They’re only the BEST CANDY EVER.
HBO
Nestle
Meatless Monday just got a whole lot tastier.
Amy Sefton / for BuzzFeed
Ready in all of 20 minutes. Get the recipe.
More flavor, less cleanup. Get the recipe.
Because we tried them for you in October!
The BuzzFeed Life editors are always trying new products, apps, tips, and DIY projects, and we decided it was time to start sharing the best of them with you. Each month, we’ll post our recommendations for what’s actually worth it. For the sake of transparency, items under “Things We Bought” and “Tricks We Learned” were purchased with our own money and/or were not the result of a PR pitch. Those under “Things We Tried” are items that were provided to us at no cost for the sake of review. Let us know in the comments what sorts of things you’d like us to review next month!
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed Life
I’ve never been very good at staying hydrated. Realizing at 4 p.m. that the only liquid I’ve ingested all day has been a venti iced coffee from Starbucks is a typical occurrence for me. Whoops. There are dozens of apps that will remind you to drink more water, but most of them tend to be complicated affairs that also track your activity and help you count calories. I didn’t want to deal with any of that. I just wanted an app with one function and one function only: to get some water into my parched bod. (It’s not, contrary to the title, about remembering to water your plants on time.)
Which is why I was excited when Plant Nanny worked for me. It’s like caring for a Tamagotchi, only your pet is a plant with eyes and caring for it means you’re *also* caring for yourself. Like a real plant, your digital one will die if you don’t give it enough water; trying to keep my plant from wilting inspires me to walk over to the water cooler so much more than I ever did when I was only trying to keep *myself* from wilting! And the glug-glug noise the app makes when you water your little sprout is super satisfying. Now my plant is flourishing and so am I. —Mallory McInnis
Plant Nanny / BuzzFeed Life
I need to make a gargantuan disclaimer re: this review, because I did not actually install these myself; my mom came to visit and she did the whole thing. (She also cleaned my blinds, installed curtain rods, and drove me to the grocery store, which in New York City is an unimaginable luxury.) So really this is a review of moms, and if we had a rating system I would give mine all of the stars.
These window coverings work in an almost suspiciously simple way. You attach large sheets of plastic around the perimeter of each window and secure them with special tape. It’s supposed to keep drafts from sneaking in, and it actually works! We haven’t had a bitterly cold day yet this year so I might be singing a different tune in the dead of January, but those annoying little gusts that plagued me in the early mornings of last fall haven’t been able to get in again.
RIP all these cakes.
With names like Baja Blast, Code Red and the upcoming Black Label, it’s hard to know exactly what taste defines America’s fifth most popular soda. And that’s exactly how it’s meant to be.
Paul Sakuma / ASSOCIATED PRESS
There’s something about Mountain Dew that evades all definition.
Its color is boldly unnatural. It tastes, approximately, like melted Life Savers, but unlike any recognizable fruit or flavor. There are no noteworthy Mountain Dew copycats or competitors. Mountain Dew exists, largely, in its own realm, separate from other sodas — and other beverages entirely.
And that turns out to be a feature, not a bug. Thanks to its radical vagueness, Mountain Dew has managed to launch a procession of spin-off flavors, each as enigmatic as the original. (Mountain Dew Voltage, anyone? It’s blue, and “charged with ginseng and raspberry citrus” flavor.) Those spin-offs have helped the brand do something none of its major competitors — Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper — have managed to: grow sales every year since 2010, despite a widespread sense that America is moving on from its love affair with soda.
So this ambiguous drink is a big deal. But what is Mountain Dew, when you really get down to it?
We thought asking the folks at Mountain Dew would sharpen our understanding on a matter of such great import, but the mystery surrounding America’s fifth most popular soda only deepened.
“We don’t try to say what color the product is internally,” Greg Lyons, vice president of marketing at Mountain Dew, told BuzzFeed News. He called it “Mountain Dew color,” which really didn’t push things forward much. We pressed further.
“Neon,” he eventually said, reluctantly.
“That’s if you’re forcing me to describe it. ‘Mountain Dew color’ is in my words. If you force me to use an adjective, that’s what I’d use. But I’d prefer, if you write about it, it to be Mountain Dew color. Because there’s not really a color we call it.”
The official BuzzFeed style guide does not recognize “Mountain Dew” as a legitimate color, so we’re going to stick with chartreuse.
Like the best abstract art, Mountain Dew leaves plenty of room for interpretation. Since first launching as a whiskey mixer in Tennessee in 1940 — its name was old-timey slang for moonshine — it has successfully spawned a rainbow of spin-offs of differing colors, tastes, and fundamental natures.
The packaging and labels across the different products are not consistent. No Mountain Dew variety looks or tastes like the other, and yet no one challenges their membership in the Mountain Dew family.
Its owners see it as something that transcends the senses. Indra Nooyi, CEO of Mountain Dew owner PepsiCo, told BuzzFeed News that Mountain Dew is “an attitude. It’s a fantastic attitude in a bottle.” And attitude never had a particular taste, per se.
Mountain Dew is, at once, both nothing and anything.
Some Mountain Dews are yellow, some are red, some are blue. Some taste vaguely like cherry, others like berries or lime, yet their names — “Baja Blast,” “SuperNova,” “Code Red” — don’t attempt to evoke any particular flavor. Soon, there even will be a Mountain Dew sauce at Buffalo Wild Wings.
Then there’s Mountain Dew Solar Flare, currently available exclusively from the soda fountains at 7-Eleven. It describes itself as “Dew with a blast of tropical punch.” None of these words are a flavor, or a taste, or even an attitude.
This is what you should do with your extra hour this weekend.
The slow cooker is the OG of make-ahead dinner. BTW, you can sub in an equal amount of carrots for the baby carrots, if you want.
MAKE-AHEAD TIP: Make the whole thing before work, duh! You can also chop the onion and celery up to 2 days in advance. Get the recipe here.
MAKE-AHEAD TIP: You can cook the mushrooms up to a day in advance. Get the recipe here.
MAKE-AHEAD TIP: Chop all the vegetables up to 2 days in advance. You can also assemble the meatballs all the way until you are about to cook them up to 12 hours in advance. Get the recipe here.
Make this your post-work Friday meal, when you can pop open a beer and cook more leisurely.
MAKE-AHEAD TIP: The biscuits can be made all the way through until just before baking. Freeze them up to 1 week in advance, then proceed with the recipe as written. (You might need to bake them a bit longer.) Get the recipe here.
