How to Make Egg Easy-to- Peel, Foolproof Boiled Eggs

It's not that hard to boil an egg, but along the way, things can (and often do) go wrong. Kitchen Konfidence offers solutions to two of the biggest challenges about making boiled eggs: Timing the water boiling exactly and getting peels off easily (without losing chunks of the egg).

Brandon Matzek's first tip is to poke the flatter end of the egg with a small, sterilized pin. This, he says, make them easier to peel. The Science of Cooking site explains what might be at play here and a few other benefits you might get from the pin prick:

Some people use a pin to make a small hole in the shell at the large end of the egg before they put the egg in the water. At the large end of each egg is a small air space. When you hard cook an egg, this air heats up, expands, and escapes through pores in the shell—but not before the egg white sets. This leaves the egg with a flattened end. Pricking the egg provides a quick escape route for the air, which gives you an egg with a smoothly rounded end. If you prick an egg, watch for a jet of air shooting from the hole as the egg cooks.

Scientists disagree on the other possible benefits of pricking an egg. Some say that piercing the eggshell with a pin lets water leak between the shell and the egg's internal membrane, making for an egg that's easier to peel. Others claim that providing a quick way out for expanding gases makes the egg less likely to crack as it cooks, which may be particularly important for older eggs with larger air sacs. Still others say that poking a hole in the shell weakens it, making cracks more likely.

Brandon's second tip, though, is pretty genius for those of us who sometimes lose track of time when boiling eggs (because it's a fact that if you wander off for a moment, you'll come back to the eggs already boiling for who knows how long). He uses a probe thermometer to be alerted for when the eggs are right about to boil:

Put the saucepan over a medium-high flame, and place the tip of a probe thermometer into the water. Water boils at 212°F, so set your thermometer to sound the alarm at 209°F. I like to give myself a little time get to the kitchen, and prepare for the next step. As soon as the water starts to boil, set a timer for 1 minute. The moment that minute is up, take the saucepan off the heat, cover, and let sit for 8 to 10 minutes. Timing will depend on the type of pan you use. I'd recommend 8 minutes the first time you try this. If the yolks are still a little squishy, try 9 minutes on your next batch.

Using a probe thermometer to boil eggs may seem a bit over-the-top, but it completely eliminates challenges #1 and #3 above. You will never over-cook an egg again.

For hard-boiled egg lovers, that's music to our ears.

For more egg boiling tips and tricks, see the full post on Kitchen Konfidence.

How to Grow A Successful Business

To succeed in business today, you need to be flexible and have good planning and organizational skills. Many people start a business thinking that they'll turn on their computers or open their doors and start making money - only to find that making money in a business is much more difficult than they thought. You can avoid this in your business ventures by taking your time and planning out all the necessary steps you need to reach to achieve success. Read on to find out how.

1. Get Organized
To be successful in business you need to be organized. Organization will help you complete tasks and stay on top of things to be done. A good way to do this is to create a to-do list each day - as you complete each item, check it off your list. This will ensure that you're not forgetting anything and you're completing all the tasks that are essential to the survival of your business.

2. Keep Detailed Records
All successful businesses keep detailed records. By keeping detailed records, you'll know where the business stands financially and what potential challenges you could be facing. Just knowing this gives you time to create strategies to overcome the obstacles that can prevent you from being successful and growing your business.

3. Analyze Your Competition
Competition breeds the best results. To be successful, you can't be afraid to study and learn from your competitors. After all, they may be doing something right that you can implement in your business to make more money.

4. Understand the Risks and Rewards
The key to being successful is taking calculated risks to help your business grow. A good question to ask is "What's the downside?" If you can answer this question, then you know what the worst-case scenario is. This knowledge will allow you to take the kinds of calculated risks that can generate tremendous rewards for your business.

5. Be Creative
Always be looking for ways to improve your business and to make it stand out from the competition. Recognize that you don't know everything and be open to new ideas and new approaches to your business.

6. Stay FocusedThe old saying that "Rome was not built in a day" applies here. Just because you open a business doesn't mean that you're going to immediately start making money. It takes time to let people know who you are, so stay focused on achieving your short-term goals and give the rest time to come together on its own.

7. Prepare to Make Sacrifices
The lead-up to starting a business is hard work, but after you open your doors, your work has just begun. In many cases, you have to put in more time than you would if you were working for someone else. In turn, you have to make sacrifices, such as spending less time with family and friends in order to be successful.

8. Provide Great Service
There are many successful businesses that forget that providing great customer service is important. If you provide better service for your customers, they'll be more inclined to come to you the next time they need something instead of going to your competition.

9. Be Consistent
Consistency is key component to making money in business. You have to consistently keep doing the things necessary to be successful day in and day out. This will create long-term positive habits that will help you make money over the long term.

Conclusion
Starting and running and running a successful business can be rewarding and challenging. Success requires focus, discipline and perseverance. However, success will not come over night - it requires a long-term focus and that you remain consistent in challenging environments. 

source : investopedia.com

How to Say When You Ask for a Raise

If you're like most people, the thought of asking for a raise makes you nervous because you aren't quite sure what to say. You might have a general idea of why you deserve a salary increase, but how do you translate that into language to take to your boss?

The answer is easier than you might think: Just be straightforward.

For instance, your wording might sound like this:

"I was hoping that we could talk about my salary. It's been a year since my last raise, and in that time, I've taken on quite a few new responsibilities. I'm now solely responsible for overseeing our website and, as you mentioned last week, our results in that area have shot way up. I've also been managing Jane since Carlos left, and I've been able to resolve the concerns we'd had about her relations with vendors; that area has been going really smoothly since I began working with her. In addition, I know you're happy with the changes that I've made to our press releases, and we've been getting a 25 percent higher rate of response when we pitch those. Now that I've been doing these things for a while, I'd like to discuss increasing my salary to a level that reflects these increased contributions."

Note a few key points about this language:

* It doesn't just say that you'd like more money, but lays out reasons for why the raise is deserved. By explaining how you've been contributing at a higher level than when your salary was last set, you can make the case for your compensation to be raised accordingly.

* It references work that you've already done, not work that you're promising to do in the future. Some people want to ask for a raise as soon as they take on new responsibilities. While this can make sense if those new responsibilities are part of a promotion to an entirely new job, if they're simply a new part of your existing job, it's generally more effective to wait until you show how well you've done with the new tasks. "Pay me more to take on new work" generally doesn't go over well, outside of a promotion. But "I've taken on new work and here are the outstanding results that I obtained in doing so" is often precisely the formula that will garner a raise.

* It makes a case based on your value to your employer. There's no mention here of what your co-workers get, or the fact that you need more because your kid is about to go to college. It's all about why your value to the company has increased, and why your compensation should reflect that.

Aside from preparing yourself with language similar to the above, there's also one more thing that you should prepare before walking into your boss's office to make that raise request: what to say if the answer is no.

Too many people just skulk off feeling dejected if their raise request is turned down. Don't let that be you. Instead, be prepared to say something like,"What would it take for me to earn a raise in the future?" A good manager should be willing to talk with you about specifically what you'd need to do to hear "yes" next time.

Alison Green writes the popular Ask a Manager blog, where she dispenses advice on career, job search, and management issues. She's also the co-author of Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Manager's Guide to Getting Results, and former chief of staff of a successful nonprofit organization, where she oversaw day-to-day staff management, hiring, firing, and employee development.

How to Archive older items manually

Your Outlook mailbox is only so big, and it’s a good bet that you won’t stop getting email anytime soon. To keep it from filling up, you can move old items you want to keep to an archive, a separate Outlook Data File (.pst) that you can open from Outlook any time you need it.

By default, Outlook uses AutoArchive to archive items at a regular interval. To learn more, see Archive older items automatically .

You can also archive items manually whenever you want. That way, you can control which items to archive, where to store them, and how old an item needs to be before it can be archived.

1. Click File > Info > Cleanup Tools > Archive.

 TIP    Archive and AutoArchive might not be available if your mail profile connects to an Exchange Server. It's also possible that your organization has a mail retention policy that overrides AutoArchive. Check with your system administrator for more information.

2. Click the Archive this folder and all subfolders option, and choose the folder you want to archive.
3. Under Archive items older than, enter a date.

4. You can create multiple .pst files if you want to archive some folders using different settings. For example, you may want to keep items in your Sent folder longer than items in your Inbox folder.
5. Check the Include items with “Do not AutoArchive” checked box to archive individual items that are excluded from automatic archiving. This option doesn't remove that exclusion from these items, but instead ignores theDo not AutoArchive setting for this archive only.
6. Click OK.

Turn off AutoArchive

To archive only when you want, turn off AutoArchive.

1. Click File > Options > Advanced.
2. Under AutoArchive, click AutoArchive Settings.
3. Uncheck the Run AutoArchive every n days box.

How to Tie a Bow Tie with Easiest Way

You might not associate bow ties with Alton Brown, but if you don't, you haven't seen some of his more recent TV shows. In his most recent video, he shows us how to pick a good-looking bow tie, along with the easy way to tie one, using himself and his own collection of ties as props.

The full video is worth a watch, especially if you don't already own bow ties or think they just look kind of goofy unless you're wearing formalwear like a tuxedo (he goes out of his way to highlight more than a few classy gentlemen who often wore bow ties without looking like circus performers.) Alton walks through common styles of bow ties, from the standard bow to the Jackson to the ever-sharp batwing tie. If you're not sure what size bow tie to get, the simple equation to remember is to take your neck size (same as you'd use for collared shirts), double it, and add two inches.

From there, he explains that tying a bow tie is a lot like tying a shoe. It's difficult to describe in text, but Alton walks you through each step in the video, complete with close-ups so you can see exactly what to do with your hands. Of course, mastering the bow tie requires practice, so you'll only get there if you own one to try out.