Category Archives: Life

The 1 Thing That Will Make Your Bathroom More Dementia-Friendly

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According to the NHS, research shows there are more than 944,000 people in the UK who have dementia, and this is only increasing as people are lving longer.

The NHS also state that in the early stages of dementia, sufferers may be able to live at home, continuing to enjoy doing the things they have always done and having an active social life.

However, there are steps you or a carer can take at home to make the condition easier to manage and offset the more difficult days of dementia.

Now, Dementia UK have shared tips for making bathrooms more dementia-friendly

On their TikTok channel, a specialist dementia nursing charity have shared their tips for making bathrooms more dementia-friendly, and they’re really simple.

Most notably, the charity recommend using brightly-coloured towels which, as well as just making your bathroom a little more colourful, will stand out more on the towel rail and make spotting them easier.

Additionally, the experts recommend that if you have a fabric bathmat, this should be rolled up when not in use to prevent trips and falls.

While this is probably just good practice in general, NHS Inform urge that dementia sufferers are at a higher risk, saying: “There are different personal risk factors that cause people to fall, however, people with dementia are at greater risk because they: are more likely to experience problems with mobility, balance and muscle weakness.”

Dementia UK offer more tips for making bathrooms accessible

On their website, Dementia UK recommend the following steps for making bathrooms a safer place for dementia sufferers:

  • Stick a written sign or a picture of a toilet to the door to help the person identify the bathroom
  • Leave the bathroom light on at night to help the person find their way
  • Fit a toilet lid and seat in a different colour from the toilet itself to make it more visible
  • Use a free-standing toilet roll holder. These are easier to see than wall-mounted holders, and putting it right next to the toilet means the person does not have to stretch and potentially lose their balance – but if the person is prone to falls, be aware that they may be a trip hazard
  • Install rails or handles at useful points such as in the bath/shower and next to the toilet
  • Provide a bath or shower seat if the person has mobility or balance problems
  • Use flood and scald prevention plugs in the basin and bath
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The Secret Method Restaurants Use To Cook Perfect Risotto Quickly

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We’ve already shared at HuffPost UK how restaurants make everything from salads to burgers and garlic bread taste so much better than many of us can make at home.

We’ve even revealed that the pros add an extra step when prepping broccoli.

But if (like) me you’ve always wanted to know how restaurants get fresh, perfectly cooked risotto on the table so quickly, it turns out they’ve got a secret trick up their sleeve for that, too.

How do restaurants cook fresh risotto so fast?

“The secret is that the rice is pre-cooked,” James Beard award-winning chef Alan Bergo shared on his site Forager Chef.

He added, “If you’ve ever wondered how fancy Italian restaurants serve risotto so quickly, it’s because the restaurant is pre-cooking and cooling their risotto before service.”

Aside from speeding the cooking process along, pre-cooking rice can improve the flavour and texture of the notoriously tricky dish, too.

“Pre-cooking the rice gives more control to the chef, helping them make sure the rice is done perfectly, and neither over or undercooked,” the chef wrote.

It’s not simply parboiled in water, either: the cookbook author and industry expert shared that the rice gets its first bath in onion, wine, water, and salt.

That way, he explains, you go from sweating over a hot stove while prepping dinner to an “effortless” meal you can knock up in no time.

Woah. So how do you pre-cook rice for risotto?

Bergo shared that he begins by gently frying off some onion until it’s translucent. Once that’s done, he adds the rice to the pan and coats it in the oil and onions, allowing it to cook for two minutes.

After that, he deglazes the pan with a splash of wine ― you can skip this step if you like.

Then comes the stock. He adds this in “ladles,” about 170ml at a time, ensuring each spoonful of stock has been absorbed by the rice before adding the next one.

“When the rice has absorbed about half of the total cooking liquid it will be roughly half cooked,” he advised ― at that point, you can remove the rice from the heat, place it on a baking tray, and create grooves in it with a spatula or knife to help it cool.

Another sign it’s done is if the rice is “soft on the outside, but still raw and very chewy in the middle, about ten minutes.”

That’s your pre-cooked rice, which you can simply store in the fridge and re-introduce more stick to later.

Genius, right?

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I Just Learned The Names Of Tetris Blocks, And They’re Perfect

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Next year, Tetris turns 40 and I have been pre-emptively celebrating by giving myself wrist cramp as I marathon the game on my phone.

While we all know by now that Tetris has quite a bit of Lore, I mean, even Apple Studios have produced a film about it starring Taron Egerton.

That being said, while I spend all of my hours in the evening flipping and swiping Tetris blocks around, I’d never considered that they actually have names and, uh, I would never have guessed them.

The names of Tetris blocks were an important tool in the early days of the game

In the early days of the game, the bricks didn’t have colours as the game was in black and white. This meant that identifying the blocks was easier done by using names for the shapes.

According to The Gamer: “One of the most popular ways to name the blocks is to call them as the letter of the alphabet that they resemble: I, O, L, J, S, Z, and T.”

Which, honestly, makes perfect sense.

However, some pranksters have given them other names in the past in a move that actually was believed by the producers at the trivia show Jeapordy!

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It all started when X (formerly Twitter) user vechitto shared a post, saying: “I found the original instruction booklet for Tetris and… did anyone know that these pieces had names??”

The edited instructions said: “There are seven total Tetris blocks, and knowing which is which at a glance is essential to mastering the game.”

In this cheeky post, our L shaped friends are named Orange and Blue Ricky, the Z’s are named after Cleveland and Rhode Island, the long line is called Hero, the T is Teewee and the cube? Smashboy.

Now, I will admit that when my blocks are getting too high and I desperately need to score a Tetris, yes, I would call the long line a hero. So, fair play. That one kind of works.

Orange and Blue Ricky, though?! Chaos.

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