The large amount of devastatingly flaky leftover breakfast slab pie I have in my fridge can attest to the smooth paste method working. Serious Eats has a pretty detailed breakdown of the science, written by the guy (Kenji) who originally came up with the concept for ATK.

Can anyone comment on upgrading from a computer running Win7 with TrueCrypt installed? (I know I should probably be moving away from TrueCrypt, but inertia is getting the best of me) Any problems I should be aware of upgrading an encrypted drive? If it makes a difference, my drive is partitioned, with only my personal…

I’ve veered close (or I guess steered directly into, depending on who you ask) to this problem, and one of my strategies is something that focuses less on how to react to situation and more on how to act to begin with:

Great article!

How do people feel about using "girl" to refer to a woman? I try to avoid it for anyone above like 16 because it feels kind of infantilizing.

Speaking of taking the metro, you can work around the parking fee by parking for free at the North Hollywood metro station and taking the subway one stop to the Universal City station. One-way subway fare is currently $1.75, so even round trip it's cheaper than parking (though the discount obviously shrinks the more…

I haven't baked muffins in a while, but a good way to prevent overmixing (which as others have noted is often the culprit for collapsed muffins) is to use a dough whisk (something like this). The weird shape lets batter flow through more easily than with a balloon whisk, while pushing the batter around just enough to…

Coming from another perspective, it can sometimes be annoying to have a conversation/debate with someone whose response is basically, "You're being illogical. I'm right. End of discussion."

I can never relate to the arguments about loading a dishwasher. Somehow I've gotten in the habit of always washing dishes by hand (this from a guy who has never lived in a place without a dishwasher). If I'm ever asked to load a dishwasher I'm sure I'll get an anxiety attack.

Question: does getting really shitty messages* like this increase one's choosiness/standards in replying to unoffensive messages or decrease it?

Eh, you like what you like, I guess.

I was in Manhattan for work one winter, and on a night off I decided to go to Martha Stewart Omnimedia headquarters for an employee craft sale (as 24-year old male government workers do). This was in a part of Manhattan that didn't have easy access to the subway system. I'm pretty good with subways but not so great…

Question: once all of the integration rollouts are complete, will all incoming GV calls routed through the Hangouts app be VOIP? What if I want an incoming call to come through as a regular voice call? I guess I would just not keep that setting on?

I was eating snow peas from a crudite platter once and started to try to wring the individual peas out of the pod.

OKC profile snippet that irrationally bothers me:

Yeah, everything you're saying makes sense. The way I look at myself is that all of my goals are related to my personal life, not my professional life. I want to have visited all the countries I want go to. I want to have tried all the foods I want to try. I want to have read all the books I want to read. I want to…

This is going to sound like a stupid question: what do people mean when they say they need a partner that is passionate about their careers/have a specific goal they are working toward/some other career-oriented statement? Obviously I realize that people aren't monolithic and universally describable, but this is just…

That's a whole other conversation I could have. I pretty regularly have leftovers last for way longer than standard guidelines. I guess I'm either lucky or just used to it.

I'll have a talk with him the next time I watch Essential Pepin.

With only a few tweaks, this could easily turn into the 15 best and worst words to use in your online dating profile.