Merry Christmas In New York City 2025

All around Manhattan the Christmas trees are up, and the brownstones are decorated. Below is a festive one on the Upper East Side.

In my kitchen, the cookies are baked. This year, I made Springerle (I do not have the molds!), Czechoslovakian cookies, Scottish Shortbread and Gingerbread cookies. We are ready to have Christmas teas with visitors!

Many of my friends are off to midnight Mass, but my senior Mother and I will watch the 1st American Pope say Mass on tv. Over the years, Mom and I have spent Christmases both together and apart.

By phone, I've had lovely catch-up chats with 4 friends today.

I hear many poor people, including a friend, are suffering with the flu. Mom and I got our flu, RSV, and the latest Covid vaccines in October, 2025. Thank heaven for shots! Get your up-to-date vaccines, dear readers, from your doctors or local pharmacies!

Adoration of the Shepherds by Jacob van Oost (1603–1671), a Flemish Baroque painter

We wish everyone near and far a Merry Christmas!🐑🐪

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The Best Sizes of Food Containers

Bormioli Rocco Quattro Stagioni Glass Milk Bottle 33.75 Ounce/1 Liter with Airtight Lid

In recent years I’ve become super orgainized. I tend to buy larger sizes of foods you might consider staples such as 4 lbs - 5 lbs of flour, sugar, dried legumes and sometimes pasta. I dislike having a job before starting a job, so having a little extra in storage containers means I can decide to make bean, lentil or pea soup without having to go to the supermarket. The same with baking, I never lack the flour or sugar to make pizza dough or a coffee cake if I get a craving or a visitor.

The 3 most useful shapes and sizes of food storage containers that fit most compactly into a pantry, refrigerator or freezer may surprise you!

1) 1 liter sized glass milk bottles - I discovered Bormili Rocco Quattro Stagioni Glass Milk Bottles with airtight lids at T.J. Maxx. Initionally, I only used them to store milk, eggnog, juice, Kombucha, i.e., liquids. But the mouth is wide enough for dried beans, peas, lentils and many pastas, and they take up less space than 32 oz canning jars, which are another great type of food storage containers. Had I considered compactness though, I’d have bought more of these than canning jars. The milk bottles are more versatile and can be lined up side by side inside a cupboard. 

2) Large (about 1 gallon) rectangle storage containers - They fit enough potato salad, cole slaw, guacamole or slices of an entire coffee cake to feed a family, but take up less room in your refrigerator or freezer than round or oval shaped contrainers. You could invest in glass or hardy plastic, but the takealong lighter plastic ones hold up surprisingly well for less moola.

3) Half cup Rubbermaid containers - When I got 8 of these as part of a set I thought it was a ripoff, but you’d be amazed at how many times they are the right size for condiments or leftovers. They also stack and snap together which is a useful space-saving function.

After I pack leftovers from a home cooked meal, I always think one day someone will design a more storeage efficient refrigerator! I notice flatter rectangles that hold a good portion of food fit better inside a refrigerator than round containers. When you get the black bottom containers or the plastic round ones for free with other food you buy, reuse them as they’re great for leftover soup or beef stew. 

Today I’d always aim to get shallow rectangle-shaped containers as the best space-savers for storage. You can stack them up!

Like-foods organized in (too thin for shoes but just right for a freezer) plastic shoe boxes bought at Walmart

If you’d like to add other space-saving-tips or brands for storing food in a cupboard, pantry, refrigerator or freezer, please comment.

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Don’t Throw Away Your Silica Gel Packets

You know those little silica gel packets that come with leather goods like shoes or handbags? Don’t throw them away. Reuse them!

I keep them with shoes that stay in plastic shoe boxes if I only wear the shoes occasionally. When I have extra silica gel packets from the shoe boxes I toss out, I repurpose them by placing the packets in the corners of my closets, kitchen cupboards, and inside drawers throughout my apartment including my nightstand and entertainment center.

Moisture if not controlled can destroy many types of dry goods. The silica gel packets absorb up to 40% of their weight in moisture, saving many types of dry goods from damage. They help maintain a dry environment, preventing mold and mildew from damaging leather goods and other articles that may surprise you!

Moreover, silica gel packets can also release moisture back into the air if the atmosphere gets too dry, helping to stabilize humidity to maintain product quality. 

Papers, photographs, jewelry, and electronics are several categories of items that can be preserved by tossing silica gel packets into the containers that store them. Razor blades will not rust or dull in a medicine cabinet, and car windshields will not fog up with silica packets placed on your dashboard. You can also toss silica gel packets into your gym bag, luggage, or clothes hamper to prevent mildew. A few packets stored in the corner of a food pantry keeps herbs, breadcrumbs and crackers fresh.

Silica gel packets are non-toxic unless cobalt is listed as an ingredient which is toxic. Most silica gel packets do not contain cobalt. If you place a few packets into a file cabinet or food pantry, you can always insert them into a paper envelope. The silica gel packets are fairly sturdy, so I don’t worry about them lying inside closets, pantries, or drawers.

Nevertheless, you should keep them away from children and pets since they aren’t editable.

Have you been throwing your silica gel packets away? Stop! They're very useful and you get them for free!

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Put The Laundry Book On Your Shelf

Do you know using too much laundry detergent gets your clothes less clean? Too much laundry detergent will also wear out your washing machine faster. So how much laundry detergent should you use to clean a normally soiled, medium load of laundry? According to 3rd and 4th generation, father and son laundry experts, Jerry and Zach Pozniak, the amount to add is only 2 tablespoons. It’s much less than most people use or what manufactures suggest. Moreover, if your clothes are not heavily soiled washing them in warm over hot water, not only gets them cleaner, but preserves the colors in your clothing.

Jerry and Zach Pozniak are the owners of a luxury dry cleaner located at 1318 Madison Avenue at 94th Street (the Carnegie Hill neighborhood) in New York City called Jeevers New York. It’s a small family run business which caters to celebrities and fashion types. 

Zach Pozniak has a YouTube channel where he doesn’t hold back on giving viewers free cleaning advise and reviewing best to worst laundry detergents and cleaning solvents. Kirkland and Purex liquid detergents top Zak’s list -- go to his channel for the complete details. Like a scientist he explains what ingredients make a detergent or solution most effective for different types of stains. Detergents containing OxiClean are recommended.

In addition to the above tips, I leaned to apply hydrogen peroxide to remove stains from a shirt after I wash but omit drying it. Let the hydrogen peroxide dry on the fabric. IMHO, The Laundry Book would make a great addition to a home. BTW: Know that my blogs are not sponsored. I give my honest opinions. The Laundry Book is a valuable reference book to help us keep our clothes in tip-top shape by squeaky cleaning them without damage. Jerry Pozniak recommends not buying clothes you can only spot clean since you can’t really clean them.

Father and son are committed to passing their 4 generations of cleaning hacks onto the public, and they run a prestige small family business customers can feel good about supporting.

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Rita Fox Made Couscous Salad

Photo: Hand Recipe/Facebook

Everybody should have a friend like Rita Fox. She’s kind, smart, fun, creative, generous and inspires you to cook! Here’s a recipe she posted on Facebook that looks amazing! I’ve never attempted to make couscous until I saw what she took to a pot luck dinner. 

The next 2 photos: Rita Fox

Couscous is an ancient North African dish with its roots in the cuisine of the indigenous Berber people. It's a staple food in the countries of the Maghreb region including Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Through North African immigration in the 1990s, the dish made its way across the Atlantic Ocean becoming popular in the Western Hemisphere. But in 1973 cookbook author Paula Wolfert played a significant role in first introducing North African flavors and couscous to American readers. Today couscous is a familiar term to everyone’s ears if not their palates!

BTW: Couscous isn’t a grain but tiny pasta. If you don’t have it in your cupboard, the recipe works with other forms of pasta.

 I linked you to 2 recipes. I don’t like feta cheese so favor Rita’s  parmesan version. 

بالصحة (bessahha)

بالصحة والراحة (bessahha o-orraha)

صحة (sahha)

My talented friend, Rita, is also the author of romance novels here. 

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Manufacturers Where Are the Refills?

I share a frustration with a lot of consumers. Reluctantly I buy a lot of mops to clean my floors. When it's time to replace the sponge head, I can never find my present mop's refills anywhere. It sucks to have to buy a whole new mop when all I need is its replacement sponge. Talk about waste in a throw away society!

Presently I have a Quickie mop. I bought the brand from the drugstore that is a stone’s throw away from my Manhattan apartment. The drugstore no longer sells the mops or its refills. Home Depot has refills for Quickie mops, but not for my model.

I don’t think it’s an accident either. A Google inquiry confirms my suspicions. We can’t get the replacement sponges for our mops frequently due to a business practice called build-in-obsolescience. Manufactures often make subtle changes to the the design rendering older refills obsolete. I’m far from a conspiracy theorist, and I’m chill about many things in everyday life, but I know I’m not imagining this practice as there’s an official name for it!

As long as I’m on a pet peeve roll, allow me to ask, why do mops and a few other tools and devises have to use unique connection systems that only fit the exact model they are designed for? Logically they don’t! There’s absolutely no practical reason except to increase revenue that some very common things everybody owns such as mops, plastic storage carts, or even Apple iPhones can't standardize their replacement parts, for examples, sponge heads (for mops) wheels (for plastic storage carts) or charging plugs (for iPhones) giving customers universal use for newer models especially within the same brands! It’s insane that every damn newer version of a tool or devise uses its own unique size of connection parts!

Of course a short-term solution is to buy extra refills for future use (urrr, accept and give the manufacturer the money). Another course of action is to look for generic knockoffs (i.e., pay a copycat competitor). 

Still, what else can consumers do? Let’s start with mops, shall we? Have you found a mop brand that you’ve been able to get the sponge refills for year after year? If so, it’d surely be my next mop because I’ve had it!😠😡

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Supermarket Plastic Produce Bags Rock

Let's discuss a bag equally as valuable and practical as a fine leather bag, namely a supermarket plastic produce bag! I’ll explain. 

Dispite buying a few sizes of Ziploc bags, I find supermarket plastic produce bags much more versatile, flexible, and useful for both storage and holding smaller quantities of food one needs to contain before dropping them into the trash. In Manhattan we put garbage down a compacter, as well as, separating it for recycling bins.

I try to be as neat as possible for the benefit of our maintenance men. Food scrapes and toiletries I can fit easily into these bags’ wide opening, and I tie the opening in a Boy Scout knot to close and leak proof it as it goes down the chute. 

What’s more, supermarket plastic produce bags are idea to separate articles that need to be stored away. Plastic produce bags are both strong and thin, taking up no additional space. Christmas decorations can be organized before going into drawers or huge Tupperware containers. What makes  these bags so perfect is again their wide opening, plus you can see your contents to know exactly what’s inside when you go to retrieve your items.

I have also used these plastic bags to enclose liquids such as suntan lotion, face creams, shampoos and conditioners before packing them into a suitcase or on a shelf at home when I fear a liquid could leak. The mess stays inside the bag without leaking on a shelf or inside a suitcase. 

After I arrive at my destination, I place dirty clothes in these bags, as well as, shoes so they won’t touch my clean clothes inside my suitcase.

At home I put raw beef and chicken inside supermarket plastic produce bags to first store them in my freezer, then to defrost the meats in my refrigerator.

If you are without containers to store flour and sugar, you can enclose them inside these plastic produce bags,  the tops secured with our trusty Boy Scout knot. Residual flour and sugar from their packaging ends up inside the plastic bags not inside your cupboards to clean.

They work so well to store all kinds of goods! I highly recommend repurposing your plastic produce bags that you bring home from the supermarket once you remove your produce. Think free storeage plastic bags. Not too big or too small but just the right size for so many jobs! Plastic produce bags never seem to develop holes from their travel home from the supermarket! Don’t toss them out as garbage, re-use them for garbage or storage bags. Personally, I don’t buy as many Ziploc bags as I once did.

Moreover, if you need more plastic produce bags than you carry home from the supermarket, you can buy them from Walmart, Amazon or ReStockIt. Who knew?

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The Honey Deuce

Photo: Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images

In September there’s a lot of talk about a mixed drink called the Honey Deuce, the official cocktail of the US Open. Created by mixologist Nick Mautone in 2006 and featured in Grey Goose’s cookbook, it features 3 fresh honeydew melon balls to represent tennis balls. At the US Open this year, it costs: $23. Drinking is expensive, no doubt about it.

Here’s how to make the cocktail at home:

The Honey Deuce

Ingredients:

1 1/2 ounces vodka - the US Open uses Grey Goose
3 ounces lemonade - A simple lemonade recipe combines lemon juice, simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water) and water.
1/2 ounce raspberry liqueur - the US open uses Chambord
3 honeydew melon balls, for garnish

If making cocktails for a crowd, mix the following larger quantities in a pitcher:

16 ounces vodka, 32 ounces fresh lemonade, 8 ounces raspberry liqueur.

Directions:

1) Fill a tall glass with ice.

2) Add the vodka, lemonade and respberry liqueur. 

3) Stir to mix.

4) Make 3 honeydew balls with a melon baller.

5) Place the balls across the top of the glass. The US Open threads the melons on a skewer.

This is a tasty drink even I (who usually skips mixed drinks for a simple glass of red wine paired with food) finds refreshing probably because during the summer, I drink water flavored with raspberry lemonade water enhancer, the only variety I think has much flavor.

So if you never drink alcohol, a raspberry lemonade flavor enhancer added to a glass of icy water is super refreshing too. Bottles up -- or in this case glasses up ... to your lips!

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Inside Drawer Organizers Are the Bomb

Mr. Penn Interlocking Drawer Organizer

Many people have a junk drawer, where necessary things like scissors, tape, staples, paper clips, or rubber bands reside for when we need them. Sometimes other articles like electrician tape, a ruler, nails, screws, or appliance instructions end up in there too because we don’t know where else to put them. 

Are you tired of shifting through your junk drawer (or night stand) to find stuff you were savvy enought to keep? You can turn to Walmart or Target for inexpensive drawer organizers to separate and give all these practical things their own home. I’ve pulled up 2 brands under $7 from Walmart Online as I think they are ideal.

Madesmart 8 Piece Desk Drawer Organizer

Made of durable and washable plastic; the compartments are sized for reasonably big, long, and small articles, and an interlocking feature gives customers options on arranging and keeping each section from sliding as you open and close the drawers. There’s no real need to spend more on expensive drawer organizers to hold inexpensive stuff. Still I recommend paying the extra dollar or two to get the interlocking benefit! Some of the $5 organizers lack this component.

If everything is visable, items won’t get lost, and you won’t forget you have them. What’s more, you may even become motivated to declutter if you see that you haven’t reached for something since it went into the drawer.

Giving everything you own a home is impowering. This is one time when spending under $7 ... to save time ... will improve your life!

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Which is Cheaper Toilet Paper or Tissue?

Like many of you, I buy both toilet paper and tissue, but short of having a cold, and the need to repeatedly blow my nose, I’ll just grab a few sheets of toilet paper because using a tissue seems wasteful to clear my sinuses after a shower or an allergy or dust causing sneeze. I don’t really need a whole tissue to drain my sinuses. This got me wondering which is cheaper, toilet paper or tissue? The answer turns out to be toilet paper.

Buying rolls of toilet paper (especially in bulk) to act as a tissue is more cost-efficient than buying boxes of tissues. Usually you get more sheets of toilet paper per roll for less money than the cost of a standard box of tissues. In other words, the toilet paper tends to cost less per roll and each roll has 2 to 3 more sheets compared to the more expensive box of tissues that contains fewer tissues per box.

Toilet paper is designed to break up quickly in water and is the only paper to safely flush down a toilet.

When you’re sick and blowing your nose frequently, a box of tissues are a better option as they’re bigger sheets so you don’t end up with snot on your hands.👃⛑

Also I’d never offer house guests a wad of toilet paper to blow their nose. It seems cheap.

Some sources say tissues are softer than toilet paper, but my 2-ply toilet paper is as soft as the tissues I buy (and I have also encountered some rough tissues I would not buy); therefore in my home, it’s more the size that differs.

So using toilet paper to blow your nose will save you a few bucks over time, but when you’re sick and blowing your nose often,  you’ll need a box of tissues. Like me, you’ll have to buy both, but when you don’t really need a bigger tissue to blow your nose, grabbing a few squares of toilet paper will simplify your life since your boxes of tissues will last longer.

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5 Homemade Bug Killers That Work

Photo: Etsy

My New York City apartment spoils me! I don’t have a bug problem. But when I visit the suburbs -- a house with side-and-back-yards and a garage -- I notice all kinds of critters try to move into the house! Recently I learned how to kill some of them:

1) Ants - Mix 1/2 teaspoon borax with 8 teaspoons of powdered sugar and enough water to dissolve, turning it into a paste. Repurpose empty yogurt cups or any empty container about the size of a cup, leaving the solution in the rooms where ants are spotted (usually in a kitchen or bathroom). The worker ants will take the bait back to the Queen of the colony. Pow, dead!💥🔫💨 I had no idea ants came into a house!

2) Wasps and hornets - They try to build nests on porch ceilings and structures. Vinegar and water chases them away, only to return. Wasps are very persistent. Spray those unwelcome pests with a mix of dish soap and water. The soap disrupts a wasp’s exoskeleton. Pow, gone!💥🔫💨

3) Lizards, spiders, and mice - While a family member’s garage door was up, I saw a lazard run inside and hide! We left the garage door partially open for a couple of hours hoping Mr. Lizard would try to escape back outside, but we didn’t see it. Next we sprayed clean rags with undiluted peppermint essential oil to leave inside the garage. What’s more, according to Home Depot and Reader’s Digest, you can mix 20 drops of peppermint essential oil into a 32-ounce spray bottle filled with water to deter spiders by spraying around your house in corners, near entrances, and along floorboards. Mice I hope never to see but the remedy to deter them from entering a garage is the same as lizards and spiders. Pow, no trespassing!💥🔫💨

4) Weevils - I read that sometimes weevils are already in the flour, rice and pasta we bring home from the supermarket. I aways put these foods in my freezer for several days to kill their eggs or lava before putting them in airtight containers in my cupboard. I toss in bay leaves for good measure. Pow, no worries!💥🔫💨

5) In Manhattan, our building has an exterminator come in every week to spray areas or apartments where roaches are seen. If a tenant sees a roach, we let the super know and the exterminator sets traps and monitors the area.

According to Lowe’s, baking soda mixed with sugar or baking soda sprinkled over an onion left out overnight for roaches to ingest produces carbon dioxide gas that builds up in their digestive tract to kill them. In an emergency, it’s good to know, however a roach infestation calls for a professional treatment. Pow, slain!💥🔫💨

In Manhattan I’m mostly spared from encounters with critters who have spindly legs and an attitude! The city sprays parks. Our building is proactive with pest control visits. Also, there is more concrete than grass, trees and plants. A trip to the suburbs reminds me how I like being spoiled! Out in the burbs residents must become highly effective killing machines to survive! Stay out of the house vermin🕷🐜🐁 or pow!!!💥🔫💨 

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