Slate Magazine - Shopping

The best automated breadmaker.

Mason Currey — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:30:37 EST

The onset of winter is accompanied by numerous hassles—nagging colds, miserable commutes, enormous puffy coats—but for me the worst part is just getting out of bed in the morning. When the temperature drops, my apartment's feeble radiators can't keep up, and pretty soon my early-a.m. routine starts to feel like a new leg of the Shackleton expedition. Which is why, this winter, I decided I needed to do something drastic. I decided I needed to buy a bread machine.

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Shopping with coupons.

Alicia Barney — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:32:50 EST

I am a Costco member. I use promo codes online and insist on relentless comparison shopping. I purchase clothes out of season to save cash. To put it kindly, I am careful with money. More directly, I am cheap. But there's one cost-cutting measure I thought I'd never try: couponing. The idea of attacking a newspaper with scissors made me shudder. I was sure all those bits of paper would just get lost and expire at the bottom of my purse. The whole process seemed so tedious and definitely not worth the effort for 25 cents off laundry detergent.

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The search for the best yogurt on the market.

Nathan Heller — Tue, 6 Oct 2009 10:09:37 EST

To drink sour milk is human; to eat yogurt is divine. The Hindu god Krishna likes yogurt. So do the sensual French. In some translations of the Song of Songs, the "land of milk and honey" is a haven chockablock with cultured dairy. Today, though, yogurt is less holy than wholesale, and even a devotee must sometimes suffer through the ugly specter of yogurt ennui. The hallmarks of this condition are, so to speak, plain: You buy the yogurt. You put the yogurt in the refrigerator. Eventually, you move the yogurt, untouched, to the trash. This is basically the yogurt version of a long-married couple checking into a lovers' bed-and-breakfast and then dozing off, right after dinner, underneath the Wall Street Journal. The urge to spoon comes with an expiration date.

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Can a book teach you how to be a man?

Matthew Schneier — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 06:57:18 EST

I knew, I reasoned, how to be a man. I had been one for quite some time—about a quarter-century, give or take. I tied ties, mixed drinks, held doors, said "please" and "thank you" when the situation warranted. I watched Mad Men for extra credit. Case closed—right?

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The best bubble-blowers on the market.

Dahlia Lithwick — Tue, 1 Sep 2009 09:53:28 EST

Ever since the invention of soap, bubble-blowing has been up there with lemonade, the beach, and long, trashy novels in the pantheon of great summery pastimes. Vats of liquid soap in which a few luckless ants attempt the backstroke, gleeful laughter as jets of tiny bubbles stream out across the grass—and who can forget Mom and Dad cursing violently at the itsy bitsy screws in the tiny little battery compartments, requiring a Barbie-size Phillips head screwdriver that is lost somewhere along with the camping gear?

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