I love May! The weather is getting warmer and warmer and each night I can smell the wonderful foods my neighbors are cooking on their outdoor grills. I don’t have one and I am oh-so jealous. There is nothing like cooking fresh foods on the grill. Everything tastes better!

One of my favorite foods to grill is corn on the cob. For the longest time, I didn’t know you could grill it. I had always had it boiled. The only problem with corn on the cob is all those little silk strands that are so hard to clean off. The inevitably get stuck in my teeth and then I have to break out the floss. It’s not a problem that would deter me from eating corn, but just an annoyance.

Hasn’t anyone found a way to get the silk strands off the cob? Yes! The Corn Desilker is an amazingly simple gadget that grabs the strands and pull them off. It’s so simple, it makes me wonder why I haven’t always had this!

I have a feeling I’ll be eating a lot of corn on the cob this summer!

As you may know, I love to cook. I’m always trying new recipes and I become more adventurous with each meal I make. That is not to say that I don’t enjoy making simple dishes as well—sometimes you just can’t beat eggs, pancakes and bacon for dinner!

The biggest drawback of cooking is the cleanup. The good vibes I get from enjoying a delicious meal I’ve made myself are short lived when I see the pile of dishes waiting in the sink. Scrubbing, soaking, and scrubbing again is not what I want to do at the end of a long day. In January I told you about a frittata and a salmon filet I made with the OrGREENiC Frying Pan. I loved being able to take the pan straight from the stove top to the oven and cleanup was shockingly simple! Nothing stuck to the non-stick ceramic surface! A quick rinse and the pan was clean. I remember wishing all my pots and pans would be this versatile and easy to clean.

My wish has been granted! There is now an entire set of OrGREENiC pots and pans! The OrGREENiC 10 Piece Cookware Set is easy to use and clean, and looks great! You can easily broil, bake, braise, steam, sauté, fry, boil, and sear without adding extra oil, fat or grease! The ten piece set includes an 8” fry pan, 10” fry pan with a lid, 1.5 qt. sauce pot with lid, 2.5 qt. sauce pot with lid, 6 qt. stock pot with lid, and an aluminum steamer insert. I’m looking forward to braising a roast and tossing it right into the oven with veggies!

I can’t wait to get my new set of OrGREENiC Cookware to start cooking more and cleaning less!

It has been something I should have addressed a long time ago. I have avoided it because I just didn’t want to think about how to go about resolving the problem. I wanted to continue to ignore the clutter, and just pretend like it would eventually be okay when I move one day. But my kitchen is small, I like to cook and serve, and I have too much stuff and not enough cabinets in the small kitchen.

I have been storing serving pieces, baking dishes, and small appliances that I do not use every day on top of the refrigerator and on top of the cabinets that don’t reach the ceiling. The other week, I opened the freezer door and a serving plate (luckily small and plastic) came tumbling down on my head. I knew at this moment that I needed a better solution to the lack of storage in my kitchen. Since it is not a home that I own and just an apartment I rent, I cannot redesign the kitchen to put in new cabinets that I like that will work for me. But I can search through different kitchen organization products to find some way to make my kitchen more manageable.

There are different ways and things to do in order to organize things better. My mom has something similar to the slim slide out pantry built into her kitchen, and she uses this for her spices – brilliant! No more digging around in search for the spice you need in a cabinet above your head! For me, I need more help in the serving pieces and appliance storage. For this, I found the perfect product: a four tier shelf. I can keep it just outside my small kitchen, it holds everything so I can see what I have, and doesn’t take up too much space from my living area. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before!

Have you ever heard of compression socks? I have recently become aware of them through some of my friends who run more competitively than me. They tell me they use their compression socks to help massage their legs as they run. I even have one friend who once wore her hot pink compression socks to work one day for pain relief just before she ran a marathon. For the rest of the world who are not runners and cannot make it “appropriate” to wear hot pink compression socks to the office every day, there is the new Miracle Socks

Miracle Socks are the compression socks you can wear every day. Not only will the Miracle Socks help reduce swelling, the Miracle Socks can also help improve circulation. Think about the aches and pains you sometimes feel in your legs during the day. The Miracle Socks use compression to reduce the pain in your legs. Additionally, Miracle Socks massage your legs while you move.

Now, you don’t have to be a runner, or in your sweats to wear compression socks. With Miracle Socks, you can massage you legs and reduce pain all day without anyone knowing that your socks are Miracle Socks.

The weekend is sadly over. I hope you had a good one. As usual, my weekend was buy but for great reasons. On Saturday I got to celebrate the upcoming wedding of one of my oldest friends and, of course, it was Super Bowl Sunday.

I really didn’t care that much about the outcome of the Super Bowl. I wasn’t rooting for either team, but I am always in the mood for get-togethers at friend’s houses with food, beverages, fun, and football. This was a small party…I like it when things are simple. My friend decided to make it a pot-luck party – this way everyone could bring something they were good at making (there was a rule that only one person could bring chips and salsa). My contribution to the party was a vegetarian 7 layer dip. Here’s the catch – my 7 layer dip came in individual plastic cups so each person could have their own, eliminating the double-dipping in a big dish of 7 layer dip. I cannot take any credit for this. Please check out the recipe here recipe, I highly recommend making these for your next party. Someone else brought a cheese board
full of cheese and crackers. Someone else made bacon, and the host of course filled in odds and ends.

What’s your favorite dish to bring to a pot-luck party?

Who doesn’t love the soft glow of a candle? It’s great to turn the lights off and enjoy the ambiance that only a candle can provide. The problem with candles is that you have to locate matches, light each one trying not to burn your fingers, trim the wicks, make sure the wax doesn’t drip on furniture, and you have to watch them closely—especially around pets or children. It kind of takes the enjoyment out of it.

Enter remote control, flickering LED light candles. These are amazing! The set of three pillars look just like real candles with a wax exterior, but inside there is a bright light that glows and flickers just like a real candle. You’d never know they’re not real. And you don’t have to go around turning each one on. Just turn the switch on the bottom to the on position and then use the remote control to turn all the candles on and off with press of one button. And there is no safety hazard with pets or children so you can place them where you want. I see no downside to these candles. They’re great!

I have spring fever! Out here on the east, we have had a very mild winter. The temperature will reach nearly 60 degrees today—the last day of January—and I love it! The spring-like weather every other week or so is a little reminder that winter does not last forever, as it sometimes seems it might.

The only thing I do not like about spring is the dreaded spring cleaning. The house has been closed up, needs to be aired out, the windows have collected a fine coating of dust (yuck!), the blades on the ceiling fans are looking a little dusty by this time, and all the nooks and crannies in your home that don’t see a vacuum during a normal cleaning could use a good scrub.

Most people don’t like cleaning windows. I don’t mind it so much. What I really dislike is cleaning out the dryer vent. There is no good way to do it with a regular vacuum. It’s a necessary safety measure to get the built up lint out of the lint trap and vent hose to prevent a fire, but the vacuum hose can only go so far. It creates such a mess and just seems like I’m making a bigger job of cleaning than I need to.

That is where the Lint Lizard comes in. This handy tool attaches to your vacuum and the long, thin, flexible hose goes right down in the vent to reach where your regular vacuum attachments can’t. I’m also going to use this under, behind and around the washer and dryer, the refrigerator, behind the headboards in bedrooms, and any other place I can find that I can’t reach with my regular vacuum attachments.

Now I’m getting excited about spring cleaning!

With all of the handheld and wireless devices we have today, one of the many benefits is having music with you wherever you go. You can listen to whatever music you want while cooking, while on a bus, at the park, the options are limitless. Sometimes you want—or need –to listen through ear phones and other times you want to hear the music through speakers. The problem is that speakers aren’t exactly portable. Until now!

The Music Bullet is pretty awesome. It connects to more than just your iPod or MP3 player. You can use the Music Bullet anywhere that you can connect to a speaker jack. So, for example, if you’re anything like me and are generally busy at home taking care of chores and other projects, you can plug in the Music Bullet into your cell phone and have a clear “speaker phone” set up for you so you can use both hands while being on the phone. Also, I frequently watch DVDs on my laptop, but I like a lot of sound, not just the flat sound my laptop provides. By hooking up the Music Bullet to my laptop, I can get the full sound of the DVD I am watching without struggling to hear.

I love the idea of speakers, but I feel like they are bulky, expensive, and don’t provide the complete sound I am looking for. With the Music Bullet, I can not only get the complete sounds from my iPod, but the Music Bullet allows me to use my cell phone and laptop more effectively than ever before.

Are you a cat lover or a dog lover? I find most people lean one way or the other. Of course you can love both, equally. But of all the people I know, most really, really love dogs and like or tolerate cats or vice versa.

Either way, part of owning a pet is the cleanup. There is the fur on the floor and furniture, the splashed water and spilled food, and nobody’s favorite, the litter box or yard cleanup. I’m not sure which I find worse—I’ll spare going into details. At least there are handy helpers for these unpleasant chores. For the dogs, the Grip and Grab Pet Scoop keeps your hands away from the mess and makes quick work of cleaning up the lawn. For the cats, there is now an As Seen on TV product called Sift N Toss. It’s a series of mesh liners that you lift out one by when the box needs cleaning. The mesh sifts out the waste and the rest of the litter stays in the box. No shoveling the litter around to find the waste and stirring up odors.

We all love our pets, but not necessarily the more unpleasant duties. These two products make it just a little more bearable.

I came across an article last week that I think many of you will find fun and even useful. It was Craft of the Day, a Pencil Dish Rack
Reading the article, and the other Craft of the Day items makes me realize that I can actually do these things even though I am not crafty at all!

I loved the idea of the pencil dish drying rack. It is such a neat idea, especially for those of us who may be on a budget. For Christmas I received a new cutting board with a tool drawer that can be used as a cheese board for parties. I have been hanging onto my old beat up board, but not using it. This is a great way to turn it into something useful that looks a lot better than a plastic drying rack!

Check out the article to see how to make the pencil dish rack with your old cutting board. Also, check out the other crafty items I am certain you’ll be able to do on your own!