Photo: GO DESIGN (Shutterstock)

Cooking wine should be good enough to drink, but not so good that you feel bad about adding it to a sauce or stew. (It shouldn’t come in a bottle labeled “Make Wine” under any circumstances.) It’s easy to find a $ 10 bottle that tastes good when cooked with tomatoes, garlic, and onions, but it does is harder to find one to eat after I’ve poured the aliquot I need for my dish. This can lead to oxidized wine that while still usableis something I like to avoid.

Enter wine in boxes, the wine that remains drinkable for a few weeks or (depending on which wine expert you ask) up to a month and a half after opening, much longer than the 3-5 day usage window of a bottle. This is thanks to the little plastic tap attached to the bag in the box, which is much better at keeping oxygen out of your wine than a cork or even a screw cap. (However, glass is still a better choice for long-term storage as semi-permeable bags can only hold off oxidation for a few months.)

The longer service life relieves the burden. The slight guilt and fear that can go hand in hand with opening a medium-sized bottle of wine for half a cup that I need to cook are a thing of the past – suddenly no amount of wine is too trivial anymore. And even if you don’t consume all of your wine in a box before it starts spinning, the low price of wine in boxes is there to mitigate that blow. A three-liter carton usually costs around $ 20, which is about five dollars for a standard 750-milliliter bottle. (Canned wine seems to offer similar benefits, but cans usually hold half a bottle and are not intended for storage once opened.)

All of these make great wine to cook with, but great wine to cook with wine too. Boxed Wine is casual and liberating, devoid of the ritual normally associated with drinking wine – there is no cork – for Wednesdays who don’t need all that pomp.

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My friend doesn’t drink and there is no one around which means that after opening a bottle, it will be my responsibility to use it all up before it spins. And although I can certainly drink 750 milliliters of wine in a few days, I don’t always want to. (I’ve drank a lot less and often get headaches after having more than two drinks in one evening. Aging is fun!) Sometimes I just want a small glass with my small dinner, or a few ounces for one Sunday afternoon Kalimotxoand box wine is there for me. (Conversely, if you have many insatiable wine drinkers in your household, box wine is a very economical choice.)

In terms of quality, box wine is better than the image suggests. Although Franzia is still very popularIt’s nowhere near the only box offering, and some of the boxes available are downright bougie. I’m a black box fan, but a good strategy for finding good boxing is to type “Best Boxed Wine” into a search engine and read the records of the most snobbish website you can find. The fanciest boxes cost around $ 30, which is still pretty darn cheap.

Photo: Bignai (Shutterstock)

President Biden today announced changes as part of the COVID business loan aid program, which targets small and minority businesses that were left out in previous aid rounds. The changes make qualification easier and include an exclusive 14-day window in which small business owners can apply for loans from Wednesday. Here’s what you need to know.

Changes to the Paycheck Protection Program

Of the $ 284 billion that Congress has allocated for another round Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Loans in December only made $ 134 billion to small businesses, according to USA Today. Like Biden before criticized The PPP program is not intended to reach the intended recipients. The following reforms are designed to fill the gap.

• From Wednesday small companies with fewer than 20 employees (which is not applicable 98% all small businesses) have an exclusive 14-day window to apply for credit. Companies with more than 20 employees cannot apply for a loan during this time.
• The program’s loan calculation formula will be adjusted so that independent contractors, sole proprietorships and the self-employed will have a better chance of obtaining the loans. The Biden Administration says Many repair companies, beauticians, and small independent retailers have either been excluded from the program or approved for very low loan amounts, sometimes as low as $ 1.
• President Biden will allocate $ 1 billion exclusively to sole proprietorships with no employees in low and middle income areas. From these companies without employees, 70 percent are owned by women and minorities.
• Biden will also lift restrictions preventing small business owners from applying for loans if they are not committing fraudulent crimes, have defaulted on their federal student loans, or have been green card or in-state Visa holders.

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How PPP Loans Work

Under the CARES Act, the PPP program was intended to help small businesses cover costs during the pandemic. Initial loans are capped at 2.5 times the average monthly wage bill, with a maximum of $ 10 million at a fixed rate of 1%. according to the Small Business Administration (SBA). However, loans can be granted if a company spends at least 60% of the money on wages and salaries such as wages or health insurance and a maximum of 40% on other qualified expenses such as rent or ancillary costs.

The program expires in late March and another renewal of the program is underway not included in Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion relief plan now winding its way through Congress.

Apply, Visit the SBA’s PPP website on Wednesday when small business applications are accepted. For more general information on PPP loans, see Here.

What is silver sparrow? No, it’s not a Game of Thrones character – did this ship sail? – but a new macOS malware that runs on both Intel- and M1-based Macs. This makes it the second known malware for the latter, but there is a silver lining: researchers discovered the malicious software before it could actually harm your system.

As Red Canary’s Tony Lambert writes:

“… the ultimate target of this malware is a mystery. We cannot know for sure what payload will be distributed by the malware, whether a payload has already been delivered and removed, or whether the adversary has a future schedule for distribution. Based on data that Malwarebytes shared with us, the nearly 30,000 affected hosts did not download what would be the next or last payload. “

Click on Red Canary’s Blog to learn more about the technical details of Silver Sparrow. If you’re curious about whether you’ve got infected, chances are you haven’t, and neither will you – Apple has exposed the problem Developer Certificates Used to sign the package files that trigger the infection. This means that Mac users will not be able to install them if they are using the Mac’s default security settings. (I didn’t find this malware so I can’t check if your Mac is warning you not to install it or just flag it as a malicious app and forbid that.)

However, if you are concerned that you may be infected, think about what you’ve been doing to your system lately. Did a website ask you to download and / or update a software package? Was it something you didn’t want to download or install until a website suggested it? Has this package file been labeled as simple and boring e.g. B. “update.pkg” or “updater.pkg”?

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If so, a slight suspicion is justified. While there is no real way to use observable behavior to determine if this malware is on your system – since it is doing nothing right now and it is unclear whether it ever will – you can search for files that the malware is pointing to Your system. Red Canary detects four files that indicate that your system may be infected:

• ~ / Library /._ insu (empty file that signals the malware to delete itself)
• /tmp/agent.sh (installation recall shell script executed)
• /tmp/version.json (file downloaded from S3 to determine execution flow)
• /tmp/version.plist (version.json converted to a property list)

That lengthy (and incredibly helpful) description Ars Technica’s annotator effect can help you find the bad files, confirm they are problematic, and remove them. Since Malwarebytes worked with Red Canary With the detection data for the analysis and the published piece, chances are good that the free version this popular anti-malware scanner / remover should also be sufficient.

If the current version of the Silver Sparrow app can’t find and remove it, make sure you keep the definitions up to date and run regular scans. I expect it won’t be long before the company releases an update that will rid macOS of this pesky but otherwise stagnant malware.

Yes, this is microwave popcorn. It’s all I had Photo: Claire Lower

In terms of fishy flavor enhancers, fermented Southeast Asian fish sauce is my all-time favorite. I love canned anchovies, especially in combination with a mess of slow cooked garlic, but fish sauce has a deeper, heartier, almost caramelized taste that interests my mouth and engages with whatever I put on it. Plus, it’s already in a convenient liquid form so it’s easy to add to vinaigrettes, marinades, Pasta sauce, chiliand melted butter.

Fish sauce is as easy to make as butter Soy sauce butterand it’s – in my opinion – a bit more interesting. Similar to soy butter, it’s salty and umami-forward, but the saltyness is brinier and the umami is funky. It also requires a lot less sauce as the flavor is quite pronounced, though somewhat tempered by the richness of the butter.

To make fish sauce butter, all you have to do is melt two tablespoons of butter on either the stove or the microwave, then stir in a teaspoon (or more) of fish sauce, depending on how funky you want your butter to be. If you have a little extra time, you can brown the butter and then stir in the fish sauce for a deeper, nuttier flavor. However, you may want to increase the sauce content to two teaspoons so the taste isn’t overwhelmed. You can also sprinkle a little sugar (brown or white) for a sweet counterpoint to play off, or toss in hot sauce to add some warmth.

Any repetition of fish sauce butter is good for popcorn – just drizzle and toss to coat like you were using just melted butter – but it’s just as delicious with steamed artichokes, noodles, roasted vegetables, and sauteed shrimp. I would put it on a lobster bun too if there is a chance the New England norms are damned.

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