Sweet/tart: 2 savory cherry recipes - Napa Valley Register

For northern Lower Michigan-based chef Bryon “Fig” Figueroa, cooking with fresh local ingredients isn’t just a preference; it’s a matter of principle.

Over the past two decades, Figueroa has made a name for himself in the local food scene cooking at local resorts, wineries, cafés and restaurants. At every place he’s worked, Figueroa has brought the philosophy that a restaurant menu shouldn’t be some fixed document, but rather something that evolves and shifts constantly depending on what local farmers have in-season. And because Figueroa lives in the part of Michigan known affectionately as “The Cherry Capital of the World,” it goes without saying that he knows a thing or two about cooking with cherries.

“With the stone fruits, it’s such a ‘get it now’ situation,” Figueroa says of the local adoration for cherries. “I dove into cherries when I moved to this area, but I’ve been a stone-fruit lover my whole life. And that season is just so fleeting. It’s like you’re chasing it the whole year, and then there are two weeks where you're just rolling in it. And then, poof! It's gone.”

When Feast and Field connected with him, Figueroa was just in the midst of starting a new gig as the chef at a brand-new restaurant in Northport, Michigan, called Northport Pub & Grille. With its grand opening coinciding with the start of cherry season in northern Michigan, Figueroa was thinking a lot about cooking with cherries at the time, brainstorming a series of menu features that would put the spotlight on Michigan’s most iconic local fruit.

Everything you ever wanted to know about cherries

“When you're looking at using cherries in your food, you need to be thinking, ‘What does my food bring, and what do I want from the cherry?’” Figueroa explains of his thought process for designing a cherry-centric menu. For instance, he notes that sweet and tart cherries bring very different attributes to a dish. He likes using sweeter varieties with gamey meats like duck or goose, versus tart cherries that he prefers as a complement to spicier dishes — a spicy Asian slaw, perhaps.

Texture matters, too. Some cherries are soft, light and moist, while others are meatier and more substantial. If the cherries are the “main event” of a dish, that weightier texture might matter. For example, Figueroa prefers big, dark cherries with a firm, juicy texture for his cherry panzanella because a large part of the dish’s appeal is “actually biting into that cherry.”

For a cherry salad dressing, on the other hand, the rules of picking the right cherry for the job are different. “It’s all about the cherry flavor, because the cherry is just going to get buzzed into the dressing,” Figueroa explains. “So, I want the cherry flavor to be prominent, but the cherry doesn’t have to have any real meat to it.”

As for developing recipes that call for cherries when cherries aren’t in-season, Figueroa has a hack for that, too.

“You can take a dried tart cherry, when you’re talking out-of-season, and you can plump it by soaking it in a cherry vinegar or wine,” he says. “That cherry takes on all the acid of whatever you want to soak it in, and that’s a great way to plump it back up and rehydrate it.”

Below, Figueroa offers two culinary-cherry favorites.

This panzanella recipe features sweet black cherries in place of the more typical tomatoes for a satisfying Midwest mashup.

An iteration of the French Monte Cristo sandwich, this cherry cristo doesn’t skimp on flavor with bacon, capicola ham, sweet cherries and maple syrup.

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Tail whips and flairs: the jaw-dropping, high-flying tricks that won BMX freestyler Logan Martin the gold - The Conversation AU

BMX freestyle has had its debut in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and Logan Martin just made history by winning the first gold medal for Australia in the sport.

The fresh, youthful, and at times risky sport involves the execution of acrobatic tricks on a BMX bike while jumping over obstacles such as walls, box jumps and spines.

A box jump is a ramp with a flat, solid surface on top - similar to a table top. A spine is like having two quarter-pipes placed back to back. The spine is designed to gain height rather than distance.

Riders are scored on multiple aspects, such as the difficulty, originality, height and creativity of their tricks during a 60-second run.

Martin’s tricks explained

So, what exactly did Martin do to win gold? Here’s a quick explanation of the tricks in his repertoire:

1. Reverse triple tail whip into an orthodox triple tail whip

In a tail whip, the rider lets go of the pedals while using the feet to spin the back of the bike around the handlebars. Logan did it three times in a row.

He completed the first tail whip in his gold-medal performance in the counter-clockwise direction, or in the direction of his non-preferred hand. He then followed this trick with another triple tail whip in the direction of his preferred hand (clockwise). This is a trick only Logan has mastered.

2. 540 flair into an opposite flair to finish

In a flair, both the rider and bike do a backflip combined with a 180-degree turn.

Logan completed this trick by twisting one and a half times mid-air on one side of the quarter pipe, and finished his run with another flair in the opposite, non-dominant direction on the opposing quarter pipe.

3. “Nothing” front bike flip

In this move, Logan takes off on a jump and flips the bike between his legs mid-air while he remains motionless. He then catches the handles — still mid-air — and pulls the bike back to his body and safely lands on it.

The most important attributes for BMX riders

BMX freestyle is still considered a relatively new and emerging sport. Given the amount of time it has been around, however, the progression of the sport has been tremendous compared to more traditional sports.

Almost every conceivable trick with a bike has seemingly now been invented, meaning the progression of the sport lies depends on the creativity of the athlete to combine a number of tricks together.

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Read more: Alt goes mainstream: how surfing, skateboarding, BMX and sport climbing became Olympic events

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For example, instead of just doing a backflip, riders now combine a backflip with a bar spin. Similarly, many riders now learn to perform tricks the opposite way – as showcased by Martin is his Olympic run. He completed a back-to-back triple tail whip, once with the bike spinning counter-clockwise and then clockwise.

The bigger the combination, the bigger the reward. This showcases that a rider has a large skillset and has taken time to learn and perform a broad range of tricks.

Logan Martin is a two-time world champion in men’s BMX freestyle. Ben Curtis/AP

Elite riders like Martin can combine up to five tricks in one. However, doing big tricks with multiple combinations is only valuable if riders can maintain control of their bikes and bodies, and land smoothly.

Execution is one of the most important components of BMX freestyle. Martin is known for his smooth runs and has even himself described the sport as being “gymnastics on a bike”.

In my research on elite BMX riders, I found that by practising the biggest tricks on a daily basis, riders learn to develop an intuitive understanding of what feel “good” and what feels “bad”.

This allows the athletes not only to establish perceptual but also problem-solving skills, meaning they know when to quickly adjust their bodies (or bikes) to avoid a crash or serious injury.

For Martin, it means his best tricks becoming second nature to him, allowing him to fine-tune his movements and gain a competitive advantage to other riders.

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Read more: Most expensive, greatest gender parity, most sports: Tokyo Olympics by the numbers

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How do they train?

What should be highlighted more in discussing the achievements of action sports athletes like Martin, is that many have learned and developed their skills in the absence of formally accredited coaches.

Unlike most traditional athletes who have had access to training programs and coaches, Martin taught himself most of his tricks or learned with and from his peers.

He also built a skatepark in his own backyard to help prepare for the Olympics. Here, he regularly rides with his best mates, Brendan Loupos (the 2019 world champion) and Jaie Toohey, who taught him the “nothing” front bike flip.

In a risky sport like BMX freestyle, having your mates around while learning dangerous tricks is important as they can help create a psychologically safe environment.

Action sport athletes tend to build strong trust relationships with their peers as they encourage and support one another in performing new and dangerous tasks. This helps a BMXer change their perception of negative emotions such as fear, enabling them to learn new tricks and develop their skills further.

As COVID restrictions forced the closure of two of Queensland’s indoor skateparks, Cycling Australia committed to building a new BMX freestyle indoor training facility to allow these athletes to continue with their training.

This also provided the opportunity for these athletes to train in a more formal coaching system for the first time.

Under the supervision of Wade Boots, Cycling Australia’s high-performance coach and technical director, and sports scientist Eric Haakonssen, the BMX freestyle athletes got in Olympic competition shape through cross training, periodisation (progressive cycles of training and recovery periods), and more emphasis on proper nutrition and breathing while riding.

In addition, strategic decisions were discussed in relation to the sequencing of tricks. For example, rather than pulling out his best tricks early on in Tokyo, risking a fault or crash, Martin completed a run he was comfortable with.

Little did he know it would be enough to win him the gold.

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Tips for creating video résumés for job applications (opinion) - Inside Higher Ed

Despite significant changes in technology and media in our daily lives over the last 20 to 30 years, the humble one- or two-page résumé has remained a remarkably consistent tool in the job application process. You can read more about the history of the résumé here. Tools like LinkedIn have certainly brought the résumé to the digital age, but despite some of its additional media features, most people’s profiles are still based on a text-heavy summary of skills and experiences.

How might this landscape change in our current era, when video rules social media, and when people’s skills and experiences are often better illustrated in action than written about in summary?

Well, first off, the general state of the job application landscape still favors the written résumé format. Yet there tends to be a great diversity of application approaches when looking at small, energetic start-ups where client interaction, sales or marketing are key parts of the role.

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Take this customer success manager position at a start-up that is “looking for a full-time kick-ass CSM that we can groom into management.” In terms of applying, they state, “If you’re interested, we’ll send you a short competency test (one that includes sending us a quick video). If you seem like a fit, we’ll interview, and take it from there.” Based on this description, they don’t seem to want a résumé at all for this particular job.

In another job ad for a sales representative role, the employer states that they are looking for someone to “interact directly with prospects via phone, video, email and online conference calls using a leading screen-sharing platform. Cover intro is not required, though very helpful. You may voluntarily send a short, less than four minutes, video to tell your story.”

(As a best practice aside, if a job description says that you have the option to send something, whether that is a cover letter or a video in this case, or sample syllabi for a faculty position, it is well worth the time to make these optional materials a dynamic and impactful part of your application. It is a little more work up front for you, but it can really help to demonstrate your proactive and creative skills to hiring managers.)

And as a final example of a video-centric application process, I found a director of marketing role in a company that defines itself as “not your standard, boring, big corporation. We are a small, agile, fun business that employs brilliant, bright and unique people.” In addition to overtly stating that “We hire people that are good at working with a team. We don’t hire a**holes!” this employer asks for the following:

“Please send us a personalized cover letter with video and résumé that includes:

• Your past experience
• Your interest in e-commerce
• Your superpower/s (what you’re amazing at)
• A situation that you have showed proactive problem-solving skills
• Anything else that makes you awesome

“One more thing … We’d also appreciate a short video from you (just send the link at the start of your cover letter) of you talking about the above. You know how it works … you get a feel for people via video, so let’s get that started now!”

While these types of requests for video applications are in the minority, and will be role specific, it’s not hard to imagine that a generational shift toward this approach in hiring in some fields will increasingly occur. In fact, that future could look a lot like this pilot program at Tik Tok, which is “teaming up with select companies” and “offering the platform as a channel for recruitment.”

The challenge of this type of application approach right now is there’s generally no agreed-upon format for a video résumé in terms of content, length and so on. From a hiring manager perspective, it is likely to be quite hard to compare candidates with similar skills from various educational and experiential backgrounds who have vastly different approaches to their video submissions. Also, I find it almost impossible to be on Tik Tok and not be distracted by videos of cats, how to make ice cream bread in the oven or why I need to buy a dash cam -- but maybe that’s just me.

All that said, for more mainstream job applications that don’t require or ask for video materials, you can still leverage video to help people get a feel for you. LinkedIn now gives you the opportunity to turn your profile picture into a video introduction with their “Cover Story” tool. Once you have recorded your video, someone who views your profile will see a silent preview of it momentarily take the place of your profile photo -- they then can click on this to see the full video. Since most hiring managers are likely to view your LinkedIn profile at least once during the hiring process, having a professional video that supports what you have said about yourself in your customized application materials can be helpful.

The emergence of required video CVs specifically for faculty positions is probably not something coming in the near or far future, but that doesn’t mean that video can’t play some role in applications for faculty roles. I’ve spoken with new faculty members who said that they included links to videos demonstrating their teaching approaches and philosophies, for example. While no search committee member is going to be eager to watch a one-hour, poorly lit, hard-to-hear video of a candidate teaching in a windowless classroom, that doesn’t mean that you can’t create more purposeful, shorter videos that show you teaching as an illustration of your approach.

And this is really the key to any video that you are creating to showcase your skills, knowledge or experience in a professional, career-relevant setting: it has to look and sound good. That means good lighting, good sound, HD video and lots of postproduction editing to make it a seamless, engaging asset to your applications. While you should format your written résumé so that no one ever notices your formatting, it’s best to edit your video résumé so that the background and ambience actually enhance your content.

Where to Start With Video Résumés?

You won’t find much consistent advice out there right now on the best way to market yourself in a video résumé, should you need one. But a good place to start is to be comfortable with the “tell me about yourself” question that often pops up in an interview. Your answer to this question should be somewhat thematic in terms of creating a unified and coherent narrative about you that helps your different experiences make sense to your audience. So rather than “I am a Ph.D. student,” which is not very informative or distinctly personal about you from a branding perspective, try to identify a more meaningful theme. For example: “In all of my work and research, I have always managed to bring a creative perspective that has opened new doors. As a Ph.D. student …”

The answer to the “tell me about yourself” question will be as unique as you are, but it should leave a lasting, positive impression in the minds of your audience -- something that is especially relevant to it. In this way, a video résumé will be similar to the traditional résumé in that it really has to be tailored to whoever will review it. You can talk about yourself in many different ways, but the most effective narrative will be the one that resonates the most with your audience.

Can the video format potentially lead to more discrimination in terms of race, gender, ableness and more? Quite possibly. That is one reason why photos are not common on American résumés -- to prevent overt discrimination to a small degree.

Will video résumés give people with more technological savvy an advantage? To a certain extent, yes. But beyond fancy editing software, filters or even special effects, your personality in the video will still count for a lot.

Do video résumés give extroverts more opportunities than introverts? Here I would say no. Introverts can actually do quite well creating dynamic, energetic videos about themselves, especially when no one else is around while they make them.

We all need to be better users of technology to communicate. As we approach a future when video résumés may become more common, I look forward to seeing you out there!

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Her Latest Trick: Finding an Affordable One-Bedroom in Manhattan - The New York Times

After a year in New Jersey, a fashion designer who moonlights as a magician discovered to her surprise that she could afford to move back to the city.

Most people have a junk drawer. Rachel Wax has a magic drawer.

“I have a lot of magic drawers, actually,” said Ms. Wax, 27, who is a wholesale designer by day and a magician by night.

“It’s definitely burning the candles at both ends,” she said. “Let’s just say I’ve gotten really good at changing and putting on makeup in a cab on my way from work to a show.”

And when each day is finally done, she now has the ideal place to crash. In May, she moved into a one-bedroom on the Upper East Side, returning to Manhattan after a year away. As she put it, “I lived in New Jersey last year because, you know, there was a plague.”

During the early days of the pandemic, she said, she felt uneasy in the city: “You’d go to a grocery store and walk down the narrow aisles, and it was horrifying.”

So she moved into a spacious two-bedroom in Edgewater, N.J., with a roommate, “seven times bigger than our old place.” And the sprawl of the local Target and Trader Joe’s and life in general suited her. “It was the perfect Covid apartment,” she said.

But she knew it wasn’t for long: “All my magic’s in Manhattan.”

Her roommate wanted to stay in Edgewater, so Ms. Wax set out to look for a place on her own, scouring online listings for studios and one-bedrooms in Brooklyn and Queens.

“I didn’t think I’d ever be able to afford a one-bedroom in Manhattan by myself,” she said. But she found listings all over the city, including in Manhattan, and suddenly had too many options.

“I realized I had about 200 apartments saved — and they weren’t going anywhere,” she said. “So I started narrowing it down, because I don’t really want to be in Brooklyn or Queens. I want to be in Manhattan.”

She wound up two blocks from the 96th Street station for the Q. “It’s the first stop,” she said, “so you always get a seat.”

Ms. Wax’s apartment is sometimes the spot for her friends to spend time after work. “Just some wine and a little ‘Love Island,’” she said. “Because I like to keep things really intellectual.”    Katherine Marks for The New York Times

Initially, she had tried for another unit in the same building, but just missed out. But when she saw the second apartment, there was even more to like: It had an exposed brick wall and a slightly bigger kitchen, and it was on a higher floor — more stairs to climb, but also more light.

In the wake of the pandemic, the management company offered to add one free month to Ms. Wax’s yearlong lease, reducing her monthly rent of $1,675 to an effective rate of $1,535.

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$1,675 | Upper East Side

Rachel Wax, 27

Occupation: Magician and fashion designer
Favorite place to perform: The McKittrick Hotel in West Chelsea. “The people who are going to that show are there to have a good time. They’re there to drink and laugh, and we don’t have to watch our language when we’re performing, which is good for me because I don’t really do kids’ shows.”
A sign that you love New York: “I smiled at a rat the other day. I didn’t even mean to. I just saw it and was like, ‘Oh, hey, neighbor.’”

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She likes being close to Barking Dog for brunch and The Penrose for drinks. She likes desserts from Milano Market and buying plants from her local bodega. “They sell the best plants,” she said.

There is hardly a surface or corner of her apartment that isn’t draped in green: ferns and succulents, potato vines and banana plants, string of pearls and monsteras. “I take a lot of pride in my plants,” she said. “And I choose ones that are hardy, because I’m sad when they die.”

With several restaurants nearby, Ms. Wax doesn’t do much cooking. “There are lots of cabinets in the kitchen for the things I don’t ever use,” she said. “I wish I could just stuff all of them with sweaters.”Katherine Marks for The New York Times

Other than a dormant kitchen cart — “I bought it with the hope that I would become somebody who cooks”— Ms. Wax makes the most of her 350 square feet. There are tools for both of her jobs scattered about. Magic books, of course, are on nearly every shelf, and an unfinished wood table, designed for a trick in progress, sits next to the door: “I’m more than happy to put in the legwork to make physical props.”

There is also a tailor’s dress form near the entrance to the apartment, and an open laptop rests on a desk in the sun-splashed bedroom. “I knew with the pandemic I’d be working from home, so it was really important to have space for a desk,” she said.

Beach-size tote bags hang from door handles, hooks and the corners of a full-length mirror. The big bags are required to fit everything Ms. Wax needs for both jobs. “It’s like having two days in one,” she said. “It’s cool to have two careers that are always competing for which can pay less.”

She has two large closets, and the bigger one houses a row of blazers, predominantly black, wall to wall, alphabetized by designer. Ms. Wax buys mostly consignment. “I spend more on blazers than any other type of clothing,” she said. “I figure if I can perform in it, it will pay for itself eventually. Plus, you can’t beat the pockets. That’s a big issue for magicians, because you need pockets, and ladies’ clothes don’t have pockets — we don’t deserve them, apparently.”

Ms. Wax realizes that magic isn’t for everyone. “Some people don’t like magic and that’s fine,” she said. “Some people also don’t like ice cream. I don’t know what to tell you.”Katherine Marks for The New York Times

In high school, fashion was all she wanted to do, but that was also when she started picking up magic from her father. “I said, ‘You’re getting attention, I want attention — teach me a magic trick, Dad.’”

David Wax, a doctor in Chicago, where he and his wife raised their family, remembers teaching his daughter one of her first tricks at a party. By the time they left, she was performing the trick for other guests. “She has a lot of confidence,” Dr. Wax said, “and a great personality for performing.”

Soon after, he brought his daughter to a magic convention. “There are not a lot of cute little girls at magic conventions,” he said. “There’s mostly old guys, like me. So everybody wanted to meet her. She was the hit of the convention.”

They did a few gigs together, even got matching rabbit-in-a-top-hat tattoos, but it wasn’t until Ms. Wax moved to New York to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology that she started meeting more magicians and developing her own performance style.

“In high school,” she said, “when you’re just starting out, you see something like a cool trick with fire and you say to yourself, ‘I want to learn how to do that.’ But as you grow and form your performing persona, some of that gets peeled away. You realize, ‘Oh, that’s magic for somebody with face tattoos — that’s not me.’”

She doesn’t do serious comedy, she said, although “most of my magic is rooted in comedy.” For close-up sets, she prefers card tricks to coins. And when it comes to stage magic, she likes taking a classic premise and putting a personal twist on it. “It took me a long time to figure out what my schtick was,” she said.

For the first time since the pandemic, gigs have started coming back. The McKittrick Hotel and the Society of Conjurers and Magicians, or S.C.A.M., are two of Ms. Wax’s favorite places to perform. The S.C.A.M. shows give her the chance to do lots of sets for different audiences. “It helps you get better at material faster,” she said. “If you can work on a trick and do it five times back to back, for five different audiences, that tightens up way faster than an occasional gig.”

Often she is the only woman in a show, and it can be challenging to navigate such a male-dominated profession.

“The magicians who’ve helped me along the way, they’re all men,” she said. “So some of the rules don’t apply to me, or they apply differently to me, and that was definitely hard to learn. Sometimes I have to put my foot down a little bit harder or bite back a little bit harder in order to demand respect.”

Saturday mornings are just about the only quiet time she gets in the apartment. She treats herself to a bagel and spends time scrolling through Instagram, dreaming of that one thing that’s still missing from her new place.

“I’m a pug nut,” she said. “And I can’t have one.”

Even if she does get permission from the management, there’s still her allergy to dogs: “All I know is that I want a pug really bad, and there’s a gaping hole in my heart.”

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TPG readers’ top tips for Austria - The Points Guy

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Gmail Tips That Will Help You Conquer Email - PCMag

Gmail has come a long way. It's not perfect and occasionally prompts ripples of outrage across its user base. But let's be honest, with Gmail you get plenty for nothing.

As a web app, Gmail is a constant work in progress, but the amount of under-the-hood power is astounding. Sure, there are plenty of browser add-ons and extensions that can enhance Gmail specifically, far beyond its original parameters. However, not every bit of power-user tech in Gmail requires special accessories. Plenty is possible without ever installing something extra.

Mastering even a few settings will help you take full advantage of what Gmail has to offer beyond the basics. Let's get started.

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Shortcut Cheat Sheet

Gmail is chock full of keyboard shortcuts for just about everything you can do; many only require a single click (hit the C key to start a compose window, for example). Click Shift+? to see them all. Enable this by clicking the gear icon on the top right and select See all settings > Keyboard shortcuts > Keyboard shortcuts on. Any new shortcut in here will overwrite the defaults. Click Save Changes button at the bottom to make them stick.

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Use Multiple Accounts

If you're a Google super fan and have multiple Google/Gmail accounts (even a Google Workspace account from work), there's no need to sign in and out constantly. On the desktop (using Chrome, Firefox, Edge), you can sign into multiple accounts at once. Each can occupy a tab and stay signed in. Click on your account avatar on the top right and select Add another account. Then, to switch between accounts, click your avatar again, and click the desired account; no password entry required. The default account is the one you signed in with first.

You can also put the Chrome browser to work to keep your multiple accounts (or accounts for other people that use the computer) separate but usable using Chrome Profiles. Click the profile icon at the upper right of your browser window (it probably looks like your Google account avatar picture), click the Pencil icon to give that Profile a name, then click Add at the bottom. You'll get a new Chrome Profile sign in page to use here. 

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Add Third-Party Email Accounts to Gmail

Do you love the Gmail interface, but don't want to give up your Yahoo, iCloud, or Outlook email address? Not a problem. Google lets you add third-party email accounts to the Gmail mobile app, which brings Google features like spam filtering and a tabbed inbox to those accounts.

You need to have at least one Gmail account first for it to work. To set it up on mobile, click your avatar in the Gmail app and select Add another account. Pick the type of account you wish to add and enter the credentials. You can then access one inbox at a time, or see all your email in one unified inbox on your phone or tablet. Go back to the avatar and select Manage accounts on this device to deactivate or delete an account later.

On the desktop, tap the gear icon and select See all settings > Accounts and Import > Check mail from other accounts > Add a mail account. In the pop-up window, type in the email address you want to link, click Next, and select Link account with Gmail.

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Check Which Apps Have Access to Gmail

Linking frequently used services to Gmail can be a time-saver, but you may want to occasionally check which apps have access to your accounts. Go to myaccount.google.com/Security, scroll down to the Third-party apps with account access section, and click Manage third-party access to disconnect any apps you don't need.  

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Send Messages Later, On Schedule

Scheduling a message to be delivered at a later time used to require third-party services, but it's now built-in. Write your message, click the drop-down menu arrow next to the Send button, and either pick a quick schedule option or select Pick date & time to get specific.

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Try to Be Confidential

Confidential Mode for Gmail gives you a granular degree of control over who can see your info in an email you send, and for how long the message is available. Turn it on by clicking the Confidential Mode lock/clock icon at the bottom of a compose window. You'll get options to set up expiration dates on the message; after that date, the message disappears and the person only sees a "message has expired" notice. You can also limit what the recipient can do, such as locking down the ability to forward it or download attachments.

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Send From a Different Email Address

You may have many Gmail-based accounts or multiple addresses on the same account. Set all those addresses up in your primary Gmail, and make it look like you're sending from a completely different account, either all the time or on a per-message basis. Go to Settings > Accounts and Import > Send Mail As, where you can add multiple email addresses. This is great if you send a lot of messages on one account, but want replies to go to another.

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Don't Just Label Spam, Block Senders

Someone bothering you? Gmail lets you block individual senders. On desktop or mobile, select the three-dot menu next to the Reply arrow button on a message and select Block [Username]. Any future messages from that email address will then be sent directly to your spam folder.  

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Unsubscribe to Everything

Getting a lot of newsletters and other junk you don't want? Most have an Unsubscribe link at the bottom of the message. Gmail (mobile and desktop) also sticks an Unsubscribe link at the TOP of the message, right next to the sender's name, if it can detect the unsub link in the message.

For easy cleanup, type "unsubscribe" into Gmail search. You'll get a list of every message that has the word listed. Go through each. This is as close as you can get to bulk unsubscribing without a third-party service. For more, read How to Unsubscribe From Unwanted Email.

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How to 'Undo Send' in Gmail

We all know the panic of hitting "send" on an email too soon. With Gmail, you can add a buffer to recall a mistakenly sent message. The feature, dubbed Undo Send, is on by default and you can't deactivate it. But you can adjust how long you get to unsend an email. Click the gear icon and select See all settings > General > Undo Send and click the drop-down menu to select how long you want to be able to undo a sent message (5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds). Then scroll to the bottom and Save Changes. Whenever you send a message, you'll see an Undo link in a black box floating at the lower-left of the screen on desktop and the lower-right on mobile.

If you click the link before the time runs out, your message will not go out. You'll get a chance to re-edit it, or delete it entirely. You can even undo discards, so when you delete a message in progress, you can bring it back and start again.

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Drag Messages or Labels

Gmail has labels, not folders. They're functionally the same, albeit discomforting to those used to the whole folder paradigm. It's easy to drag a message from the inbox to a label and thus file it away, archived for future searches. But if that message in the inbox requires further attention, you can do it backwards: Drag the label from the left sidebar to the message. It stays in the inbox but is ready for future archiving.

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Send+Archive

Label a message before it's sent by clicking the More Options menu at the lower-right of the compose window. You can then archive it instantly when sent. To set it up, go to See all settings > General > Send and Archive > Show "Send & Archive" button in reply. If a reply you're composing already has a label, you'll see a new button called Send+Archive (though it doesn't actually say "archive," it shows Gmail's archive icon: a file box with a down arrow on it.) Click that button and the entire thread gets archived to the pre-assigned label.

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Email Address Disguises/Aliases

Gmail ignores periods in your email address. So [email protected] is the same as [email protected] or even [email protected] They all go to the same person. This feature might seem useless, but you can still see the pattern, so it's a great trick for signing up for newsletters or sharing your email address—you can tell who's sold your name to spammers, for instance.

Gmail also ignores anything after a plus sign (+). So [email protected] goes to the same place as [email protected]. This alias is incredibly handy for filtering messages, as Gmail filters do see what's after the plus. Thus, if you sign up for every newsletter with [email protected], you only need to filter on messages sent to that address, rather than on every individual newsletter sender. (The downside is that many services don't allow sign-ups with email addresses that have "optional" characters like a plus sign.)

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Power Your Search

The quickest way to do a power search in Gmail is to click the down arrow in the search box, which produces a full search dialog box. But Gmail supports many search operators. For example, type "in:trash" and "in:spam" to only search those folders (they're usually skipped). Or restrict a search to just "in:inbox." Use "label:" followed by the label/folder name to only search that folder. The "filename:" followed by an actual file's name finds specific attachments.

Use a minus sign (hyphen) to search one thing and not another: "dinner -movie" would only find messages that say "dinner," but skip any that mention "movie." The other Boolean operator supported is "OR" (all caps).

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Response in a Can

Stop typing so much, especially the same message over and over. Templates—previously called "canned responses"—are a must for repeated, redundant, repetitive emails. Turn it on via See all settings > Advanced > Templates > Enable. Scroll down to Save changes, and Gmail will re-load. Create a new email and type up a canned response. Click the ellipsis menu in the lower-right corner of the message and select "Templates." Here, you can save the message you just typed as a template for future messages, or apply an already-saved template to the current window. If you re-write the canned reply, you can re-save it with the same name for future use. (However, in this case there is an extension that makes this kind of thing a lot easier, called Magical, which works in more than just Gmail.)

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Get Smart

Smart Reply is a machine learning tech that prepares three, short appropriate replies to messages you receive. A single tap on the offered reply adds it to the response window, where you can send it off or write more. It appears in the Gmail apps for iOS and Android as well as on the desktop web interface. If you find these suggestions annoying, turn them off via See all settings > General > Smart Reply > Smart reply off, and then scroll down to save changes.

Similarly, Smart Compose will suggest words or phrases to use as you type an email. If you type, "I hope you," for example, you might see "are well" appear in grayed-out text. If that's what you meant to say, hit the tab key and Gmail will automatically insert "are well" into your message. If not, keep typing and the suggestion will disappear. To turn this off, head to See all settings > General > Smart Compose > Writing suggestions off, then save changes.

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Sign Out Remotely

You can access Gmail from multiple devices at the same time. Sometimes, you might stay signed in when you don't mean to (on, say, a public computer), or worse, suspect someone of using your account behind your back (turn on two-factor authentication to avoid that). On the desktop, scroll down to the bottom of your inbox. In the fine print at the bottom of the page, it says Last account activity, followed by a time. Click the Details link underneath it to see all the activity for the account. If something looks fishy, do a Google Security Checkup and deactivate open sessions on other devices.

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Hit the Mute (or Snooze) Button

Mute email threads you want to banish. In your inbox, click the checkbox next to the thread in question, click the ellipsis icon up top and select Mute; you can also right-click a thread on the desktop to see a menu with Mute. The thread will seemingly disappear, but it remains in the archive even as new messages come in. You won't see any message in the thread again unless you are the direct recipient, or you search for it.

If you just want to mute a discussion for a set amount of time, right-click a thread to find Snooze. If you click snooze, the message disappears from the inbox and comes back after the length of time you specify.

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How to Select All Gmail Emails

To select every message in a label in Gmail, you click the checkbox in the upper-left corner, right? Almost. Checking that box selects every conversation on that first page of results—and that's limited to 100 items max. If you want everything under that label, visible on the page or not, check the box and look for the link at the top of the results that says Select all X conversations in [Label].

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Get Attached

The first trick for sending attachments: Don't forget to attach them. Thankfully, Gmail will pop up a reminder if your message includes phrases like "I have attached" or "I have included," and you hit send without attaching anything.

You can drag and drop files from the desktop to a Gmail message. Images will be embedded in the message unless you drag the file to the toolbar below the composition pane. There's a 25MB limit per Gmail message. If your file is too big, it goes to Google Drive and the recipient gets a link. You can, however, receive attachments totaling up to 50MB.

If you are a big Google Drive user, attaching items that already reside there is not only a breeze, they don't count against the 25MB limit. Click the Insert Files Using Drive icon in the composition window's toolbar to pick a file to attach. This also gets you around the kind of files Gmail blocks, such as EXE files. (For more, see How to Send Large Files Over the Internet.)

Want the same thing for your Dropbox account? Use the Dropbox for Gmail Chrome extension.

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Establish a Delegate

You can delegate someone else to share control of your Gmail account, be they a company admin or your significant other. Set up the account under See all settings > Accounts and Import > Grant access to your account > Add another account. The person also has to have a Google or Gmail account of some sort—their email address must end in the domain name that matches yours. If you go to the path above and find a delegate there who you didn't authorize, change your password immediately—you probably got phished.

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Delete Big Messages

If you've come close to using up the 15GB of storage Google provides for free, and you don't want to pay for more, delete some messages. Search for "size:xm" where you replace the x with a number. The "m" stands for megabytes. Any message with over 10MB of size probably has some hefty attachments. Save them to your hard drive, but not to Google Drive—that's space you share with Gmail, so it won't save space. 

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