BostonZest

Keeping Your Dog Well Hydrated on Hot Summer Days

Poppy may be young but she does not like the heat and would prefer sitting on a bench sipping water to walking, when it's above 75 degrees. 

On hot days, we try to get out earlier and choose the shady side of the street and the canopy of trees on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall for our exercise. A walk along the water can be a bit cooler, especially if you have a breeze and some shady trees.

We carry water on our walks most of the year because Poppy loves to jump up on a bench for a rest and a nice cool drink. Like Maggie Mae before her, Penny swears Poppy has a look she gives us when she wants a drink. And, like most dogs, she is a drippy drinker. 

There are lots of products designed for dogs to drink from when you're out and about.

Here are a few of our favorites. 

 

We love our H2O4K9, Dog Water Bottle and Travel Bowl. You can clip it to your belt and the cap becomes a drinking container. Ed carries it in a Mesh Water Bottle Carrier that we've had for ages.

Penny keeps a Silicone Pop-Up Water Bowl in her backpack so we always have a way to share water with a thirsty dog. You can see Poppy drinking from her Pop-up in the photo below.

You can use a plastic bag

If you came out without a special water dish for your dog, you can use a plastic bag. Just slide your hand inside, cup your hand, and pour in some water. It won't leak the way your hand does without the bag, and you won't waste water as you would if you let your pup drink from a bottle.

Here's our dear little Maggie Mae back when she demonstrated the plastic bag method.

This summer we decided to get an early start on keeping Poppy well hydrated. Since she is fed a raw, homemade diet, we've added water to our recipe and we pour extra water into her dish with each meal. 

We also carry a back-up bottle of cold water in an insulated water bottle carrier for the people on the walk and to tempt Poppy with a bit of cold water when she doesn't seem interested in her own supply.

Get to know all of our Sunday Dogs (and other critters) at Boston Dogs.

Thanks to everyone who Hops over to Amazon from here to do their shopping. We appreciate your support.

Details:
Words: Penny Cherubino, edited for BostonZest from her City Paws Newspaper Column.
Photography: 2008-2014 Penny & Ed Cherubino

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ID Spam Calls with White Pages Reverse Phone Number Look-Up Right After You Block Them

In February we told you "We Love Our Spam, Scam & Robo Call Blocker." The names and phone numbers of most people from whom we actually want to receive calls are already built into our phone system and they pop up on the screen with proper identification. We block all other calls and then check them out over on, White Pages Reverse Phone Number look-up.

Yes you can put the number into a Google search box and get a list of links to pages that might or might not be safe to visit. White Pages is a site that has been around for years with a history of legitimate service. 

When the identification of your caller pops up on White Pages, you get a spam level report and other users who have been harassed by this phone number supply information about the calls they've received. One benefit to immediate blocking is that many users say they get constant calls from the same numbers. We don't. Once they're blocked, we don't hear from them again. 

Should we discover that a call is legit, like a recent one from a mail order pharmacy, you can unblock the number, add it to your system, and contact the caller. 

Since we purchased our CPR Call Blocker V202 in February, we have blocked 95 specific phone numbers. In addition to spam, scams, marketing, charity, and political calls, this includes phone numbers from a parking lot system that kept printing our number as one of theirs in the directory they distributed to parking attendants and in other print material. Now all those numbers seem to reach a dead or non-working phone line. We have also blocked all private numbers, unknown callers, international and out of the area callers, and unavailable callers.

We have most certainly seen a drastic decline in unwanted phone calls since we began using the blocker. Most of the real calls we receive come in on our cell phones. The constant ringing of our land line was from spam, scams, and other annoying calls.

During election season, we plan to block any and all political and polling calls. 

We love the sound of silence from our phones!

Do you have an Amazon Gift Certificate to use? Or do you need to buy one for a gift? Remember to click over to Amazon from here to support this site!

  

Details:

Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2016 Penny & Ed Cherubino  

Opinel Knives Are Perfect for Picnic & Vacation Season

We love our Opinel Knives! If you have one (or more like us), it's time to take it out and take it with you. 

Here is our oldest Opinel, a traditional #8 with a carbon steel blade. Yes, we have to make sure it's clean and dry when we put it away but it has provided a sharp edge for years and years with just routine home maintenance.

If carbon steel is not right for you, they now make these knives in stainless steel. You'll also find some specialty blades made for gardeners, fishermen, mushroom foragers, and wine lovers! 

Because Opinel knives are inexpensive (considering how well they work), we keep a few of them packed and ready to go (in the travel kit shown above) for cooking in other people's kitchens. There's one in our roof deck dining bag so we always have a knife to share a bit of cheese with friends. Back in the days when we had cars, we had one of these in each vehicle. 

They make great gifts for anyone who loves to enjoy an impromptu bit of food and fun.

What's on your Food Lover's shopping list?

    

Details:

Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photos: ©2014 Penny & Ed Cherubino 

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MeMail App Is Our Friday Link

The MeMail App is something I use all the time to turn random thoughts, promises, and ideas into a list that will appear in my email program the next time I sit down at my computer.

As I sent myself an email to do a post on something else I had just recommended to a friend, I quietly laughed at myself because I was using MeMail to get the job done, just as I often do many times a week. But I had never done a post recommending that readers invest $1.99 in this clean-cut, simple, productivity tool.

In the Apple App Store the description says, "Featured in TED Blog: '25+ apps to make your everyday life easier' (2014-09) Capture a thought, to-do, or scrap of information, FAST! MeMail does one thing exceptionally well: send quick emails to a pre-set address. Email yourself reminders or notes? Just launch, type, and send — that's it ..." 

It really is that simple. You set it up with your email address when you get it and keep it handy on the front screen of your phone. When you want to remember something, you open it, type (or in my case dictate) what you want to remember, and hit send. 

Do you have an Amazon Gift Certificate to use? Or do you need to buy one for a gift? Remember to click over to Amazon from here to support this site!

Details:

Words: Penny Cherubino
Screenshots courtesy of Apple App Store

Learn How to Cook on a Continuum with The Kitchen Ecosystem by Eugenia Bone

Cooking meals on a daily basis can be daunting or it can be relaxing depending on your approach. I recently discovered the book The Kitchen Ecosystem. Author Eugenia Bone helped me see why it might be easier for longtime cooks to prepare daily meals while the same task could be stressful for the occasional cook.

Having Stuff on Hand

One crisper drawer in my refrigerator is devoted to my cooking basics: celery, carrots, parsley, cabbage, lemons, and apples. With the stocks in my freezer and the onions and garlic in my pantry, I have the beginning of many soups, stews, braises, and salads.

The Kitchen Ecosystem is arranged by 40 common ingredients. For each one, the author provides recipes for dishes that star that ingredient and follows with ideas on what you can make to add to your pantry with not only the leftovers, but also the scraps. (e.g., Who knew that apple peel stock could be handy to have when you need a bit more pectin in a jelly or jam?)

Preserving foods by fermenting, canning, and freezing are part of the author's repertoire. But even if you're not ready to make your own sauerkraut or can chicken, you can make stocks to freeze and prepare a dish that will let you turn the leftovers into a sequence of meals.

Tired of Leftovers?

If you or your family quickly tire of the same food after a day or two, think about preparing a basic version of something and then creating variations on a theme. I do this all the time with chicken soup. I’ll make a big pot of simple chicken soup and then serve it at future meals with different starches like rice, pasta, noodles, dumplings, barley, grains, cubes, etc. In the photo above, I used polenta cubes.

Whenever I have leftover, falling apart, tender meat from a pot roast or braised lamb shanks, I’ll shred the meat and turn it and the braising liquid into a chili by adding beans, chilies, and seasoning then simmering until the flavors blend.

Repurpose

When I make chicken soup, I use enough chicken to have extra poached chicken. This can become the curried chicken salad you see above. That's a cool, crisp, spicy change of pace.

Every few weeks, I make a big batch of homemade dog food for my Westie Poppy. The recipe I use calls for a wide assortment of vegetables and there’s always half a cauliflower, half a cabbage, and a few other things left when I’m done. These become a soup for the human members of the family. One version is the cabbage and kielbasa soup shown below.

If you shy away from buying a whole head of broccoli, cabbage, or cauliflower because you’ll only eat part of it and waste the rest, consider soup on day two. It can be vegetarian or you can add meat or sausage to the mix. You might even consider making the soup on one burner while you’re cooking the meal that will have cauliflower as a side dish on the others. Most soups taste better on day two when the flavors have had an opportunity to harmonize.

The Boston Public Library has a copy of The Kitchen Ecosystem that you might want to borrow to start thinking about cooking on a continuum. The book is also available in an ebook format. 

What's on your Food Lover's shopping list?

   

Details:

Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photos: ©2016 Penny & Ed Cherubino. Cover art courtesy of the publisher, Clarkson Potter.

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We Love Our Spam, Scam & Robo Call Blocker

Faced with the upcoming election season, we decide to invest in a call blocker for our landline. We've only had it for a short time but are already enjoying the benefits. No more nightly call from a number that comes up as Quincy and is reported to be spam when we do a reverse number look-up over on WhitePages.com. 

The evening after we installed the call blocker that call came in. We hit the "Block Now" button and haven't seen that particular spammer on our incoming call list again.

No more calls for the business that keeps printing our phone number instead of their own on everything from company directories to business cards. We had a list of the numbers that kept calling us looking for them and entered those manually into the call blocker. While we do feel sorry for the people trying to reach the business when their call is disconnected, we've pleaded with staff members from the company for years to stop giving our number as theirs. 

We also used the shortcuts provided in the device's users manual to block all withheld, private, unknown, international, out-of-the-area, international calls with 00 prefixes, and unavailable callers. Most of our friends and family reach us via text or our cell phones so we don't expect that to shut out many legitimate calls. 

The equipment comes with 200 "known spam" numbers blocked. Obviously, we are benefiting from that because we've entered only 14 numbers (as of this post) and are already amazed at how few spam and robocalls we're receiving. 

We did our research and found hundreds of positive reviews and a strong customer service support system for CPR Call Blocker V202. We ordered ours from Amazon and had free delivery with our Amazon Prime membership.  

Both of us keep remarking on how nice it is to be free of those spam, marketing, and political calls. As the candidates begin to call, we'll just block their numbers as they arrive. 

We still have our special answering machine message that we told you about in our post "Sick of Political and Polling Phone Calls?" And, we've added our land line numbers to the National Do Not Call Registry. While we still believe that we should all have a right to an "opt in" rather than an "opt out" choice for all calls, this is certainly a step forward for this household. 

Watch for updates on this post as we get more use out of this call blocker.

Do you have an Amazon Gift Certificate to use? Or do you need to buy one for a gift? Remember to click over to Amazon from here to support this site!

 

Details:

Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2016 Penny Cherubino  

Stop and Smell the Beans – the Gorgeous Coffee Beans

What’s so great about coffee? Besides the fact that many of us can’t start or survive the day without it, there has to be more to this all but magical drink than just the caffeine.

There’s the unmistakable aroma of fresh brewed coffee in the morning. The close your eyes, “mmm …” after that first sip. And, the shameless excuse it provides to take a much needed break anytime of day.

While all of that works for me, there’s also “the look” of coffee, especially as it’s being prepared. Tearing open a package of freshly roasted beans and watching those glistening nuggets of goodness cascade into the grinder bin is not to be dismissed lightly. I should explain.

In our home, we’ve been ordering coffee beans from the same company, Beanstock Coffee, for years. These guys roast their coffee, “... locally, in small batches and always to order.” Because we love robust, dark roast coffee, our favorite is the Black Fish Creek Blend that they describe best as, “... “Very dark and smooth without being burnt and finishing with subtle berry notes.”

After grinding, and before brewing, there’s another beauty shot moment of a fresh mound of tiny ground granules that’s quickly upstaged by its intoxicating fragrance.

Gorgeous coffee beans – that shouldn’t be overlooked – on their way to becoming an outstanding cup of joe.

Warm up the espresso machine!

And, before we get emails asking, we use a Breville Cafe Roma Espresso Maker and a Capresso Burr Coffee Grinder.

Do you have an Amazon Gift Certificate to use? Or do you need to buy one for a gift? Remember to click over to Amazon from here to support this site!

  

Details:

Words: Ed Cherubino

Photography: © 2015 Ed Cherubino

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