process really is that easy. Plus, the oil gets filtered so well it looks like new each time I pour it back into the fryer. I don’t know how many uses I’ll get out of it, but I’m keeping it in the fridge so I’m hoping to use it for a while – peanut oil isn’t cheap!
It’s also important to note that the reservoir only holds a tiny bit more than the Max fill line in the fryer. You shouldn’t overfill a fryer anyway, but if you do, it will leak during the draining process.
Once you’ve drained the fryer, you wipe the heating element off, and everything else goes into the dishwasher. Couldn’t be easier.
It takes up practically the whole dishwasher, but it fits!
The fryer itself is very easy to use. If you’re worried about splatter you can even raise and lower the fry basket with the lid on. The basket holds a decent amount of food, but you don’t want to crowd the basket, especially with anything battered.
Veggie Tempura
The fryer heats up quickly (less than fifteen minutes for cold-from-the-fridge oil) and returns to its max temperature quickly as well. However, my oil never got up to the 374 degrees listed on the dial. It stopped at 330. I’m not claiming that my thermometer is exactly right, but I’m confident that it is not off by as much as forty-four degrees!
Still, that was hot enough to cook all of my foods well. I’m going to do some testing at some point to see if the thermometer is simply inaccurate, or if it is accurate but the heating element simply isn’t powerful enough to reach the max.
The other small problem is the placement of the “on” indicator light – I can’t see it! It’s basically behind the dial. Very awkward.
But otherwise, this fryer is excellent. Reading over this review it seems like I spend a lot of time complaining and not much time praising, but the good points of the fryer are very simple: it fries well, it cleans up easily.
I highly recommend it.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Deep Fryer, Food, review
Fix A Broken Suitcase Zipper Pull Easily
Aug 25, 2012 Product Review
No matter how much I spend on a suitcase, the sipper pulls always break within a year or two. Such a pain in the butt. After losing both main sipper pulls on my favorite suitcase, I finally decided to try to fix them myself.
I found Zippermend on Amazon, and it was so inexpensive I figured it wouldn’t work, but also that I wouldn’t waste much money trying, so I bought two. Here’s what happened:
Keep in mind, you still need someplace not broken to attach the new zipper pull to. When zipper pulls break they usually rip off, taking half of the piece that was holding them. But if you’re lucky, you’ll still have the rings that you’re supposed to put your lock into to keep the suitcase closed (you know, the ones we used to use before the TSA said they had to get into our suitcases and go through our underwear).
Tags: broken zipper, review, Travel
Get any TV online with WD TV Live–and a chance to win one!
Jun 19, 2012 Contest/Giveaway
[This giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to the winner, Stephanie, comment #12. Thank you to all who entered.]
The ability to play Netflix movies and show the pictures from my laptop on a TV is so prevalent at this point, I get annoyed when I can’t. With the WD TV Live Streaming Media Player from Western Digital selling on Amazon for a price so low they wouldn’t even show it to me unless I put it in my cart, there’s little excuse not to have every TV in your home connected to the internet and your home network.
My favorite thing about this box is its size. Its footprint is smaller than a standard square napkin:
In fact, it’s so small and light that you can hang it on the wall with just a couple of screws or nails.
Setup was extremely easy. I hooked up the included power cord and RCA cable and put the batteries into the remote. It scanned for WiFi signals (you can also hook it up directly to a modem if you don’t have WiFi), and I chose mine and put in my password. I have to admit I was worried at this point – the WiFi signal was only showing one bar. I’ve never gotten anything to work on one bar. To compare, my laptop in the same location gets four or five bars.
I went right to Netflix and signed in with no problem, and started streaming an episode of The Office I’d been watching the night before. It loaded quickly and played all the way through! On one bar!
Cake Pop Stands from KC Bakes
Feb 28, 2012 Product Review
I’ve been making cake pops for a few months now. They’re fun, easy, and incredibly delicious (and a nice morning treat with my current “dessert with breakfast” diet). But the one thing that bugged me about the whole process was the Styrofoam blocks I was going through. I tried wrapping them in packing tape and poking holes through with a sharp pencil so that they wouldn’t fall apart so easily. I tried buying the denser blocks used to make “fake” wedding cakes. I even tried making the cake pops upside-down, which gives them ugly, flat tops.
Then I found the pretty, practical, affordable cake pop stands by KC Bakes. I purchased three of them at a discount, with a promise of a write-up if I found them useful. And oh my yes, I do. So does my number-one cake pop helper.
First of all, they’re infinitely reusable, as opposed to Styrofoam, which breaks down rather quickly with all of that poking and wiping. If you’ve been using Styrofoam, these stands will pay for themselves after not that long.
The holes are the perfect size for regular sucker sticks. They’re well spaced so that you have access to each cake pop. They come in a variety of sizes and colors.
These stands clean up easily. If you drizzle chocolate on them you just wait for it to dry, and it lifts right off cleanly with the help of a fingernail. If you drip chocolate into one of the holes, it can be picked out easily with a toothpick. This was the biggest improvement over my Styrofoam blocks: those were nearly impossible to clean.
The “skinny mini” six-hole size is also perfect for gift giving, at $15. If I’d had my act together I would’ve bought a half dozen of the small ones and given them to teachers for Christmas, filled with cake pops, of course. End of the school year, perhaps.
If you’re a cake pop maker – or want to be – I’d definitely recommend these stands. They’ll make it so much easier to produce pretty, professional-looking cake pops. Your friends and family won’t believe you didn’t buy them from a bakery.
Plus, I can’t wait until my next party: the centerpiece of the buffet table will definitely be a gorgeous display of cake pops!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 1. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
The best non-stick pan I’ve ever used in my entire life. Seriously
Jul 21, 2011 Product Review
How’s that for a review headline? It’s not an exaggeration. I’m something of a cookware nut, with a drawer full of expensive pans, including lots of Calphalon One. But I’d never even heard of GreenPan before encountering the company at a gift guide trade show. I didn’t linger at the table too long because, well, I’m not all that green. I’m happy to do my part for the environment up to a point, and that point is when I have to give up quality in exchange for being green. I never would have purchased this pan without trying it first. I would have been too skeptical. I was curious enough to accept a unit for review, but didn’t expect to like it.
Turns out they already had me pegged on their site. They describe their mission as bringing “constainability” to their products: “‘Convenient’ as we don’t ask you to change your lifestyle, ‘sustainable’ as we are preserving the natural resources of our planet in a responsible way.” I’m helping without having to do anything. That’s how I like my green living.
I can say without reservation that this is the best non-stick pan I’ve ever used. GreenPan sent me a 12-inch frying pan from their GreenPan Copenhagen collection. I’ve had it for a couple of weeks now and have been trying it out with foods that usually require lots of oil or butter to keep from sticking. When I make scrambled eggs I want them to slide out of the pan, and I hate it when a thin layer of egg sticks and burns and then gets all over the “good” egg, but that usually requires an amount of oil that I’m just not willing to use.
I first tried cooking scrambled eggs in my GreenPan with a small amount of butter. I couldn’t believe it, but the eggs just slid around like they were on a thick coating of oil. Next time I tried them with no butter or oil at all. Not only did nothing stick, but there were no little overcooked bits, and once I took the eggs out of the pan you couldn’t even tell I’d cooked anything in it!
This morning Jake wanted pancakes, so I did the ultimate test: pancakes in the GreenPan with no oil or butter whatsoever. Adding to the difficulty, Jake likes chocolate chips in his pancakes, and they usually burn right onto the surface of whatever pan I’m using. But not this one! It was flawless. I was able to wipe out the little bits of chocolate that remained with a paper towel, instead of the scrubbing I have to do on my other pans. (Of course, I wouldn’t use this pan routinely for pancakes, unless I only needed to make one at a time – I just wanted to test out the surface.)
I even used it to reheat macaroni and cheese. I figured that all that cheese sauce would stick and get crusty, but no. Not one bit. I’m seriously impressed.
The design of this pan is fantastic, with no rivets inside for food to cling to. Plus the handle is all metal, which means you can put it right into the oven no problem.
I think the best test of a review unit is asking myself, would I buy it with my own money? Well, I love this pan so much that I purchased an 8-inch GreenPan as well. I’m pretty sure that the next one I’m going to buy is the GreenPan Dubai 8” loaf pan – just the other day I ruined a loaf of rye when I couldn’t get it out of its oiled pan. I can’t wait to report on that one.
I also desperately want to purchase GreenPan universal lids for my pans, but can’t seem to find them online in the US – I’ve written to the company and will update this post with what I find out. UPDATE: The universal lids aren’t available in the US yet! Wahhhh! But I’ll let you know when they are.
So, to sum up: if you care about the environment and want to buy your cookware and bakeware from a company that also cares, GreenPan is for you. And if you don’t care about the environment at all but just want the best nonstick pan out there, GreenPan is also the company for you. I almost wonder if they’d have better sales among people like me if they marketed the same products under a non-green name.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 1. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Don’t leave money on the table, use Coupon Cactus!
Jun 28, 2010 Paid/Sponsored Post
The following is a sponsored post. I wrote the entire post myself based on my own experiences with CouponCactus.com, and can truthfully and wholeheartedly say that I really like the site and will continue to use it.
I do most of my shopping online at this point, everything from shoes to food to batteries to computers. One of the best things about online shopping is the ability to comparison shop and get the best price, and every bit of savings helps. So the chance to earn cash back for purchases that I would be making anyway gets me giddy.
Coupon Cactus is a cash-back, coupon and sale site with savings from thousands and thousands of stores, and the best part is that it is completely totally 100% free to use. There are three ways to save money using this site. I’ve used one of them, cash back, twice already. I signed up for the site very quickly and got started.
Cash Back
A few nights ago a light bulb fell out of my kitchen ceiling onto the counter and glass shattered everywhere. Besides nearly scaring me half to death, it reminded me that I needed light bulbs. One by one those particular recessed reflector bulbs have been going out and I haven’t been able to find replacements locally – it’s a weird size. So I went on to the Coupon Cactus site and searched for “light bulbs” and was happy to see a bunch of results. A store called 1000 Bulbs sounded promising, and offered 3% cash back, so I checked it out. They had my bulb, so I bought a dozen, because the bulbs were cheaper if I bought twelve or more. So, I got a great price from a store I’d never heard of before, and I’ll also get about $1.60 in my Coupon Cactus account.
The way it works is this: you sign up for Coupon Cactus – and remember, that’s free – and then use it as a portal to get to online shopping sites. As long as you’ve signed in to Coupon Cactus and make your purchase from that same window you started in, that’s all you have to do. You don’t have to enter any codes or do anything special, just check out. And then later you’ll see the money in your account. Four times a year, Coupon Cactus sends you a check or deposits your money in your PayPal account (if there’s less than $10, they roll it over to the next quarter).
Then this evening as I was cleaning my desk I noticed that I’m running low on business cards, and with BlogHer coming up I don’t want to get caught without any. So, I went to the site I always go to for business card printing, UPrinting.com, and started ordering. Then I remembered Coupon Cactus, and thought I’d check just in case UPrinting was offering cash back. It was! So I put in my order, and the 4% cash back I’ll get from ordering my business cards is already pending in my Coupon Cactus account.
Coupons and Sales
Another way to save with Coupon Cactus is by using their coupon codes and sale listings, and often these savings are in addition to the cash back I talked about above. With some of the coupons you need to copy a code and enter it at check out, with other offers the savings will be reflected automatically. There are some great coupons listed, like 25% off of Ross Simons (+ 2% cash back), 20% off of Popcornopolis (+ 4% cash back), and a Steve Madden coupon that almost made me fall off of my couch: 15% off of a $75 or more order, plus free shipping, plus 5% cash back. Drool. And that last one is exclusive to Coupon Cactus! Keep in mind, these offers do expire, but new offers come in every day as well.
Referrals
Quite possibly the easiest way to earn money on Coupon Cactus is to get your friends, family, co-workers, dog walker, kids’ teachers, and blog readers (ahem!) to sign up for Coupon Cactus using your unique code (mine is 129693 – please use it!). For the rest of eternity, as long as the internet and Coupon Cactus exist, whenever someone who signs up with your referral number gets cash back, you also get cash back – 25% of what they got! And that doesn’t come out of their share, it comes out of Coupon Cactus’ share, so spread your code far and wide and you could earn free money just because your friends and family went shopping.
Searching
Depending on what you’re shopping for (browsing or going for a specific item) and whether or not you know which store you want to buy from, there are a bunch of different ways to look for coupons and sales and cash back. The tabs at the top let you look for the biggest discounts, or the newest discounts, stores that have free shipping, sales and coupons that are expiring, the most popular discounts, and of course by store or category. Or you can just search for a specific item, like “water shoes” or “camping stove.”
There are coupons and cash back offers for just about everything you can think of, even travel. If you have any questions you can check out the CouponCactus FAQ page for all of the details. As for me, I have a gift to buy for my husband, and I’d love to save some money on it!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has Compensation Levels of 12 & 13. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, and the NYC Moms Blog.
Tags: Coupon Cactus, review
Queen finally comes to Rock Band
Oct 20, 2009 Around NYC
I took another visit to the MTV offices in Times Square Monday to play some more Rock Band. I’ve been a huge fan of Rock Band since my mom bought it for us two Christmases ago (honestly I don’t think I had touched our XBox 360 before that). It’s something our whole family can do together. And we played the crap out of that first Rock Band set, so over the summer MTV gave us a Rock Band 2 bundle, which is a great improvement over the first one. The guitar and drums are now wireless, and both instruments are sturdier and more fun to play. And the best part? Just about all of the music from Rock Band 1 can be stored on your hard drive and played with Rock Band 2 – no switching discs!
So Monday’s fun? I got to try out two different sets of downloadable content, both being released Tuesday: 10 songs from Queen, and the Abbey Road album for The Beatles Rock Band.
The Abbey Road songs were great, but I’m not as familiar with those Beatles songs as I am with some of their other songs. Of course the great thing about Rock Band is that it’s gotten me listening to a lot of music I never would have otherwise. So I can’t wait to get more familiar with those songs. [UPDATE: I just realized I forgot to mention that the Beatles songs cannot be played on the original Rock Band games. They can only be played on The Beatles Rock Band.]
I had a lot more fun with the Queen songs. I love Queen, and I’ll be downloading them Tuesday when I get back from Sesame Street. As if I need another thing to keep me up late. But I’m sure I can convince The Ass to have a little Queen marathon with me. :-)
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
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