This is just a quick note to readers to let you all know that I'll be publishing a lot less frequently here at Casual Kitchen as I start up work on some other projects.
There's a few more things I'd still like to do here: strip down and simplify the layout, organize a guide for readers new to the site, put together a longer-form work based on some of Casual Kitchen's key topics, fix the ad units so I can monetize the site a little less incompetently, and so on.
But after more than ten years, 3.3 million pageviews (and counting) and well over a thousand articles, I'm (finally!) running out of things to say here. It's time to let this project go... and start something else.
Casual Kitchen has been a really fun writing project, one that exceeded anything I ever, ever expected. I hope readers have learned a few things over the course of this blog's life; I know I have by writing it.
Let me thank you, readers, for your all your support and interest!
--Dan
************************
You can support Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
This Nigerian nourishment is known as the Jollof Rice with a curve! It feels great to see the looks on your visitors' or companions' countenances when they think you are serving them the great old Jollof Rice yet bam, the minute the main spoon enters the mouth, you are certain to get the vibes of delight! It makes you feel better, isn't that right?
The most effective method to Cook Coconut Rice [Video]
White Coconut Rice
Indeed, it looks equivalent to the Jollof Rice you know however the fragrance and taste is unique. For what reason don't you shock your visitors today around evening time by setting up this simple supper formula?
This formula is for Jollof Coconut Rice, there's another adaptation of coconut rice known as the White Coconut Rice.
Coming up next are different varieties of Jollof Rice:
Hamburger Mince Jollof Rice
Smoky Party Jollof Rice without Firewood
Verdant Jollof Rice
Great Party Jollof Rice
Blended Vegetable Jollof Rice
Rice and Beans
Fixings
3 stogie cups | 750g long grain parboiled rice
500mls Tomato Stew
600 mls Coconut Milk
Chicken (entire chicken or drumsticks)
Bean stew pepper (to taste)
Salt (to taste)
1 medium onions
3 stock shapes
1 tablespoon thyme
Before you cook Coconut Rice
Set up the tomato stew in the event that you don't have some in the cooler. Visit the Tomato Stew page for subtleties on the best way to do that. It is prudent to plan tomato stew before hand and keep in the cooler. This is so that at whatever point you need to cook any jollof rice related dish, it is simply a question of adding it to your cooking.
On the off chance that you will utilize entire chicken, wash and cut the entire chicken into pieces. Spot the pieces in a pot; include water till it just covers the bits of chicken, include the slashed onions, stock blocks and thyme and begin cooking. The cooking time relies upon the sort of chicken. The chicken or cockerel cooks a lot quicker than the hen however the hen is more delectable.
Cooking till done and add salt to taste. Put the bits of chicken in a sifter to deplete, at that point fry with vegetable oil. You can likewise flame broil it in a broiler. This is to give it a brilliant look which is increasingly adequate particularly on the off chance that you have visitors for supper. Peruse how to season and flame broil chicken for increasingly one this.
Right now is an ideal opportunity to extricate the coconut milk. This is a significant simple errand on the off chance that you pursue the technique definite in How to Extract Coconut Milk. Put the coconut milk in a safe spot.
Parboil the rice utilizing the strategy point by point in parboiling rice for cooking coconut rice. Wash the parboiled rice and put in a strainer to deplete.
Cooking Directions
Presently we need a pot huge enough to oblige the rice till it is finished. Remember that the rice will regularly ascend by in any event one fourth of its amount from the parboiled state to the done state.
Pour the chicken stock, coconut milk and the tomato stew into the chose pot. Set on the stove to bubble. Include the depleted parboiled rice, salt and pepper to taste. In the event that vital, top up with water to bring the water level to a similar level as the rice. This is to guarantee that all the water evaporates when the rice is cooked.
Spread the pot and leave to cook on medium warmth. Thusly the rice does not consume before the water dries.
In the event that you parboiled the rice as depicted at parboiling rice for cooking coconut rice, the rice ought to be finished when the water is dry. Affirm that the rice is finished by tasting it. That is the manner in which coconut rice is cooked.
Present with Fried Plantain, Nigerian Moi, Nigerian Salad or Coleslaw.
On the off chance that you have any inquiries regarding getting ready Coconut Rice, click here to ask me.
Depiction:
Discover direct why Nigerian seared rice is so mainstream by attempting this delectable, simple formula. Served nearby chicken, its unrealistic. Regardless of whether you have it as a side dish or a dinner all alone, the hot flavors will have you at the main nibble.
Fixings:
2 cups in length grain white rice
2 huge green peppers
1 little cabbage
1 huge onion
½ cup green beans
4 huge carrots
2 cups chicken stock
½ tbsp. white pepper
3 cooking spoons groundnut oil
4 huge chicken thighs (or other meat of decision)
1 tsp. curry powder
Flavoring and salt to taste
Strategy:
Wash and flavor the chicken pieces. Bubble until delicate, at that point fry or flame broil them.
Hack the carrot, cabbage, green pepper and green beans.
Parboil the rice, at that point cook in the chicken stock (include 2 additional cups of water). Cook until practically delicate, at that point put in a safe spot.
Put a perfect griddle ablaze. Add groundnut oil and onion to the dish. Blend for a moment at that point include the carrot and green beans. Mix for one more moment.
Include the cabbage, green pepper, white pepper, curry, flavoring and salt to taste (attempt to keep it somewhat hot). Pan fried food for 2 minutes.
Add the rice to the blend, mix and stew for 5 minutes. Present with the chicken.
Discover direct why Nigerian seared rice is so mainstream by attempting this delectable, simple formula. Served nearby chicken, its unrealistic. Regardless of whether you have it as a side dish or a dinner all alone, the hot flavors will have you at the main nibble.
Fixings:
2 cups in length grain white rice
2 huge green peppers
1 little cabbage
1 huge onion
½ cup green beans
4 huge carrots
2 cups chicken stock
½ tbsp. white pepper
3 cooking spoons groundnut oil
4 huge chicken thighs (or other meat of decision)
1 tsp. curry powder
Flavoring and salt to taste
Strategy:
Wash and flavor the chicken pieces. Bubble until delicate, at that point fry or flame broil them.
Hack the carrot, cabbage, green pepper and green beans.
Parboil the rice, at that point cook in the chicken stock (include 2 additional cups of water). Cook until practically delicate, at that point put in a safe spot.
Put a perfect griddle ablaze. Add groundnut oil and onion to the dish. Blend for a moment at that point include the carrot and green beans. Mix for one more moment.
Include the cabbage, green pepper, white pepper, curry, flavoring and salt to taste (attempt to keep it somewhat hot). Pan fried food for 2 minutes.
Add the rice to the blend, mix and stew for 5 minutes. Present with the chicken.
My Ego Doesn’t Want to Hear It. Why?
"You're going to want to 'peel' your feet up off the pavement more. And then lay them back down with a mid-sole strike. It'll help you make more of a circular motion with your legs as you run."
This was Laura, helping correct my running form, and quoting directly from Danny Dreyer's excellent book Chi Running. Which, oddly enough, I had her read years ago to improve her running form. Hmm.
I had a negative reaction to this comment, even considering it (wrongly, as we will soon see) vaguely condescending.
My reaction was nothing more than my ego attempting to "protect" me. And what I'd like to do in today's post is explore how dangerous our egos can be when they defensively and aggressively overprotect us.
I'll start by considering reality from my ego's deeply insecure point of view. Assume for the moment that my ego was 100% correct in its worst-case interpretation of Laura's comment: that Laura's intention was to lord over me how terrible my running form was, and by implicit comparison how amazingly perfect her form is. Her comment was intended to condescend and to indicate superiority.
Yes, I know this sounds ridiculous already (I mean, jeez, who wants to go through life automatically assuming such negative intent in everything said around you? [1]), but bear with me.
Now, we're both reasonably intelligent people who try to be "meta" about a conversation while we're in it. We're both mostly aware that it pays to say things in such a way that the other people understands the point you're trying to make. Likewise, we also try to be aware that the other person has "intentionality" in what he or she says too. In other words: I can generally assume if something is important enough for Laura to say, there's most likely a decent reason for her to bother to say it.
Otherwise, I've chosen to marry somebody who blithers at me for no discernible reason, something I really don't want to be true.
Once you start considering the real purpose of a conversation about running form (instead of your ego's insecure and false assumptions about that purpose), and once you ruminate a little bit about why somebody might offer a suggestion about something they noticed about your form, you start to see how important intentionality is, and likewise how important it is to assume positive intent in what others say to you.
Let's go back to my ego for a second, and return to my ego's negative interpretation of Laura's statement. My ego arrived at this negative interpretation in a split second, without any real consideration of Laura's intentions. The only thing it "considered" was the idea that I was likely being insulted somehow. Thus my ego reacted in order to protect itself from a potential ego injury... and this ended up preventing me from improving my running form, by insta-rejecting an excellent idea from a book I already knew and totally agreed with.
Thanks ego! Thanks a lot.
If you can believe it, it gets even worse: our ego protection reaction, if it's habitual, will condition our psychological environment (including those people unfortunate enough to be in it) to never offer us any helpful suggestions. Think about it: if I were to react this way to every idea or suggestion Laura ever makes, eventually she'll stop bothering to try and help me.
A disturbing way to look at this is to conclude that the more reactant your ego, the more your life will be bereft of help in all forms.
Yes, you and I both know the truism about never giving unsolicited advice. But at the same time, helpful suggestions exist only if they manifest in other peoples' minds, and those helpful ideas and suggestions appear in other's minds when they appear, not necessarily when we want them to appear. Thus we have to be ready for this "help" on other peoples' schedule, not on our own. It's just like being consistently ready in case a teacher appears.
There's yet another aspect of our ego protection reflex that's just as pernicious. Consider an example I read recently about trees in a biosphere project. Scientists couldn't understand why all the trees inside of the biosphere kept falling over before they matured. Well, it turns out that if you're a tree inside a biosphere, you never get exposed to wind. Wind is a type of stressor, and trees exposed to wind as they mature become far stronger and resilient. [2]
Essentially, our egos want to keep us in a biosphere, where we never face any wind. Our egos presume negative intent, they presume insult and condescension, and they do so instantly, reflexively. If all we do is reflexively ego-protect, all we'll end up with is a fragile, brittle, easy-to-injure psyche.
So I started peeling up my feet.
Footnotes:
[1] One useful heuristic to use at all times when interacting with others: do not automatically presume negative intent in the things other people say.
[2] A fancy word for this is hormesis, or hormetic response. The tree's hormetic response to wind strengthens it over time. For further reading on the human body's hormetic response to running and how even running shoes intefere with hormesis, see also What Barefoot Running Taught Us About Expensive Sneakers (And What Nike and Others Really Don't Want You To Know)
*****************
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
This was Laura, helping correct my running form, and quoting directly from Danny Dreyer's excellent book Chi Running. Which, oddly enough, I had her read years ago to improve her running form. Hmm.
I had a negative reaction to this comment, even considering it (wrongly, as we will soon see) vaguely condescending.
My reaction was nothing more than my ego attempting to "protect" me. And what I'd like to do in today's post is explore how dangerous our egos can be when they defensively and aggressively overprotect us.
I'll start by considering reality from my ego's deeply insecure point of view. Assume for the moment that my ego was 100% correct in its worst-case interpretation of Laura's comment: that Laura's intention was to lord over me how terrible my running form was, and by implicit comparison how amazingly perfect her form is. Her comment was intended to condescend and to indicate superiority.
Yes, I know this sounds ridiculous already (I mean, jeez, who wants to go through life automatically assuming such negative intent in everything said around you? [1]), but bear with me.
Now, we're both reasonably intelligent people who try to be "meta" about a conversation while we're in it. We're both mostly aware that it pays to say things in such a way that the other people understands the point you're trying to make. Likewise, we also try to be aware that the other person has "intentionality" in what he or she says too. In other words: I can generally assume if something is important enough for Laura to say, there's most likely a decent reason for her to bother to say it.
Otherwise, I've chosen to marry somebody who blithers at me for no discernible reason, something I really don't want to be true.
Once you start considering the real purpose of a conversation about running form (instead of your ego's insecure and false assumptions about that purpose), and once you ruminate a little bit about why somebody might offer a suggestion about something they noticed about your form, you start to see how important intentionality is, and likewise how important it is to assume positive intent in what others say to you.
Let's go back to my ego for a second, and return to my ego's negative interpretation of Laura's statement. My ego arrived at this negative interpretation in a split second, without any real consideration of Laura's intentions. The only thing it "considered" was the idea that I was likely being insulted somehow. Thus my ego reacted in order to protect itself from a potential ego injury... and this ended up preventing me from improving my running form, by insta-rejecting an excellent idea from a book I already knew and totally agreed with.
Thanks ego! Thanks a lot.
If you can believe it, it gets even worse: our ego protection reaction, if it's habitual, will condition our psychological environment (including those people unfortunate enough to be in it) to never offer us any helpful suggestions. Think about it: if I were to react this way to every idea or suggestion Laura ever makes, eventually she'll stop bothering to try and help me.
A disturbing way to look at this is to conclude that the more reactant your ego, the more your life will be bereft of help in all forms.
Yes, you and I both know the truism about never giving unsolicited advice. But at the same time, helpful suggestions exist only if they manifest in other peoples' minds, and those helpful ideas and suggestions appear in other's minds when they appear, not necessarily when we want them to appear. Thus we have to be ready for this "help" on other peoples' schedule, not on our own. It's just like being consistently ready in case a teacher appears.
There's yet another aspect of our ego protection reflex that's just as pernicious. Consider an example I read recently about trees in a biosphere project. Scientists couldn't understand why all the trees inside of the biosphere kept falling over before they matured. Well, it turns out that if you're a tree inside a biosphere, you never get exposed to wind. Wind is a type of stressor, and trees exposed to wind as they mature become far stronger and resilient. [2]
Essentially, our egos want to keep us in a biosphere, where we never face any wind. Our egos presume negative intent, they presume insult and condescension, and they do so instantly, reflexively. If all we do is reflexively ego-protect, all we'll end up with is a fragile, brittle, easy-to-injure psyche.
So I started peeling up my feet.
Footnotes:
[1] One useful heuristic to use at all times when interacting with others: do not automatically presume negative intent in the things other people say.
[2] A fancy word for this is hormesis, or hormetic response. The tree's hormetic response to wind strengthens it over time. For further reading on the human body's hormetic response to running and how even running shoes intefere with hormesis, see also What Barefoot Running Taught Us About Expensive Sneakers (And What Nike and Others Really Don't Want You To Know)
*****************
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Why Are Vegan and Vegetarian Recipes Obsessed with Looking Like Meat-Based Meals?
Why do so many vegan or vegetarian recipes try to look like meat-based meals?
Here's a textbook example of what I mean, a vegan deviled eggs recipe. This recipe is totally vegan, with no animal products used at all, but it is designed to look exactly like a non-vegan food.
In other words, it's supposed to be a simulacrum of a food a vegan wouldn't eat.
Now, my goal isn't to criticize this person's recipe per se. [1] What I want to do is get at a more central problem endemic to vegan and vegetarian cuisine. Which is:
With so many great vegan and vegetarian recipes out there, what is the benefit of making facsimiles of the very foods you would never eat in the first place?
Remember, here at Casual Kitchen we are not vegan or vegetarian, but we often eat vegan or vegetarian meals, and we feature dozens and dozens of easy, healthy and laughably cheap vegan and vegetarian recipes here at this blog.
But imagine a rabid meat eater who didn't know any better. To her, it would seem as if vegan and vegetarian cooking has an insecurity complex. A form of penis envy even. It's as if vegan/vegetarian cooking somehow is all worried that it isn't "real" food, so in order to compensate, it has to somehow imitate or resemble non-vegetarian food.
And so, we are presented with processed pseudo-foods like tofu scramble, vegetarian hotdogs, or my personal favorite: tofurkey. It all suggests that unless a meal looks or seems like meat it can't be taken seriously as a meal.
We all know that this could not be further from the truth. Vegans and vegetarians have no reason to be insecure--much less have penis envy--about what and how they eat. So why the imitative food simulacra? Why so many processed pseudo-foods when there are so many amazing vegan and vegetarian recipes already out there?
Readers, what do you think?
READ NEXT: Casual Kitchen's Core Principles: #2: Embrace Low-Meat Cooking
Footnote:
[1] That said, I can't say I'm appetized by egg whites made of agar agar, which then require a dose of black pepper to mask the taste. This is pure pseudo-food.
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Here's a textbook example of what I mean, a vegan deviled eggs recipe. This recipe is totally vegan, with no animal products used at all, but it is designed to look exactly like a non-vegan food.
In other words, it's supposed to be a simulacrum of a food a vegan wouldn't eat.
Now, my goal isn't to criticize this person's recipe per se. [1] What I want to do is get at a more central problem endemic to vegan and vegetarian cuisine. Which is:
With so many great vegan and vegetarian recipes out there, what is the benefit of making facsimiles of the very foods you would never eat in the first place?
Remember, here at Casual Kitchen we are not vegan or vegetarian, but we often eat vegan or vegetarian meals, and we feature dozens and dozens of easy, healthy and laughably cheap vegan and vegetarian recipes here at this blog.
But imagine a rabid meat eater who didn't know any better. To her, it would seem as if vegan and vegetarian cooking has an insecurity complex. A form of penis envy even. It's as if vegan/vegetarian cooking somehow is all worried that it isn't "real" food, so in order to compensate, it has to somehow imitate or resemble non-vegetarian food.
And so, we are presented with processed pseudo-foods like tofu scramble, vegetarian hotdogs, or my personal favorite: tofurkey. It all suggests that unless a meal looks or seems like meat it can't be taken seriously as a meal.
We all know that this could not be further from the truth. Vegans and vegetarians have no reason to be insecure--much less have penis envy--about what and how they eat. So why the imitative food simulacra? Why so many processed pseudo-foods when there are so many amazing vegan and vegetarian recipes already out there?
Readers, what do you think?
READ NEXT: Casual Kitchen's Core Principles: #2: Embrace Low-Meat Cooking
Footnote:
[1] That said, I can't say I'm appetized by egg whites made of agar agar, which then require a dose of black pepper to mask the taste. This is pure pseudo-food.
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Monday, August 12, 2019
Launch step-by-step Peach Melba roulade
Fixings
50g spread
, dissolved, at that point cooled, in addition to extra for the tin
6 huge eggs
175g brilliant caster sugar, in addition to 3 tbsp extra for cleaning
120g self-raising flour
For the filling
1 tsp vanilla concentrate
420g can peach
in syrup, depleted (save the syrup), and generally slashed
75g raspberry coulis (we utilized instant from Waitrose)
150g pack raspberry
200ml twofold cream
Strategy
Dispatch well ordered
Warmth stove to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Margarine and line a 25 x 35cm Swiss move tin with preparing material. In an enormous bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar utilizing an electric hand blender until light in shading and cushioned – this will take around 5 mins.
Filter the flour into the bowl. Utilizing an enormous metal spoon, delicately crease it into the eggs. Pour in the margarine and rapidly overlay to join. Be mindful so as not to overmix, as this will thump all the let some circulation into of the whisked eggs. Empty the blend into the lined tin and smooth out to the edges with your spoon. Heat for 12-15 mins until cooked through and springy.
Lay a sheet of heating material, bigger than your wipe, on your work surface and residue with the rest of the sugar. Flip the wipe onto the sugary surface and cautiously strip off the material coating the base of the wipe. Utilize the sheet underneath to help you firmly move up your roulade. Leave to cool.
To make the filling, include the vanilla and 3 tbsp of the peach syrup to the cream and rush with electric blenders until it frames delicate pinnacles. Overlap in half of the hacked peaches and swell down the middle the coulis.
Unroll the roulade, expel the preparing material and spread with the peachy cream. Disperse the raspberries and the rest of the peaches over the top. Sprinkle with the remaining coulis and firmly re-roll the roulade. Move to a serving plate or board and serve straight away.
50g spread
, dissolved, at that point cooled, in addition to extra for the tin
6 huge eggs
175g brilliant caster sugar, in addition to 3 tbsp extra for cleaning
120g self-raising flour
For the filling
1 tsp vanilla concentrate
420g can peach
in syrup, depleted (save the syrup), and generally slashed
75g raspberry coulis (we utilized instant from Waitrose)
150g pack raspberry
200ml twofold cream
Strategy
Dispatch well ordered
Warmth stove to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Margarine and line a 25 x 35cm Swiss move tin with preparing material. In an enormous bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar utilizing an electric hand blender until light in shading and cushioned – this will take around 5 mins.
Filter the flour into the bowl. Utilizing an enormous metal spoon, delicately crease it into the eggs. Pour in the margarine and rapidly overlay to join. Be mindful so as not to overmix, as this will thump all the let some circulation into of the whisked eggs. Empty the blend into the lined tin and smooth out to the edges with your spoon. Heat for 12-15 mins until cooked through and springy.
Lay a sheet of heating material, bigger than your wipe, on your work surface and residue with the rest of the sugar. Flip the wipe onto the sugary surface and cautiously strip off the material coating the base of the wipe. Utilize the sheet underneath to help you firmly move up your roulade. Leave to cool.
To make the filling, include the vanilla and 3 tbsp of the peach syrup to the cream and rush with electric blenders until it frames delicate pinnacles. Overlap in half of the hacked peaches and swell down the middle the coulis.
Unroll the roulade, expel the preparing material and spread with the peachy cream. Disperse the raspberries and the rest of the peaches over the top. Sprinkle with the remaining coulis and firmly re-roll the roulade. Move to a serving plate or board and serve straight away.
Fixings
500g/1lb 1oz solid white bread flour, in addition to some additional flour for wrapping up
40g/1½oz delicate spread
12g/2 sachets quick activity dried yeast
2 tsp salt
about 300ml/10¾fl oz lukewarm water (warm not cold – about body temperature)
somewhat olive or sunflower oil
Instructions to recordings
Technique
500g/1lb 1oz solid white bread flour, in addition to some additional flour for wrapping up
40g/1½oz delicate spread
12g/2 sachets quick activity dried yeast
2 tsp salt
about 300ml/10¾fl oz lukewarm water (warm not cold – about body temperature)
somewhat olive or sunflower oil
Instructions to recordings
Technique
- Put the flour into an enormous blending bowl and include the spread. Include the yeast at one side of the bowl and include the salt at the other, generally the salt will slaughter the yeast. Mix every one of the fixings with a spoon to consolidate.
- Include half of the water and turn the blend round with your fingers. Keep on including water a little at any given moment, consolidating admirably, until you've grabbed the majority of the flour from the sides of the bowl. You should not have to include the majority of the water, or you may need to include somewhat more – you need a mixture that is very much consolidated and delicate, however not sticky or soaked. Blend with your fingers to ensure the majority of the fixings are joined and utilize the blend to clean within the bowl. Prop up until the blend shapes an unpleasant batter.
- Use about a teaspoon of oil to delicately oil a perfect work surface (utilizing oil rather than flour will keep the surface of the mixture steady). Turn out your batter onto the lubed work surface (ensure you have a lot of room).
- Crease the most distant edge of the batter into the center of the mixture, at that point turn the mixture by 45 degrees and rehash. Do this multiple times until the batter is in all respects gently covered all over in olive oil.
- Presently utilize your hands to ply the mixture: drive the batter out one way with the impact point of your hand, at that point overlap it back on itself. Turn the mixture by 90 degrees and rehash. Massaging along these lines extends the gluten and makes the mixture versatile. Do this for around 4 or 5 minutes until the batter is smooth and stretchy. Work rapidly with the goal that the blend doesn't adhere to your hands – on the off chance that it gets too sticky you can add a little flour to your hands.
- Clean and gently oil your blending bowl and set the batter back into it. Spread with a soggy tea towel or gently oiled stick film and put it aside to demonstrate. This gives the yeast time to work: the mixture should twofold in size. This should take around 60 minutes, yet will fluctuate contingent upon the temperature of your room (don't put the bowl in a hot spot or the yeast will work too rapidly).
- Line a heating plate with preparing or silicone paper (not greaseproof).
- When the mixture has multiplied in size scratch it out of the bowl to shape it. The surface ought to be fun and glossy. Turn it out onto a delicately floured surface and thump it back by manipulating it immovably to 'thump' out the air. Utilize your hand to roll the batter up, at that point turn by 45 degrees and move it up once more. Rehash a few times. Delicately transform and smooth the mixture into a round portion shape.
- Spot the portion onto the lined heating plate, spread with a tea towel or delicately oiled stick film and leave to demonstrate until it's multiplied in size. This will take about 60 minutes, however might be faster or more slow contingent upon how warm your kitchen is.
- Preheat the broiler to 220C (200C fan helped)/425F/Gas 7. Put an old, void broiling tin into the base of the broiler.
- Following an hour the portion ought to have demonstrated (risen once more). Sprinkle some flour on top and in all respects tenderly rub it in. Utilize an enormous, sharp blade to make shallow cuts (about 1cm/½in profound) over the highest point of the portion to make a jewel design.
- Put the portion (on its preparing plate) into the center of the broiler. Empty virus water into the unfilled broiling plate at the base of the broiler just before you shut the entryway – this makes steam which enables the portion to build up a fresh and glossy hull.
- Heat the portion for around 30 minutes.
- The portion is cooked when it's risen and brilliant. To check, remove it from the broiler and tap it delicately underneath – it should sound empty. Turn onto a wire rack to cool.
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
A Sucker Born Every Minute in the Spice Aisle
Everybody knows the famous quote from P.T. Barnum: "There's a sucker born every minute."
I'm one of those suckers.
The other day Laura was making a recipe from her Indian cookbook and she asked if I'd like her to grind up some extra coriander. "We should never buy ground coriander at the grocery store any more. We have a lifetime supply right here." She reached into her big secret bag of Indian spices and pulled out two packages of coriander seeds, 600 grams in total (about 21 ounces), which, together, cost about $4.50.
Needless to say these coriander seeds were not purchased in the grocery store spice aisle--as Casual Kitchen readers know, the grocery store spice aisle is a corporate conspiracy that exists for no reason other than take willingly captive and credulous consumers and rudely separate them from their money. Laura long ago got smart: she buys all her spices at an Indian grocer.
We also have a little $18 spice grinder, and Laura used it to grind up enough whole coriander seeds to fill a just-emptied 1.25 ounce jar of McCormick ground coriander. It took two minutes.
Okay. Let's do some math and find out how much of a sucker I've been by buying ground coriander in a standard grocery store--in total contravention of my very own recommendations here at this blog.
* At our grocery store, it costs $7.99 to buy that 1.25 ounce jar of ground coriander.[1]
* Laura's 21 ounces of whole coriander seeds = 16.8 x 1.25 ounce jars.
* 16.8 jars of grocery store ground coriander at $7.99 per 1.25 ounce jar = $134.23.
In other words, Laura paid $4.50 for spices that would cost $134 in the grocery store.
And here comes the part about me being a sucker. I was paying a markup of more than 2,900.00% for a spice. (!!!!!) [math: 134.23 / 4.50 = 29.88 or 2,988%]
I get queasy just thinking about it.
Stay out of the grocery store spice aisle. It's an oligopoly designed to overcharge you. And they do it because they can.
Instead, find another source away from this totally non-competitive market environment, like a local ethnic food market. And if you can buy your spices in whole form, all the better: they'll be cheaper still and they'll last forever.[2]
My example of spice industry exploitation is interesting to me (uh, and hopefully to you too, dear readers), because it basically involves me acting out of convenience while not thinking. However, another consumer might easily argue, "Heck, does the eight bucks I wasted on 1.25 ounces of coriander really matter? Really? What's the big deal?"
Well, on one level, it's not a big deal. It's only eight bucks. But then again, doing things on a small level trains you for detecting and avoiding exploitation on a much larger level. Furthermore, it trains us in the healthy exercise of throwing creativity--rather than money--at a problem.
And even on this small level it isn't really that small: there's enough value in Laura's $4.50 worth of whole coriander seeds to pay for six spice grinders, which we could use to grind up any other whole spices we might purchase, which will help us further escape the clutches of the spice cabal.
Back to P.T. Barnum's quote about suckers. Everybody knows this quote, but rarely do people enjoy finding out that they're the sucker. That phrase is always for somebody else. Right? Which is why it's always painful to figure out that you've been a sucker who's been getting needlessly separated from your money, for years, for no real reason. Easier just to argue that it's only eight bucks, and eight bucks doesn't really make a difference.
READ NEXT: What's Your Favorite Consumer Empowerment Tip?
And: Recipe: Saag Murgh (Chicken with Spinach)
Footnotes:
[1] This 1.25 ounce jar of ground coriander used to cost $6.99, but in recent years McCormick has jumped on the organic bandwagon, and so they've added both the magic word “organic” and another dollar of price premium to their already overpriced product. Lovely.
[2] Another scam about spices is the idea that they "fade" over time and thus need to be thrown out every so often. In some places you will even see recommendations to throw out "old" spices after as little as six months, something that is scandalously, criminally false. Of course the spice industry would love for you to throw out and re-buy all your spices every six months.
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
I'm one of those suckers.
The other day Laura was making a recipe from her Indian cookbook and she asked if I'd like her to grind up some extra coriander. "We should never buy ground coriander at the grocery store any more. We have a lifetime supply right here." She reached into her big secret bag of Indian spices and pulled out two packages of coriander seeds, 600 grams in total (about 21 ounces), which, together, cost about $4.50.
Needless to say these coriander seeds were not purchased in the grocery store spice aisle--as Casual Kitchen readers know, the grocery store spice aisle is a corporate conspiracy that exists for no reason other than take willingly captive and credulous consumers and rudely separate them from their money. Laura long ago got smart: she buys all her spices at an Indian grocer.
We also have a little $18 spice grinder, and Laura used it to grind up enough whole coriander seeds to fill a just-emptied 1.25 ounce jar of McCormick ground coriander. It took two minutes.
Okay. Let's do some math and find out how much of a sucker I've been by buying ground coriander in a standard grocery store--in total contravention of my very own recommendations here at this blog.
* At our grocery store, it costs $7.99 to buy that 1.25 ounce jar of ground coriander.[1]
* Laura's 21 ounces of whole coriander seeds = 16.8 x 1.25 ounce jars.
* 16.8 jars of grocery store ground coriander at $7.99 per 1.25 ounce jar = $134.23.
In other words, Laura paid $4.50 for spices that would cost $134 in the grocery store.
And here comes the part about me being a sucker. I was paying a markup of more than 2,900.00% for a spice. (!!!!!) [math: 134.23 / 4.50 = 29.88 or 2,988%]
I get queasy just thinking about it.
Stay out of the grocery store spice aisle. It's an oligopoly designed to overcharge you. And they do it because they can.
Instead, find another source away from this totally non-competitive market environment, like a local ethnic food market. And if you can buy your spices in whole form, all the better: they'll be cheaper still and they'll last forever.[2]
My example of spice industry exploitation is interesting to me (uh, and hopefully to you too, dear readers), because it basically involves me acting out of convenience while not thinking. However, another consumer might easily argue, "Heck, does the eight bucks I wasted on 1.25 ounces of coriander really matter? Really? What's the big deal?"
Well, on one level, it's not a big deal. It's only eight bucks. But then again, doing things on a small level trains you for detecting and avoiding exploitation on a much larger level. Furthermore, it trains us in the healthy exercise of throwing creativity--rather than money--at a problem.
And even on this small level it isn't really that small: there's enough value in Laura's $4.50 worth of whole coriander seeds to pay for six spice grinders, which we could use to grind up any other whole spices we might purchase, which will help us further escape the clutches of the spice cabal.
Back to P.T. Barnum's quote about suckers. Everybody knows this quote, but rarely do people enjoy finding out that they're the sucker. That phrase is always for somebody else. Right? Which is why it's always painful to figure out that you've been a sucker who's been getting needlessly separated from your money, for years, for no real reason. Easier just to argue that it's only eight bucks, and eight bucks doesn't really make a difference.
READ NEXT: What's Your Favorite Consumer Empowerment Tip?
And: Recipe: Saag Murgh (Chicken with Spinach)
Footnotes:
[1] This 1.25 ounce jar of ground coriander used to cost $6.99, but in recent years McCormick has jumped on the organic bandwagon, and so they've added both the magic word “organic” and another dollar of price premium to their already overpriced product. Lovely.
[2] Another scam about spices is the idea that they "fade" over time and thus need to be thrown out every so often. In some places you will even see recommendations to throw out "old" spices after as little as six months, something that is scandalously, criminally false. Of course the spice industry would love for you to throw out and re-buy all your spices every six months.
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
How Martha Stewart's Brand Lost Its Mojo
Grant McCracken, an anthropologist and an insightful commentator on modernity, offered an intriguing quote recently about Martha Stewart:
"She's the mistress of the semiotic codes dear to the upwardly aspirational middle class… Martha's semiotics were powerful. Fresh flowers. Fresh linens. Fresh colors. And an embargo on all things unsophisticated and déclassé."
To anyone who lived through the 1990s, this quote captures Martha Stewart's brand perfectly.
Except that things change. Eras and generations change. And Martha's brand, at least in that form, simply doesn't click with the Millennial generation. Millennials don't even want to buy homes, much less fill them with fresh linens and flowers. They don't bake. Or read magazines.
But the companies out there selling to us need to keep brands like these alive, alive for as long as they can. This is done by "repositioning," "staying relevant" and "pivoting," all of which are annoying marketing terms that, to me at least, merely serve to underscore the rampant cynicism infesting the world of branding and consumer products.
As an example: Do you remember Emeril? Remember him and his show, his celebrity cookbooks and celebrity-branded cookware? Do you remember "Bam!"? Martha Stewart's company bought this brand too, back in 2008, in a failed effort to stay relevant. Once upon a time Bam! was cool. It sold a lot of overpriced cookware. Now nobody remembers.
So how does "Martha Stewart" as a brand stay relevant, now that civilization has thankfully moved on from mansions, fresh linens and other pretensions of a lost era? How does Martha sell--and more importantly, what does she sell--to a generation that doesn't even cook?
Back to the cynical parlance of modern media: Martha will "pivot." She'll attach her trusted name to a food delivery service.[1] She will "reposition" her brand by getting on the marijuana bandwagon, doing a bunch of campy skits with Snoop Dogg to sell you trendy cannabis products. All of which will make her "relevant" to today's consumers.
In other words, she'll do anything to sell to you.
Does it make you feel like a sucker, having stuff like this fed to you? Do you enjoy being sold one branded aspirational lifestyle in one era--only later still to see it replaced by another new, "more relevant" branded aspirational lifestyle in a later era?
The whole thing feels like an extended elaborate joke, played on three generations of consumers.
Timeline of Martha Stewart, her brand, and her companies:
1999: Martha Stewart IPOs her company, market value reaches $1.8b
2003-4: Stewart indicted, convicted and jailed for lying under oath and obstruction of justice in connection with a suspicious sale of shares of Imclone stock, one day before Imclone collapsed in value (due to failing to receive FDA approval for the drug Erbitux).
2005: Martha's comeback: Stewart is released from prison, and over the next few years, her company announces deals to sell Martha Stewart-branded merchandise at Kmart, Macy's and JCPenney, all of which devolve into lawsuits. Later she announces deals to sell merchandise through Petsmart, Michaels and Home Depot.
2011: After serving a five year ban from public markets as part of her conviction settlement with Federal regulators, Martha Stewart rejoins her namesake company's board of directors.
2015: After years of declining ad sales, declining branding revenue and declining circulation of her various publications, Martha Stewart Omnimedia is sold to Sequential Brands [ticker: SQBG] for $350m.
2019: Sequential Brands, collapsing under a mountain of debt, firesales Martha Stewart's brand, as well as the Emeril Legasse brand, for a mere $175 million, [2] less than half what they paid for it just four years earlier, and less than one-tenth of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia's peak valuation. Sequential Brands now trades at penny-stock levels, at approximately 50c a share.
2019: Martha Stewart announces a deal with Canopy Growth Company, a Canada-based cannabis company, to market a line of cannabis supplements and other pot-infused wellness products for pets.
Footnotes:
[1] It's hard not to notice the rich irony of Martha Stewart's meal delivery service brand using the slogan "recipes from America's most trusted home cook." As if calling your meal delivery service "home cooking" actually makes it so.
[2] Get ready: now yet another company will likely be ramming a pivoted and repositioned Martha and Emeril in our faces all over again.
READ NEXT: Aspirational Marketing and the Unintended Irony of Pabst Beer
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
"She's the mistress of the semiotic codes dear to the upwardly aspirational middle class… Martha's semiotics were powerful. Fresh flowers. Fresh linens. Fresh colors. And an embargo on all things unsophisticated and déclassé."
To anyone who lived through the 1990s, this quote captures Martha Stewart's brand perfectly.
Except that things change. Eras and generations change. And Martha's brand, at least in that form, simply doesn't click with the Millennial generation. Millennials don't even want to buy homes, much less fill them with fresh linens and flowers. They don't bake. Or read magazines.
But the companies out there selling to us need to keep brands like these alive, alive for as long as they can. This is done by "repositioning," "staying relevant" and "pivoting," all of which are annoying marketing terms that, to me at least, merely serve to underscore the rampant cynicism infesting the world of branding and consumer products.
As an example: Do you remember Emeril? Remember him and his show, his celebrity cookbooks and celebrity-branded cookware? Do you remember "Bam!"? Martha Stewart's company bought this brand too, back in 2008, in a failed effort to stay relevant. Once upon a time Bam! was cool. It sold a lot of overpriced cookware. Now nobody remembers.
So how does "Martha Stewart" as a brand stay relevant, now that civilization has thankfully moved on from mansions, fresh linens and other pretensions of a lost era? How does Martha sell--and more importantly, what does she sell--to a generation that doesn't even cook?
Back to the cynical parlance of modern media: Martha will "pivot." She'll attach her trusted name to a food delivery service.[1] She will "reposition" her brand by getting on the marijuana bandwagon, doing a bunch of campy skits with Snoop Dogg to sell you trendy cannabis products. All of which will make her "relevant" to today's consumers.
In other words, she'll do anything to sell to you.
Does it make you feel like a sucker, having stuff like this fed to you? Do you enjoy being sold one branded aspirational lifestyle in one era--only later still to see it replaced by another new, "more relevant" branded aspirational lifestyle in a later era?
The whole thing feels like an extended elaborate joke, played on three generations of consumers.
Timeline of Martha Stewart, her brand, and her companies:
1999: Martha Stewart IPOs her company, market value reaches $1.8b
2003-4: Stewart indicted, convicted and jailed for lying under oath and obstruction of justice in connection with a suspicious sale of shares of Imclone stock, one day before Imclone collapsed in value (due to failing to receive FDA approval for the drug Erbitux).
2005: Martha's comeback: Stewart is released from prison, and over the next few years, her company announces deals to sell Martha Stewart-branded merchandise at Kmart, Macy's and JCPenney, all of which devolve into lawsuits. Later she announces deals to sell merchandise through Petsmart, Michaels and Home Depot.
2011: After serving a five year ban from public markets as part of her conviction settlement with Federal regulators, Martha Stewart rejoins her namesake company's board of directors.
2015: After years of declining ad sales, declining branding revenue and declining circulation of her various publications, Martha Stewart Omnimedia is sold to Sequential Brands [ticker: SQBG] for $350m.
2019: Sequential Brands, collapsing under a mountain of debt, firesales Martha Stewart's brand, as well as the Emeril Legasse brand, for a mere $175 million, [2] less than half what they paid for it just four years earlier, and less than one-tenth of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia's peak valuation. Sequential Brands now trades at penny-stock levels, at approximately 50c a share.
2019: Martha Stewart announces a deal with Canopy Growth Company, a Canada-based cannabis company, to market a line of cannabis supplements and other pot-infused wellness products for pets.
Footnotes:
[1] It's hard not to notice the rich irony of Martha Stewart's meal delivery service brand using the slogan "recipes from America's most trusted home cook." As if calling your meal delivery service "home cooking" actually makes it so.
[2] Get ready: now yet another company will likely be ramming a pivoted and repositioned Martha and Emeril in our faces all over again.
READ NEXT: Aspirational Marketing and the Unintended Irony of Pabst Beer
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Displacement
When you buy something, you aren't just buying that something. Buying a TV isn't just buying a TV.
It's buying a device that may suck up as much as two months' worth of time per year from your life (yes, on average, people watch that much TV). Further, watching TV actually makes us less happy.
In other words, "buying a TV" is really displacing about 15-20% of your time, and likely displacing an equivalent amount of your happiness.
If you knew that gleaming new TV you were about to buy would actually provide anti-time, anti-enjoyment and anti-happiness, would that change anything?
Let's say you buy one of those meal prep/meal delivery services like Blue Apron or HelloFresh. The benefits (as they are presented to you) are clear and concrete: you'll save time, you won't have to cook, your life will be easier. This is why these services are sold to you.
But what might this service displace?
It will displace the practice of a basic life skill that, over time, could become increasingly easy for you through use (or increasingly difficult through disuse). It will also displace the act of building efficient grocery shopping skills, yet another basic life skill that gets gradually easier and easier over time. It displaces healthy social activities centered around the practice of cooking. And this is to say nothing about the displacement of all the other things you could do with the money you've spent.
You can certainly drive yourself crazy overthinking this, but it doesn't change the fact that all of our purchases (really, all of our acts and all of our decisions) displace something else that we could otherwise do.
And in the heat of the buying moment it's nearly impossible to focus on what a purchase will displace. But because it tends to put the brakes on spending actions, I think this could be a useful frugality tool to have handy when making any purchase. And it goes without saying that the companies selling these items or these services to you do not want you to think this way at all. They want you focused on the comfy, easy-to-visualize realm of obvious benefits. They don't want you in the uncomfortable, abstract realm of displaced activities and displaced happiness.
With all this in mind, I've created a mini-checklist of pre-purchase questions you can ask yourself to help you focus on what that purchase will displace:
1) Am I being humble about the results of this purchase? What incorrect assumptions might I be making about how I'll use (or mis-use) this product or service?
2) Unintended consequences will undoubtedly result from this purchase. Have I considered them? What might they be?
3) Should I hold off on this purchase to think through questions 1 and 2 a bit more?
Readers, what would you add?
See the intelligent and useful book Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton for related ideas on this topic
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
It's buying a device that may suck up as much as two months' worth of time per year from your life (yes, on average, people watch that much TV). Further, watching TV actually makes us less happy.
In other words, "buying a TV" is really displacing about 15-20% of your time, and likely displacing an equivalent amount of your happiness.
If you knew that gleaming new TV you were about to buy would actually provide anti-time, anti-enjoyment and anti-happiness, would that change anything?
Let's say you buy one of those meal prep/meal delivery services like Blue Apron or HelloFresh. The benefits (as they are presented to you) are clear and concrete: you'll save time, you won't have to cook, your life will be easier. This is why these services are sold to you.
But what might this service displace?
It will displace the practice of a basic life skill that, over time, could become increasingly easy for you through use (or increasingly difficult through disuse). It will also displace the act of building efficient grocery shopping skills, yet another basic life skill that gets gradually easier and easier over time. It displaces healthy social activities centered around the practice of cooking. And this is to say nothing about the displacement of all the other things you could do with the money you've spent.
You can certainly drive yourself crazy overthinking this, but it doesn't change the fact that all of our purchases (really, all of our acts and all of our decisions) displace something else that we could otherwise do.
And in the heat of the buying moment it's nearly impossible to focus on what a purchase will displace. But because it tends to put the brakes on spending actions, I think this could be a useful frugality tool to have handy when making any purchase. And it goes without saying that the companies selling these items or these services to you do not want you to think this way at all. They want you focused on the comfy, easy-to-visualize realm of obvious benefits. They don't want you in the uncomfortable, abstract realm of displaced activities and displaced happiness.
With all this in mind, I've created a mini-checklist of pre-purchase questions you can ask yourself to help you focus on what that purchase will displace:
1) Am I being humble about the results of this purchase? What incorrect assumptions might I be making about how I'll use (or mis-use) this product or service?
2) Unintended consequences will undoubtedly result from this purchase. Have I considered them? What might they be?
3) Should I hold off on this purchase to think through questions 1 and 2 a bit more?
Readers, what would you add?
See the intelligent and useful book Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton for related ideas on this topic
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Tuesday, July 16, 2019
Planting the Tree Today
I'm back. Thanks, readers, for indulging me while I took a little time off from writing.
****************************************
I've been thinking about this quote a lot recently:
The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.
The next best time to plant a tree is now.
Unfortunately, I've been agonizing lately over why I didn't start doing certain things earlier in life. I wish, for example, that I had begun compound lifting much, much earlier in my life. My body (at its current age) just doesn't respond all that well to heavy workouts. It takes me days to recover, and after a good workout of deadlifts, squats, pullups and bench presses, I am wiped. Wiped out for the rest of the day. I wish I were fitter and more robust than I am, despite all the effort I put into my fitness.
Sure, there are solutions here. I can do lighter, milder, maintenance-type workouts. I usually feel good after workouts of that level of intensity. But then I'll just be in maintenance mode. That's fine, but in maintenance mode I won't be getting stronger, I won't be growing.
This is one of those examples where I think to myself, "shit, if I had just planted this compound lifting 'tree' twenty years ago, I'd have a real tree now. I'd be much more adapted to lifting at a level that I'd be satisfied with." But I can't go back to twenty years ago and plant that compound lifting tree. I can only plant it today. (Well, technically, I planted it a few years ago, but still.)
I can come up with lots of other examples, sadly: I wish I had taken up drawing or painting earlier in life. I wish I had learned to surf earlier. I wish I had taken up language learning wayyyy earlier--like back when I was still a teenager.
And then, I recall a conversation with a friend of mine who's then-partner told her, "It's too late for me to get started on retirement. I'm too old now to bother to save money." He was just thirty-seven at the time.
Now, let's take a moment and notice the circular logic and self-defeatism of giving up on doing something simply because it's possible you could have started earlier. This should resonate with anyone embracing YMOYL, early retirement or any of the frugality strategies discussed thoughout Casual Kitchen. If your first thought is "it's too late for me" then nothing can ever be worth doing. Tough to go through life like that.
And so here, readers, is where I confess my hypocrisy to you. The complaint about not starting to save money earlier and my complaint about not starting lifting earlier are identical! They are the same.
Of course it's always easier to see flaws and hypocrisies in others than in ourselves, isn't it?
So there's my problem and my challenge--and yours too, if you struggle with the "it's too late" issue anywhere in your life: Get over yourself and plant the tree. Now.
READ NEXT: Good Games
AND: YMOYL: The Full Companion Guide Archive
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
****************************************
I've been thinking about this quote a lot recently:
The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.
The next best time to plant a tree is now.
Unfortunately, I've been agonizing lately over why I didn't start doing certain things earlier in life. I wish, for example, that I had begun compound lifting much, much earlier in my life. My body (at its current age) just doesn't respond all that well to heavy workouts. It takes me days to recover, and after a good workout of deadlifts, squats, pullups and bench presses, I am wiped. Wiped out for the rest of the day. I wish I were fitter and more robust than I am, despite all the effort I put into my fitness.
Sure, there are solutions here. I can do lighter, milder, maintenance-type workouts. I usually feel good after workouts of that level of intensity. But then I'll just be in maintenance mode. That's fine, but in maintenance mode I won't be getting stronger, I won't be growing.
This is one of those examples where I think to myself, "shit, if I had just planted this compound lifting 'tree' twenty years ago, I'd have a real tree now. I'd be much more adapted to lifting at a level that I'd be satisfied with." But I can't go back to twenty years ago and plant that compound lifting tree. I can only plant it today. (Well, technically, I planted it a few years ago, but still.)
I can come up with lots of other examples, sadly: I wish I had taken up drawing or painting earlier in life. I wish I had learned to surf earlier. I wish I had taken up language learning wayyyy earlier--like back when I was still a teenager.
And then, I recall a conversation with a friend of mine who's then-partner told her, "It's too late for me to get started on retirement. I'm too old now to bother to save money." He was just thirty-seven at the time.
Now, let's take a moment and notice the circular logic and self-defeatism of giving up on doing something simply because it's possible you could have started earlier. This should resonate with anyone embracing YMOYL, early retirement or any of the frugality strategies discussed thoughout Casual Kitchen. If your first thought is "it's too late for me" then nothing can ever be worth doing. Tough to go through life like that.
And so here, readers, is where I confess my hypocrisy to you. The complaint about not starting to save money earlier and my complaint about not starting lifting earlier are identical! They are the same.
Of course it's always easier to see flaws and hypocrisies in others than in ourselves, isn't it?
So there's my problem and my challenge--and yours too, if you struggle with the "it's too late" issue anywhere in your life: Get over yourself and plant the tree. Now.
READ NEXT: Good Games
AND: YMOYL: The Full Companion Guide Archive
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Tuesday, July 9, 2019
[Links] A Recession-Proof Guide to Saving Money on Food
Readers, I'm still doing some traveling, so please enjoy this post from Casual Kitchen's archives--one of the most popular posts from the early years of this blog.
*********************
Here at Casual Kitchen I spend a lot of time writing and thinking about ways to save money on food, and today I thought it would be a great time to run a retrospective of some of our best and most read articles on the subject.
Feel free to peruse the links below for posts on how to cook more efficiently at home, ideas on how to eat well on very little money, and other articles on how to save money in the kitchen.
Recipe Ideas:
All CK Recipes Filed Under "Laughably Cheap"
Money-saving Tips and Ideas:
Ten Tips to Save Money on Spices and Seasonings
A Simple Way to Beat Rising Food Prices
Mastering Kitchen Setup Costs
Eight Tips to Make Cooking At Home Laughably Cheap
How to Get More Mileage Out of Your Cookbooks
Longer Essays on Food Costs:
Stacked Costs and Second-Order Foods: A New Way to Think About Rising Food Costs
Why Spices Are a Complete Rip-Off and What You Can Do About It
Tips on Saving Money while Eating Healthy:
What's the Most Heavily Used Tool in Our Kitchen? Our Rice Cooker.
How to Make Your Own Inexpensive Sports Drink
How to Create Your Own Original Pasta Salad Recipes Using the Pasta Salad Permutator
Two Useful Cooking Lessons From Another Cheap and Easy Side Dish
Fresh Herbs Part 2: Solutions to the Waste Problem
Cooking Strategies and Tactics:
How to Team Up in the Kitchen
How to Apply the 80/20 Rule to Cooking
More Applications of the 80/20 Rule to Diet, Food and Cooking
Seven Ways to Get Faster at Cooking
Ten Strategies to Stop Mindless Eating
Doing Your Favorite Thing: How to Spend Exactly the Right Amount of Money For an Important Celebration
********************
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
*********************
Here at Casual Kitchen I spend a lot of time writing and thinking about ways to save money on food, and today I thought it would be a great time to run a retrospective of some of our best and most read articles on the subject.
Feel free to peruse the links below for posts on how to cook more efficiently at home, ideas on how to eat well on very little money, and other articles on how to save money in the kitchen.
Recipe Ideas:
All CK Recipes Filed Under "Laughably Cheap"
Money-saving Tips and Ideas:
Ten Tips to Save Money on Spices and Seasonings
A Simple Way to Beat Rising Food Prices
Mastering Kitchen Setup Costs
Eight Tips to Make Cooking At Home Laughably Cheap
How to Get More Mileage Out of Your Cookbooks
Longer Essays on Food Costs:
Stacked Costs and Second-Order Foods: A New Way to Think About Rising Food Costs
Why Spices Are a Complete Rip-Off and What You Can Do About It
Tips on Saving Money while Eating Healthy:
What's the Most Heavily Used Tool in Our Kitchen? Our Rice Cooker.
How to Make Your Own Inexpensive Sports Drink
How to Create Your Own Original Pasta Salad Recipes Using the Pasta Salad Permutator
Two Useful Cooking Lessons From Another Cheap and Easy Side Dish
Fresh Herbs Part 2: Solutions to the Waste Problem
Cooking Strategies and Tactics:
How to Team Up in the Kitchen
How to Apply the 80/20 Rule to Cooking
More Applications of the 80/20 Rule to Diet, Food and Cooking
Seven Ways to Get Faster at Cooking
Ten Strategies to Stop Mindless Eating
Doing Your Favorite Thing: How to Spend Exactly the Right Amount of Money For an Important Celebration
********************
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
Ask Yourself These 21 Questions Annually
Readers, for the next few weeks I'll be doing some travelling, so please enjoy this post from Casual Kitchen's archives.
*********************
Readers, I wanted to share a list of questions from How To Retire Happy, Wild, and Free by Ernie Zelinski.
This unusual and indiosyncratic book comes from the same family of foundational works as Early Retirement Extreme, Your Money Or Your Life and Mr. Money Mustache’s blog. And as any Casual Kitchen reader knows, these books and sites have massively influenced my thinking. Zelinski’s book is yet another work that pushes readers to think wildly differently about the world we live in, and like these other books, it offers thoughtful, open-minded readers an opportunity to "play chess instead of checkers" in the game of life.
The following list of twenty-one questions is structured in a way to get you to think and reflect. Are you surrounding yourself with the right social and informational inputs? Are you spending your time properly, in a fulfilling way? Are you making truly active choices about these things? Or are you making passive choices while telling yourself they’re active?
I consider Zelinski’s list of questions to be an important contribution to the canon of early retirement/anti-consumerist literature. And while these questions come from a book about retirement, the questions below are really about living a mindful life of quality. In other words, anyone--at any stage of life--will benefit from thinking about them.
Questions to Ask Yourself Annually
1) Am I in control of my lifestyle?
2) Do I make the most of my money to give me the best quality of life?
3) What can I achieve in my retirement that would make me proud?
4) What can I do that is unique?
5) Do I have enough great friends in my life?
6) Do I devote sufficient time to see my close friends?
7) Do I watch too much TV?
8) Does my lifestyle complement my partner's?
9) Do I travel as much as I would like?
10) Do my time commitments allow me to make a contribution to making this world a better place?
11) Do my time commitments allow me to indulge in creative endeavors?
12) Am I developing spiritually as a human being?
13) Do I exercise enough, in my own enjoyable way?
14) Do I complain too much?
15) Am I as grateful as I should be for what I have in my life?
16) Am I continually learning something new?
17) Do I do something special for myself each and every day?
18) Do I take enough time to meditate and keep my mind in tiptop shape?
19) Am I living in the right country or in the right part of the country?
20) What will make me feel better?
21) Do I have everything I need to be happy, but don't realize it?
Readers, what do you think? Which questions do you find particularly helpful or provocative? And why?
READ NEXT: The Official Your Money Or Your Life Reading List
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
*********************
Readers, I wanted to share a list of questions from How To Retire Happy, Wild, and Free by Ernie Zelinski.
This unusual and indiosyncratic book comes from the same family of foundational works as Early Retirement Extreme, Your Money Or Your Life and Mr. Money Mustache’s blog. And as any Casual Kitchen reader knows, these books and sites have massively influenced my thinking. Zelinski’s book is yet another work that pushes readers to think wildly differently about the world we live in, and like these other books, it offers thoughtful, open-minded readers an opportunity to "play chess instead of checkers" in the game of life.
The following list of twenty-one questions is structured in a way to get you to think and reflect. Are you surrounding yourself with the right social and informational inputs? Are you spending your time properly, in a fulfilling way? Are you making truly active choices about these things? Or are you making passive choices while telling yourself they’re active?
I consider Zelinski’s list of questions to be an important contribution to the canon of early retirement/anti-consumerist literature. And while these questions come from a book about retirement, the questions below are really about living a mindful life of quality. In other words, anyone--at any stage of life--will benefit from thinking about them.
Questions to Ask Yourself Annually
1) Am I in control of my lifestyle?
2) Do I make the most of my money to give me the best quality of life?
3) What can I achieve in my retirement that would make me proud?
4) What can I do that is unique?
5) Do I have enough great friends in my life?
6) Do I devote sufficient time to see my close friends?
7) Do I watch too much TV?
8) Does my lifestyle complement my partner's?
9) Do I travel as much as I would like?
10) Do my time commitments allow me to make a contribution to making this world a better place?
11) Do my time commitments allow me to indulge in creative endeavors?
12) Am I developing spiritually as a human being?
13) Do I exercise enough, in my own enjoyable way?
14) Do I complain too much?
15) Am I as grateful as I should be for what I have in my life?
16) Am I continually learning something new?
17) Do I do something special for myself each and every day?
18) Do I take enough time to meditate and keep my mind in tiptop shape?
19) Am I living in the right country or in the right part of the country?
20) What will make me feel better?
21) Do I have everything I need to be happy, but don't realize it?
Readers, what do you think? Which questions do you find particularly helpful or provocative? And why?
READ NEXT: The Official Your Money Or Your Life Reading List
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
Humps
Readers, for the next few weeks I'll be doing some travelling, so please enjoy this post from Casual Kitchen's archives.
*********************
Much of human behavior essentially amounts to comfort seeking. When we're hot, we seek air conditioning. When we're hungry, we eat without delay. When we want something, we buy it, even when we don't really have the money.
A few years ago, when I fortuitously stumbled onto William Irvine's brilliant book on Stoicism,
I started embracing various types of "voluntary discomfort" as part of my (halting) efforts to learn to appreciate life more. Stoicism is a really intriguing set of philosophies, and I didn't realize how many misconceptions I had of it. For example: Stoics don't "do" voluntary discomfort because they get off on suffering--that's just a snarky and condescending misreading of the practice. Rather, they do it to appreciate the comforts they have, and to avoid taking those comforts for granted.
At this point I'd also read Julien Smith's short book The Flinch,
which is about how our "flinch" reaction often covertly produces avoidance behaviors that divert us from valuable life experiences. This book taught me to invert the flinch reaction and seek out experiences I'd normally flinch from. Finally, it was around this time that I'd begun exploring compound weightlifting in an effort to combat aging and get back some of my lost athletic footspeed and endurance.
Now, I'm awfully slow--window-lickingly slow--at learning things, but I'm finding surprising synergies, big ones, across almost all "domains of discomfort" in my life. Let me describe three examples:
1) Cold Showers
A crucial metaphor from The Flinch is the cold shower. And holy cow, the idea of taking a cold shower is something I definitely flinch from. It seems like such an incredibly awful experience that some days (uh, like today, the very day I'm working on a first draft of this post) I simply can't do it. I turn the water to a nice hot temperature and I wait like a wuss for the water to warm up.
But on the days I can do it, the actual experience of a cold shower isn't really all that bad.
Hahaha ...hahahahahaha... yes it IS that bad! That first shock of the cold water is hellish. I hate it.
Except... three minutes into that shower, the water oddly doesn't feel cold any more. More importantly, I always feel great after a cold shower. I feel refreshed, calm, replenished. Moreover, there's compelling evidence of both positive physiological and psychological effects of cold showers. For example, after difficult athletic training sessions, cold showers help your body recover. I've also found I get cognitive benefits from cold showers too: I feel sharper, mentally fresher afterwards.
The point here is that you've just got to get over the hump. And in the case of a cold shower, that hump is just three minutes long. That's it. And all these benefits are yours, in return for a minor exercise of voluntary discomfort and discipline.
2) Deadlifts
There's a lot to talk about in the domain of compound lifting, and most of this domain is still outside of my circle of competence. But I can speak to my experiences learning to do deadlifts, and one thing I can say confidently is that my road--the road between nervously picking up a deadlift bar with exactly zero pounds on it, and now doing a somewhat respectable 3x10 reps at one and a half times my body weight--was paved with humps. Lots of them.
In contrast to nautilus-type machines that work one or two muscles at a time under more limited conditions, compound lifting trains your entire body: your muscles, bones and connective tissue are all forced to work in concert. And this includes lots of minor muscles overlooked in most standard workout routines.
So, as I worked toward making my body deadlift-compliant, I tweaked parts of it I didn't even know about, and pulled muscles in places I didn't know I had muscles. In my first few months of deadlifting, I experienced intercostal muscle pulls throughout my rib cage. I experienced strains in all kinds of random places in my abs and upper hips (the so-called "abdominal cuff" area is fertile soil for injuries for beginning deadlifters since most people are shockingly fragile there). I tweaked my elbows, wrists, collarbone, even my fingers.
It was kind of like a cold shower... except that it took me about a year to come out the other side. But once I got over the hump, I had a more robust and far less fragile body.
In how many other domains do we see a "hump" of discomfort between us and serious insights and opportunity? And where else do we lose out on longer-term gains because we flinch from (or fear) the upfront discomfort?
3) Learning to Cook
With my typical slowness, I've come to discover that cooking is yet another discipline of voluntary discomfort, with enormous benefits once you get over "humps" of various types.
The discomfort here is a bit more metaphorical, of course. In the very short run, learning to cook is way more of a pain in the ass than grabbing takeout or going out to dinner. So the voluntary discomfort at first involves deferring an easier solution in order to develop some basic cooking and shopping skills.
And then there are the dinners and recipes you screw up as you learn. You'll make mistakes, and ruin a few meals. More humps and discomfort, in other words. It's a necessary part of the road towards competence, and later, skill.
There are many more layers to the metaphor: you'll have to learn how to keep a stocked pantry, how to shop efficiently, how to avoid rookie errors like buying out of season fruits and veggies, and so on. These are all examples of humps to be overcome, but on the other side of those humps are enormous benefits.
Conclusion
I'd speculate that when it comes to cooking humps, most readers here at CK have long ago gotten over them, to the point where we can whip up several days' worth of laughably cheap food in less time than it takes to drive to the takeout place. Some humps used to be big, but as they recede into the rear-view mirror of life, it gets deceivingly easy to forget about all the work that went into getting over them. Don't forget to give yourself credit for this!
Once again, though, this is still more proof of the enormous value of what's on the other side of those humps. Which is why I'm trying to look at the various humps and sources of discomfort in my life in a different way. I am trying to think about what's on the other side of them--usually really good stuff--and I'm trying to train myself to run towards them rather than flinch from them.
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
*********************
Much of human behavior essentially amounts to comfort seeking. When we're hot, we seek air conditioning. When we're hungry, we eat without delay. When we want something, we buy it, even when we don't really have the money.
A few years ago, when I fortuitously stumbled onto William Irvine's brilliant book on Stoicism,
I started embracing various types of "voluntary discomfort" as part of my (halting) efforts to learn to appreciate life more. Stoicism is a really intriguing set of philosophies, and I didn't realize how many misconceptions I had of it. For example: Stoics don't "do" voluntary discomfort because they get off on suffering--that's just a snarky and condescending misreading of the practice. Rather, they do it to appreciate the comforts they have, and to avoid taking those comforts for granted.At this point I'd also read Julien Smith's short book The Flinch,
which is about how our "flinch" reaction often covertly produces avoidance behaviors that divert us from valuable life experiences. This book taught me to invert the flinch reaction and seek out experiences I'd normally flinch from. Finally, it was around this time that I'd begun exploring compound weightlifting in an effort to combat aging and get back some of my lost athletic footspeed and endurance. Now, I'm awfully slow--window-lickingly slow--at learning things, but I'm finding surprising synergies, big ones, across almost all "domains of discomfort" in my life. Let me describe three examples:
1) Cold Showers
A crucial metaphor from The Flinch is the cold shower. And holy cow, the idea of taking a cold shower is something I definitely flinch from. It seems like such an incredibly awful experience that some days (uh, like today, the very day I'm working on a first draft of this post) I simply can't do it. I turn the water to a nice hot temperature and I wait like a wuss for the water to warm up.
But on the days I can do it, the actual experience of a cold shower isn't really all that bad.
Hahaha ...hahahahahaha... yes it IS that bad! That first shock of the cold water is hellish. I hate it.
Except... three minutes into that shower, the water oddly doesn't feel cold any more. More importantly, I always feel great after a cold shower. I feel refreshed, calm, replenished. Moreover, there's compelling evidence of both positive physiological and psychological effects of cold showers. For example, after difficult athletic training sessions, cold showers help your body recover. I've also found I get cognitive benefits from cold showers too: I feel sharper, mentally fresher afterwards.
The point here is that you've just got to get over the hump. And in the case of a cold shower, that hump is just three minutes long. That's it. And all these benefits are yours, in return for a minor exercise of voluntary discomfort and discipline.
2) Deadlifts
There's a lot to talk about in the domain of compound lifting, and most of this domain is still outside of my circle of competence. But I can speak to my experiences learning to do deadlifts, and one thing I can say confidently is that my road--the road between nervously picking up a deadlift bar with exactly zero pounds on it, and now doing a somewhat respectable 3x10 reps at one and a half times my body weight--was paved with humps. Lots of them.
In contrast to nautilus-type machines that work one or two muscles at a time under more limited conditions, compound lifting trains your entire body: your muscles, bones and connective tissue are all forced to work in concert. And this includes lots of minor muscles overlooked in most standard workout routines.
So, as I worked toward making my body deadlift-compliant, I tweaked parts of it I didn't even know about, and pulled muscles in places I didn't know I had muscles. In my first few months of deadlifting, I experienced intercostal muscle pulls throughout my rib cage. I experienced strains in all kinds of random places in my abs and upper hips (the so-called "abdominal cuff" area is fertile soil for injuries for beginning deadlifters since most people are shockingly fragile there). I tweaked my elbows, wrists, collarbone, even my fingers.
It was kind of like a cold shower... except that it took me about a year to come out the other side. But once I got over the hump, I had a more robust and far less fragile body.
In how many other domains do we see a "hump" of discomfort between us and serious insights and opportunity? And where else do we lose out on longer-term gains because we flinch from (or fear) the upfront discomfort?
3) Learning to Cook
With my typical slowness, I've come to discover that cooking is yet another discipline of voluntary discomfort, with enormous benefits once you get over "humps" of various types.
The discomfort here is a bit more metaphorical, of course. In the very short run, learning to cook is way more of a pain in the ass than grabbing takeout or going out to dinner. So the voluntary discomfort at first involves deferring an easier solution in order to develop some basic cooking and shopping skills.
And then there are the dinners and recipes you screw up as you learn. You'll make mistakes, and ruin a few meals. More humps and discomfort, in other words. It's a necessary part of the road towards competence, and later, skill.
There are many more layers to the metaphor: you'll have to learn how to keep a stocked pantry, how to shop efficiently, how to avoid rookie errors like buying out of season fruits and veggies, and so on. These are all examples of humps to be overcome, but on the other side of those humps are enormous benefits.
Conclusion
I'd speculate that when it comes to cooking humps, most readers here at CK have long ago gotten over them, to the point where we can whip up several days' worth of laughably cheap food in less time than it takes to drive to the takeout place. Some humps used to be big, but as they recede into the rear-view mirror of life, it gets deceivingly easy to forget about all the work that went into getting over them. Don't forget to give yourself credit for this!
Once again, though, this is still more proof of the enormous value of what's on the other side of those humps. Which is why I'm trying to look at the various humps and sources of discomfort in my life in a different way. I am trying to think about what's on the other side of them--usually really good stuff--and I'm trying to train myself to run towards them rather than flinch from them.
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
Tragedy at Peat Village: A Natural Resource Fable
Readers, for the next few weeks I'll be doing some travelling, so please enjoy this post from Casual Kitchen's archives.
*********************
It was Ireland, during the 11th Century, in a tiny little community called Peat Village.
Peat Village was nothing special, just a tiny village on the edge of a huge peat bog. People there lived very simply back then, and life in this forlorn little village was at best brutish and short. Average life expectancy was 24 years, disease was rampant, and famine and hunger were constant realities.
One day in Peat Village a villager stumbled onto a significant discovery. The peat from the bog next to the village could be used as a fuel! Yes, it was a dirty fuel--it was awfully smoky when it burned--and of course it had to be harvested, treated and dried before it would really burn well, but without a doubt it could be used as a serviceable fuel. And there was so much of it! This villager began using peat to heat his home, his food and his water. In the following years, he and his family enjoyed a meaningfully improved standard of living.
Others in Peat Village caught on to the idea of using peat as a fuel, and they began heating their food, water and homes too. Their standard of living also increased. It wasn't long before everyone in Peat Village was burning peat, and as this little community's living standards improved, things changed irrevocably for the better: disease became just a little less rampant, food became a just little more plentiful, and life expectancy became just a little bit longer. Life became a little less brutish and short.
However, there was a very intelligent villager living in Peat Village who began to worry. He wondered about the longer-term consequences if everyone in Peat Village continued to use peat to heat their homes and their food and water. He started to worry about what would happen if Peat Village ran out of peat.
And he was right to worry about this. It was clear--to the point of obviousness--that there was a limited supply of peat. Yet each year, villagers used more and more of it. What would happen when, inevitably, all the peat was used up?
The other villagers considered this nothing more than scaremongering. Some laughed. But this very intelligent villager was absolutely certain he was right. He could see the writing on the wall. After all, when the supply of a resource is fixed and demand is growing, it is only a matter of time before that resource runs out. It could be years, it could be decades, but the logic was inescapable: at some point--probably soon--Peat Village would run completely out of peat.
Clearly, this would be an unmitigated disaster for the Peat Village community. "Peak Peat" was coming, and with it would come a total collapse in the peat-based economy.
Our scaremonger friend traveled throughout Peat Village to spread the word. He created a list of rules and recommendations for peat conservation for all the residents to follow so they could avoid, or at least postpone, the inevitable Peak Peat catastrophe. He encouraged villages to use peat only when absolutely necessary, if at all. He got into many debates with villagers who didn't agree with him. After all, the villagers wanted to keep their heated homes and heated food. These things improved their quality of life and their standard of living. And some of the villagers thought it was silly to just leave the peat sitting there in the bog completely unused when it had brought about such improvements in their community. Finally, the villagers said, it will be a long time before we use up all of our peat. In the meantime perhaps we will discover another fuel source to replace it.
But our scaremonger friend didn't think very much of the intelligence of these villagers. He considered them unsophisticated and naive, and he mocked them by calling them "deniers." He told them they already achieved significant improvements in their standard of living, and it would be impossible (and not to mention irresponsible) to maintain their current living standards in the post-Peak Peat era.
There was another vaguely bothersome thing about this scaremonger villager. It a small thing, but bothersome nonetheless: since he traveled so much throughout Peat Village, he didn't exactly follow all of the peat conservation rules he set down for all the other villagers. When he stayed at inns and homes across the village, he would often enjoy peat fires and peat-heated food. He reduced his peat use slightly in his own home, but because he was so successful speaking, writing and teaching about Peak Peat, his thatched hut was one of the largest in the entire village. It took quite a bit of peat just to heat a small portion of his house! But in any case, he told himself, his personal use wasn't all that important. What was more important was that he get out the word about Peak Peat and the coming catastrophe that would inevitably follow.
Centuries later (our scaremonger friend lived for a very long time, you see), a new and revolutionary fuel came along. It was called "coal." Coal was hundreds of times more efficient than peat, far cleaner, and in every sense a superior energy source. In Coal County, which wasn't very far from Peat Village, homes and industries switched over to this new and advanced fuel. As a result, Coal County began to enjoy a significantly improved standard of living.
But not tiny Peat Village. They were still busy preparing for Peak Peat: conserving peat as much as they could, shivering over their tiny peat fires, huddling around their half-warmed meals, and earnestly following the rules and guidelines as they were told. Their standard of living hadn't increased at all for centuries, and their community never developed sufficient scientific or engineering expertise nor any extra economic capacity to make use of a newfangled energy source like coal.
In the meantime, our scaremonger friend continued traveling widely, spending the passing centuries getting the word out on the coming collapse of the peat-based economy. Since he’d already fully convinced everyone in Peat Village of his views (what few remaining "deniers" there were had been totally ostracized by the community), he often found himself traveling into Coal County to give speeches on Peak Peat. Sadly, he couldn't find many people in Coal County who were interested in conserving peat, as hard as he tried. Peak Peat just didn't seem to be a priority there.
One day, however, after giving yet another sparsely attended speech in Coal County, our very intelligent villager stumbled onto a brilliant insight: The supply of coal had to be limited too!
Once again, he could clearly see the inescapable logic: when the supply of a resource is fixed and demand is growing, it is only a matter of time before that resource runs out. It could be years, it could be decades, but the logic was inevitable: at some point--probably soon--Coal County would run out of coal. This would be an unmitigated disaster. A collapse in the coal-based economy was coming, and coming soon.
And he was right to worry about this. It was clear--to the point of obviousness--that there was a limited supply of coal. And yet every year more and more people were burning more and more of it. What would happen when, inevitably, all of it would get used up? Peak Coal was coming. Anyone who doubted so was clearly a denier.
Our scaremonger friend began traveling even more widely (even using coal-based modes of transportation) in order to get the word out. He created a list of rules and recommendations for coal conservation for the residents of Coal County to follow so they could avoid, or at least postpone, the inevitable Peak Coal catastrophe.
By this time, he hardly ever visited his friends back in Peat Village any more. With all of his important work on coal conservation, there was just no time.
Another century or two passed. Coal began to be replaced by a new and even better energy source called "oil." It was far more efficient than coal, hundreds of times less polluting, and all around an infinitely more flexible and useful fuel. In fact, it was such a superior fuel that throughout Oil Nation (which was just few days' journey by coal-powered steamship from Coal County) most homes and industries quickly switched over to this advanced fuel. As a result, Oil Nation enjoyed a much improved standard of living.
The residents of Coal County, however, were still preparing for Peak Coal: conserving as much coal as they could, huddling over their modest coal fires, and earnestly following the rules and guidelines set down by our scaremongering friend, just as they were told. Sadly, however, their standard of living hadn't increased at all for several generations, and needless to say, their community never developed the scientific expertise nor the extra economic capacity to make use of a newfangled energy source like oil.
Our scaremonger friend continued to travel widely, often using coal- and even oil-based energy to the extent he needed to. After all, spreading the coal conservation message was far more important than following a few minor rules, you see.
Interestingly, by this time, he never used peat-based energy at all. Why would he use such a laughably primitive fuel source, especially with such important work to do?
One fine day, while he was speaking to a mostly empty auditorium in Oil Nation (oddly enough, there wasn't very much interest in Peak Coal there), he hit on yet another truth. Admittedly it was a somewhat derivative truth, but it was staggering in its implications: the supply of oil had to be limited!
Once again, he could clearly see the inescapable logic: when the supply of a resource is fixed and demand is growing, it is only a matter of time before that resource runs out. It could be years, it could be decades, but the logic was inevitable: at some point--probably soon--Oil Nation would run out of oil. This would be an unmitigated disaster. A collapse in the oil-based economy was coming. And coming soon.
It was clear--to the point of obviousness--that there was a limited supply of oil, yet every year, more and more people used more and more of it. What would happen when, inevitably, it was all used up? Peak Oil was coming. Anyone who doubted it was a denier.
Our scaremonger friend redoubled his efforts. There was important work to do! He created a list of rules and recommendations for oil conservation for all Oil Nation citizens to follow, so they could avoid, or at least postpone, a Peak Oil catastrophe. He began traveling even more widely, all over Oil Nation and beyond, and his utterly logical and inescapable conclusions became so widely accepted and respected that he began receiving invitations to speak internationally at major conferences like Davos and the World Economic Forum. He became one of the world's wealthy elites, sharing his important and far-seeing knowledge through books, speeches and media appearances.
Needless to say, he never visited Coal County any more. His work on Peak Oil was far too important.
And of course, by this time we'd all but forgotten about the people of Peat Village.
*********************
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
*********************
It was Ireland, during the 11th Century, in a tiny little community called Peat Village.
Peat Village was nothing special, just a tiny village on the edge of a huge peat bog. People there lived very simply back then, and life in this forlorn little village was at best brutish and short. Average life expectancy was 24 years, disease was rampant, and famine and hunger were constant realities.
One day in Peat Village a villager stumbled onto a significant discovery. The peat from the bog next to the village could be used as a fuel! Yes, it was a dirty fuel--it was awfully smoky when it burned--and of course it had to be harvested, treated and dried before it would really burn well, but without a doubt it could be used as a serviceable fuel. And there was so much of it! This villager began using peat to heat his home, his food and his water. In the following years, he and his family enjoyed a meaningfully improved standard of living.
Others in Peat Village caught on to the idea of using peat as a fuel, and they began heating their food, water and homes too. Their standard of living also increased. It wasn't long before everyone in Peat Village was burning peat, and as this little community's living standards improved, things changed irrevocably for the better: disease became just a little less rampant, food became a just little more plentiful, and life expectancy became just a little bit longer. Life became a little less brutish and short.
However, there was a very intelligent villager living in Peat Village who began to worry. He wondered about the longer-term consequences if everyone in Peat Village continued to use peat to heat their homes and their food and water. He started to worry about what would happen if Peat Village ran out of peat.
And he was right to worry about this. It was clear--to the point of obviousness--that there was a limited supply of peat. Yet each year, villagers used more and more of it. What would happen when, inevitably, all the peat was used up?
The other villagers considered this nothing more than scaremongering. Some laughed. But this very intelligent villager was absolutely certain he was right. He could see the writing on the wall. After all, when the supply of a resource is fixed and demand is growing, it is only a matter of time before that resource runs out. It could be years, it could be decades, but the logic was inescapable: at some point--probably soon--Peat Village would run completely out of peat.
Clearly, this would be an unmitigated disaster for the Peat Village community. "Peak Peat" was coming, and with it would come a total collapse in the peat-based economy.
Our scaremonger friend traveled throughout Peat Village to spread the word. He created a list of rules and recommendations for peat conservation for all the residents to follow so they could avoid, or at least postpone, the inevitable Peak Peat catastrophe. He encouraged villages to use peat only when absolutely necessary, if at all. He got into many debates with villagers who didn't agree with him. After all, the villagers wanted to keep their heated homes and heated food. These things improved their quality of life and their standard of living. And some of the villagers thought it was silly to just leave the peat sitting there in the bog completely unused when it had brought about such improvements in their community. Finally, the villagers said, it will be a long time before we use up all of our peat. In the meantime perhaps we will discover another fuel source to replace it.
But our scaremonger friend didn't think very much of the intelligence of these villagers. He considered them unsophisticated and naive, and he mocked them by calling them "deniers." He told them they already achieved significant improvements in their standard of living, and it would be impossible (and not to mention irresponsible) to maintain their current living standards in the post-Peak Peat era.
There was another vaguely bothersome thing about this scaremonger villager. It a small thing, but bothersome nonetheless: since he traveled so much throughout Peat Village, he didn't exactly follow all of the peat conservation rules he set down for all the other villagers. When he stayed at inns and homes across the village, he would often enjoy peat fires and peat-heated food. He reduced his peat use slightly in his own home, but because he was so successful speaking, writing and teaching about Peak Peat, his thatched hut was one of the largest in the entire village. It took quite a bit of peat just to heat a small portion of his house! But in any case, he told himself, his personal use wasn't all that important. What was more important was that he get out the word about Peak Peat and the coming catastrophe that would inevitably follow.
Centuries later (our scaremonger friend lived for a very long time, you see), a new and revolutionary fuel came along. It was called "coal." Coal was hundreds of times more efficient than peat, far cleaner, and in every sense a superior energy source. In Coal County, which wasn't very far from Peat Village, homes and industries switched over to this new and advanced fuel. As a result, Coal County began to enjoy a significantly improved standard of living.
But not tiny Peat Village. They were still busy preparing for Peak Peat: conserving peat as much as they could, shivering over their tiny peat fires, huddling around their half-warmed meals, and earnestly following the rules and guidelines as they were told. Their standard of living hadn't increased at all for centuries, and their community never developed sufficient scientific or engineering expertise nor any extra economic capacity to make use of a newfangled energy source like coal.
In the meantime, our scaremonger friend continued traveling widely, spending the passing centuries getting the word out on the coming collapse of the peat-based economy. Since he’d already fully convinced everyone in Peat Village of his views (what few remaining "deniers" there were had been totally ostracized by the community), he often found himself traveling into Coal County to give speeches on Peak Peat. Sadly, he couldn't find many people in Coal County who were interested in conserving peat, as hard as he tried. Peak Peat just didn't seem to be a priority there.
One day, however, after giving yet another sparsely attended speech in Coal County, our very intelligent villager stumbled onto a brilliant insight: The supply of coal had to be limited too!
Once again, he could clearly see the inescapable logic: when the supply of a resource is fixed and demand is growing, it is only a matter of time before that resource runs out. It could be years, it could be decades, but the logic was inevitable: at some point--probably soon--Coal County would run out of coal. This would be an unmitigated disaster. A collapse in the coal-based economy was coming, and coming soon.
And he was right to worry about this. It was clear--to the point of obviousness--that there was a limited supply of coal. And yet every year more and more people were burning more and more of it. What would happen when, inevitably, all of it would get used up? Peak Coal was coming. Anyone who doubted so was clearly a denier.
Our scaremonger friend began traveling even more widely (even using coal-based modes of transportation) in order to get the word out. He created a list of rules and recommendations for coal conservation for the residents of Coal County to follow so they could avoid, or at least postpone, the inevitable Peak Coal catastrophe.
By this time, he hardly ever visited his friends back in Peat Village any more. With all of his important work on coal conservation, there was just no time.
Another century or two passed. Coal began to be replaced by a new and even better energy source called "oil." It was far more efficient than coal, hundreds of times less polluting, and all around an infinitely more flexible and useful fuel. In fact, it was such a superior fuel that throughout Oil Nation (which was just few days' journey by coal-powered steamship from Coal County) most homes and industries quickly switched over to this advanced fuel. As a result, Oil Nation enjoyed a much improved standard of living.
The residents of Coal County, however, were still preparing for Peak Coal: conserving as much coal as they could, huddling over their modest coal fires, and earnestly following the rules and guidelines set down by our scaremongering friend, just as they were told. Sadly, however, their standard of living hadn't increased at all for several generations, and needless to say, their community never developed the scientific expertise nor the extra economic capacity to make use of a newfangled energy source like oil.
Our scaremonger friend continued to travel widely, often using coal- and even oil-based energy to the extent he needed to. After all, spreading the coal conservation message was far more important than following a few minor rules, you see.
Interestingly, by this time, he never used peat-based energy at all. Why would he use such a laughably primitive fuel source, especially with such important work to do?
One fine day, while he was speaking to a mostly empty auditorium in Oil Nation (oddly enough, there wasn't very much interest in Peak Coal there), he hit on yet another truth. Admittedly it was a somewhat derivative truth, but it was staggering in its implications: the supply of oil had to be limited!
Once again, he could clearly see the inescapable logic: when the supply of a resource is fixed and demand is growing, it is only a matter of time before that resource runs out. It could be years, it could be decades, but the logic was inevitable: at some point--probably soon--Oil Nation would run out of oil. This would be an unmitigated disaster. A collapse in the oil-based economy was coming. And coming soon.
It was clear--to the point of obviousness--that there was a limited supply of oil, yet every year, more and more people used more and more of it. What would happen when, inevitably, it was all used up? Peak Oil was coming. Anyone who doubted it was a denier.
Our scaremonger friend redoubled his efforts. There was important work to do! He created a list of rules and recommendations for oil conservation for all Oil Nation citizens to follow, so they could avoid, or at least postpone, a Peak Oil catastrophe. He began traveling even more widely, all over Oil Nation and beyond, and his utterly logical and inescapable conclusions became so widely accepted and respected that he began receiving invitations to speak internationally at major conferences like Davos and the World Economic Forum. He became one of the world's wealthy elites, sharing his important and far-seeing knowledge through books, speeches and media appearances.
Needless to say, he never visited Coal County any more. His work on Peak Oil was far too important.
And of course, by this time we'd all but forgotten about the people of Peat Village.
*********************
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
Are You Sure Your Farmer Wants To Get To Know You?
Readers, for the next few weeks I'll be doing some travelling, so please enjoy this post from Casual Kitchen's archives.
*********************
The First Lady has planted a garden, organic, of course, and the Department of Agriculture is spending 50 million or so on a program called Know Your Farmer. The effort is likely to disappoint: in fact, a suburban housewife determined to know this corn farmer is likely to be mortified by my looks, the way I smell, and my opinions. I can't imagine why any resident of Manhattan would want to know me, and, trust me, some of my neighbors are even worse.
...One of the assumptions implicit in all this local food stuff is that we farmers are dying to make a connection with our customers. In many cases, nothing could be further from the truth. All we want is to sell corn and to be left alone.
--Blake Hurst, farmer and president of the Missouri Farm Bureau
I borrowed this striking quote from The Locavore's Dilemma, partly because it had me laughing out loud, but also because it illustrates an intriguing point about the food and ag business.
Take a Brooklyn hipster (no, really, take one!). Imagine her, freshly done reading one of Michael Pollan's books, and deciding, firmly, that she wants to get "close" to her food. She’s gonna know her farmer, man. Now she'll make regular trips to the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket, take a weekly subway ride to Manhattan's Union Square Farmer's Market, and maybe even once a month line up a Zipcar Prius to drive up the Hudson Valley (staying within 100 miles of course) to visit an actual organic farm!
Hipsters are usually quite good at irony. But there's one question, ironically, that this hypothetical Brooklyn hipster never thought to ask: what if her farmer doesn't want to know her back?
You'd think this imaginary friendly farmer, if he really wanted to know this hipster and others like her, would take a job where he'd actually get to meet hipsters. He wouldn't farm at all! He'd work at the Apple Store. Or at Whole Foods.
If you take Blake Hurst's word for it, most farmers just want to farm. They didn't sign up to meet hipsters and agri-intellectuals. That's the reason other people sell, distribute and retail their food: because selling, shipping, distributing, retailing and hipster-meeting isn't farming.
Think about this a little bit. Does your farmer want to know you?
Are you sure?
Related Posts:
Thoughts On Recipe Development
An Interview with "Appetite For Profit" Author Michele Simon
A Cup of Morning Death? How "Big Coffee" Puts Profits Before People
Did Newark Mayor Cory Booker Really *Try* With His Food Stamp Challenge?
*********************
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
*********************
The First Lady has planted a garden, organic, of course, and the Department of Agriculture is spending 50 million or so on a program called Know Your Farmer. The effort is likely to disappoint: in fact, a suburban housewife determined to know this corn farmer is likely to be mortified by my looks, the way I smell, and my opinions. I can't imagine why any resident of Manhattan would want to know me, and, trust me, some of my neighbors are even worse.
...One of the assumptions implicit in all this local food stuff is that we farmers are dying to make a connection with our customers. In many cases, nothing could be further from the truth. All we want is to sell corn and to be left alone.
--Blake Hurst, farmer and president of the Missouri Farm Bureau
I borrowed this striking quote from The Locavore's Dilemma, partly because it had me laughing out loud, but also because it illustrates an intriguing point about the food and ag business.
Take a Brooklyn hipster (no, really, take one!). Imagine her, freshly done reading one of Michael Pollan's books, and deciding, firmly, that she wants to get "close" to her food. She’s gonna know her farmer, man. Now she'll make regular trips to the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket, take a weekly subway ride to Manhattan's Union Square Farmer's Market, and maybe even once a month line up a Zipcar Prius to drive up the Hudson Valley (staying within 100 miles of course) to visit an actual organic farm!
Hipsters are usually quite good at irony. But there's one question, ironically, that this hypothetical Brooklyn hipster never thought to ask: what if her farmer doesn't want to know her back?
You'd think this imaginary friendly farmer, if he really wanted to know this hipster and others like her, would take a job where he'd actually get to meet hipsters. He wouldn't farm at all! He'd work at the Apple Store. Or at Whole Foods.
If you take Blake Hurst's word for it, most farmers just want to farm. They didn't sign up to meet hipsters and agri-intellectuals. That's the reason other people sell, distribute and retail their food: because selling, shipping, distributing, retailing and hipster-meeting isn't farming.
Think about this a little bit. Does your farmer want to know you?
Are you sure?
Related Posts:
Thoughts On Recipe Development
An Interview with "Appetite For Profit" Author Michele Simon
A Cup of Morning Death? How "Big Coffee" Puts Profits Before People
Did Newark Mayor Cory Booker Really *Try* With His Food Stamp Challenge?
*********************
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Tuesday, June 4, 2019
What Happens Once You've Cooked a Recipe 100 Times?
Readers, for the next few weeks I'll be doing some travelling, so please enjoy this post from Casual Kitchen's archives.
*********************
Readers, do you have any recipes you've cooked so many times that you've lost count?
When you reach this point with a favorite dish, interesting things happen. You barely need to look at the recipe. Preparing it becomes relaxing, even meditative. You don’t think about the process steps and how to do them. Heck, you hardly need to think at all, and the recipe comes out great every time.
Despite all I've written here at Casual Kitchen, you'd think cooking would be meditative and relaxing for me all the time. You'd be wrong. Usually I try to avoid cooking--or even better, shirk it off onto somebody else. But there are several key recipes here, recipes like Chicken Mole, Risotto, Black Beans and Rice, North African Lemon Chicken and Groundnut Stew, that I've made hundreds of times, and I’m so comfortable with these recipes that preparing them becomes as mentally demanding as folding the laundry. Which is my idea of a meditative exercise.
My introduction to this idea was in New Zealand. Our friend Richard, who owns a cafe and catering company in the city of Christchurch, was teaching me how to make a "flat white" (like a cappuccino, only better). Coffee is a refined art in New Zealand and I was struggling to get it just right. The grounds needed to be pressed just enough, the milk needed to be frothed just right, and everything needed to be combined with just the right amount of flair. I screwed up several that went right into the wastebasket. Then, finally, I made one that got a passing grade. Maybe a C-minus.
Richard told me, "after you've properly made 200 of these, I'd let you in front of a customer." I stared at him. As naive as I'm sure this sounds, this was the first time I'd really thought about the concept of making something so many times that it becomes second nature, that you don’t have to think about it, and you can start to add your personality to the process rather than just complete the process.
These are the kinds of things you can do after you've cooked a recipe 20, 50 or even 200 times:
1) You can carry on a conversation while you cook, and pay sincere attention to both tasks.
2) You can scale up the recipe for a large dinner party or a big group with little additional stress.
3) The cooking experience becomes easy, even effortless.
4) You confidently modify the recipe, or add improvisational flourishes as you cook. You know exactly how the recipe works and you know what variables you can and cannot tweak.
5) You make it... and it tastes amazing every time. You may not even know why it tastes amazing, but it just does.
Perhaps this is the home cook's version of the so-called 10,000 Hour Rule. Then again, you certainly don't need 10,000 hours to get good--really, really good--at cooking. Why? Well, just do the math: It only takes fifty hours to make a 30 minute recipe one hundred times (the majority of the recipes here at CK can be made in under 30 minutes for $2 a serving or less). Using the time-saving strategy of heavy rotation--rotating in the easiest, least expensive and most-loved recipes on a twice- or three-times-a-month basis--you could hit the I cooked this 100 times mark with four or five favorite recipes within just a few years.
Which makes cooking healthy food for your family an even easier part of your life than it already is.
Related Posts:
Thoughts On Recipe Development
Making It a Treat
Re-Seasoning: Never Be Bored With Leftovers Again
The Paradox of Cooking Shows
*********************
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
*********************
Readers, do you have any recipes you've cooked so many times that you've lost count?
When you reach this point with a favorite dish, interesting things happen. You barely need to look at the recipe. Preparing it becomes relaxing, even meditative. You don’t think about the process steps and how to do them. Heck, you hardly need to think at all, and the recipe comes out great every time.
Despite all I've written here at Casual Kitchen, you'd think cooking would be meditative and relaxing for me all the time. You'd be wrong. Usually I try to avoid cooking--or even better, shirk it off onto somebody else. But there are several key recipes here, recipes like Chicken Mole, Risotto, Black Beans and Rice, North African Lemon Chicken and Groundnut Stew, that I've made hundreds of times, and I’m so comfortable with these recipes that preparing them becomes as mentally demanding as folding the laundry. Which is my idea of a meditative exercise.
My introduction to this idea was in New Zealand. Our friend Richard, who owns a cafe and catering company in the city of Christchurch, was teaching me how to make a "flat white" (like a cappuccino, only better). Coffee is a refined art in New Zealand and I was struggling to get it just right. The grounds needed to be pressed just enough, the milk needed to be frothed just right, and everything needed to be combined with just the right amount of flair. I screwed up several that went right into the wastebasket. Then, finally, I made one that got a passing grade. Maybe a C-minus.
Richard told me, "after you've properly made 200 of these, I'd let you in front of a customer." I stared at him. As naive as I'm sure this sounds, this was the first time I'd really thought about the concept of making something so many times that it becomes second nature, that you don’t have to think about it, and you can start to add your personality to the process rather than just complete the process.
These are the kinds of things you can do after you've cooked a recipe 20, 50 or even 200 times:
1) You can carry on a conversation while you cook, and pay sincere attention to both tasks.
2) You can scale up the recipe for a large dinner party or a big group with little additional stress.
3) The cooking experience becomes easy, even effortless.
4) You confidently modify the recipe, or add improvisational flourishes as you cook. You know exactly how the recipe works and you know what variables you can and cannot tweak.
5) You make it... and it tastes amazing every time. You may not even know why it tastes amazing, but it just does.
Perhaps this is the home cook's version of the so-called 10,000 Hour Rule. Then again, you certainly don't need 10,000 hours to get good--really, really good--at cooking. Why? Well, just do the math: It only takes fifty hours to make a 30 minute recipe one hundred times (the majority of the recipes here at CK can be made in under 30 minutes for $2 a serving or less). Using the time-saving strategy of heavy rotation--rotating in the easiest, least expensive and most-loved recipes on a twice- or three-times-a-month basis--you could hit the I cooked this 100 times mark with four or five favorite recipes within just a few years.
Which makes cooking healthy food for your family an even easier part of your life than it already is.
Related Posts:
Thoughts On Recipe Development
Making It a Treat
Re-Seasoning: Never Be Bored With Leftovers Again
The Paradox of Cooking Shows
*********************
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Greeting Card SCAM! How to Save $6 (Or More) on Greeting Cards -- and Defeat the Greeting Card Industry Once and For All
Why are greeting cards so ridiculously expensive?
It's hard not to think about the incredibly fat and juicy profit margins of these little folded pieces of paper when you find Mother's Day, graduation and birthday cards priced at $4.99, $6.99, and even $8.99 in your local suburban grocery or drug store. Sure, some have glitter or cute ribbons on them. And bad poetry. But the bottom line is this: greeting cards are one of the most profitable products in modern retailing.
And long term readers of this blog know why: it has everything to do with competition. Or the lack thereof.
While there are plenty of items in our grocery stores sold at fair prices and reasonable markups, there are also certain items sold at unfair prices under surprisingly limited competition. Many branded/advertised foods, the dreaded spice aisle, and of course greeting cards are all good examples of non-competitive submarkets in the grocery/retail world.
Two companies dominate the greeting card aisle, Hallmark and American Greetings, making it one of the least-competitive segments of all of retail. Worse, when consumers need a card for Mother's Day or an almost-forgotten anniversary card for a spouse, they don't care that much about the card's price. Typically, they just need to get the card and get on with their day.
An economist would call this a non-competitive market with minimal price sensitivity. An investor like Warren Buffett would call this a wonderful business,[1] because in markets like these companies can actually raise prices, every year, little by little, and consumers just passively keep buying cards like they always do.
There may appear to be thousands of cards to choose from, the choice is illusory. The market and its egregious prices are under complete duopoly control. And that's why you can hardly find a card for less than $4.99 any more.
Just to focus our attention here: for $4.99 you can buy a paperback book. Or five pounds of pasta. Or three dozen eggs. Or three pounds of lentils! Many of Casual Kitchen's most popular laughably cheap recipes cost less than this.
Looking downfield a little bit, I wonder what the consumer reaction will be to the first basic greeting card that exceeds the $10 price point? It's coming. And here's something really mortifying: at the rate card prices are currently compounding, we could easily be paying $20 for greeting cards in a decade, give or take. [2]
Which brings us to a question: how high does the price of a greeting card have to go before it becomes... insulting? Or even condescending? As in "We, the greeting card industry, have so little regard for you consumers that we expect you to mindlessly pay 60,000% markups for a folded card."
Don't misunderstand: I have no problem paying money for a gift card. But I have a huge problem paying sums of money that are ridiculously divorced from the value we receive from that expenditure. As an empowered consumer, you should too.
So, what do we do? Well, as in many consumer empowerment situations, the answer is "it depends." But a good starting point is to stop using our typical buying patterns. Clearly, the greeting card cabal can easily prey on us if we seek to satisfy our greeting card "needs" the way we always have.
One solution we know won't work: going to another retailer. Remember the simple technique of going to a local ethnic grocery store to find more reasonably-priced spices? This tactic, which worked so well to subvert the non-competitive grocery store spice aisle, isn't effective against the anti-competitive greeting card industry. They've pretty much locked up control of all of the shelf space at all retailers, everywhere.
Which takes us to a more elegant solution, something we might call a modified "don't want it!" technique. Rather than submitting to the greeting card cabal, and paying their prices on their cards, screw 'em. I'm playing this game on my own (much more fun) terms, by making my own cards.
So, for Laura's birthday, this was this year's card:
Sure, we save a little money. But more importantly, Laura LOVED it. She thought this card was hilarious, adorable even. We both got a huge laugh out of it. And it was free. FREE. [3]
And if I can do this with my pitiful artistic ability, you can do better.
Here's the broader takeaway for anyone interested in consumer empowerment: in any anti-competitive marketplace where prices are way out of line with the value we receive, don't buy. Don't be so damn obedient. Figure out another way. Play chess.
Footnotes:
[1] Lamentably, American Greetings and Hallmark are both privately held. Recall elsewhere in Casual Kitchen where we discussed how easy it is to self-fund many of your consumer products purchases by investing in the stock of the company and receiving dividend payments. That won't work here unfortunately.
[2] Don't laugh, hear my math: Assume a $7.99 card and imagine the greeting card cabal gradually raises prices at an average 8% annual rate, consistent with recent pricing activity. In just 12 years, that $7.99 card will have compounded to $20.12. It's coming.
[3] Okay, I lied. It wasn't quite free: the cost was technically 1 sheet of standard copy paper at $7.49 per 500 sheets, or about 1.5c. Thus I provided Laura with an amusing birthday card for less than one 300th of the price of a standard $4.99 greeting card.
****************
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
It's hard not to think about the incredibly fat and juicy profit margins of these little folded pieces of paper when you find Mother's Day, graduation and birthday cards priced at $4.99, $6.99, and even $8.99 in your local suburban grocery or drug store. Sure, some have glitter or cute ribbons on them. And bad poetry. But the bottom line is this: greeting cards are one of the most profitable products in modern retailing.
And long term readers of this blog know why: it has everything to do with competition. Or the lack thereof.
While there are plenty of items in our grocery stores sold at fair prices and reasonable markups, there are also certain items sold at unfair prices under surprisingly limited competition. Many branded/advertised foods, the dreaded spice aisle, and of course greeting cards are all good examples of non-competitive submarkets in the grocery/retail world.
Two companies dominate the greeting card aisle, Hallmark and American Greetings, making it one of the least-competitive segments of all of retail. Worse, when consumers need a card for Mother's Day or an almost-forgotten anniversary card for a spouse, they don't care that much about the card's price. Typically, they just need to get the card and get on with their day.
An economist would call this a non-competitive market with minimal price sensitivity. An investor like Warren Buffett would call this a wonderful business,[1] because in markets like these companies can actually raise prices, every year, little by little, and consumers just passively keep buying cards like they always do.
There may appear to be thousands of cards to choose from, the choice is illusory. The market and its egregious prices are under complete duopoly control. And that's why you can hardly find a card for less than $4.99 any more.
Just to focus our attention here: for $4.99 you can buy a paperback book. Or five pounds of pasta. Or three dozen eggs. Or three pounds of lentils! Many of Casual Kitchen's most popular laughably cheap recipes cost less than this.
Looking downfield a little bit, I wonder what the consumer reaction will be to the first basic greeting card that exceeds the $10 price point? It's coming. And here's something really mortifying: at the rate card prices are currently compounding, we could easily be paying $20 for greeting cards in a decade, give or take. [2]
Which brings us to a question: how high does the price of a greeting card have to go before it becomes... insulting? Or even condescending? As in "We, the greeting card industry, have so little regard for you consumers that we expect you to mindlessly pay 60,000% markups for a folded card."
Don't misunderstand: I have no problem paying money for a gift card. But I have a huge problem paying sums of money that are ridiculously divorced from the value we receive from that expenditure. As an empowered consumer, you should too.
So, what do we do? Well, as in many consumer empowerment situations, the answer is "it depends." But a good starting point is to stop using our typical buying patterns. Clearly, the greeting card cabal can easily prey on us if we seek to satisfy our greeting card "needs" the way we always have.
One solution we know won't work: going to another retailer. Remember the simple technique of going to a local ethnic grocery store to find more reasonably-priced spices? This tactic, which worked so well to subvert the non-competitive grocery store spice aisle, isn't effective against the anti-competitive greeting card industry. They've pretty much locked up control of all of the shelf space at all retailers, everywhere.
Which takes us to a more elegant solution, something we might call a modified "don't want it!" technique. Rather than submitting to the greeting card cabal, and paying their prices on their cards, screw 'em. I'm playing this game on my own (much more fun) terms, by making my own cards.
So, for Laura's birthday, this was this year's card:
 |
| I muffed the ice cream cone, but that's an exact likeness of Laura. |
Sure, we save a little money. But more importantly, Laura LOVED it. She thought this card was hilarious, adorable even. We both got a huge laugh out of it. And it was free. FREE. [3]
And if I can do this with my pitiful artistic ability, you can do better.
Here's the broader takeaway for anyone interested in consumer empowerment: in any anti-competitive marketplace where prices are way out of line with the value we receive, don't buy. Don't be so damn obedient. Figure out another way. Play chess.
Saved six bucks. She's amused (and impressed even) by my artwork.— Daniel Koontz (@danielckoontz) May 16, 2019
And on her birthday neither of us was exploited by the greeting card cabal. For once. pic.twitter.com/k3OiVAUEKy
Footnotes:
[1] Lamentably, American Greetings and Hallmark are both privately held. Recall elsewhere in Casual Kitchen where we discussed how easy it is to self-fund many of your consumer products purchases by investing in the stock of the company and receiving dividend payments. That won't work here unfortunately.
[2] Don't laugh, hear my math: Assume a $7.99 card and imagine the greeting card cabal gradually raises prices at an average 8% annual rate, consistent with recent pricing activity. In just 12 years, that $7.99 card will have compounded to $20.12. It's coming.
[3] Okay, I lied. It wasn't quite free: the cost was technically 1 sheet of standard copy paper at $7.49 per 500 sheets, or about 1.5c. Thus I provided Laura with an amusing birthday card for less than one 300th of the price of a standard $4.99 greeting card.
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