Polls and surveys

I've used an extension from Rakuten on my browser for a long time.  They give me money for shopping online at various places like Kohls, Macys, and Ebay.  If you land on one of their partners they will ask you to sign in to Rokuten.  If you buy something, they'll give you money back, but not right then; I'm not sure how long they wait to send me what's coming to me, but I've gotten anywhere from five to 18 dollars in my mailbox, depending on what I've bought and how long they waited to send it.  Usually it's closer to $5; the waiting time may have been a year, for all I know, but it costs me nothing, because I was going to buy that item anyway.  Their website is HERE, if you want to read about it.

What I'm really wanting to talk about, though, is their polls.  I seldom go to their website to see what they have to offer, but at some point I got an email asking if I'd like to participate in polls and be rewarded for doing so.  Well, since I don't have a packed schedule around here, I decided to give it a go.  

I sort of get tired of taking the boring surveys and polls, so I don't do every one that comes along.  Even so, in less than a month I have $10 waiting, which I can get as an Amazon gift card, or have it sent to my Ebay account.  Some of the polls want my opinion of various politicians, and I like to think perhaps I'm helping both parties figure out who they should choose to run in the election.  If they ask me about someone I've never heard of, I look the person up to see the various things they've done (or haven't done).  Of course I don't spend hours studying each person, so that's probably a silly way to do things; but it beats saying eeney, meeny, minie-moe.  And in the process, I learn a little about the politician.

It isn't all about politics, either.  Sometimes they will ask if you've heard anything bad about a food item, a motel, or business of any kind.  I have learned to look some of those up, because it's obvious that business has been in the news and they want to know how many people know about it.  Today, among other items, Smirnoff Vodka and Velveeta were mentioned.  I check out both  of them and found out many people are refusing to buy Smirnoff because it's Russian; I found the problem with Velveeta was simply this:  "Kraft Foods is recalling 260 cases of Velveeta cheese sold to Walmart stores in 12 states.The states are Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin."

This may be boring you to death, but if you have lots of time on your hands, you might have a bit of a hand in who runs for office, find out who's who, and learn about the plight of various foods and businesses, and get paid for it, although it won't come in your mailbox.  That 1,025 means I can get $10 today, which will leave 25 to start my next payment.

You'll find it HERE.

AND you can get paid for referring them.  However, I simply blogged about it because I thought someone might like to do this.

Pancakes

I've written about pancakes more than once on this blog.  I've had so many people tell me nobody makes pancakes as good as mine; my ex-daughter-in-law often visits with my granddaughter to eat pancakes.  If I don't have any sausage to go with the pancakes, she has been known to bring some, because sausage makes the pancakes taste better.  So I've known for a while I have quite a following.  But yesterday, I found out how famous I really am.  (That last sentence is sarcasm, more than pride.)

Cliff was sitting in his place on the couch cruising Facebook yesterday afternoon when he got a request on Messenger:  The wife of an old friend and co-worker of his asked him if he could get my pancake recipe and message it to her; she said her husband, Don, told her my pancakes were the best, and that hers just didn't make the grade.  I don't even remember making pancakes for him; I haven't even seen him for years!  I'm a legend!  

The fact is, it really isn't a recipe.  After a few years of making them from scratch because it was just the two of us, I bought a box of pancake mix and realized they were better than my recipe.  I started out writing instructions, but then realized it would be much easier to show her.  So I mixed up some pancake batter and made Cliff my cameraman.  I did manage to portray my "secret" tricks... I say secret because I don't know anyone who has followed my example... but forgot to tell her a couple of cardinal rules, so I typed those on Messenger beneath the video I sent.  One of those was to not get the pancake mixes where you just add water.  The other is to never smash the pancakes after you flip them.  Why, you ask?  Because the leavening in the pancake has made it light and fluffy as the first side cooks; if you smash all that air out of it, it's just a heavy mess of cooked dough.  I think people do that because they're afraid the pancake won't get done in the middle, but I have a trick that will fix that problem, which is why I wanted to show her, rather than explain it in words.  

I wish I'd prepared a little better, because I'm going to show you the video.  I don't cook and talk at the same time very well, and hadn't even thought about what I'd say; but if you watch it to the end, it's sort of funny because of my dear husband:  I was simply going to make a pancake for Anita's benefit and throw out the batter, because we'd had big bowls of chili four hours earlier.  But Cliff is not going to let any pancakes go untasted.  Watch to the end, and forgive my stammering and searching for words.