Alex Nafash
More by Alex Nafash
 You’re Doing It All Wrong: Food Edition12/19/2012 |
1. Stiry-frying: If you’re using a non-stick skillet, using wet vegetables, or filling your pan with too many ingredients, YOU’RE DOING IT ALL WRONG. When using a non-stick skillet, especially with meat, the ingredients will not caramelize correctly. When a pan is crowded, the meat and vegetables get unevenly cooked – some are overdone while others are still raw. To make a stir-fry successfully, the best cooking pan to use is a wok. Another good tip is to cut all your vegetables and meat with the same thickness because when they stir-fry they will cook evenly. 2. Baking and Decorating Christmas Cookies: When you make cookies, if the butter is not at room temperature, YOU’RE DOING IT ALL WRONG. When the butter is at room temperature it can evenly mix with the other ingredients so you don’t have pockets of butter in your cookies. Before baking your cookies make sure to chill the dough in the fridge for at least 2 hours. If not, YOU’RE DOING IT ALL WRONG. This will make the dough too soft and hard to handle because it will stick to everything when you try to roll it out. To decorate your cookies with icing, fill a Ziploc bag with icing and push the icing to one corner. Then, cut a small hole at the corner of the Ziploc bag and begin piping. No piping bag or fancy piping tips needed!
|
 13 Things You Didn't Know About Thanksgiving11/17/2012 |
1. The pilgrims didn’t hold the first Thanksgiving – To see what the first Thanksgiving was like you have to go to: Texas. Texans claim the first Thanksgiving in America actually took place in little San Elizario, a community near El Paso, in 1958 – twenty-three years before the Pilgrims’ festival. 2. The first TV dinner was Thanksgiving leftovers – In 1953, someone at Swanson severely overestimated the amount of turkey Americans would consume that Thanksgiving. With 260 tons of frozen birds to get rid of, the company salesman ordered 5,000 aluminum trays, recruited an assembly line of people with spatulas and ice-cream scoops and began creating mini-feasts of turkey, cornbread, peas, and sweet potatoes – creating the first ever TV dinner. 3. FDR tried to change the date – FDR learned the hard way not to mess with some traditions. In 1939, the President declared that Americans should celebrate the annual feast one week earlier, hoping the decision would spur retail sales during the Great Depression. But Americans did not react well to this. After two years of complaints, Congress adopted a resolution in 1941 setting the fourth Thursday of November as the legal holiday. 4. Mary had a little Thanksgiving obsession – The woman who wrote the classic nursery rhyme “Mary had a Little Lamb” also played an integral role in making Thanksgiving a national holiday. After a 17-year-letter-writing campaign, president Abraham Lincoln was convinced to issue an 1863 decree recognizing the historic tradition. 5. We eat a lot of turduckens – Thanks to some culinary genius, more and more Americans are forsaking Butterballs for Turduckens. A what? Picture this: a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken. Though this may seem sacrilege to some, the original Thanksgiving meal featured fish, oysters, eel, and lobster as well as wild turkey. |
 Why Girls Play Hard to Get10/24/2012 |
Almost every guy will have faced this situation at least once in his life (most likely more): you meet a girl you like, you seem to get along very well, but every time you think you are getting somewhere she pulls back. But why? It can drive a guy crazy trying to figure what a girl is thinking and if she is genuinely interested in him or just playing with him. Girls – we have to admit that we do this sometimes, even though we may not know why we do it. Is it out of fear, insecurity, fun? Let’s find out! Here are some real reasons why girls play hard to get: Fantasy Fear |
 Why Girls are Mean to Other Girls10/18/2012 |
None of us would consider ourselves mean (I hope), but the truth is girls are not always nice to each other. We may be nice to each other’s faces, but behind girls’ backs, who knows what is being said. Let’s look at the best example of mean girls: the movie Mean Girls. Clever, right? We would like to think that an experience of repeatedly being hurt by a bad friend (bully, frenemy, etc.) would make girls more empathetic towards others in similar situations, but Mean Girls actually shows us that this has an opposite impact. The girl who has been hurt by her mean friends might be equally mean to someone else. Don’t be like those girls in the movie. I know that sometime in your life, a girl was mean to you; it's happened to all of us. But that does not make it okay to be mean to other girls. Here are some common questions to ask ourselves about why girls are mean to each other: 1. Why do girls call other girls pretty or skinny with a tone of disgust? Now the real question is – do any of these have answers? It is probably true that some girls are jealous and bully others to make themselves feel superior. Some girls may be trying to mask their own insecurities by focusing on other’s imperfections and insecurities. Plus, Facebook and other forms of social media are now providing more of an open arena for this type of indirect female bullying. The virtual world provides an unlimited, retaliation-free space for mocking, shunning, and attacking other people. |
 How to Make a Long Distance Relationship WORK in College9/22/2012 |
Being apart from someone you love isn’t easy because being with that person is what makes you happy. I get it. But, I’ll let you in on a little secret: there’s a way to still feel that joy and happiness even when you’re apart. But it takes a little work. If you don’t want to work at it, then a long distance relationship isn’t for you. If you want to put in that little extra effort, then you will have no problem making it work! I have been in a long distance relationship for a year now and I know how difficult it can be (especially when I was abroad and in a different country and time zone). But we made it! And I would say that we are now stronger than ever. Here are some tips to help you keep your long distance relationship strong. Communication. Talking and communicating are different things. Communicating takes patience, listening and sacrifice. Since you won’t be around each other nearly as often as you want to be, you learn to perfect your communication skills. After all, there’s nothing else to do but talk to each other. It can get monotonous, though. “How was your day?” “Good. How was yours?” You have to keep your conversations fun and new each day. Make sure you laugh with each other everyday, too. It may sound dumb, but it brings out that happiness. Also, you have to say what’s on your mind – aka if something is bothering you – because he may not be able to pick up on your body language. A kiss can’t fix the problem this time. The sooner you talk about it, the sooner you can put it in the past. Communicating is the only thing you two have while you’re apart, so get comfortable with it and do it often. Make sure you Skype or video chat and not stick strictly to phone calls. It’s good to see each other’s faces because it is another layer of communication that brings you two closer. Whoever said “distance makes the heart grow fonder” was mistaken. I say: distance makes better communicators. |
 DIY Dorm-Friendly Decorations9/20/2012 |
Want to transform your dorm into a home? Of course you do! Your dorm room (or off-campus apartment) is going to be your home for the next year. So why not make it feel like one? I’ll let you in on a secret…you can do it all by yourself! The beginning of the semester is always hectic and decorating your dorm room may be the last thing on your mind. But, if you take the time decorate, it will definitely be worth it in the long run. And once those midterms and papers start rolling in, home is exactly what you’re going to want it to feel like. So, here are some great DIY ideas to decorate your dorm room. For Empty Wall Space:
Spoon Mirror There are a bunch of fun DIY ideas on this website that don’t necessarily have to do with decorating your dorm room but are still fun (#1, 2, 6, 7, …). http://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/31-insanely-easy-and-clever-diy-projects. But check out number 17 for a great way to hang your necklaces. Number 23 is a cool way to turn inexpensive frames into chalkboard signs. I also (secretly) love number 15 – a great way to glitz up anything! |
 What We Say, What Guys Think We Say, and What We Really Mean9/13/2012 |
In girl world, yes doesn’t always mean yes, no always means no, and maybe means no. Confusing, huh? Well, not for us girls. We know exactly what we mean, but guys don’t. This can cause communication problems between you and your man. It is important that we are aware what we say isn’t always what we mean. And we especially can’t expect guys to actually think about what we’re saying and not accept it at face value. Women are complex beings. We tend to read way more into things than men do. Men just don’t understand. It’s just how we operate. So here are the possible confusions that you and your man may encounter and their translations: What I said: Take out the garbage please. What I said: I’m okay, really. What I said: I should go. What I said: I don’t mind paying. |
 It's Christmastime in the City: Romantic Dates in Boston12/5/2011 |
As the Christmas carol goes, “It’s Christmastime in the city.” Do you know what that means? Boston is filled with pretty lights and Christmas decorations. It's easy to get caught up with school work and feel obligated to stay trapped in your room until finals are over, but the city is calling you. It doesn’t want you to miss out on the Christmas cheer and I think you deserve a break after working so hard this semester. So take a break and try out the best Christmastime romantic dates in Boston (ater all, you won't see your cutie for a whole month over break)!
|
 One Dress, Two Dress, Old Dress, New Dress11/13/2011 |
You’re on your way home for Thanksgiving, excited to fill your stomach with lots of turkey and mashed potatoes to last you till next year. When you get home, you drop a huge pile of laundry right at your mom’s footsteps. She hasn’t done your laundry in months, so you tell yourself that she won’t mind doing all of the laundry you purposely forgot to wash since Columbus Day. But now you have no clean clothes to wear until your laundry is done, so you go into your room, which is surprisingly clean compared to your dorm room at school. You turn to your closet and see lots of empty hangers. But when you look closer, you see all those tops and dresses you consciously decided while you were packing for school back in early September that you know you will never wear again. So why exactly did you keep them…?
|
