Stuff I Tried

I am obsessed with researching things. Here are my reviews of food, products, and various things I've wasted my money on. Learn from my mistakes.

[stuffitried]

Body Shop Vanilla Perfume Oil  Back in the mid 90s there used to be a perfume bar at The Body Shop that had delicious scented perfume oils. Upon discovering people selling vials of it on ebay, I decided to take a nostalgic walk down memory lane and buy one to see if the Vanilla oil is as great as I remember. The scent has reached a weird cult status of being the only “true pure vanilla scent” since it was discontinued in the early 2000s.  Well turns out it smells like a Vanilla scent I already own from Anthropologie and I now smell like a vanilla marshmallow.  Shortform reviews on Instagram at http://www.instagram.com/stuffitried It may be food reviews, but will probably be mostly lip balms.

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Stuff I Tried | Bottega Louie Desserts | 02.13.15 Dessert 06: Tarte aux Fraiser

Fancy words for Strawberry Tart. Strawberries sitting atop custard and a thin layer of strawberry jam, all contained within a delicious light crumbly crust. It is simple and perfect and now sits 2nd in rank to the Tropezienne (aka giant hamburger sized cream puff).

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Stuff I Tried | Bottega Louie Desserts | 02.06.15 Dessert 05: Petit le Dome

co-worker: "What do you think that is?" me:  "... I don't know, it looks like a giant hard boiled egg..."  An employee explained what this was, and in between the baking terms I heard three ingredients:  white chocolate, lemon curd, and pineapple (I tasted no pineapple). Cutting it open, I still maintain there's no way this isn't modeled after a hard boiled egg. 

[stuffitried]

Stuff I Tried | Bottega Louie Desserts | 02.06.15 Dessert 04: Vanille Flocage 

"Vanilla bean cremeux with raspberry gelee atop a speculoos cookie crust". It looked like camembert and tasted like a fancy vanilla pudding. That crust only vaguely tasted like Speculoos.  It mostly reminded me of the bread my friends and I would lift from the communion trays after church. Eventually whoever made it would give us the extras in a ziplock bags so we wouldn't steal the blessed pieces of the body of Christ.

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Stuff I Tried | Bottega Louie Desserts | 01.29.14

Dessert 03 : Saint Honore. This is named after the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs. It even has a wikipedia page. I've been eyeing this alien thing for a while. It looked decadent because it was so shiny. I thought it was caramel or honey.  Turns out those puffs are actually covered with delicious crunchy caramelized sugar.The cream is possibly caramel flavored but my tastebuds aren't completely back after being sick. Thumbs up if you dig the taste of caramel without actually wanting to eat messy caramel.

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Stuff I Tried | Bottega Louie Desserts | 01.24.14

Dessert 02: Tiramisu Eclair

I love tiramisu. Now you're telling me you put espresso flavored cream in puff pastry and glazed it with honey (or is that caramel..)? HELL YEAH. In reality, it was dry and half of it ended up in the garbage. You're better than this Bottega.

[stuffitried]

Stuff I Tried | Bottega Louie Dessert | 01.23.14

Dessert 01: Petite Fraisier

This is essentially a fruit parfait, but fancy because it has crumbled pistachios and gold leafing on that strawberry.

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Stuff I Tried | Mission: Bottega Louie Dessert Counter  This year I will eat my way through Bottega Louie's dessert counter and try every single pastry. Even the passion fruit one. I hate passion fruit. I do this for the people.

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Stuff I Tried: L'oreal's sulfate-free cleansing conditioner

I guess this is supposed to rival Wen, but it just left my hair smelling like Raid Ant & Roach bug spray.

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Stuff I Tried: Digital Perm "It's been 20 years since I've gotten a perm, perm technology must have surely improved since then!" ~ thoughts I have that don't end well. After 5 1/2 hours in a chair in a Koreatown salon known for great results with digital perms, my hair ended up not taking the curl. I returned 4 days later for them to fix it and ended up with wavy hair reminiscent of a perm I got in 1992. I did not ask for it, nor did any of the pictures suggest I wanted this. I wanted bouncy large waves. Oh well, I could live with it. At least my hair wasnt half curled and half vaguely wavy like I had slept with a pony tail. After a month of hair maintenance confusion and being generally unhappy with my dumb decisions, I cut it all off because my hair felt like the fluffy ears of a cocker spaniel. It's still curly despite the cut so here's to hoping it doesn't look like Gillys curly fro once I get to washing it.

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Stuff I Tried: globalgig international nano sim card 

In July, I traveled to Europe for two weeks with my family. Knowing that I'd want access to all the social medias and a safety net of google maps when walking around alone, I looked into an international sim card for my new iphone 5s.  Verizon's international data plans cost $30 per 100 MB + exorbitant charges if you go over. I can easily blow through that watching gifs of corgis wagging their butts. Not a valid option for regular use of my phone. However I bought it anyways... just in case I needed to make a call home or my sim card didnt shipped in time.

Knowing that I use about 2 gigs a month, I bought the Globalgig 1 GB Nano Sim from DataRoam for my iPhone. It arrived about a week later. Note that they will only ship to the address linked to your credit card. So I activated the card on GlobalGig's website, per instructions. A confirmation of my activation never arrived. I wasn't even sure if I was supposed to receive an email about it, so assumed everything was fine. Unfortunately when I got to Italy, my phone read "No Service".

After 5 days of email tag and a $15 call to customer service, we figured out that it wasn't my phone but GlobalGig's fault. Their website seems to red flag US addresses when activating international sims and doesn't process them... SO IF YOU GET THIS, ACTIVATE IT OVER THE PHONE WITH A REAL HUMAN BEING.

After it was activated it was smoooooth sailing. I had a phone that had internet access in all 10 countries I visited, AND text messaging once I linked my iMessage account to an email address. It saved my sanity after being isolated with 50 filipinos on a bus.  Other Notes: 1) If you opt to buy a sim card in europe, they only work in the country you buy them in.  2) Not all phones can take a sim card. Older generation iPhones are locked. 3) Change your Location Services, Mail, and anything else that auto refreshes in the background. That shit drains your data usage. 4) This is just for DATA. Once you pop it in, your phone number will no longer be accessible or linked to your phone. You will have internet access, but no phone unless you make calls via Skype or similar service over IP. 5) Cancel the service over the phone when you get back from vacation. It auto-renews every month. SAME WITH VERIZON'S INTERNATIONAL SERVICE. 

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Funfetti Nostalgia

Stuff I Tried: Betty Crocker Rainbow Chip Cake  Today a recipe popped up on Food52 for funfetti cake made from scratch.  It brought back warm fuzzy memories of having Betty Crocker Rainbow chip cake as a kid. So I decided to pick up a box on the way home from Barre class, because the heart wants what it wants.

When I got there, I noticed funfetti cake, but not the frosting I remembered. What the hell is this vanilla frosting you toss sprinkles into? This is not the deliciousness I remember. So I googled, only to find out it was discontinued in 2013… and there is plenty of outrage about it.

My craving had to be satiated so I went ahead and bought the stuff Betty Crocker replaced my beloved frosting with, and the chocolate chips this blog recommended.

Because I still feel like a box cake is cheating, I switched out the water, oil, and 3 eggs it called for with whole milk, half a cup of butter, and 4 eggs, just so it would taste more “homemade”. While my rainbow chip cupcakes baked, I mixed in the tiny chips into the frosting. I also added some chopped up Valrhona white chocolate chunks because I can’t resist being fancy.

Verdict: Bullshit. While the frosting is slightly nostalgic, these chips are crunchy. NAY, NOT THE SAME. Fuck you Betty Crocker. Now I see why 11,000 people/robots are so angry on facebook about this.  

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Ginger Mint Lemonade!

Stuff I Tried: Ginger Mint Lemonade A friend of mine made me this drink for our bad TV night. I was initially tentative because, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was a nice balance of spice from the ginger and the refreshingness of mint. Like if you threw some ginger ale into a mojito. I would never really be compelled to make a drink from scratch, but the deliciousness of this drink cured my laziness. Here is the receipe from Epicurious. Note: I didn’t bother to chop the ginger up very well. It was pretty chunky, and as a result, I probably used more than 1/3 cup. I’d probably cut it down to 1/4 and increase the amount of mint. Also FYI 1/3 cup of fresh lemon juice is about 3 or 4 lemons. —————- Fresh Ginger Mint Lemonade

1/2 cup (packed) chopped fresh mint leaves

1/3 cup chopped fresh ginger

1/3 cup honey

2 cups boiling water

1/3 cup fresh lemon juice 

1 1/2 cups (about) cold water

Ice cubes

Fresh mint leaves

Lemon slices

preparation

Combine chopped mint, ginger, and honey in medium bowl. Add boiling water. Let steep 30 minutes. Strain into 4-cup glass measuring cup, pressing on solids to extract liquid. Add lemon juice and enough cold water to measure 4 cups total. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover and refrigerate.)

Fill glasses with ice cubes. Add lemonade. Garnish with mint leaves and lemon slices and serve.

[stuffitried]

Squarespace vs Zenfolio vs Wix

Personally, I haven’t had a website for a while. Well, I have, but it’s pretty half assed. As a graphic designer, I just couldn’t get myself to commit to making something on my free time when it’s something that I have to do at work on the reg for other clients. UGH, pick out a font? For myself? on my free time? Why do that when I can watch actors reenact murders on Lifetime television’s Killer Kids.

So I considered my options.

First I tried Zenfolio. I was attracted to its its photo licensing feature, since this was the most common thing I've been asked for in the past. However, after doing my research and deciding on paying for a full year upfront for the service, I discovered some limitations. I didn't have control over margins and their layout for customizing web features is just a mess:

Aesthetics aside, Zenfolio DOES work for a good amount of people who probably don’t care that there’s no place to insert CSS or how the breadcrumbs look. I will give it credit that is pretty easy to use for sharing, selling and downloading private galleries with clients, so if that’s what you’re into then by all means, give Zenfolio a try.

At work, our website is hosted by WIX. It was initially a Flash website builder, but with the incarnation of HTML5 they made the switch, and thank god. It’s faster and now works with all tablet devices.

I know I know, we are a design firm, we should build our own, right?  Long gone are those days. Sure we can skin a site and have it built from scratch, but with websites like wix making it easy with the drag and drop backend, there’s no need anymore.  So using a site like wix, we set up the skin, then teach clients how to manage it on their own once the design process is over.  I have no problems with Wix really, other than all their websites look very template-y. Their backend layout is really easy to understand and update and their templates automatically have a mobile layout version built in.

However personally, I now use Squarespace. After hearing them continuously pimped on WTF and Stuff You Should Know and how lovely their backend is, I gave in.

So far, I like it. It’s simplistic and clean and the menus are fairly intuitive. There’s a donation option for generous people to contribute a buck, a place to sell physical goods and services, and amazon affiliate links are built in. You can import your tumblr blog (although it’s not automatic, I hope it’s fixed in the future) or type directly on the site and export it to tumblr, which I am going to test out now. (UPDATE: It doesn’t work if you push this post after publishing to squarespace.)

Anyway, I out of all three options, I dig Squarespace and would recommend it to anyone. UPDATE: My Zenfolio subscription was finally up in March 2015 and I decided not to renew, despite the fact that they FINALLY updated their backend interface. It's definitely prettier, however, customization is still frustratingly lacking. Also, I HATE that they don't have a delete account option. You have to contact customer service via email to delete your account. On the upside, once it is set up to delete, your website self destructs on your subscription cancellation date. Before that options, they remind you to use the easy options to download all your photos off the site.  PS. I don't make any moneys off this recommendation. 

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Stuff I Tried: Things in my Medicine Cabinet Edition Oasis Mouthwash. I suffer from an annoyance called Sjogren's Syndrome, it's causes perpetual dry mouth and eyes. This mouthwash doesn't contain alcohol so it doesn't dry out my mouth. It also tastes better than Biotin, which is like minty oil. Duac Topical Gel.  This is a prescription topical gel for zits. After years of wasting money buying drugstore products that didn't work, I decided to consult with a dermatologist. There's no generic of this item, so it costs about $120 per tube. Crazy, but it works and lasts a long time. If you can't afford this, you may want to just look into washing your pillowcases and towels more often and hope for the best. Sensodyne Repair & Protect. I bought this stuff on ebay from the UK. While they do sell Repair & Protect in US stores, it lacks the calcium sodium phosphosilicate (aka Novamin). Novamin apparently chemically reacts with your saliva, remineralizing your teeth, restoring enamel. No other product does this, and the FDA hasn't approved it in the states. I don't know if it works, I just know I didn't have a cavity on my last dentist visit after having 6 cavities the visit before. Is it the Novamin? My compulsive flossing out of fear? Who knows, but I'll continue to use it.

Systane Gel Drops. I use this before I go to bed and like it better than most eyedrops out there. And I've tried a lot.  Pure Moist Contact Solution. Feels the most like natural tears... or at least what I remember them to be when I used to show human emotion.

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Stuff I Tried: Fried Apple Pies Sweetango apples (a hybrid of Honeycrisps and Zestars) are in season! My boss told me of some easy things to make using canned biscuit dough, so I tried out Paula Deen's recipe.

Goddamn, these are good... and easy. They're like fried apple doughnuts. 

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Stuff I Tried: Mrs. Field's Blue Ribbon Chocolate Chip Cookies

Decided to go with the non-oat flour Mrs. Fields recipe this time around and they turned out delicious. Crisp edges and soft and chewy in the middle. Using high quality chocolate really does make all the difference. 

Pro Tip, throwing a slice of fresh bread keeps fresh baked cookies from going dry through osmosis... it also apparently revives cookies that are already hard.