"Things Go Better With Coke"

Remove Tough, Greasy Stains from Clothing with Coca Cola

If you've got some greasy, difficult stains on your clothing, it turns out Coca Cola might be able to solve the problem. Clever list site Listverse suggests that adding a little to your wash will make the difference:

Grease stains are famously difficult to remove from clothing and stain removers can be very expensive. Here is a cheap solution: empty a can of coke into your wash along with the usual detergent and run it through a normal cycle. This is also quite effective for removing blood and it helps to deodorize smelly clothes.

The reason it can break up stains is thanks to the carbonic and phosphoric acid inside. Most people hear about this ingredient and wonder how Coca Cola is safe to drink, but as Snopes details the amounts inside are too small to have any impact on your tough stomach—just your dirty laundry. While you might not want to drink a ton of Coca Cola thanks to the (real or artificial) sugar and sodium content, you and your soon-to-be clean clothes will be just fine.

From Listserv

Eric Clapton -Autumn Leaves

Homemade Mayonnaise in 2 Minutes or Less

You might remember your grandmother using a mayonnaise maker - a jar with a plunger that she plunged up and down...well, here you go...the easiest way to make mayonnaise in the world! No more jars with blue or yellow lids and LOTS of weird ingredients...make it soon!

Get it? It is essentially sucking down oil in a thin, steady stream, saving you from having to do it yourself. In no time flat, you end up with a cup full of creamy, perfectly emulsified, real-deal, better-than-anything-you-can-buy mayonnaise, and you've pushed yourself up to a 100% success rate (with the option of making small batches, to boot!).

Of course the best part of all this is that you get to flavor it however you'd like. Most often for me that means garlic (I microplane one clove into the mix per egg yolk I use).

Pro-tip: Be Careful With Your Extra Virgin

It's possible to make a truly tasty mayonnaise by using high quality extra-virgin olive oil, but there's a problem: Blenders, food processors, and hand blenders are too powerful.

You see, extra-virgin olive oil droplets are composed of many tiny fragments, many of which are bound tightly together, preventing our taste buds from picking them up. Whip the olive oil with enough vigor, by say, using a food processor or blender, and you end up shearing those bitter-tasting fragments apart from each other. The result is a mayonnaise with a markedly bitter taste. Not only that, but these tiny fragments actually decrease the efficacy of emulsifiers like mustard or lecithin, making your sauce more likely to break.

So what if you want to have an ultra-stable mayonnaise that's still strongly flavored with extra-virgin olive oil but has no bitterness? The key is to use a neutral-flavored oil like canola or vegetable to start your mayonnaise. Once it's stable, transfer it to a bowl and whisk in some extra-virgin olive oil by hand. You'll still get plenty of flavor, but none of the bitterness.

And this, my friends, is how great sandwiches start.

From Life Hacker...via The Food Lab