Timely nuggets of information and ideas we want to share with you.

We’ve all taken photos where something or someone in the background ruins the entire photo. Help is here.

remove.bg is a great way to remove any background in a photo. It is free, simple, and quick. Upload a photo or drop it onto the page. Click ‘Remove Background’ and your photo will be background-free. Click on Features, and you can choose the Magic Brush which will remove or restore any part of your image, or change the background to something else, and more. It’s amazing and fun. Your original photo remains intact, just in case.

The U.S. government updates its Dietary Guidelines every five years, with 2025 being the next update. A recent draft report was released two weeks ago by a committee of scientists advising the government on its next round of guidelines in 2025. The committee has recommended that Americans eat less red and processed meats and more beans, peas, and lentils. A further recommendation was that plant-based protein sources be moved from the vegetable group to the protein foods group and list plant-based protein sources above animal sources including seafood, meats, poultry, and eggs. This is particularly interesting because the meat industry immediately pushed back against the committee’s recommendations saying that they had ignored strong scientific evidence about the nutritional value of red meat. The government doesn’t always follow the recommendations of this committee of scientists. Time will tell how the updated 2025 dietary guidelines deal with the plant-based dietary recommendations.

Eleanor Wilkinson is a U.K. chef who specializes in one portion meals. Her cookbook and Instagram account are called One Pot One Portion. It is important to cook for oneself, but who wants all the clean up? Wilkinson solves that problem with the One Pot part of her cookbook title. My children follow her and love her recipes. Using only one pot in no way limits what’s possible. Her cookbook can be pre-ordered. It will be available February 11, 2025. $26.00.

If you are on Instagram, you can follow her and watch her demonstrate each recipe.

More photo assistance. ClipDrop by Jasper is an image upscaler. It can double the size of a small photo. That’s amazing on its own, but there are additional tools on offer. With the Cleanup tool you can remove any unwanted thing in your photo, including time stamps. With the Relight tool you can improve the quality of your selfies or other photos by transforming the lighting into photos that looks professional. The tool Sketch to Image turns your doodles into real images. It’s fun to play with.