Learn One Thing: De-Gas Beans

Those of you visiting from Kristie’s blog, The Eid’s Have It, will already be aware of this tip, but since it’s new to me I figured I’d feature it here as part of my Learn One Thing series.  Apparently it is possible to remove/deactivate the gas producing attributes of beans!  Kristie discovered this process recently while researching ham and bean soup recipes.  Check out her post to read more about her experience and find out if it really works:

Beans, beans the magical fruit.

Learn One Thing: Replace Your Lost Cellphone Charger for Free

Just a quick update with a trick I learned today via a post on LifeHacker.  Apparently most hotels have a box of cell phone chargers just lying around, so if you lose yours you can go to a nearby popular hotel and pretend like you left yours there on your last stay, and they will let you peruse the lost and found box of chargers to see if you can find it.  If you’re lucky you find a charger that is compatible with your phone, if not, on to the next hotel down the street… What a clever trick!

Replace Your Lost Cellphone Charger For Free [LifeHacker]

Learn One Thing: Minimum Credit Card Purchase Requirements

Sorry for the lapse in the Learn One Thing series. It is really tough to write about one thing every day, along with all the other stuff I want to do in a day. Anyway, I just learned today that:

Businesses that accept Visa, MasterCard, and Discover aren’t allowed to set minimum-purchase policies (these credit card companies strictly forbid it)

American Express does allow it, but discourages the practice to keep customers happy. I think this is interesting because I know I’ve run across a few places (one local bar here in CT that I play darts at occasionally comes to mind) and think that it is unfair to have a $10 or $15 minimum charge, causing me to use their in house ATM machine if I don’t have enough cash on hand. Next time I’m in this situation though, I will know that technically they’re not allowed to utilize this practice, and try to get them to waive the policy. At least they accept credit cards, unlike a very popular pizza place we visited recently here in New Haven that many people claim has the best pizza. I guess people still go there despite this fact!

Source: Don’t Get Intimidated By “Credit Card Minimum Purchases” [Credit Card Outlaw] (via Lifehacker)

Learn One Thing: A day in the Internet

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Learn One Thing: How to Make Turkey Gravy

At the last minute this year we decided to host some of Maggie’s PA friends over for Thanksgiving Dinner.  Maggie has been taking care of all the preparation and cooking (she likes to cook!) but since she doesn’t like gravy on her mashed potatoes or turkey (I know, weird huh?) she put me in charge of making it.

Never having hosted Thanksgiving (or any meal that required gravy), I had to learn how to make turkey gravy, and for that I turned to old faithful (when it comes to how to videos), YouTube:

Now that doesn’t sound too difficult, we’ll see how it turns out!  Next up I need to learn how to properly carve a turkey…