Here are this week’s 5 things you should know.
01. About Food Donation Act
The Food Donation Act protects you from US civil and criminal liability for products donated in good faith. Many stores, restaurants and even households throw out unused food daily instead of donating or even giving it to coworkers. They always claim that they would be liable if someone came back and sued them for getting sick. This act protects the donor.
On October 1, 1996, President Clinton signed this act to encourage donation of food and grocery products to non-profit organizations for distribution to individuals in need. This law:
- Protects you from liability when you donate to a non-profit organization;
- Protects you from civil and criminal liability should the product donated in good faith later cause harm to the recipient;
- Standardizes donor liability exposure. You or your legal counsel do not need to investigate liability laws in 50 states; and
- Sets a floor of “gross negligence” or intentional misconduct for persons who donate grocery products. According to the law, gross negligence is defined as “voluntary and conscious conduct by a person with knowledge (at the time of conduct) that the conduct is likely to be harmful to the health or well-being of another person.”
02. Shortest route to a fire exit will be dictated by pushable doors
In almost all buildings (all new buildings), the fire doors that leads to the nearest fire exit will be push doors. This means that if you have to pull a fire door, you’ve probably gone too far. This ONLY applies to fire doors. These will be placed in main corridors. Your office door is not a fire door, neither is your bathroom door.
03. How to keep perishable foods fresh longer
For ouple of years I’ve been doing a lot more cooking at home and eating less processed foods. I’ve learned a lot about preserving vegetables way longer than their “normal” shelf life. I thought I’d share some of the big ones that often went bad as I was figuring these out:
- Celery and carrots. Wash, peel if desired, chop into whatever size will fit into a Tupperware and cover with cold water. Change out water every 4-5 days, but this will let them last at least 2 weeks, sometimes up to a month.
- Fresh greens (lettuce, spinach, kale). Wash leaves, dry with salad spinner or shake thoroughly. Lay out a layer of paper towels and put the greens on the paper towels in roughly a single layer (a little overlap is okay but 3 layers of leaves can cause the middle ones to decay). If you run out of room, put another layer of paper towels on top, so that paper towels are between each layer of greens. When you’re all done, roll it like a twinkie and stick the roll into a plastic grocery bag and loosely tie. The paper towels help absorb the excess moisture, keeping the greens from rotting early, but also hold enough moisture in there that they stay crisp. You can also use this tactic to perk up wilted greens that have been sitting in the fridge too long.
- Ginger. Peel, chop, and blitz in a blender with a little bit of water. Pour into ice cube trays and freeze. Take out of tray and put into baggies.
- Tomato paste. Oftentimes, you only need 1-2 tbsp in a recipe. Put the rest into 1 tbsp mounds on a piece of wax paper and freeze. Once solid, throw into a plastic baggie in the freezer.
- Avocados. Avocados will ripen outside of the fridge, but the fridge can keep them from going bad once they’re ripe.
- Soft squashes. Crisper drawer in refrigerator can keep them fresh for at least a week and a half.
- Extra chicken broth. Freeze in a muffin tin in 1/2 cup aliquots; pop out once frozen and put in freezer bag.
- Bread. Slice up and keep in freezer. When you need a slice, pop the frozen slice into the toaster or wrap in slightly damp paper towel and reheat for 10-15 sec.
- Fresh herbs. Place in plastic bag slightly open with a folded paper towel to absorb extra moisture. If you need them to keep more than a week or two, you can either freeze whole leaves, or blitz them and freeze them like the ginger.
- Berries. Keep in fridge; if you will be using them for baking or yogurt/ice cream toppings, you can wash and freeze them.
04. Anything around a gravestone will get destroyed by a weed eater
Someone I know works for a landscaping company and one of the sites that he works at is a graveyard. Due to its immense size and the pressure from his boss to get the job done quickly, and the unpredictability of the weed eater, things often get mangled. He has seen flowers, flags, statues, figurines, glass, mementos, stuffed animals, and a host of other items get completely ruined. They do their best to go around the items, but it is next to impossible to miss every object. The objects that have the best chance of surviving are:
- Items that are placed on top of the gravestone (the higher up it is the less chance it will be hit) – Flowers that are placed inside of a vase attached to the stone.
- Larger items (Larger items are easier to spot, so it isn’t difficult to get around them. However, they are often skipped, causing the grass to grow tall around them).
05. Personal Finance Basics
Khan Academy, in partnership with Visa, has a 20-part Youtube Series on Personal Finance that nearly everyone can learn from. The longest video is around 18 minutes. If you have got 4 hours of free time, I would recommend to just watch the series. You’ll almost certainly learn something. The series consists of:
- Part 1: Institutional Roles in Issuing and Processing Credit Cards
- Part 2: Roth IRAs
- Part 3: 401ks
- Part 4: Basics of the U.S. Income Tax Rate
- Part 5: Inflation Overview
- Part 6: Mortgage Interest Rates
- Part 7: Time Value of Money
- Part 8: Term and Whole Life Insurance
- Part 9: Open-Ended Mutual Funds
- Part 10: Estate Tax
- Part 11: Unemployment Rate Primer
- Part 12: Traditional IRAs
- Part 13: What It Means to Buy a Company’s Stock
- Part 14: Relationship Between Bond Prices and Interest Rates
- Part 15: Introduction to Bonds
- Part 16: Introduction to Compound Interest
- Part 17: The Rule of 72 for Compound Interest
- Part 18: Annual Percentage Rate (APR) and Effective APR
- Part 19: What is Bankruptcy?
- Part 20: Introduction to Mortgage Loans
Was so confused as to what a “weed eater” was when I first read it haha. They’re called “whipper snippers” over here.
Is it possible to get more global things to know? So often, a good portion of these tips are US-centric.
As someone who works in finances. I have to say that a lot of the videos contained generalizations and innacurate information. Its best to talk to providers about the full details of their accounts especially when it comes to insurance. Term and whole life are to be taken very seriously because a lot of them are unfortunately designed in favor of the company which is once again why it is best to get as any details as possible (and preferably even to have someone who is knowledgeable on the subject) when making a decision as crucial as to who you are entrusting potentially thousands of dollars with.
If you wanna store an avocado halve in the fridge make sure to let the seed inside of it and squeeze lemon juice on its flesh before wrapping it in plastic. Also wrapping an avocado in newspapers speeds up the ripening process.