I am really bad about taking pictures and then getting them printed and framed….THEN hanging them on the walls of our home. I’m trying to work on that, so I decided to take Lily outside and take some cute pics of her the other day! Check out my little beauty having fun outside, below!
I can’t believe she is going to be TWO next week!!
<3 Katie Ryan
*MUNDANE MYSTERIES is sponsored by Airtron Heating & Air Conditioning.
We all know that washing our hands is important. But, much like towels, can bars of soap that we use to clean ourselves get dirty, too?
First, what is soap? Usually made of sodium or potassium salts from fatty acids & alkaline solutions, derived during a process called “saponification”, soap’s chemical makeup involves things called polar heads & non-polar tails. It’s a great emulsifier, which means it’s good at dispersing one liquid into another. So, when you wash your dirty hands with soap & water, those soap molecule tails are repelled by water but attracted to oils, which in turn attract dirt. Then, those tails cluster together & form “micelles”, which trap the dirt & oil. Those micelles are negatively charged & soluble in water, so they repel each other & remain in the water, where they’re easily washed away.
So, basically, soap gets your hands clean by latching onto grease, dirt, and oil more strongly than your skin does. Now, yes…you’re washing all those loose, dirt-trapping, dirty soap molecules away when you use soap…but does a bar of soap sitting on the bathroom counter or liquid soap in a bottle also get contaminated with microorganisms? The answer is “yes”, soap can, and indeed does, get dirty, though it isn’t really much of a problem. A few studies have been done where bars of soap, intentionally covered with E. coli & other bacteria, were given to test subjects who were told to wash up. None of those studies found any evidence of bacteria transfer from the soap to the subjects’ hands. Yay science!
Dirty soap can’t clean itself, however. So, how does a contaminated bar of soap get clean? The same way your hands do: a good, old-fashioned scrub-a-dub-dub. The friction from your hands rubbing against the soap, combined with the flushing action of the running water, removes any harmful microorganisms from both your hands and the soap & sends them down the drain.
Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via social media (@AndyWebbRadioVoice), or shoot me an email at [email protected].
*MUNDANE MYSTERIES is brought to you by Airtron Heating & Air Conditioning.
Some national holidays get a little muddled in our minds, most notably Memorial Day & Veterans Day. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has encountered enough of the confusion to have dedicated an entire section of their website to explaining the difference between the two similar, but very different, holidays.
Memorial Day & Veterans Day are observed about 6 months apart: Veterans Day every November 11th, and Memorial Day the last Monday of May. Both are meant to acknowledge the brave individuals who’ve served our country in the military…but what’s the difference between the two?
Veterans Day, originally known as Armistice Day, was first observed on November 11, 1919, the 1-year anniversary of World War I’s end. In 1926, Congress made it an annual observance, before making it a national holiday in 1938. Then, in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower changed the holiday’s name from Armistice Day to Veterans Day, to recognize veterans of both World Wars. Today, Veterans Day celebrates all military veterans, living or dead, who’ve served our country, with an emphasis placed on thanking military members in our own lives.
Memorial Day, while also a celebration of military veterans, has a more solemn vibe, as it honors those who’ve died in service to their country. When first observed after the Civil War, local communities would decorate the graves of fallen soldiers with flowers, which is why it was originally called Decoration Day. Originally held on May 30th, the date was chosen because it wasn’t the anniversary for any particular battle & all soldiers could be honored. But, the occasion shifted after World War I from remembering only the Civil War fallen to those who’ve perished throughout all of America’s conflicts. Memorial Day, as we now know it, was declared a federal holiday in 1971 & moved to the last Monday in May to facilitate a 3-day weekend.
The easiest way to think of the two holidays: consider Memorial Day a time to remember & honor those who are no longer with us to receive our gratitude personally, while Veterans Day should be a time to shake hands with a veteran who stood up & fought for our freedoms.
Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via social media (@AndyWebbRadioVoice), or shoot me an email at [email protected].
So you want to have an amazing Thanksgiving but do not want to have to do the hours of cooking and cleaning? Check out these local restaurants who want to take care of cooking the meal for you!
7th Street Cafe
301-663-1516
Thanksgiving Menu
Brewer’s Alley
301-631-0089
Thanksgiving Menu
Buttersburg Inn
410-775-9939
Thanksgiving Menu
Canapes Catering
301-663-8220
Thankgiving Menu
Carriage House Inn
301-447-2366
Thanksgiving Menu
Carter Que BBQ & Grilling
301-829-2222
Thanksgiving Menu
Celebrations Catering
301-271-2220
Thanksgiving Menu
Cracker Barrel
301-682-4405
Thanksgiving Menu
Dutches Daughter
301-668-9500
Thanksgiving Menu
The Farmhouse Exchange
301-271-2322
Thanksgiving Menu
In10se BBQ
301-639-5616
Thanksgiving Menu
Sara Kep’s Kitchen
240-457-1645
Thanksgiving Menu
The Savory Spoon Catering Co.
240-446-4038
Thanksgiving Menu
Serendipity Market & More
301-360-5463
Thanksgiving Menu
Strokers BBQ
301-712-4137
Thanksgiving Menu
Trouts Market
301-845-8674
Thanksgiving Menu
Wegmans
240-575-7300
Thanksgiving Menu
*MUNDANE MYSTERIES is brought to you by Airtron Heating & Air Conditioning!
We all know of that one particular brand of chicken made with its “famous blend of 11 herbs & spices”. But, have you ever stopped to think not what those exact herbs & spices are, but what herbs & spices exactly are?
Herbs & spices have a lot in common. Both should have dinner guests begging for the recipe after they reach for their 2nd & 3rd helpings of each dish on the table. But, herbs & spices can also completely change your mind about Brussels sprouts, broccoli, or other not-as-widely-loved veggies (y’know…the ones we’ve all hated since we were kids).
While herbs & spices both come from plants, they don’t all come from the same parts of plants. Herbs are the leaves of a plant (think parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, etc.). Spice, however, is any seasoning harvested from any other part of the plant (roots, bark, seeds, rhizomes, bulbs, buds, and others). Some spicy examples: Cinnamon sticks are really bits of Cinnamon Tree bark, while Cloves are dried flower buds from the Clove Tree.
Some plants can be both an herb and a spice, which can make things a bit complicated when it comes to naming those products. The leaves of the Coriandrum sativum plant are known as cilantro, which is definitely an herb. But, we call the seeds of the same plant coriander, which is a spice. However, cilantro & coriander are both common names for the whole plant (since “cilantro” is really just the Spanish word for coriander). Dill is another example: dill weed refers to dill leaves (an herb), while Dill Seed (which is actually not a seed, but the tiny, brown fruit of the dill plant) is a spice.
If you find yourself talking about herbs with a botanist instead of a chef, however, they won’t refer to just the leaves of the plant as an herb. Botanically speaking, herbs are whole plants with no wooden parts like trees & bushes. But, let’s hope you’re cooking with a chef, and not a botanist, to at least keep things as simple (and delicious) as possible.
Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via social media (@AndyWebbRadioVoice), or shoot me an email at [email protected].
Brought to you by Catoctin Mountain Orchard.
I was looking for something to make the other night for dinner and realized I had most of the ingredients for shrimp scampi. My version is dairy free, too, which was exciting to me!
I used a 1lb of peeled frozen large shrimp and defrost them in cold water. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
Then, I cooked my angel hair pasta according to the box. You can use any kind of pasta you like for this recipe. Set aside.
In a large pan, add olive oil, butter (optional)- I used vegan butter, minced garlic and red pepper flakes (optional)- saute for a few minutes.
Add shrimp to the pan, sprinkle with italian seasoning mix. Add 1/4 cup of chicken broth (if you have white wine, you can substitute this.) Then, add lemon juice. Let juices reduce a bit.
Add in your pasta and toss with sauce and shrimp, sprinkle parsley on top. Add salt to taste.
Add parmesan on top…DONE!
Mix
/Angel Hair
Pasta
We had a great Halloween! We did our little trunk-or-treat party and froze our butts off, but it was so much fun!!!
My little Abby Cadabby loved trick or treating, but made me carry her from car to car to get candy. Once she got the idea that she was getting things by stopping at each car, she wanted down so she could grab the candy herself!
Now Mommy and Daddy have a lot of candy to snack on 😉
No one…literally no one…wants to even think about this. But it’s been a pervasive statement for as long as I can remember.
Luckily, that “fact” you may have heard about people swallowing 8 spiders in their sleep each year…it ain’t true. Not even close, really, as it genuinely flies in the face of the biology of both spiders & humans. So, it’s highly unlikely a spider would ever even end up in your mouth to begin with.
There are 3 or 4 spider species that live in most North American homes, and you’re likely to find them either tending to their webs or hunting in non-humany areas. When they are out & about, they usually don’t intentionally crawl into your bed. Why? Because it doesn’t usually have any prey for them (unless it has bed bugs, in which case…you have a bigger problem to worry about). Spiders also have no interest in humans; they look at us like they would a big rock, because we’re so large to them. We’re really just part of the landscape.
More than anything, spiders probably find snoozing humans terrifying. A slumbering person breathes, has a beating heart, and likely snores, which are all things that create vibrations warning spiders of danger. So, a spider would not intentionally approach a sleeping person.
The myth also seems ridiculous from a human biology standpoint. If someone sleeps with their mouth open, they’re probably snoring, which would scare off any 8-legged interlopers. Plus, most folks would, more than likely, get woken up by the sensation of a spider crawling on their face, even more so their mouth.
Spider experts do admit that a sleeping person could plausibly swallow a spider, but it would be a strictly random event. But, people who claim to have swallowed spiders never seem to have any concrete evidence (since most humans race to flush spiders down the toilet whenever they have the chance). Nor are there ever any eyewitnesses for such a frequent event as 8 spiders a year would be. So, even if you heard or read that 8-spider-per-year statistic from what you’d consider a trustworthy source (y’know, like your fishing buddy or a Snapple cap), you can rest assured that it doesn’t have a leg to stand on…or 8 legs, as the case may be.
Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via social media (@AndyWebbRadioVoice), or shoot me an email at [email protected].
