“My bundt hole’s too big,” I said. I was alone in my kitchen. My inner Beavis laughed out loud.

This was supposed to be an “easy, colorful July 4 recipe.” That’s what I’d jotted on our editorial list of stories for the week, anyway. Not quite as simple as the patriotic berry trifle I made for this column a few years ago (heck, you don’t even need an oven for that one), but it is close.

To be fair, the cake part of the Food Network’s Fireworks Bundt Cake was, in fact, cake. As in easy. Fluffy and fortified with sour cream and buttermilk, it stuck in the pan just a little here and there, but these small imperfections didn’t worry me.

Cute, edible props are a win for holiday recipes no matter what, but they can be great for camouflaging imperfections, too. (Amy Drew Thompson/Orlando Sentinel)

Because I had fireworks in the form of some gorgeous rock candy props. I had red, white and blue sprinkles. I even had a few nice strawberries I’d forbidden anyone from eating as a standby garnish. A nice opaque glaze would provide a smooth, white draping blanket that would make all these American colors pop. I was counting on it.

What I wasn’t counting on was a cavernous bundt hole. Or a glaze so ghostly it’d be better suited for my Halloween column (where things don’t always go as planned, either).

I’ve seen the food stylist hacks. Dish-soap bubbles on coffee to make it look rich with creamy foam. Lipstick on strawberries too white near the stems. Dyed mashed potatoes as a stand-in for ice cream so you can shoot without worry of melting. It’s all brilliant. But rather than busting out the Elmer’s glue for a flawless, fool-you glaze, I’m doing what I always do: Telling you what really happened.

Like when most of my pumpkin cheesecake bars hit the floor before their close-up.

My dog simultaneously judging me while hoping he can have some. If you need the glass, too, you could always make taking one a part of the fun! (Amy Drew Thompson/Orlando Sentinel)

I don’t know what went wrong with the glaze, to be honest. The cake had cooled overnight and I was careful to follow the directions, but even so, I must have added a smidge too much water.

The wide crater? There was really no illusion-free fix. At their intact length, the rock candy angles were all wrong. Thirty degrees at best, their sticks choked the space quickly, preventing that pretty, bouquet-like presentation in the Food Network image from coming together. Even at different lengths, there was no suitable arrangement. Not without a votive holder, which is what I eventually used, in combination with placements of shorter sticks between glass and cake, to achieve my facsimile.

Not quite as pathetic as something from “Nailed It!” but decent. And, you know, sometimes — even with recipes way out of my league like Christina Tosi’s confetti cake — I do pretty OK.

I am neither a pro baker nor a food photographer. I am exactly who this recipe is for. And though it probably doesn’t need pointing out, you could make this design idea even easier by replicating the look with a store-bought cake mix if you’re really pressed for time. For holidays, especially when you’re hosting or attending a July 4 gathering at the last minute, it’s just nice to have something festive to set on the table or hand your host when you arrive.

And it doesn’t suck to have a story that goes with it, especially if the cake isn’t everything it could be.

Want to reach out? Find me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram @amydroo or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie. Email: amthompson@orlandosentinel.com. For more foodie fun, join the Let’s Eat, Orlando Facebook group.

Ghostly glaze or not, it’s still cute. (Amy Drew Thompson/Orlando Sentinel)

Fireworks Bundt Cake

Recipe courtesy Food Network (foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/fireworks-bundt-cake-3762601)

Ingredients

For the cake:

2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for the pan
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 2/3 cups granulated sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup buttermilk

For the glaze:

2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Red, white and blue nonpareils, for topping
Red, white and blue rock candy sticks, for decorating

Directions

Make the cake: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Butter a 10- to 12-cup bundt pan, making sure to get in all the crevices; dust with flour and tap out the excess. Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl; set aside.
Beat the butter and granulated sugar in a large bowl with a mixer on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then beat in the sour cream and vanilla. (The batter may look curdled.) Reduce the mixer speed to medium low and add the flour mixture in three batches, alternating with the buttermilk; beat until combined.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake until the cake is golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 55 minutes. Transfer to a rack and let cool 15 minutes in the pan; loosen the edge of the cake with a knife and invert onto the rack to cool completely.
Make the glaze: Whisk the confectioners’ sugar, lemon juice, vanilla and 1 tablespoon water in a bowl; add a splash more water if the glaze is too thick. Spoon over the cake, letting it drip down the sides. Decorate with nonpareils. Let stand until set, 5 to 10 minutes. Put rock candy sticks in the center of the cake.

Jessica Roy | Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Rising temperatures are pushing California’s power grid to its limit — again.

Forecasters say extreme heat will bake the state this week, starting what is expected to be the longest heat wave of the year. Northern California, the Central Valley and the southwestern deserts in particular are bracing for dangerous temperatures through the extended Fourth of July holiday weekend and into early next week.

The demand for around-the-clock cooling could strain the state’s utilities, and the increased risk of wildfires also threatens to force some precautionary power cutoffs. You can find many tips online for beating the heat, but a lot of them involve using some electricity.

Here’s what you can do to stay cool without power, before and during an outage.

How to prepare before a blackout

If you have advance notice of a rolling blackout, try to cool your home as much as possible beforehand and do whatever you can to keep it that way, said Joseph Riser, a public information officer for the Los Angeles Emergency Management Department. During a Flex Alert, you want to keep your AC at 78 or higher, or turn it off entirely. But before the alert goes into effect, it’s OK to crank it so that the system will have to work less when you should be conserving power. Close blinds, curtains and doors to contain the cooler air.

A battery-operated or rechargeable fan will come in handy. Even a little handheld one will help you feel more comfortable. Consider adding one to your emergency kit. If you get one that can be recharged via USB, you could use power from a charged laptop or power bank to keep the fan running during a protracted outage.

Stay hydrated. Tap water will still be accessible — power outages usually don’t affect whether the plumbing works — and is perfectly safe to drink in L.A., Riser said. If you prefer water from your fridge filter, consider filling up a few extra bottles ahead of time.

Sign up for alerts from your electricity provider and bookmark the page with the outage map for the latest information. In a lot of Southern California, that’s going to be Southern California Edison, which has an outage map here and lets you sign up for alerts by email, text and phone here. In the city of Los Angeles, you can check the L.A. Department of Water and Power outage map here and click here to sign up for alerts. Here’s the outage map for San Diego Gas & Electric and how to download the app with alerts. And here’s where to find the outage map for Pacific Gas & Electric, which serves much of the rest of California, and where to sign up for those alerts.

How to stay cool when the power’s out

Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. With one big caveat: Freezing-cold water will actually make your body work harder, causing you to heat up, Riser said. Stick to cool or cold drinks, not ones that are a degree or two off glacial. And don’t forget to offer plenty to your pets.

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Cold compresses on your head and the back of your neck, and cold showers or baths are other good ways to regulate your body temperature, with the same clause about erring on the side of “cool” over “frigid.” Sticking your feet in a bucket of cold water will help cool you down if you don’t want to spend all day in the tub. If you have a spray bottle, you can fill it with cool water and mist yourself.

“Knowing your house” can help you avoid overheating, Riser said. Depending on how long the outage lasts and which way your windows face, you might want to move to rooms with cooler areas as time goes on. Not many people in California have basements, but if you do, it’s probably not as warm down there. If your house has multiple stories, the ground floor will be a better bet than the upper floors. If you know there’s a specific time of day that a breeze kicks up, open your window at that point to let it cool your house. If you have a shady area or even a pool in your backyard, it might be cooler out there than indoors.

Keep an eye on the temperature outside and inside your house as it gets later in the day. If the temperature drops to where it’s lower outside, do the opposite of what you did earlier: Open all the windows and doors and let the cooler air flow in. Or take that opportunity to go to a local park or other shaded outdoor location.

Riser also recommends checking whether local family and friends still have power. You might opt to decamp to their house for a few hours or overnight. You could also visit a cooling center, your local library, or a restaurant or movie theater, if you can afford it. Again, signing up for alerts from your power provider will help you keep track of how long you can expect the lights to be out, and when you might be able to go back home.

Some don’ts for when the power is out:

Stand in front of an open fridge: While understandably tempting, this won’t do much to regulate your body temperature, and you risk letting all your food spoil.
Run a gas-powered generator indoors: Never, ever.
Cook with gas appliances: Even if you have a gas stove or oven that are still functioning, try to avoid cooking inside when you’re trying to keep temperatures as low as possible.
Burn candles: They’re a fire risk. If you need light, opt for battery-powered sources.

Signs of heat-related illness

When you can’t turn on your AC and it’s blazing hot outside, you are at risk of heat-related illnesses. Here are the signs, what to do when they happen, and when it’s time to go to the emergency room or call 911. Never hesitate to call emergency services when you feel seriously ill, Riser said, even when it’s during another emergency like a power outage.

Heat cramps: Heavy sweating during intense exercise. Muscle pain or spasms.What to do: Cease exercising. Move to a cool place. Drink water or a beverage with electrolytes.When to seek help: If cramps last longer than an hour, if you’re on a low-sodium diet, or if you have heart problems.
Heat exhaustion: Heavy sweating. Cold, pale and clammy skin. A fast, weak pulse. Nausea or vomiting. Muscle cramps. Tiredness or weakness. Dizziness. Headaches. Fainting.What to do: Move to a cool place. Loosen your clothes. Apply cold compresses or take a cold bath. Sip water.When to seek help: If you’re throwing up, your symptoms get worse, or your symptoms last longer than an hour.
Heat stroke: Body temperature of 103 or higher. Hot, red, dry or damp skin. A fast, strong pulse. Headache. Dizziness. Nausea. Confusion. Fainting.When to call 911: Immediately. Heat stroke is a medical emergency. Do not give a person suffering from heat stroke anything to drink. Move them to a cooler place and use cold compresses or a cold bath to lower their temperature.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Kimberly Palmer | NerdWallet

The term “body doubling” might make you think of someone completing a task for you, like a stand-in who does stunts for an actor, but it actually refers to using someone else’s presence to help you focus on your own task.

While the technique has been used for years among people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, financial experts say that people outside of the ADHD community can also find body doubling helpful to get money tasks done, especially if they are struggling to get started or remain focused.

You could dial into a video conference filled with strangers while you revamp your budget on your own, or you could sit with your partner while you pay bills or organize receipts.

“The social presence of somebody doing a task with you makes you feel like you’re not alone and allows you to get it done,” says Dave DeWitt, a certified financial planner who specializes in serving clients with ADHD. “It helps you feel supported,” he adds, especially when you’re working on something that can be overwhelming like financial to-dos.

“I use it all the time,” says Vanessa Dean, a money coach who specializes in serving clients with ADHD and also has ADHD herself. “It gives me something else to focus on and holds me accountable.” She adds that she often body doubles with her clients by sitting on Zoom with them while they organize their finances and budget.

If you want to give body doubling a try, financial experts suggest keeping the following guideposts in mind:

Pick a specific task to tackle

“The tasks I find tedious or boring are the ones I need to body double for,” says Ellyce Fulmore, a financial educator and author of “Keeping Finance Personal.” She incorporated the concept into her money coaching program by encouraging body doubling work at the end of group calls. Participants work on specific financial tasks at the same time, like adding expenses to a budget, filing taxes or logging in to financial accounts, with cameras on or off.

“Body doubling can help with motivation,” Fulmore explains. “It can create a sense of pressure and can also help regulate your nervous system,” especially if the other people aren’t stressed out or avoiding the task, which can have a calming effect, she adds.

Christine Hargrove, a researcher and clinician who specializes in financial therapy and ADHD treatment in Athens, Georgia, says she’s had clients find body doubling helpful when they fill out financial aid forms like the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. “The emotional availability, the physical presence, a little background noise — it helps them get in the zone where they can do it,” she says, even if it’s just working in the presence of a roommate.

(Kimberly Palmer tried out body doubling for herself. Find out what she learned.)

Find the method that works best for you

Body doubling can take different forms, Hargrove says. Some people might prefer a silent partner who’s doing an unrelated task, like folding laundry, while others might prefer a group setting of people focused on the same thing.

One easy way to try body doubling is to ask a friend to get on a video call with you where you both tackle tasks side by side without interaction, Hargrove adds. “Just make sure you’re both going to do it and not chitchat,” she says.

Fulmore says she prefers body doubling with a friend or at a coffee shop versus a group of strangers on a video call. “As you try out different things, you’ll get a better sense of what works well for you,” she says. “If you know you need to focus with complete quiet, then you might not want to body double with someone who is chatty.”

Set time limits and give yourself breaks

Even while body doubling, it’s important to give yourself breaks, DeWitt says. He suggests working for 25 minutes then giving yourself a 10-minute breather. “That gives you time to decompress and see how much you got done and how much more you need to do,” he adds.

Many of the paid body doubling apps that organize group video calls, such as Flow Club, Focused Space or BodyDoubling.com, encourage time limits and breaks, DeWitt says.

Keep financial details private

Body doubling doesn’t mean sacrificing privacy or security when it comes to your finances, Fulmore says. She suggests avoiding working on taxes in a public setting, logging in to financial accounts on public Wi-Fi, or sharing your screen while body doubling if it would reveal personal financial information.

As long as you follow those basic privacy guidelines, body doubling can be a safe and effective way to complete financial tasks, she adds. “It’s all about knowing how your brain works and finding a technique that matches up with that.”

Kimberly Palmer writes for NerdWallet. Email: kpalmer@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @kimberlypalmer.

The article Could a ‘Body Double’ Help You Complete Money Tasks? originally appeared on NerdWallet.

It isn’t hard to understand that global warming is already changing how we live. In India’s capital, New Delhi, this summer has been so hot — above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) even at night — that people are gasping, the tap water is scalding, and the walls of their homes emit heat like radiators.

The Saudi Arabian authorities said that 1,300 pilgrims have already died on this year’s Hajj. Players at the European soccer championships are collapsing due to exhaustion.

And yet economists — clearly able to keep cool heads when everybody else is losing theirs — are in the middle of a fresh debate about the real costs of climate change. A new working paper from two academics at Harvard and Northwestern, and published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, argues that the macroeconomic damage from climate change might be as much as six times higher than previously estimated.

Their model predicts that a single degree increase “in global mean temperatures leads to a gradual decline in world GDP that peaks at 12% after six years and does not fully mean-revert even 10 years after the shock.” They point out that this makes unilateral climate action worth it for countries like the U.S.; that argument must surely also hold countries that are poorer but far more exposed to climate change, such as India. Is it possible to add a couple more countries here?

The paper has set off a storm of furious criticism, and not just from economists. The climate scientist John Kennedy argues that its methodology may be flawed. He isn’t sure, for example, that we can easily extrapolate from the historical record of 0.3-degree shocks to global temperature to the larger, one-degree changes associated with climate change.

It’s clear that global warming is already having a malign effect on human health and livelihoods. We just need more clarity on how much.

Discussion of the real costs of climate change, to human welfare and to national economies, have been going on for decades. But we no longer need such estimates to make the case that it is real, and a problem. Instead, we need them as inputs into policymaking — similar to employment or price data.

Policymakers are still short of objective, sector-specific and precise estimates of current and possible future costs. That shortage is a growing problem — because climate policy is beginning to bite. Billions of taxpayer dollars are being directed to sectors that promise to curb emissions; consumers are paying more for carbon-intensive goods and services; and pressure to follow a net zero strategy has complicated decisions for companies and institutional investors.

These should all count as successes in the fight against climate change. When money moves, however, people begin to ask pointed questions. It isn’t just various Republican politicians attacking “woke capital” to get in the headlines. Serious macroeconomic decision-makers, accustomed to evidence-based policy, are beginning to ask exactly what global warming’s costs and benefits are for their particular countries.

India’s chief economic adviser, for example, asked earlier this year if we were irrationally scared of the health effects of global warming. It is true that we in India are more exposed to heat stress than most. But, he pointed out, large-scale studies suggest that far more people die in India as a consequence of “moderate cold” than from extreme heat.

Delhi’s temperature might stay above 40 degrees for weeks on end, with all the negative effects on public health and economic activity that entails; but would other Indians actually live longer if average temperatures rose? Do we have real evidence for the aggregate effect of higher temperatures on mortality in India and the rest of the developing world?

These are real questions that deserve real answers. But the data we currently have is insufficient. And that lack of data might lead to erroneous conclusions. Some scholars in India have noted that those most exposed to heat stress are manual laborers, construction workers and farmers — marginalized groups whose illnesses and deaths the country’s public health system might not properly record.

It’s vital that we put more resources into identifying and analyzing the effects of warmer temperatures. Some efforts have already begun: Last year, the World Health Organization released a framework to quantify the economic value of the health outcomes of climate-related investments.

Countries like India must also begin to quantify the many indirect effects of climate change on their macroeconomic fundamentals: from greater variability in farm output to less productive physical investments. We can’t make evidence-based policy for the greatest global problem of our time without more high-quality data.

Mihir Sharma is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, he is author of “Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy.”

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