Post by Alison Hein.

It’s about this time of year when I begin to yearn for summer. I want to be outside, soaking up sunshine and enjoying long, sultry days that stretch into evenings. I want to be firing up my grill, dining al fresco and lingering on the patio with a cold, crisp glass of Sancerre. Sigh. Failing all that, I do the next best thing – treat myself to a sweet, colorful, summery breakfast – like oranges.

Did you know that the orange is the most commonly grown fruit tree in the world? Little wonder with its fruits’ succulent citrus flavor and sweet tangy juices. It’s versatile too, with uses stemming well beyond dining – from perfume-making to producing manicurists’ orangewood sticks.

I like to make this recipe using sweet, seedless navel oranges. Delicious and readily available right now (with a peak growing season of January through March), their thick, vibrant skins make a beautiful presentation and perfect single serving-sized bowl. Mix the sweet chopped oranges with some fresh pineapple and unsweetened coconut, and you’ve got a delicious tropical filler. A word of caution – the sweet juice of these oranges can turn sour relatively quickly, so the orange cups should be eaten within a few hours of assembly.

So, instead of pining away for a season yet to come, bring some sunshine to a loved one with a sweet, colorful breakfast in bed.

Ingredients
1 navel orange
3 tablespoons fresh pineapple*, chopped fine
2 tablespoons unsweetened shredded coconut
2 tablespoons non-fat vanilla yogurt
3 tablespoons granola
Fresh mint leaves, for garnish

Preparation
Slice orange in half. Using a grapefruit knife, cut all the way around one orange half between the skin and fruit. Slice along fruit segments remaining in orange. Scoop out gently with a spoon. Chop orange pieces finely and place in medium bowl. Gently scrape any remaining white inner rind from orange peel and discard. Repeat with second orange half, and set scooped-out peels aside.

Add finely chopped pineapple, coconut and yogurt to the orange pieces and mix well. Choose one of the following two options:

Option 1 (if eating immediately): Stir granola into fruit mixture. Fill each orange peel half with fruit mixture. Garnish with fresh mint leaves and serve immediately.

Option 2 (if preparing in advance): Fill each orange peel half with fruit mixture. Cover and chill in refrigerator until ready to serve. Remove from refrigerator, and sprinkle tops with granola. Garnish with fresh mint leaves and serve immediately.

∗Many stores sell small portions of fresh fruit if you don’t want to purchase a whole pineapple. Canned pineapple will work in a pinch.

Makes 2 servings.

Tags: Breakfast in Bed, Breakfast Recipe, Charles P. Rogers, Children, family

Post by Laura Cheng.

Hospital Corners – A Tidy Present to Self

Housewives rejoiced in the 1950s when fitted sheets created by an African American woman named Bertha Berman. Before its invention, there was the multitasking flat sheet.  People would fold flat sheets around each of the four corners of the mattress using a technique called the “hospital corner”.  Hospital corners are simply a way of folding and tucking in bed linens under the mattress at the foot of the bed. It proved to be far neater than just cramming the sheets under the mattress.

Source: www.CartoonStock.com Catalog Reference: pknn770, Kinsella, Paul

60 years later, in today’s day and age, anyone who works in a hospital or joins the armed forces still has to learn how to make “hospital corners”. However, for the remainder of the generation who can master all seven episodes of Angry Birds, but don’t know how to fold a hospital corner, feel free to open up your iPad notebook app.

1. Making the bed requires you to bend over. To avoid strain on the back, make sure to bend at the knees and not at the waist.
2. Lay the flat sheet on the bed.
3. Pull it down enough so that it goes over the foot of the bed slightly. The long edges and the foot edge should hang below the bottom of the mattress, and the long edges should hang equally.
4. Tuck the sheet hanging off the foot edge under the mattress.
5. Start at one of the foot edges. Pull straight up, forming a sort of triangle at a 45 degree angle. Just lay it there on the top of the bed.
6. Tuck in any part of the sheet that is hanging below the mattress.
7. Pick up the triangle. Pull it straight down, making a diagonal line.
8. Now tuck it in tightly under the mattress.
9. Repeat for the other corners of the bed.

The instructions will make even more sense after watching someone. What better way to get motivated than directly from a Drill Sergeant?

Now, doesn’t that look nice? You have just wrapped a tidy present to yourself! Hospital corners can be applied to all bed linens, sheets, blankets, etc. And with practice, the end result could look like this:

Tags: bed, bedroom, Charles P. Rogers, Design, Hospital Corners

Post by Mark T. Locker.

Pure by Julianna Baggott.

So, everyone has read The Hunger Games by now, I imagine. And those who haven’t will probably read it once the “Now a Major Motion Picture!” edition is released. As you may know, Teen Dystopia novels are all the rage. Some of them are pretty good, some of them…not so much. Now I’m not sure where Pure is being placed in bookstores. The library classifies it as Science Fiction, and although the protagonist is sixteen, the narrative style is more along the lines of adult literature. Well, wherever you want to place it on your shelf, don’t leave it there long. Get it down and read it. Because it’s awesome.

There was a Detonation. Those who were within the Dome were spared the awful effects of the Detonation. Of those on the outside, many were killed. Those who were not found themselves permanently fused to whatever was nearby. Pressia was just a little girl, clutching her doll when the Detonation occurred. And now he has a doll’s head fist at the end of her arm. There’s a boy with birds in his back, and some unlucky people have become a part of the earth. Partridge was safe within the Dome when the bombs went off but life trapped within the dome is not the utopia those stuck on the outside believe. And, fearing for his future and fueled by the hope that his mother may still be out there somewhere, Partridge decides to flee the Dome and brave whatever terrors may lie on the other side…

Tags: bed, bedroom, bedtime stories, book reviews, Charles P. Rogers, Julianna Baggott, Pure

Post by Mark T. Locker.

I know, I know, this is also not a movie but I don’t care! If I haven’t been watching movies of late it’s because I have been watching Burn Notice instead. Now, I’m not one to usually watch spy shows with car chases, explosions, and shameless product placement but there is something about ever-cool Michael Weston and his mojito-swilling sidekick Sam and trigger-happy girlfriend Fiona that just tickles me pink. The premise is that Michael Weston was a spy for the U.S. government but got blamed for a bunch of horrible stuff he didn’t do and got burned. As the beginning of each episode reminds us, being burned means no cash, no credit, few friends. So while he and his buddies try and clear his name, they take on odd jobs facing off scary drug lords, low-life con artists and myriad other bad guys, always in creative ways and always while educating us on some very important tools of the spy trade. Since I finished the last season available on Netflix, I have wandering around weeping and moaning, seeking desperately for new meaning for my life. It’s just that fun.

Tags: bed, bedroom, Burn Notice, Charles P. Rogers, Movie Reviews, movies in bed, Television Reviews

Post by Mark T. Locker.

We spend a lot of time (well, almost ALL of our time) here on the bed blog talking about how to sleep comfortably, how to beautify where we sleep and how best to make the falling asleep and the waking up as pleasant as possible. But what about sleep itself? That’s what all of this revolves around, after all. Well, I have decided to troll the depths of the Internet to find some fascinating factoids about that most-beloved pastime, sleep.

Ducks sleep with one eye open.

It’s true! Needless to say, being a duck can be hazardous to one’s sleep. In order to avoid being eaten by crocodiles, coyotes or owls looking for a midnight snack, ducks keep one eye open. What’s even better is that if they are dozing in a row, the middle ones close both eyes. Fun!

The Weird Truth About Light on Knees

Apparently, if you shine a bright light on the back of your knees, it can reset your internal clock. I don’t know what kind of scientist decided to try the old light-on-the-back-of-your-knees trick, and I’m not totally sure what this means or what purpose it may serve, but it’s good to know!

Dolphins Sleep One Half at a Time

Not unlike the duck, dolphins are susceptible to predators when sleeping. They also need to be conscious to breathe. So their fantastic way of dealing with this is to sleep half a brain at time. Imagine how much we could accomplish if we could do that! I’m pretty sure my brain is only half-awake most of the time anyways!

For Further Reading

There is a great episode of Radiolab about sleep. It’s full of very interesting stuff: http://www.radiolab.org/2007/may/24/

Nova on PBS also had something on sleep: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/sleep.html

The Internet seems to have a few resources as well. Some of my facts I got from this site: http://listverse.com/2007/10/29/top-20-facts-about-sleep/

Happy Sleeping!

Tags: bed, bedroom, Charles P. Rogers, Facts, sleep