Hasta La Gadget!

 A good in-ear headphone is like a truly good book – most of the time, you’re settling for “good enough,” and a true masterpiece only comes along once in a while. The new RHA T10i is that masterpiece when it comes to in-ear buds, with design that’s durable, eye-catching and comfortable, and sound quality that’s hard to match, and that can be tailored to your… Read More

Grandma Rose isn’t speaking to Aunt Essie. Cousin Jim just converted to “Jediism.” Ruffles threw up on the living-room rug.

You have enough Thanksgiving woes without having to worry about the meal. From fixing dry stuffing to thickening watery gravy, here are a few of the cleverest Turkey Day rehab tips.

Problem: The turkey won’t be done on time.

Solution: First, serve your guests more cheese and crackers. Then, increase the oven temperature, going as high as 450°F–but cover the turkey with aluminum foil first. Cook for no more than two minutes per pound of turkey weight. Remove the foil near the end to crisp up the skin.

See Video: How To Carve a Turkey

Problem: The cranberry sauce won’t jell.

Solution: In homemade cranberry sauce, the jelling occurs as a reaction between the pectin and the sugar. The cranberry sauce must boil long enough for this to happen, so start by cooking it longer. If you reduced the amount of sugar in the recipe, add more, because sugar is necessary to get the sauce to thicken. Finally, it’s a good idea to cool your cranberry sauce at room temperature, not in the refrigerator. As the sauce cools, the consistency will firm up somewhat.

Problem: The stuffing is dry.

Solution: Add a hot liquid (broth is the obvious choice, but apple juice can be interesting too) and mix until it’s a consistency you like.

Problem: You didn’t make enough sweet potatoes.

Solution: Sweet potatoes pair well with many fruits. You can mix chunks of sweet potatoes with chunks of apples (cooked, perhaps with some brown sugar) and puree them both, if you like. Or, you could layer them with bananas and some brown sugar and cinnamon, splash on some orange juice (rum even), and bake at 375°F until tender (about 45 minutes).

Recipe: Sweet Potato Salad.

Problem: The gravy is too thin.

Solution: You need a thickener. You can stir in some arrowroot (1 tablespoon per cup of liquid) or cornstarch (1½ teaspoons per cup of liquid). In either case, dissolve it in a little cold water, add to your gravy, and stir over medium heat until the mixture boils and thickens. Cornstarch will need to be cooked for a few minutes to improve the taste.

Problem: The green beans are turning gray.

Solution: If your beans’ color is starting to fade as they simmer, either they’re overcooking, in which case you should drain them right away and plunge them into ice water to stop the cooking, or there’s lemon juice or vinegar in the water, in which case you should add a pinch of baking soda to balance the acidity.

Recipe: Crispy Green Bean Fries.

Problem: The mashed potatoes lack fluff.

Solution: Add a pinch of baking powder and keep fluffing.

Recipe: 20-Minute Mashed Potatoes.

Problem: The crust of the pumpkin pie is browning too fast.

Solution: It’s usually the edges that start browning first. Cover them with a thin strip of aluminum foil, shaped to fit.

More from PureWow

Thanksgiving Side Dish Face-Off.
Video: How To Carve A Turkey
How To Set The Table Properly
Cinnamon-Roll Pie Crust

Jack Mackenroth

Jack Mackenroth is at it again! After a successful record breaking online campaign to raise money for Housing Works during their annual Braking AIDS Ride from Boston to New York City, he is keeping true to what he knows works best… selfies. Mackenroth raised an astonishing $50,000 plus with his team for the 2-day cycling event, and a lot of that money was raised with him promising donors promotional selfies with Mackenroth showing off his body and their social media handles. In days of the self-obsessed selfie culture, he’s ready to continue raising awareness and money for HIV/AIDS by banking on people wanting to show themselves off…in the shower.

Jay Williams

“I was inspired by the use of the word ‘clean’, especially common in gay culture, to describe oneself as STI/STD free. Indirectly this implies that HIV-positive people are somehow ‘dirty'”, says Mackenroth. “I thought a PG or PG-13 shower selfie or Vine video would be a fun way that everyone could easily show their support for finding a cure by using social media and by using the hashtag #weareALLclean when they post their photo with the link. They then nominate 3 other people to participate and hopefully donate to the project as well.”

Chris Salvatore

The campaign is sure to get some traction as Mackenroth has enlisted the help of his fellow “social media superstar” friends, including Chris Salvatore, who will be spearheading the campaign on the west coast. “It’s time to erase the stigma and unite as a global community. Regardless of your gender or sexual identity—no matter what age, color, size or shape you are, you should be part of this project! Let’s all be one loud, united voice in support of awareness, education, treatment and research for a cure.”, says Salvatore. “And have fun with it. Be funny, sexy, or silly. Who doesn’t want to see people in the shower soaping up for a good cause?”

Angela Hubbs

Mackenroth is once again using social media to help raise money for an organization he is passionate about, and hopes to inspire others to continue to keep HIV awareness in the spotlight. With the recent success of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, Mackenroth might be onto something here, but it’s up to the internet to work it’s magic and either make it or break it. Mackenroth partnered up with social media app Moovz, a leading global gay social app, to launch the project.

Mathew Rodriguez

The campaign is officially launching between now and December 1st, which also happens to be World AIDS Day, and will be ongoing until the goal of 1 million dollars is raised. All the money raised will be donated to Housing Works, a New York-based nonprofit organization fighting on the front lines to end AIDS and homelessness, not just in New York but globally by 2030.

David Duran (Me)

To participate in the HIV Shower Selfie Challenge, like I just did… the instructions from the official fundraising website are below:

INSTRUCTIONS:

1) Take a selfie or Vine video of yourself in the shower.** NO EXPLICIT NUDITY**

2) Post your photo on Moovz and all social media platforms with the caption “Take HIV Shower Selfie Challenge raise $$ for AIDS cure bit.ly/CUREAIDS #weareALLclean”

3) Challenge 3 or more other people to participate!

4) (Optional) DONATE!! Please consider a small donation if you are able. Every penny counts!

5) On World AIDS Day: Monday, December 1st, please change all your social media profile pix to your shower selfie photo and spread the word!!

I love the holidays with all my heart. I wait all year, anticipatory as a child, to be able to play Christmas carols without apologies. Truth is, from November through New Year’s, my life takes on an incandescence undreamed of in the rest of my work-a-day year. Music, decorations, lights, tinsel, a lifetime’s worth of carefully-wrapped treasures — all find their way out of attic or basement and into a house made magical by the memory of Christmas Past.

Right after Thanksgiving, we chop down a tree at the local farm, then pray for snow and enough nippy New England nights to keep it going through New Years. And invariably the moment the tree is trimmed and I’m alone with it, teacup poised, the rich aroma of winter cinnamon and nutmeg making my head swim with memories, I have a vision of my mother and father, as they were when I was small. Young and shiny, full of life and laughter, as when on long ago Christmas mornings they’d stand, sleepy-eyed and open-hearted, watching me exult in the presents they’d saved to buy, then attributed to Santa’s benevolence. Is it the tree that has the power to reach across the years to draw these ghosts of Christmas past, I wonder, or is love a cosmic Time Machine that transcends all boundaries? All I know for sure, is that somehow the seeds of joy my parents planted long ago, sprout anew each November and carry me all the way through January. In good years and in bad — and I, like you, have had both — the remembered love has sustained me, as it sustains me now.

A Continuum of Magic

So when others rail against the crass commercialism, the frenzied traffic and the artificial snow, I see none of that. I see, instead, the holiday feasts from Thanksgiving to New Year’s… recall the glow of other days when all those I loved were with me still, and were gathered round… hear familiar voices ring out once more across the cold, crisp air. I see the faces of beloved family and friends, joined in joyous celebration… feel the laughter and the love that poured from those kind hearts in a continuum of magic that has the capacity to last forever.

It makes me wonder if such magic as that could reach beyond the boundaries of home and hearth, into the larger human family. If love has the power to transform the future, just as surely as those long ago Christmases have transformed a lifetime of Decembers, perhaps in this holiday season, when every act of goodness seems to count a hundredfold, it’s in our power to set in motion the beginnings of a better world.

Just a Thought…

As an astrologer, I can tell you for certain, we are in a time slot of significant transformation for humanity. The year 2015 appears to be carrying a cataclysmic make-it-or-break-it kind of energy in the Cosmic Calendar. What if this season of loving kindness, could give us an edge in using this potent energy to propel us onto the path of peace and good will, with a universal wind at our back to help us finally go the distance?

If there’s one universal truth of this holy season, it’s that we’re all each other’s family… and that when we choose to see the good amidst the terrible… the hero in the rubble… the decency in a man’s heart beyond his ethnicity or outer trappings… we alter the future as irrevocably as an act of terrorism does, but with vastly different consequences. What if this is a moment, when we can plant a seed of love and goodness that will poke its green shoot up somewhere in time, and blossom against all odds?

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world,” Gandhi said. If the spirit of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa — all just different names for loving and giving in the name of a loving God — makes it easier to believe we can embody such change, and that the power to alter the future is in our hands, how many lives could we touch with the magical intent of this most magical time of a magical year, I wonder? How many battlefields could be stilled? How many seeds of joy could we plant that would bear fruit in our children’s children’s lives? Enough to tip the balance? I don’t know, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to try? If we know in our hearts that it’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness, what better season could there be than this, for lighting it?

By Ms. Suzanne Jannese

Ten years ago, at this very minute, I married him for the second time.

Technically and legally, our first wedding was a secret affair, merely to let my then Australian boyfriend remain in the country with me. We regarded it as “the step between moving in together and actually getting married.” It was held at a registry office on Kings Road, where Judy Garland, Roman Polanski and allegedly George Clooney all had previously wed. We only told a couple of close friends, who we asked to be our witnesses. I wore a white suit, and he wore a nervous smile.

Looking back on that day, some folks would have called me crazy to marry a man I had only known for a year. But I knew, deep down, that he was the one for me. Even though it took him another 14 months to actually propose and another year for us to have the actual church wedding and all the formal celebrations with all of our friends and family.

Prior to meeting my husband at 28, I’d had 6 long years in the dating wilderness filled with broken hearts (mine) and terrible dates. I had almost given up on “The One” ever appearing. I would quiz all my married friends, desperate to know how they “knew” and what had separated Mr. Right from all the Mr. Wrongs that went before. Most people mystifyingly said things like, “I just knew,” and “it was different,” which wasn’t very helpful.

More from YourTango: 7 Ways No Sex For A Year Improved My Marriage

But then I met my husband and I finally understood what all my friends had been talking about. So now I’m here to give YOU advice — the same advice I had been seeking all those years ago. How do you know when he’s Mr. Right as opposed to Mr. Right Now? How can you be sure that he isn’t gonna run off at the first hurdle, or he wants the same things out of life that you do? In short, how do you “just know”?

Here are a few things to look out for:

1. It came easy.
Not that any relationship is easy — over time there are all sorts of things couples have to negotiate — but what I realized most about my husband in the beginning was that it all happened pretty easily. He didn’t play games. He called when he said he would. He didn’t play it cool, but he didn’t chase me either. It just felt like I’d known him a long, long time and every time we hung out, we had a great laugh. Plus, I fancied the pants off him. Before him, the men/boys I’d dated were all either super-hot and super-dull or really great but really unsexy. I couldn’t find someone that I wanted to go to the movies with and then rip his clothes off later.

2. I didn’t find him by sitting on my ass.
I met my husband when I walked through the wrong door in a hotel hoping to find the bathroom, only to knock him on the head and send him flying. Turned out he was the cute hotel bartender and later, a bit tipsy, I gave him my number. He looked at that bit of paper as if I had handed him a used tissue. I didn’t expect him to call, so I shouted as I left the bar something like, “I believe in Carpe Diem, so if you call, you call. If you don’t, you don’t!” He thought that was funny and called. In short: You’ll never meet Mr. Right by sitting alone, waiting for him to come to you. Get off your arse and give a hot guy your number!

3. I didn’t freak out just because he sucked on the phone.
When my husband first called me, he left the DULLEST message I’ve ever heard. Next bit of advice: if he sounds awful on the phone, do NOT despair (most men are useless on the phone). He expected me to call him back and be a “sure thing.” Nice. I was busy with work, so didn’t get to call him back until five days later.

4. I actually WANTED to wait to have sex with him.
We met for coffee, which is a brilliant first date. Why? Because you don’t get hammered and fall into bed with him, wake up, leave and never see him again. Day time dates are key because you get to talk, see them in cold, harsh daylight, and all that stress of whether or not he expects to come back to your place later doesn’t exist. I waited five dates until he stayed over. And every woman I know who waited five dates to sleep with someone, married them. True story.

More from YourTango: 7 Signs Your Best Friend Is An Emotional Vampire

5. He supported me really early on in our relationship.
On our second date, I heard that an acquaintance of mine had died. A bit of a mood killer on a date, obviously. But he was totally supportive. He took me for food and tried to be as understanding as he could given that he barely knew me. A week later, after the funeral, he called to see how I was doing. When I asked about his day, he responded, “I called to see how YOU are. I didn’t call to talk about me and my day.” In that split second I realized he was special. It took one moment — one seemingly insignificant sentence — and I knew. After that, I let myself fall in love with him, which we’ll get to in the next point.

6. I was mentally and emotionally ready to fall in love with someone.
It’s crucial to be ready (really ready!) to love someone else. Sometimes we think we are ready, but we’re not. We often have our own baggage we need to address before we can allow ourselves to love someone else. Plus, falling in love is scary business. It makes you vulnerable, and for those who have had their hearts trampled on in the past, it is twice as hard to let yourself trust again. But when it’s right, it shouldn’t be scary. We only feel anxious and fretful when we’re involved in bad love because our intuition is telling us it’s not right. Listen to your gut. It’s there for a reason.

7. My list of requirements? I disposed of it immediately.
My husband moved in three months later. Right before we were married, I found a diary entry from years ago with a list of qualities my ideal man would have: where he’d live, what job he’d have, and a bunch of superficial stuff about what books he’d read and movies he’d watch, etc. What a load of crap! If you’re single, take that list and burn it immediately because guess what? No single person will ever meet all your requirements. And when you do finally find the elusive “one” (and for the record, I believe there are many “ones” along the way that you could meet, not just one, true soulmate), your partners will have qualities that are even better than anything you could have written on a list.

Then one day, you’ll wake up and realize you’ve been married for 10 years. Someone will congratulate you and ask how you knew he was the one, and you’ll find yourself saying, “I just knew.”

This article originally appeared at YourTango.

More great content from YourTango:

• 5 Ways I Survived Being Dumped By My Best Friend

• Why ALMOST Having An Affair Saved My Marriage

• I’m A Stay-At-Home Mom Who Can’t (And Won’t!) STFU