Stir together a batch of homemade lemonade using fresh lemons and bottled lemon juice to save time. It’s a sweet and refreshing treat! If you want a treat, make it yourself. It’s a rule of thumb that makes sense to me, especially with sweet drinks. Because at the risk of being the fun police, even homemade drinks like lemonade are still treats (and mostly sugar). So this is a treat we make ourselves, especially in hot weather. You might also like: How to Make a Homemade Sports Drink This lemonade recipe requires just a few simple ingredients: lemon juice, fresh lemons, sugar, and water. You can make this lemonade with all freshly-squeezed lemons, especially if you’d like to keep your...
Dear Amy: My family and I came to America from the Soviet Union when I was a teenager. We became citizens. I got educated here and own a successful business. I write well and speak correctly, with almost no accent. I feel like I am an American. I love America, and try to learn new things every day, but I feel like something is missing in me. Since I was born and spent my formative years in a communist country (truly like another planet, compared to the USA), my “autopilot” reactions are not like those of typical American-born people. For instance, my manners, topics of conversation, humor, dress, attitude toward money, and even body language sometime seem “foreign.” I feel...
An Afternoon Respite by Mabel May Woodward, c. early 1900s. What I’ve been reading. Well, my book notes posts pretty much dried up this year. Like so many things. I’m gonna blame the pandemic, because: why not? Anyway, a quick overview of what I’ve been reading and enjoying, as far as I can remember, in the second quarter of the year. Books I’ve Finished 1. Eifelheim by Michael Flynn This was my plague-themed pandemic book back in Lent … was it March? It was a re-read. I really love this novel about what happens when aliens show up in a medieval village in the Black Forest. The novel includes the Black Death coming to the village, so, yeah, it felt...
For those of us who are mostly homebound this summer, the simple pleasure of receiving snail mail can be a godsend. While we’ve already turned you on to over 20 of the coolest magazines for kids, we also think there’s no better time than now to look into the plethora of kids’ activity boxes that can be delivered straight to your door. From bundles of educational toys for toddlers and expertly curated book clubs, to brain-boosting science experiments and globe-trotting (from your living room) adventures for school-aged children, we’ve gathered 25 incredible subscription boxes for kids at a variety of prices that’ll provide some much-appreciated screen-free fun and learning this summer. You can buy ’em one-off, or sign up for...
What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to summaries of five or fewer words. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question. 1. Living on debt 2. Prioritizing saving for retirement 3. Extending life of gas grill 4. What happens in August? 5. More on sanded cast iron 6. Stay-cation idea with kids 7. Prepping for next lockdown 8. Dry beans advice? 9. Handling child’s “gap year” 10. Inexpensive pocket-sized games? 11. Giant ham and turkey suggestion 12. Inexpensive long term isolation ideas A few months ago, I mentioned Money in Excel, a spreadsheet template that (at the time) was an upcoming release from Microsoft that worked within their Excel spreadsheet...
