• How to Cut and De-Seed a Pomegranate

    Late October, early November is the season for pomegranates, pinkish red orbs filled with crunchy, juicy seeds, bursting with flavor. You can get them at most supermarkets, but if you live anywhere near where they are grown, it's best to get them at a local farmer's market. Here you are most likely to find the ripest pomegranates - the ones whose peels are beginning to crack open, their plump, ripe seeds expanding beyond the peel's ability to contain them. If you are unfamiliar with how to open and remove the seeds from a pomegranate, here are the steps that we use:

    Print Options How to Cut and De-Seed a Pomegranate

    METHOD

    1 Pomegranate juice stains. So before you begin to cut into one, make sure you are wearing something that you don't care too much about, like an old t-shirt. The juice will stain a wood cutting board (you can use vinegar or lemon juice to get the pink out) so you may want to cut on a plastic cutting board. Work close to the sink, making cuts and then moving the

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  • How to Cook and Eat an Artichoke

    I can imagine, that if you didn't grow up eating artichokes and if you were encountering them for the first time, they might seem a little intimidating. How one cooks and eats an artichoke is not obvious from its appearance. If you've always wondered how to cook and eat the darn things, here are the steps:

    Print Options How to Cook and Eat an Artichoke
    • Prep time: 5 minutes
    • Cook time: 35 minutes

    METHOD

    How to Cook an Artichoke

    1. If the artichokes have little thorns on the end of the leaves, take a kitchen scissors and cut of the thorned tips of all of the leaves. This step is mostly for aesthetics as the thorns soften with cooking and pose no threat to the person eating the artichoke.

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    2. Slice about 3/4 inch to an inch off the tip of the artichoke.

    3. Pull off any smaller leaves towards the base and on the stem.

    4. Cut excess stem, leaving up to an inch on the artichoke. The stems tend to be more bitter than the rest of the artichoke, but some people

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  • The actress was recently reunited on set with Charlie Sheen. She told Bethenny what her experience was working with her ex-husband.

  • Easy Tip for Getting Corn Off the Cob

    Lots of recipes (creamed corn, corn chowder, corn salad) require stripping the corn kernels away from the cob. In practice, it's a bit tricky as the corn cob can slip from its position, and the kernels can go flying all over the place. I don't know where I first heard of this trick of using a bundt pan, but it's great for helping to steady the corn cob and to catch the kernels as they come off the cob.

    Print Options Easy Tip for Getting Corn Off the Cob

    METHOD

    To remove corn kernels from the cob using a bundt pan, stand the shucked corn cob upright, with the tip of cob placed in the center hole of the bundt pan.

    Holding the cob steady, use a sharp knife and make long downward strokes on the cob, separating the kernels from the cob.

    Many bundt pans have a stick-free interior. If this is the case with yours, be careful not to scratch the interior of the pan with your knife. If the knife scratches around the edges of the bundt pan hole, that shouldn't be a problem, as when you use a

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  • Easy Poached Eggs

    Poaching eggs is one of the easiest, quickest, and lowest calorie ways of preparing eggs, as there is no added fat. Poached eggs make great additions to salads, such as the French salad Lyonnaise, or sandwiches, or just served simply with toast and a little salt and pepper. Here are a few of our methods for how to poach an egg.

    Print Options Easy Poached Eggs Recipe
    • Cook time: 4 minutes

    Fresh eggs will be easier to poach (they'll hold together better) than older eggs. Vinegar is optional, it will help the eggs hold together, but if you don't like the taste, omit.

    Add to shopping list

    INGREDIENTS

    • Fresh eggs
    • 1 to 2 teaspoons vinegar (rice vinegar works well) (optional)

    Equipment needed

    • Shallow saucepan with cover
    • Slotted spoon

    METHOD

    1 First bring water in a saucepan to almost boiling. If the water is already boiling, lower the heat until it is no longer boiling. At this point, you can add one or two teaspoons of vinegar to the water, if you want. The

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  • By Al Yellon - Editor

    The All-Star Game is supposed to celebrate the best of the best in baseball. Here are some players who were picked for the game who don't qualify for that status.

    Follow @sbnbaseball on Twitter, and LikeBaseball Nation on Facebook.

    Jul 8, 2012 -Every year, there's debate and discussion of who did not get picked for major-league All-Star teams, even after some of those who were originally left out are added to the squads due to injury (A.J. Pierzynski is still on the outs this year, and that's a real snub -- he definitely deserved to go).

    But what about players who do get to go to the Midsummer Classic despite, and I'm trying to be charitable here, being mediocre-to-awful? There have been some real head-scratching choices in All-Star history, yet those players will always have the "All-Star" banner on top of their pages on baseball-reference.com. Here are eight of the worst picks of all-time.

    1942 American League: Eddie Smith. Smith, perhaps

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  • Actress and philanthropist Olivia Wilde has a reputation for helping people in need and giving back to less fortunate communities, particularly in Haiti. This year, the A-lister wanted to further her contributions to Haiti by co-designing a limited-edition bag for charity with her partner-in-good Barbara Burchfield and our very own Accessories Director, Mollie Culligan.


    Olivia_Final_Image1Olivia_Final_Image1
    "I thought, what company could create something with us that would really be able to have that same feeling of something loved and worn and beautiful and organic and Alternative was just the perfect and obvious fit," says Olivia. Both Olivia and Barbara wanted to collaborate on a cross-body to backpack convertible bag that resembled Olivia's own "Haiti Bag" which she had carried on many of her countless trips there.

    20120227_OliviaWildeBag_Inside_lowres_web20120227_OliviaWildeBag_Inside_lowres_web
    The Message Bag is a unisex style crafted from vintage army canvas, pebbled leather and accents of antique brass hardware. Wearers will find an added bonus on the inside of the bag as they open up Read More »

  • Today's guest post is from Shakirah Dawud.

    "Let's talk about something else."

    In the year and a half I've been blogging, I've seen no less than 10 different blogs change direction. They found their true voices. Kudos. They realized their businesses were going in one direction and their blog another. Laudable. They were sick of blogging about one topic and wanted a change. Fine.

    But what about when we've become old men on the hill?

    But what happens when we build enormous communities? Our names become famous in business and social media because we offer useful advice, revolutionary thoughts, and strong opinions about certain aspects of the world around us.

    And then Something Big happens, and we speak to it on the blog. We confess to our readers that we're bare humans, without the trappings of wisdom or professionalism. We become more ourselves. And we like it. So do our readers.

    Can we like it too much?

    It's a slippery slope, baring one's soul. Everything

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  • Search engine optimization isn't just about being found through online search, it's about putting your best content in front of the right people. The key to being found by your ideal niche is doing everything within your power to make sure search engines are able to figure out what you do in order to refer the right traffic to your site. One of the easiest tools to neglect in optimizing SEO is internal linking within your website.

    Internal linking is a valuable tool you can use to help a search engine figure out which pages on your website are the most valuable. Dave Davies writes for Search Engine Watchthat, "a link from the homepage of a site or another strong page will be weighted higher than a link from a weak page 12 levels deep in its hierarchy."

    Highlight Important Pages through Internal Links

    If you want to highlight a signature product's landing page, vitally important content in a blog post, or your company's about page for search engines, you can build more internal

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  • Search rankings and the future of your web sites and blogs… It seems like everyone is talking about their search ranking these days, and why wouldn't they? With Google throwing web sites and their rankings around like rag dolls, you never know where your rankings might be!

    Thankfully there is a wide selection of tools and resources for you to use to track where you are in the search results, and some that will keep tracking reports and progress of your movements. In this post we are going to highlight a few of the best free, free trial, and paid solutions out there for tracking your blog's movement in the search engines.

    WhatPageOfSearchAmIOn.com

    This web site has such a silly long name, yet it tells you exactly what you use the site for…WhatPageOfSearchAmIOn.com shows you exactly where you are currently ranked in the search results for any search term. It's an extremely fast and easy to use tool. All you need to do is put in the search box the phrase you want to see if

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