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Read about how marketers target teenagers
Read a personal finance memoir
Spruce up your home
Find the best cutlery
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Repel stains with these new clothes
Inside the Teen Selling Machine
Advertisers like to sell stuff to teens, and they're figuring out ever more in-your-face ways to do it -- such as hiring popular teens to wear brand-name clothes to spur copycat purchases. That's the nub of Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers (Perseus, $25), by Alissa Quart.
Quart's book may find an audience in the Hamptons. But for the rest of us, it reads more like an anti-capitalist tract than a guide to how parents and kids can cope with the stepped-up marketing blitz. When she strays from telling the facts about how marketers operate, Quart leaps to the sweeping conclusion that teenagers are being "corporatized" and "commodified" -- except for a few resisters, such as the underground musicians who took over a Kinko's copy shop and put on an illegal concert as a protest against "neutered mall space."
Teenagers have always been a contradictory amalgam of conformist and rebel. And they are not all victims of "increasingly atrophied familial relationships," which the author says make them suckers for a pretty ad. Most of them will survive to become pretty-much-normal adults who can take Starbucks or leave it.
--Janet Bodnar
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Family Undertaking
A new genre -- the personal-finance memoir -- may have been born in Currency of the Heart (University of Iowa Press, $25). Writer Don Nichols, former director of communications for the U.S. Mint, tracks how he took charge of his mother's finances after his father's death from cancer.
Nichols gives a clear, numbers-free explanation of the changes he made to the family portfolio -- and to his family relationships -- while shuttling between D.C. and his native Iowa. For example, his 74-year-old mother secretly bought an expensive whole-life insurance policy to avoid asking her children to set aside money for her burial. Nichols admits her mistake was caused by his failure to listen to her -- just one example of how he knits together family, fears and finances in this candid and touching book.
--Sean O'Neill
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Interior Motives
A few choice enhancements can bring your lived-in abode up to date.
Your decades-old house may be well-built and roomy, but it probably lacks the touches you'd find in today's model homes that give them an airy, new feeling. Several thousand dollars worth of updates, however, can be like a shot of Botox for your home, giving it a contemporary ambience without the pain of a full remodeling facelift.
We talked with interior designers for ideas about makeovers that can bring some of those new-house features into a well-loved home. They offered tips and strategies for replacing your floors, for installing 21st-century light fixtures and even for deploying kitchen appliances in new ways.
Fashion underfootFirst priority: Rip out any wall-to-wall carpet. If there's pristine hardwood underneath, you're in luck. Throw down a new area rug and you're done. If the floor is scarred and dull, budget $2 to $3 per square foot to have old hardwood sanded, stained (if you wish) and resealed. If you find nothing under the carpet but plywood, read on. You're in the market for a new floor -- or maybe even two.
Whether to choose different materials for different rooms or lay down one material depends on the effect you're after. "It always makes spaces look bigger if you have the same flooring going from space to space," says Melinda Sechrist, president of Sechrist Design Associates, in Seattle. "But if how you're using the spaces is different, it makes sense to change the flooring."
If you do break up the space with different floors, restrain yourself. "It's nice to have a variety, but it's not nice to stand in one place and see three or four types of flooring," cautions H. Don Bowden, an architect and interior designer in Mobile, Ala., who is president of the American Society of Interior Designers.
The good news is that sealants render many of the new floor materials, even cork, suitable for use in heavily trafficked areas, making it practical to use one type of flooring throughout the house.
It's not just for wine bottles anymore. Cork floors are durable enough to stand up to dance-hall use. In your home, they make a comfortable, resilient floor for the kitchen, and even give a rich, nutlike base to more formal rooms where area rugs are used. Consider the floors supplied by Dodge-Regupol or Duro-Design Cork Flooring. Installed cost: About $10 per square foot.
Yes, linoleum is back. It's likely the original floor in your kitchen was linoleum--if the house was built before vinyl sheets took over in the 1970s. Real linoleum is a durable material made of cork, linseed oil and other earthy stuff. Last year Armstrong Floor Products started selling linoleum for residential use after a nearly three-decade hiatus. To browse colors, go to www.armstrong.com. Installed cost: $3.50 to $4 per square foot.
Technically, bamboo is not a wood but a grass. But botany notwithstanding, the narrow strips of light-colored flooring offer a crisp, clean effect and wear well. Sources include Bamboo Hardwoods and Plyboo America. Installed cost: About $10 per square foot. Kitchens: think small
Before you simply replace old metal boxes in your kitchen with new metal boxes, allow yourself to think small. Thanks to a proliferation of appliance drawers for warming food, cooling food and even cleaning up the food, you can save steps -- if not cash. With appliances, you're all but guaranteed to spend more as the size shrinks.
But going small allows you to place appliances wherever they're handy -- even outside the kitchen. Refrigerator drawers (supplementing your full-size fridge) might go in the kitchen island to keep veggies crisp. Or you might put one near the bedroom, to handle baby bottles or medicine, or near the wet bar in the family room (throw in some freezer drawers for ice cubes).
Warming drawers are often located in a kitchen island, closer to where food will be served. KitchenAid's "Architect" series includes 27- and 30-inch-wide electric drawers that can keep food and plates warm at 90 to 225 degrees. Price: $699 to $899. GE Appliances' "Profile" series of drawers offers four temperature settings, from 75 to 230 degrees. Price: $575 to $750.
They're small, they're cool, and they cost a lot of money. Small refrigerator and freezer drawers, made by Sub-Zero, come "naked," ready to accept stainless-steel fronts or wooden fronts that match your cabinets. Two-drawer units give a tiny (but handy) 5.3 cubic feet of storage. The freezer version provides 5.1 cubic feet of storage. Price: $2,300.
Fisher & Paykel makes one- and two-drawer dishwashers that can handle up to seven place settings per drawer. A two-drawer unit will fit into the space vacated by Old Noisy, but the key is that you can run each drawer separately -- a boon for small households. Price for a two-drawer unit: $1,200 to $1,350, depending on finish (single-drawer: $700 to $800).
Finally, a lazy man's dishwasher: the "Briva" sink/dishwasher made by KitchenAid . The right-hand side of the sink is a dishwasher that lets you wash up to five place settings in just 18 to 30 minutes. When you're not washing dishes, you can take out the dish rack and spray arm to use both sides as sinks. Price: $2,200.
Let there be lightsYou can get the biggest splash for your remodeling dollar with a lighting makeover, says architect H. Don Bowden. Light is easy to improve in an older home because homebuilders used to give little thought to it beyond deciding where to put the switch. Get rid of those utilitarian lights hanging from the center of your ceiling -- and add lights where you really need them. "For $3,000 to $5,000, I could make a huge impact," Bowden says.
He recommends layering lights by mounting two or more levels in each room. Bright task lighting should be available for those spaces where you work, such as a kitchen counter or desktop, and general background lighting should softly fill in the shadows. Install dimmer switches on the different circuits so you can adjust the light to the proper brightness for working, socializing, or crashing in front of the tube.
To get some ideas about layering, play around with GE Lighting's Virtual Lighting Designer at www.gelighting.com and click on the home lighting option. There, the virtual-designer feature will show how different combinations of area lighting (such as recessed lights), task lighting (bright halogens under cabinets) and accent lighting (a table lamp) can change the ambience of the room.
But will you ruin the homey feeling if you add layers of modern lighting to an Ozzie-and-Harriet house? "There are times when that provides a wonderful contrast," says Bowden. "Even with a Victorian home, sometimes the updated lighting highlights features that had been in the shadows."
Besides, better lighting will help you see better.
Cheap 1970s-vintage fixtures the size of coffee cans gave track lights a bad image, but today's tiny halogens can be a lifesaver in an older home -- especially if there's not enough room in the ceiling to accommodate recessed lights. A quick and easy way to go is to get an inexpensive, low-volt track kit with three MR-16 lamps, which have bulbs with shiny, multifaceted reflectors, for just under $50. For more style, go with fixtures from Lightolier or Juno. Juno's Trac 12 spotlight with MR16-size lamp costs $240 for a three-light setup.
Halogen lights under kitchen cabinets give a clear view for mincing onions, yet can be dimmed to a night-light glow once the dishes are done. Installing under-cabinet lights can be a do-it-yourself job. In April, look for GE's new two- and three-light bars at home-improvement retailers. Price: $28 to $43.
As the name implies, pendant lights are like jewelry. You dangle one or more over a dining table, kitchen island or dining-room credenza. Fixtures range from ultramodern, clear-glass cones, such as the Fucsia pendant lamp, available for $255 from online retailer Design Within Reach, to Juno Lighting's Trac 12 miniature glass pendants for $57 each, plus $160 or more for track and transformer. Ikea offers clean, inexpensive style with its Kvintett pendant, which has an alabasterlike glass shade, for just $25.
--Elizabeth Razzi
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The Kindest Cutlery
The right kitchen knife isn't always the biggest in the drawer.
Chef Wayne Nish stands surrounded by stainless steel as he demonstrates the knife work that has helped him reach the top of his game as co-owner and chef of March, a four-star Manhattan restaurant. He speed dices a plum tomato, squares the root out of an onion, and reduces a saddle of venison to the sum of its parts. Then he raises the blade over the leg knuckles of a tiny squab.
Whomp!
No doubt about it: Nish knows knives. The 51-year-old chef, whose menus run the gamut from foie gras de canard to sweet-potato flan, has wielded high-end hunting knives on African safari and "drooled" over a $4,000 sashimi knife in Kyoto. "You refine your tastes and learn what's necessary and what's not," he says.
So what does the chef, who is 6 feet 4 inches and has a grip to match, suggest for your kitchen? Here's his take on the best blade bang for your buck.
King of cutleryNish is surveying the chef's knives that line the counter at J.B. Prince, a professional-cookware store in New York City (for trade prices, go to www.jbprince.com). Iconic for its gently curved blade and heavy handle, the chef's knife is "the most versatile tool in a professional's knife roll," says Nish. "It can be used for fine work. It can be used for chopping -- and it can be used as a light cleaver."
Nish later demonstrates that versatility, in the March kitchen, when he uses the front end of his Wüsthof chef's knife to dice the tomato, the middle area to slice the onion and the back end of the blade to deconstruct the venison. "I could take this knife and butcher a small baby lamb or suckling pig," he says, although, thankfully, he doesn't.
Not all chef's knives are created equal, however. Nish looks for one that has been forged -- that is, hammered from hot steel -- rather than stamped from extruded steel. Forged knives tend to be thicker, heavier and stronger than stamped blades and typically carry a swordlike hilt, called a bolster, for added heft. "The top of the blade gets thicker as it gets down toward the bolster," says Nish. "That thickness allows you to use it as a cleaver."
The forged, ten-inch Wüsthof chef's knife that Nish prefers costs $100. You might balk at the price, but consider how much you'd spend on one of those butcher-block knife sets with enough cutlery to storm the Bastille. A good-quality chef's knife will eliminate the need for most of those knives.
If the Wüsthof is more knife than you need, Nish also recommends a stamped Victorinox chef's knife. It's thinner, but will work fine as long as you don't plan to dice up a steer. With their shapely blades and strong, molded handles, "Victorinox knives appear to be designed by chefs for chefs." An eight-inch Victorinox chef's knife, distributed by Forschner, runs $34 at www.jbprince.com.
A ten-inch chef's knife can cut a lot of crudités. But cooks with small hands (or fewer knife skills) might prefer a less formidable nine-inch or eight-inch blade. Go smaller than that, says Nish, and you lose the length and breadth that make a chef's knife worthwhile.
The blade is only part of the decision. How the knife fits your hand, as well as how you hold and use it, can make the difference between comfort and carpal tunnel. Nish uses the Grand Prix model chef's knife with its thick, foreshortened handle at work, and the sleek, Classic Wüsthof ($100) at home. The slimmer handle on the Classic, although elegant, doesn't cut it for big jobs, he says.
A traditional knife, such as the Classic, has a full tang -- a blade that extends the length of the handle. A full tang makes for a strong, well-balanced handle, but you can't necessarily spot one by looking: Some newer handles wrap around the tang.
Chef's KnifeExpert opinion: "The gold standard,"useful for every task you'll ever have.
The Wüsthof Grand Prix chef's knife comprises all that is good in a high-end knife: a forged blade, a thick bolster for balance and protection, and an easy-to-clean handle. The handle is rounded to fit the hand comfortably for big chopping jobs (all knives available at www.surlatable.com). $88
Although some makers claim that a single blank of steel makes for a stronger knife, Henckels Professional S series uses several grades. The blade has a high carbon-and-chromium content, to hold an edge better; the bolster has less carbon, to resist corrosion. $80
The Global chef's knife has a jazzy look. It uses features of European and Asian knives and has an edge that is angled to be flatter and thinner (and thus sharper) than European knives. $112
Sturdy standbysFor the rest of his collection, Nish has honed the choices to a three-inch paring knife, a five-and-a-half-inch boning knife and a ten-inch slicer.
Nish relies on a forged ten-inch Wüsthof slicer ($100) to cut venison into bite-size pieces, but any blade with a slim profile will do, he says. "The less surface, the less friction sliding through food." The Global brand, with its extra-thin edge characteristic of Japanese knives, makes the cut in this category, he says.
For boning, Nish prefers a stamped blade to a forged one: "It's thinner, more flexible and easy to keep sharp. You can literally bend the knife to the curvature of the bone." He uses a stamped Henckels boning knife ($30), but also admires the Victorinox brand. It's $15 at J.B. Prince.
Nish is equally enthusiastic about a three-and-a-half-inch, stamped, serrated paring knife by Victorinox, also available at J.B. Prince: "It requires no sharpening, will keep a cutting blade much longer than a forged knife -- and at $3 or so, you can dispose of it and get a new one when it gets dull."
Be sharp | Keep your edgeYou might be tempted to buy a knife that never needs sharpening, but no-sharpen knives make for a mediocre edge, says Judith Prince, owner of J.B. Prince, a cookware store in New York City.
Butchers' steels and silicon-carbide whetstones have long been the tools of choice to restore blades to working order. These days, many cooks rely on diamond steels or stones, whose ultrahard surfaces produce a quick, ready edge. At Sur La Table, you can find a diamond stone for $45. Nish uses a diamond sharpener with interchangeable files in different grits, sold by EdgeCraft ($30 at www.viecokitchen.com).
If stroking a steel or stone is beyond your skill, you could buy a sharpener that guides the blade through two interior steels. But such little sharpeners, including the Chef's Choice ($30 at Williams-Sonoma), don't always accommodate the blade toward the bolster.
Some experts recommend the Chef's Choice EdgeSelect electric sharpener (Williams-Sonoma, $129), which fits most bolstered knives, but caution that electric sharpeners can eat away the blade with overuse.
--Jane Bennett Clark
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No-Strings Wireless
A prepaid wireless phone is the way to go if you rarely need a cell phone and don’t want to commit to a long-term contract. The cost: as little as $7 a month plus the phone ($80 and up). Here are three top plans suited to occasional use (you can buy from the companies or from retailers).
Cingular Wireless’s Phone in a Box (877-426-0525; www.cingularwireless.com) is just right for checking in. With the Anytime Calling plan, rates drop as you buy bigger blocks of time, from 50 cents a minute for a $10 block to 20 cents a minute for $100.
TracFone (www.tracfone.com) offers a simple plan on its Web site for those who want a cell phone just for safety. For $95, you get 150 minutes that are good for a full year.
Virgin Mobile (888-322-1122; www.virginmobileusa.com) caters to teens and young adults with VirginXtras, including movie showtimes, MTV’s schedule, music and text messaging. Pricing is 25 cents a minute for the first ten minutes used each day (beginning at 5 a.m.), then 10 cents for each minute after that.
--Ronaleen R. Roha
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Sweetheart Deals
Think inside the box
An assortment of milk chocolates and bittersweet chocolates is sure to tantalize the taste buds, advises Carole Bloom, author of the Chocolate Lover's Cookbook for Dummies. Bloom's pick: L.A. Burdick's Valentine's Picnic Basket, a debauchery of handmade bonbons, truffles and more, nestled amid miniature roses in a wicker basket ($65, plus shipping; www.burdickchocolate.com). If you're in a rush, Godiva's satin-lidded Romantic Truffle Heart ($42) can be found at many department stores.
Bubbly, wrapped
French champagne is a classic gift that is becoming more alluring, thanks to lower prices. Laurent-Perrier recently reduced the price of its Grand Siècle from $100 to $80. Wine Enthusiast has called this prestigious multivintage cuvée "an almost supernaturally perfect brut that brims with expressive berry, dough and spice flavors."
April in Paris
You can use the champagne to toast your impending trip to Paris, where your dollar will stretch 18% more than four years ago. This April, France Vacations is offering a five-night stay at the Duquesne Eiffel hotel and round-trip, nonstop economy-class airfare on United Airlines from Chicago's O'Hare airport for $890 a person. The hotel's convenient location -- merely a Cupid's arrow shot from the Eiffel Tower and a 15-minute walk to the Rodin museum -- makes this package a steal.
That loving feeling
How about a massage with juniper-and-cypress oil? Or a facial using seaweed extracts? You can have an hourlong session of either one when you stay at the Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain, in Scottsdale, Ariz. Zagat Survey 2003 lists the Sanctuary as one of its most noteworthy hotel spas. A three-night stay recently cost $1,485 a couple (plus tax, tips and fees for extra spa sessions).
Reporter: Josephine Rossi
Jump-start a heart
The HeartStart Home Defibrillator is the latest do-it-yourself device for rebooting a heart. The machine's automated voice coaches you through the procedure, but you'll need to watch ER to learn when to shout "Clear!" ($2,300; prescription required; www.heartstarthome.com).
--Sean O'Neill
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Stain, Stain, Go Away
Brands lay it on the line with spill-resistant fabrics.
They look and feel like Levi's, but for about the same price as a pair of 501s, Jeep Jeans ($39) will stand up to Mother Nature and tailgate parties. Jeep coats each tightly woven fiber with Teflon, which causes coffee, grape soda and olive oil to bead up and roll away like water off a duck's back. Even gobs of jelly wipe off.
When we rubbed against a greasy grill in a Jeep Denim Shirt ($39), we thought we'd snookered the Jeep process. But after one wash, nearly all the sticky smear came out. With a little pretreatment, the rest disappeared on the second wash, as did a splattering of mustard. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for a coarse, white polo shirt from Quantum, which we relegated to the rag box after it failed the barbecue-grill test and a wine spill.
The comfortable, breathable fabrics of Eddie Bauer Nano-Care Chinos ($48) and Dockers Teflon Go Khakis ($52, shown above) withstood nearly everything we threw at them. Most stains disappeared with the swipe of a cloth -- though mustard and grease took several washings. Although the pants lost a bit of their repellent properties after ten washings, wine and coffee still vanished. Plus, Bauer's chinos stayed soft and supple, and Dockers' permanent crease kept its edge.
We hope you remember Mom's advice to lean over your plate, but we recognize that some men still treat ties as narrow bibs. If you're one of them, try Arden Cravats Tie with Teflon ($45; call 800-824-4880 to find a retailer near you that carries the ties). Hot sauce, red wine, coffee and grape soda -- this tie sheds them all with ease. Clingy foods, such as blueberry jelly and mustard, may leave a residue, however.
Be wary of other ties that claim to be stainproof. "Don't be afraid to spill hot sauce on this tie," reads a tag on a Teflon-treated Tabasco tie, sold by the maker of the famous hot sauce. Our verdict: Be very afraid. The Tabasco sauce wouldn't budge.
--Erin Burt
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