Peaches Sold as Sexy Butts in China

 

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Peaches have long been compared to backsides. Because, well, peaches look like tushes! And now, thanks to some fruit venders in China, they really look like butts. Sexy butts.

These peaches are apparently being sold to capitalize on the the upcoming romantic Qixi Festival. They’re a novelty present! And should be taken as such. But, they aren’t cheap: A box of nine panty fruit is 498 yuan or US$80.

The peaches are getting mainstream coverage in China. Online, some people have been delighted by the peaches, while as Sina explains, some think they are rather vulgar! They look kind of cheeky to me.

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[Photo: 农业博士]
Continue reading Peaches Sold as Sexy Butts in China

8 hits Prince wrote for women, from Sinead to Sheena Easton

In his 1986 classic “Kiss,” Prince sang, “Women, not girls, rule my world.” The statement rang true throughout his career. Though we may first think of the Purple One for his flamboyant fashion and sexuality (along with his extensive discography), the fact is that Prince was an early proponent of female power in an industry that until recently rarely saw women as anything more than window dressing.

Sinead o'Connor and Sheena Easton
AP; Getty Images

Prince always had his ear to the ground for talents like Sinead O’Connor and Sheena Easton.

From his earliest days, women were front and center with Prince on stage as Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman played guitar and keyboards, respectively, in his band The Revolution, as well as singing.

Even after Wendy & Lisa left for their own Emmy-winning career as a duo, Prince continued working with women musicians like the 3rd eye girl trio of Ida Kristine Nielsen, Hannah Welton and Donna Grantis. And throughout his career he championed protégés like Sheila E. (to whom he was once engaged), Vanity and Carmen Electra.

But Prince’s most enduring legacy with women might be in the songs he wrote for them to record. In some cases, his compositions helped land them the biggest hits of their careers (Sinead O’Connor); in others, they provided a chance to change their whole persona (Sheena Easton).

Here are just a few of the tunes you might not realize Prince wrote for ladies only. Let’s see them do the twirl:

“Nothing Compares 2 U,” Sinead O’Connor (1990)

Originally composed for The Family, one of Prince’s many side projects, the song appeared on their 1985 album but was not released as a single. O’Connor’s spare take and emotional video made it an international hit.

“Manic Monday,” The Bangles (1985)

Prince recorded “Manic” as a duet with another side project on the band Apollonia 6’s sole album in 1984. He gave the song two years later to The Bangles using his pseudonym from his 1986 film “Under the Cherry Moon,” “Christopher.”

“Sugar Walls,” Sheena Easton (1985)

Prince used another pseudonym to submit this song: “Alexander Nevermind.” It was considered sufficiently raunchy to earn criticism from televangelist Jimmy Swaggart.

“Love Song,” Madonna (1989)

Prince worked with Madonna on much of her 1989 album “Like a Prayer,” on which this song appears; he’s uncredited as a guitarist on several songs, and they shared the writing of “Love Song.”

“Stand Back,” Stevie Nicks (1983)

Full disclosure: Technically, Stevie Nicks wrote this song. However, it was heavily influenced by the melody of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette,” which inspired Nicks on the day she got married to Kim Anderson in 1983. She got Prince on the phone and told him what she’d done and asked if he would play on her take (she also promised him 50 percent of the royalties). Twenty minutes later, he was in the studio. An hour and a half later, she told MTV, he left. Later, “Prince and I became really good friends.”

“I Feel for You,” Chaka Khan (1984)

The tune originally appeared on Prince’s self-titled 1979 album, but it was picked up five years later by R&B singer Khan and catapulted her to a No. 3 Billboard hit and a Grammy Award for the writer in 1985.

“With This Tear,” Celine Dion (1992)

Prince wrote the song as a gift to the Canadian singer and she put it on her self-titled album.

“How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?” Alicia Keys (2002)

Prince originally recorded the song as a non-album B-side to his 1982 hit “1999” and again on his 2002 live album, “One Nite Alone … Live!” Keys picked it up that same year and made it a hit.


Attribution and Copyright: Randee Dawn, Today Trending

The “Captain America: Civil War” Directors Reveal How It Was Assembled

Warning: This story contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Captain America: Civil War.

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Elizabeth Olsen, Chris Evans, and Sebastian Stan in Captain America: Civil War. Marvel Studios

Captain America: Civil War features one of the largest principal casts ever assembled for a Marvel Studios film, especially one centered around a single titular superhero. And, unlike every other movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date, these superheroes are not battling with an external enemy, but among themselves. On top of that, two significant new superheroes to the MCU set to launch their own movie franchises in the coming years — Black Panther and Spider-Man — are introduced in Civil War, the latter after an unprecedented and frankly miraculous negotiation between two rival movie studios.

Which is to say that making Captain America: Civil War was a Hulkulean task for directors Joe and Anthony Russo. In late April, BuzzFeed News sat down with the brothers — who came up in the industry directing comedies like 2002’s Welcome to Collinwood and 2006’s You, Me and Dupree, and TV shows like Arrested Development and Community — to understand how they pulled together one of the largest and most challenging superhero movies yet.

“We knew that we had to surprise the audience in some way, and to subvert the standard structure, which was tiring us.” Producer Nate Moore, screenwriter Stephen McFeely, director Anthony Russo, screenwriter Christopher Markus, and director Joe Russo on the set of Captain America: Civil War. Zade Rosenthal / Marvel Studios

The Russos’ first Marvel Studios movie was 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which is widely considered to be among the very best of Marvel Studios’ movies (if not the best). Months before it opened in April of that year, Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige was so confident in The Winter Soldier that he began preliminary meetings with the Russos — along with producer Nate Moore, and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely — to discuss a third Captain America movie.

“[It was] a very soft conversation of us sitting down and just discussing generally what we could do with the character moving forward,” said Joe Russo. “We batted around a bunch of different big ideas. He’s a tricky character, because he’s very stoic and moral. However, we felt like if we kept pushing him, and deconstructing him, we could end up in a place that was very interesting.”

“We knew that we had to surprise the audience in some way, and to subvert the standard structure, which was tiring us.”

The team circled the idea of basing their story on Civil War, a 2006 Marvel comic series by Mark Millar that pits Cap (Chris Evans) against Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) as ideological opposites after the government attempts to place superheroes under its expressed control. The dilemma for the Marvel Studios brain trust was whether Civil War — in which a vast number of superheroes align either with Cap or Tony — was more of an Avengers movie than a Captain America movie.

“The way we answered the question was, of course it could be made into Captain America film if the story is told from his point of view, and if the plot is incredibly resonant with his world,” said Joe. “What’s interesting about Cap is that he had two family units, one from the past, and one in the present. What would happen, we thought, if you took those two family units and we smashed them into each other, and he was forced, on a very elemental level, to choose?”

For Cap’s original family from the 1940s, there was only one choice: his best friend and surrogate brother, Bucky Barnes. Bucky’s transformation into the brainwashed Hydra assassin the Winter Soldier made him a wanted man across the globe, but by the end The Winter Soldier, Cap had dedicated himself to finding Bucky and helping him to reform.

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Sebastian Stan in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Marvel Studios

“Cap’s devoted to the idea that there is still a human being inside the Winter Soldier that he knows and loves,” said Anthony. “And he’s going to find that human being in there, no matter what it costs him. How do you put an equally compelling idea up against that?”

The answer: What if Bucky, under orders from Hydra as the Winter Soldier, had secretly killed Tony Stark’s parents, Maria and Howard Stark, who was one of Steve’s closest allies during World War II? “You wind up with a very combustible situation,” said Joe. “In fact, that’s why we decided to do Civil War, because of that idea.”

By setting two of the MCU’s biggest heroes against each other in a third-act battle about a deeply personal conflict — rather than averting yet another global cataclysm — the Russos saw the potential to shake the movie free of an all-too familiar superhero movie trope. “As filmmakers, you have to look to how crowded the marketplace is becoming,” said Joe. “As a fan, there are the things that I’m growing weary of about the [superhero] genre. We knew that we had to surprise the audience in some way, and to subvert the standard structure, which was tiring us.”

There was just one catch. “Kevin [Feige] was like, ‘OK, you guys gotta get Downey!’” said Anthony with a laugh.

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Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans in Captain America: Civil War. Zade Rosenthal / Marvel Studios

Wooing Robert Downey Jr.

Making a Captain America movie was not part of Robert Downey Jr.’s overall contract with Marvel Studios, so the Russos were tasked — with Feige’s support — with persuading the actor to sign on to the project. The stakes were high: Without Stark, Civil War was a no-go.

According to the Russos, it turned out that what had so excited them creatively about Civil War excited Downey, too. “I think he loved the fact that we were going to deconstruct the genre by having a third act where the two heroes are having in essence a life-or-death battle with each other,” said Joe. “He was really attracted to the fact that we were going to make his character much darker in this than he had been in any other film up to this point.”

Indeed, while Downey’s face is as prominent as Evans’ in the Civil War posters, the fact that this was a Captain America movie afforded Downey an unusual opportunity, one the Russos first experienced at the onset of their career. “[George] Clooney had a small role inWelcome to Collinwood, and he kind of helped the movie get greenlit by doing that,” said Anthony. “We said to him, ‘Oh, thanks so much for doing this role, sorry it’s so small.’ And he goes, ‘Look, guys: This is the most fun for me. Playing the lead kind of sucks, because your job as a leading man is to show up and let everybody else steal the scene. Now I get to steal the scene. That’s really fun for me.’ I think Downey had a bit of that. Because Chris was the titular lead of the film, he had license to go off the rails a little more than he would as a typical lead.”

But that did not mean that Downey was content to coast through the making of Civil War. The actor’s involvement was officially announced at a Marvel Studios media event in October 2014, and right up through production, Downey met regularly with the Russos and screenwriters Markus and McFeely — none of whom had worked on a film involving Tony Stark — to develop the character of Iron Man in Civil War. “There’s a process you go through with Robert where you work on the scenes the week leading up to shooting them,” said Joe. “Whatever scenes are coming up, we’d go over to his house on a Sunday, we’d all have lunch together, and work on the scenes. We would rewrite them based on ideas that Robert had about the character, because he knows the character better than any of us ever will.”

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Black Panther Marvel Studios

Introducing Black Panther

As the Russos were busy nailing down Downey in mid-2014, they were also developing theCivil War script with Markus and McFeely, and they soon realized that while pitting Captain America and Iron Man against each other was creatively exciting, it also came with its own set of complications. “We knew the movie was going to get binary,” said Anthony. “It’s Cap versus Iron Man, and the two sides versus each other.”

“We wanted to avoid getting in a rut,” added Joe.

“We thought a nice way to shake up that dynamic as the movie progress is if we had this, like, third-party radical, who was tied into the plot in a very propulsive way, but didn’t give a shit about either side of the argument,” continued Anthony.

Chadwick Boseman in Captain America: Civil War. Marvel Studios

Enter T’Challa, aka Black Panther, Marvel’s first black lead superhero. “At that point, Black Panther was a movie that Marvel probably wanted to do, and we were like, ‘Well, if you are going to do it, here’s why Black Panther would be really valuable in this movie [too],’” said Anthony. For Civil War, the filmmakers decided that T’Challa would initially believe that Bucky is responsible for the death of his father, and cautiously side with Tony, but his methods — and mere presence — would disrupt the dynamic among the established Avengers. “We loved how he could mess everything up as the story progresses,” said Anthony.

Casting Chadwick Boseman — known for his terrific performances as Jackie Robinson in42 and James Brown in Get on Up — in the role was something of a no-brainer. “He has that great combination that you always look for: He has leading man looks and presence, but with character actor chops,” said Anthony. At that October 2014 press event — at which Feige also announced a Black Panther movie — Boseman stood between Evans and Downey, a visual cue representing his ambiguous role in Civil War.

In the comics, a different character finds his loyalties torn between Cap and Iron Man. But getting him in their film at all plunged the Russos into a most tangled web.

 

Spider-Man. Marvel Studios

Capturing Spider-Man

Even with Black Panther playing the free radical in Civil War, the filmmakers still felt their movie needed to avoid getting too weighed down by the personal baggage Cap and Tony were bringing to it. “Especially when you’re making movies this expensive, you have to hold a large audience,” said Anthony. “You’ve got to make stories that are well-rounded. We knew how dark we wanted to take the storyline between Cap and Tony, but how do we balance this movie so that it’s not, like, just a brutal experience? We needed some people in this movie who are not invested in the conflict that is tearing this family called the Avengers apart. And we needed one on each side. That’s how we circled Ant-Man and Spider-Man.”

Ant-Man, of course, was already a part of the MCU; Paul Rudd debuted as the character in the eponymous Marvel Studios film in July 2015. The movie rights to Spider-Man, however, were held by a completely different film studio, Sony Pictures — and in the spring of 2014, Sony was gearing up to release The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in the first weekend of May. And yet, according to the Russos, that was also around the time they first floated the idea to Feige of somehow getting Spider-Man into Civil War.

“He was like, ‘Uhhhh, I don’t know? Maybe there’s something there,’” recalled Anthony with a chuckle. “It was like the smallest door was opened to a road forward potentially.”

“We had to behave in such a manner as if there were no other options for the movie than to have Spider-Man in the film,” said Joe.

“[We] worked Spider-Man into the story in a way that is inexcisable, or else the house falls down and you’ve got to rebuild it again,” added Anthony. “We were very exposed on a creative level of needing him. … Even after the preliminary agreement was made to share Spider-Man, there were tons of deal points that still needed to be worked out. So even though we got permission to keep proceeding as if Spider-Man was in the movie, it was always like, don’t talk about it, keep quiet about it, because it was still very sensitive.”

The Russos give full credit to Feige for hammering out the Spider-Man deal with Sony, which was officially announced in February 2015 and includes a new Spidey film, Spider-Man: Homecoming, produced by Feige and Marvel Studios and released by Sony on July 7, 2017. “Kevin loves Spider-Man, and he’s always been looking for a way to [use] him,” said Anthony. But the brothers were not above exercising their own leverage to keep the deal alive. “Certainly there’s a lot of pain in executing a deal like that, and when people feel pain, they go, ‘Ah, is there a way to relieve this pain by just not doing this deal?’” said Joe. “They would come to us and say, ‘Are you sure we can’t make this movie without Spider-Man?’ We would say, ‘You absolutely can’t do it without him.’ And then we would cite the tone.”

Marvel Studios / Via youtube.com

“‘The whole movie falls apart!’” added Anthony. “But it was true.”

“It was absolutely true,” said Joe. “The movie, I think, does become a much more dour affair without the addition of Spider-Man.”

In Civil War, Tony Stark visits Peter Parker (played by Tom Holland following an exhaustive casting search) after catching YouTube videos of the teenager exercising his powers for the first time. “It made sense to us that Tony wanted to recruit this kid because he’s incredibly strong,” said Joe. “But he always has an amazing nonlethal way of stopping people, which is he webs them up. So in Tony’s mind, he’s like the perfect nonlethal weapon to bring to a fight.”

“The other thing we loved about Spider-Man is that he’s a kid,” added Anthony. “Everybody else was so experienced; they’d been through adventure after adventure. So we were like, let’s take the greenest version of Spider-Man — the kind of kid who’s just starting to use his powers, but he wasn’t the whole package yet. So that let Tony really become a mentor for him. We loved that relationship.”

Sebastian Stan and director Anthony Russo.
Director Joe Russo. Zade Rosenthal / Marvel Studios

Subverting expectations and preparing for Infinity War

The actual villain in Civil War, Zemo (Daniel Brühl), drew his name from the Marvel comics, but was otherwise radically transformed into a grieving Sokovian soldier who holds the Avengers responsible for his family’s death during the events of 2015’sAvengers: Age of Ultron.

“Zemo is not necessarily anything other than a conduit in the movie. He’s an allegorical villain. He doesn’t really do anything, other than, at a very crucial moment, open a can of worms in front of them when tensions are high,” Joe said, referring to Zemo’s reveal to Tony that Bucky killed his parents, sparking the wrenching climactic fight between Cap and Iron Man. By keeping the antagonist in Civil War so comparatively mortal and low key, the filmmakers hoped to further upend what audiences have come to expect from a superhero movie.

“We knew that we could give people a movie that is like, oh, Captain America, who’s the lead of the movie, isn’t going to fight the bad guy in the end of the movie,” said Anthony. “Even Iron Man, who’s the second lead, isn’t going to fight the villain. In fact, the guy who’s going to fight the villain, Black Panther, isn’t even going to fight the villain — he’s just going to keep the villain from killing himself.” (As for the obvious narrative parallels between Civil War and the recent Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the Russos pled ignorance. “We knew nothing about the project,” said Anthony. “I think it was dangerous to our process to try to guess about what they might do.”)

Image courtesy of buzzfeed.com and technobuffalo.com

We found a copy of Prince’s 1994 video game. You’re welcome.

Did you know Prince was the star of his very own (sort of) video game? It was a secondhand purchase, since the game isn’t produced anymore. Instead, I pulled a 14-year-old Sony VAIO out of my closet.

Did you know Prince was the star of his very own (sort of) video game?

 

Prince Interactive surfaced in 1994, right when the introduction of CD-ROMs was changing the world for PC users. It launched after Mystand The 7th Guest, along with a flood of other “Myst-alike”puzzle game knockoffs.

Of course, this one starred Prince, meaning it was inherently weirder than any of its contemporaries.

After his unexpected passing on Friday, I went looking for Prince Interactive. Even at a time when game streaming has turned “Let’s Play” videos intoa big business, there’s almost nothing to be found online. So I did what any other bereft Prince fan might have done: I ordered Prince Interactiveon Amazon.

It was a secondhand purchase, since the game isn’t produced anymore. What’s more, the 22-year-old CD-ROM is ancient enough that it can’t run on any Windows version more recent than XP.

If you have a registration key for any of the earlier Windows versions, it’s possible to set up a virtual drive using software like DOSBox and install Old Windows from there. That wasn’t an option for me. Instead, I pulled a 14-year-old Sony VAIO out of my closet. It still ran, and it had Windows XP.

Perfect.

Popping the CD-ROM in the drive which spun as loudly as you’d expect I loaded the setup executable and was greeted by this image:

A dizzying gauntlet of “OK” prompts followed as the setup process copied the files to their destination and advised me about editing my autoexec.bat(!!).

Before it finished, the installation app warned me in two consecutive pop-up messages to reboot my computer.

 

The whole thing was a welcome reminder that, nowadays, computers work for us (most of the time) and not the other way around.

Image courtesy of mashable.com

This Is The Only Thing I Learned After Studying Love For An Entire Year

Last year, I decided I was going to learn everything there is to know about love.It was almost summer, and the weather was getting warmer every day. After a string of dead-end “things” with guys throughout the previous year, I decided I was going to spend the next year studying love.

I wanted to ensure I’d be so knowledgeable when it came to relationships that I would never feel heartbroken again. It was a good thought, but what really ended up happening is something I could never have predicted. I discovered love cannot be learned, and that it has to be experienced.

In the beginning of my quest, I thought about the kind of person I wanted to love and how the person should love me. I read a lot of break-up poetry. I read books and filled the margins with notes. I wrote a lot about my own faults and how to fix them, convinced I couldn’t “reach” love until I did.

But, despite how much I studied, I found I was feeling more alone and less fulfilled with the relationships I had in my life than I ever had before. Not only had I not found love, but my friendships were suffering as well.By thinking so much about love, I forgot to love. I forgot how to give it and how to receive it. I had become really connected with myself and really disconnected with the rest of the world. It felt terrible.

Then one day, I came across a quote by Andrea Gibson, and I realized I had been approaching it all wrong. It said:

Before I die, I want to be somebody’s favorite hiding place, the place they can put everything they know they need to survive, every secret, every solitude, every nervous prayer, and be absolutely certain I will keep it safe. I will keep it safe.

That line became my new philosophy about love and relationships. It was like a light went on, and suddenly, I realized that in order to be someone’s safe place, you have to let down your walls and invite someone in. Love isn’t something you can take crash course in to ensure you’ll always succeed and never be hurt or disappointed.

It made all the sense in the world why in the last year, I had accomplished the opposite of what I set out to do. I had kept my heart closed. I had kept it locked away because it hurts when it’s broken. But, the result of locking something up is that nothing else can get in.

Sometimes, you have to put down the books, put down the pen and go live. People aren’t lists, and love cannot be planned or predicted. Love is a practice, and in order to experience all of its beauty, you have to immerse yourself in it. You have to give yourself over to the learning. You have to risk that it’s wrong. You have to risk that it’ll hurt.

Andrea’s quote will forever be one of my favorite reminders that being a lover and being loved requires vulnerability, something I’ve mastered behind a screen and hid from in the real world. I spent a year studying how to love, but until I lived every day intentionally experiencing it as a verb instead of studying it as a noun, I hadn’t learned a thing.

Now, I find that I see and experience love all around me. Love isn’t something that should ever be confined to describing just romantic relationships. In taking down my walls, the most meaningful and valuable friendships have enriched my life beyond anything I could have studied or prepared for.

Allowing myself to learn from experience and be open to the way love comes and goes has made me bolder in the way I live my life and love people.Last year, I viewed love as a destination, when it is a constant presence in our daily lives. It is being open and allowing your heart to grow, to flourish and to bloom.

You’ll find you learn so much along the way, and while getting hurt is always a possibility, so is a cosmic love. If you don’t want to miss out on that, let down your walls. Give it a try, and I’m sure you’ll find love has been there all along.

I’m a poet who loves to be unapologetically honest about the human condition. I love words, books, travel and enjoying this world.

Image courtesy of elitedaily.com

Original Chicken Rendang

 

Chicken Rendang

Rendang is a dish which originated from the Minangkabau ethnic group of Indonesia and is now a popular Malaysian dish, served at ceremonial occasions and to honour guests. Rendang is traditionally prepared by the Malay community during festive occasions.

There are many variations and each recipe is as good as any other. What I like best about this delicious dish is that enticing aroma that wafts out of the kitchen, fills the entire house, luring one and all. The aftermath is a fragrance that lingers for days evoking satisfaction and bliss.

The Recipe :

11/2 kg chicken, washed, and cut into medium pieces; 4 onions, sliced fine; bulb garlic; 1inch piece ginger; 1 tsp chilli powder, food colouring; 100 gms coconut powder mix with 3 cups warm water and keep aside or milk from two coconuts; 1 inch piece galangal (aromatic ginger); 4 screw pine leaves(pandanus); 4 kaffir lime leaves; 4 turmeric leaves, 3 stalks lemon grass (use the white part only); Salt to taste; orange food colouring.Grind onions, garlic, both the gingers and the chilli powder till fine. Add to pan with the rest of the ingredients and bring to a low boil. Add chicken, lower heat and simmer until the gravy is dry and chicken is tender. Keep stirring to prevent sticking. Remove leaves before serving hot with rice.NB: This dish does not need any oil. We like our rendang with gravy, so I simmer till half the gravy evaporates. Absolutely delicious.

See full story on theversatilehousewives.com

Image courtesy of theversatilehousewives.com

This company tricked kids into eating dog food in hamburgers

People eating dog food without knowing! Yes, the Freshpet is so confident in the quality of its dog food that it thinks people would even enjoy it. They then filmed their expressions of surprise, disgust and, in some cases, indifference after they revealed the secret ingredient. The taste testers were surprisingly good sports about the revelation, perhaps to save face after raving about their food seconds earlier.

[embedyt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtHa8Cf4BOI[/embedyt]

 

Image courtesy of mashable.com

 

Homemade: How To Make Teriyaki Sauce Yourself


My mom always likes to remind that when I was a lil’ kid, the only part of the chicken I would eat were the drumsticks. I’m pretty sure I felt like it was very Flinstone’s-esque of me to be eating drumsticks. Also, Medieval Times! That place gave you big turkey legs for dinner (much like most Renaissance fairs) and I thought it was the most hilarious thing ever.

Now that I’m a boring adult, I hardly ever reach for drumsticks unless they’re teeny chicken drummettes which is a whole other thing! This recipe is awesome because it allows me to eat all of the drumsticks. And the sauce is my absolute favorite thing ever. I want to put it on everything: chicken, salmon, tofu, you name it.

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A few years ago I remember my dad calling me telling me I must, I MUST make homemade teriyaki sauce for the blog. I brushed him off thinking to myself, How good can it be. Wrong way to think. Bad attitude, Adrianna!

SEE ALSO: What Ingredients Used

Like all homemade versions of things you most likely can buy at the store, the best part about making the homemade version is customization.

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This is way less sweet than typical teriyaki sauce. (It’s usually too sweet for me.) I made it zester, spicier and less salty.

The sauce you see hasn’t been thickened with a thickening agent (read: cornstarch) but you can make it thicker if you like (I’ve included directions below). It’s a bit runnier than normal teriyaki sauces, but not to worry–it’s still just as amazing.

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Homemade Teriyaki Sauce

Prep Time: 1 hour

Cook Time: 35 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour, 35 minutes

Serving Size: 2, generously

  • 1/2 cup soy sauce
  • 2 tablespoons water
  • 2 tablespoons sweet rice wine
  • 2 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 3 tablespoons honey
  • 1 garlic clove, zested
  • 1 teaspoon fresh ginger, zested
  • 1 pound chicken drumsticks
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon sesame seeds, for garnish
  • Serves 2 generously

Directions

  1. Heat the soy sauce, water, sweet rice wine, brown sugar, honey, garlic clove and fresh ginger in a small saucepan over moderately high heat. When the mixture reaches a simmer, bring the heat down to low and allow to reduce for 10 minutes, until the sauce reduces by about half. Transfer to a small bowl; mixture will thicken as it cools. Note: If you’d like it thicker, for it to resemble much more like a glaze, pour a tablespoon of the mixture into a small bowl. Add a teaspoon of corn starch to the small bowl and whisk until it completely dissolves. Add the corn starch mixture to the teriyaki sauce, whisking until dissolved.
  2. To make the teriyaki chicken, sprinkle the chicken with the baking powder. Allow to air dry in the fridge for about 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Spray a sheet of foil with cooking spray and place the chicken side by side. Transfer to the oven to cook for 20 minutes. At the 20 minute mark, flip the chicken and cook for an additional 15 minutes, until the skin is golden brown and crispy. Brush the chicken with the teriyaki sauce and transfer to the oven for an additional 5 minutes. Remove the chicken from the oven and top with teriyaki sauce, liberally. Sprinkle the chicken with a pinch of two of sesame seeds and serve.

Image courtesy of acozykitchen.com

OnePlus finally reveals the OnePlus 2, its ‘flagship killer’, starting at $329

OnePlus, the Chinese startup behind the popular OnePlus One, has finally revealed its next flagship and it doesn’t disappoint. With a refreshed set of flagship-worthy specs and a new operating system, the OnePlus 2 manages to build on all the best features of its predecessor while making significant hardware and software improvements for less than $400. Like its predecessor, it lacks a microSD option for additional storage, but has dual-SIM slots.

The new OnePlus 2 with the optional bamboo back cover.

There are five different “SwapStyle” back covers available (from left): Kevlar, bamboo, sandstone black, black apricot and rosewood.

The OnePlus 2 ships with the company’s signature “sandstone black” back cover.

The OnePlus 2 runs OxygenOS, which is based on Android 5.0 (Lollipop).

The OnePlus 2 with the $26.95rosewood back cover.

The OnePlus 2 is one of the first flagship smartphones to support the new USB Type C standard. The company’s USB cable also features a reversible design.

One of the most hyped Android phones of the year has arrived. OnePlus, the Chinese startup behind the popular OnePlus One, has finally revealed its next flagshipand it doesn’t disappoint.

With a refreshed set of flagship-worthy specs and a new operating system, the OnePlus 2 manages to build on all the best features of its predecessor while making significant hardware and software improvements for less than $400.

The company is billing the OnePlus 2 as 2016’s “flagship killer” and the specs alone certainly put the OnePlus 2 squarely at the front of the pack in terms of its Android competitors.

The 5.5-inch phone is powered by a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor with options for 4GB or 3GB of RAM (for the 64GB and 16GB capacity models, respectively). Like its predecessor, it lacks a microSD option for additional storage, but has dual-SIM slots. The display is 1,920 x 1,080 resolution (full HD) and comes with a fingerprint sensor that can store up to five prints. The 13-megapixel rear-facing camera is equipped with a dual-LED flash and f/2.0 aperture; it supports 4K resolution video and a slow motion mode that shoots at 720p.

More impressive, however, is the price: The unlocked OnePlus 2 will cost $329 for the 16GB model and $389 for 64GB. By comparison, Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S6, with 64GB of storage and only 3GB of RAM, runs more than $800 without a carrier subsidy.

“Our goal is to just have enough margin to keep the company running and not make a profit,” OnePlus cofounder Carl Pei tells Mashable. “When we launch a new product, we normally make nothing selling it,” he says, adding that the company expects its margins to improve over time as it sells more devices and hardware costs go down.

For its second generation flagship, Pei says OnePlus made more than 100 changes from its first release in 2013. Most notably, the polycarbonate bezel of the original OnePlus One has been swapped for an all-metal one, which give the phone a more premium look and feel.

The OnePlus 2 ships with the company’s signature “sandstone black” back cover. The textured cover manages to strike the right balance between providing a good grip and while not feeling (or looking) cheap as is often the case with textured covers employed by other manufacturers.

The “black sandstone” back cover that ships with OnePlus 2.

Image:Karissa Bell/Mashable

OnePlus is also selling four optional back covers: black kevlar, bamboo, rosewood and black apricot. Each cover is made with the actual materials on a polycarbonate casing and each feels and looks like it belongs on a premium flagship. The covers are easily removable and, unlike the OnePlus One, the new covers don’t have antennas embedded in them, which has helped bring the cost down to $26.99 each.