How To: Get iced-tea stains out of your plastic pitcher

Posted on December 12th, 2010 in Commentary by EngineerBoy

The pitcher in question...

I love home-made iced tea, and have gone so far as to post my recipe for it.  As you can see in the picture to the right, I use translucent Tupperware 1-gallon pitchers for the tea, and after over a year of use the pitchers were getting tea-stained.

I did a lot of things to try to remove the stains – scrubbing the hell out of them, letting them soak overnight with dish soap, filling them with boiling water hoping to cook the stains out, etc, etc, etc.  Nothing worked and the stains just kept getting more stainier.

I eventually turned to the web, and many (many) people recommended soaking overnight filled with warm water and a little bleach (yuck!) or OxiClean (double-yuck!!), but using any kind of chemical like that seemed, well, yucky.

Then

Homemade breakfast taquito recipe

Posted on December 11th, 2010 in Commentary by EngineerBoy

The basic ingredients

We love breakfast taquitos, usually from Whataburger or a local Mexican restaurant, but also wanted to make them at home from time to time, and have developed this recipe over a few iterations:

Ingredients:

2 potatoes
6 eggs
6 scallions, chopped
3 oversized flour tortillas
2 tbsp cooking oil
2 tbsp butter
Salt
Pepper
Optional: shredded cheese, salsa, Tabasco sauce, or whatever else you might want to try putting on a breakfast taco

Start a heavy, large skillet heating (we use cast iron) on medium-high heat (set to 7 on our electric that goes to 10).  Wash the potatoes and shred them with a grater, leaving the skins on.  Spread the shredded potatoes in an even layer on a microwave-safe plate, and microwave them on high for 5 minutes, uncovered.  Remove from the microwave and set aside.  This step is important because to get crispy