Life hacks

I was thinking about a couple of little things that have made my life a lot better in the last year and I figured I’d share:

Buying cheese powder

I love mac & cheese, particularly Annie’s sharp cheddar. However, 1) they always give too many noodles and not enough cheese and 2) Annie’s switched over to only selling either gluten free (which has a glue-like consistency) or organic (and I’m philosophically, or at least stubbornly, against organic food). However, it turns out that you can get cheese powder on Amazon. I can use as much as I want (I discovered that there is such a thing as “too much cheese powder”) and on any pasta I want.

Hemming my jeans

I took a jeans-making class last year and, although I doubt I’ll ever make another full pair of jeans (it was a lot of work), I am now pretty comfortable with modifying existing pairs. I recently got a pile of $10-a-pop jeans from Goodwill and spent 20 minutes hemming up the bottoms and now have jeans that fit me much better than the $80-a-pair jeans I used to get.

To hem jeans you need a sewing machine, iron, and the ability to sew a straight line, but other than that, it’s pretty straight-forward. Put them on, pin where you want the hem to fall, measure. Say it’s 5″ from the existing hem (shut up, I’m short). Draw a line with a Sharpie (or tailor’s chalk, but I’m assuming most people reading this don’t have a well-stocked sewing room), giving yourself 1.5″ for the new hem (so a line 3.5″ from the existing hem). Cut off just within that line. Fold over the hem .5″ Sew it down. Iron the shit out of it. No one likes to switch modes and iron, but it’ll look super jenky and handmade if you don’t. Then fold over the hem again, which shaves off the last .5″, and sew it down ~7/16″ from the edge (as far away from the edge as possible, while still catching your folded-over part).

If you want the overstitching to be visible, use some sort of triple stitch, but I usually just use the normal stitch and it looks fine. You will probably have to hand-crank the machine across the seams, since it’ll be trying to stitch through 12 layers of denim at that point. Then iron again and you’re done.

Cooking breakfast on weekends

I have discovered that scones and dutch babies are very easy to make. It’s very luxurious having hot pastries and good coffee while the Google Home plays jazz.

Scones are great because they need cold, even frozen, butter (pro tip: get a 4-pack and stick it in your freezer, it’ll last forever) and don’t even require eggs. Just throw together flour, sugar, baking powder, butter, and salt, then add cranberries, chocolate chips, maple syrup and walnuts, or sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Always put a little extra sugar on top before baking, because it’ll form a delicious crust.

Dutch babies are great because, again, it doesn’t matter what temperature the butter is: you put it in a pan to start with and stick it in the oven anyway. Also, the taste reminds me of something from my childhood, but I haven’t figured out what, yet. I’ll have to keep eating them until I figure it out.