Best of Casual Kitchen 2009

2009 was a great year for Casual Kitchen. This blog was profiled in the Chicago Sun-Times, blurbed in the New York Times, and traffic grew strongly, with year-to-date pageviews up 124% compared to 2008.

Casual Kitchen is truly becoming what I've always hoped it would become: a widely-read site where people can have intelligent discussions about the food industry, and where people can learn how to make the most of the money they spend on the food they eat.

I published more than 100 articles this year, and as we wrap up 2009, I'd like to share what I thought were the top 10 posts of the year here at CK. Enjoy!

1) The 25 Best Laughably Cheap Recipes at Casual Kitchen
A recession-busting special in which I compiled all of the best, cheapest recipes on this blog, many of which cost $1.00 or less per serving. This post was retweeted repeatedly on Twitter and ultimately turned out to be one of the most heavily viewed posts of the year.

2) Guess What? We Spend Less Than Ever on Food
This short and controversial post got picked up by several economics blogs, and then got picked up by The New York Times. And it led to our own poll of food spending of Casual Kitchen readers, which indicated that the average CK reader spends meaningfully more on food than the national average.

3) Survivor Bias: Why "Big Food" Isn't Quite As Evil As You Think It Is
Yes, we spend a lot of time criticizing the food industry here at Casual Kitchen. But we shouldn't forget that we as consumers have enormous influence on what foods appear on our store shelves. See also How to Whine About Big Food, which also ruffled a few feathers when it ran earlier this month.

4) How Food Companies Hide Sugar in Plain Sight
Another short and extremely popular post in which I expose a sneaky trick that food companies use to make food appear like it contains less sugar than it really does.

5) The Raw Foods Trial
In which I ate a 100% raw diet for seven days--and lived to tell about it. The link takes you to the main archive page of the full trial, which turned out to be the most popular series in the three year history of Casual Kitchen.

6) The Hummus Blogroll: 17 Easy to Make Hummus Recipes
Every possible variation on hummus you could imagine. All of these recipes are easy to make and surprisingly inexpensive. I never had so much fun putting together a blogroll.

7) 27 Themes and Ideas for Wine Tasting Club Meetings
This was a popular post that ran in the middle of a series on wines. See if you can finish this article and not start your own wine club! For still more on wine, see my post on How to Start A Casual Wine Tasting Club and How to Enjoy Wine on a Budget.

8) The Priming Reflex: How to Control Your Appetite (And Turn Your Back on a Million Years of Evolution)
Three tips that may forever change how you eat.

9) Who's Watching the Watchdogs? Ethical Problems in the "Ten Riskiest Foods" Report By the CSPI
After seeing the media mindlessly parrot the misleading conclusions of a biased and alarmist study on food-borne illnesses, I got so angry that I wrote this post in response.

10) How to Give Away Your Power By Being a Biased Consumer
A few readers got angry with me for making positive comments about Wal-Mart and negative comments on organic foods. However, the point of the article still stands: if you want to be an empowered consumer, you have to take a hard and unfiltered look at your unconscious biases. Read it with an open mind and see what you think.

Honorable Mention:
1) 41 Ways You Can Help the Environment From Your Kitchen
2) Brand Disloyalty
3) Ask Casual Kitchen: Advice For a New Blogger

Once again, I thank my readers for your contributions, your insights and most of all for your attention. Here's to an even better 2010!

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me from your own blog, or by subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Retro Sundays

I created the Retro Sundays series to help newer readers easily navigate the very best of this blog's enormous back catalog of content. Each Retro Sundays column serves up a selection of the best articles from this week in history here at Casual Kitchen.

As always, please feel free to explore CK's Recipe Index, the Best Of Casual Kitchen page and my full Index of Posts. You can also receive my updates at Twitter.
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This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

Mastering Kitchen Setup Costs (December 2006)
In which I show how you can set up a kitchen for $150 or less by sticking to basic items. This post was picked up by The Simple Dollar, driving a lot of CK's early readership. I'll always be grateful to Trent for helping put Casual Kitchen on the map.

Eight Tips to Make Cooking At Home Laughably Cheap (December 2006)
This post gave birth to one of Casual Kitchen's best known memes, and the expression laughably cheap now describes any dish that is so cheap to cook that it literally makes you laugh out loud.

Wintry Tomato Vegetable Soup (December 2007)
An all-time favorite veggie soup recipe. Easy to make and utterly delicious.

My 2009 Cooking, Food and Diet Goals (December 2008)
Looking back on this post, I did pretty well here, although I admittedly dropped the ball on baking real, yeast-based breads. The most interesting experience of the past year? By far it was my exploration of raw foodism.

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

CK Friday Links--Friday December 25, 2009

Here's yet another selection of particularly interesting links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts and your feedback.

PS: follow me on Twitter!
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One of my all-time favorite bloggers, Kris at Cheap Healthy Good, shares her very best posts of the year. Well worth a read. (Cheap Healthy Good) PS: Stay tuned--on Monday, CK will run its own best of 2009 post!

Psychological tricks and techniques that menu consultants use to squeeze more dollars out of diners. (Eater)

10 quick eco-friendly things you can do right now, especially tips #6 and #7. (Bargaineering)

Don't drop a turkey pot pie. I've heard that flying pot pie goo can travel up to 5-6 feet. (Beach Eats)

An interesting 5-minute video on how candy canes are made. (Eat Me Daily)

Recipe Links:
If you're interested in serving leg of lamb sometime during the holidays, here is a spectacular Stuffed Leg of Lamb, with easy, step-by-step instructions. (The Art of the Pig)

A Christmas tradition for one of my favorite bloggers: Tamales Verdes/Green Chile Tamales. (A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa)

Another great traditional recipe for holiday baking: Old-Fashioned Molasses Cookies. (A Mingling of Tastes)

A laughably easy Scottish shortbread recipe. (The Claytons Blog)

Off-Topic Links:
An exceptional post explaining the basic fundamental of using minimalism in web design. (Webdesigner Depot via @PANDA_DESIGN)

Some excellent comebacks and responses you can use to rebut anyone's sarcastic comments about your lifestyle choices. (The Middle Finger Project)

This essay was a key inspiration for us to give up television here at Casual Kitchen. (LewRockwell.com)

Surprising and unusual Christmas factoids. (Chow and Chatter)

Do you have an interesting article or recipe that you'd like to see featured in Casual Kitchen's Food Links? Send me an email!



How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

How to Use Food and Wine Jargon Without Sounding Pretentious

"Ah, this wine is steamy, racy and upside-down. Oh, and with a great nose!"

It's one thing to hear a genuine oenologist make this statement. It's another thing entirely to hear it from someone who just finished Wine For Dummies and now mistakes himself for an expert.


The problem with wine and food (and, for that matter, classical music and art), is that the sensations and experiences of these disciplines are extremely difficult to describe in plain English. Thus, each discipline naturally develops its own specialized jargon as shorthand for difficult-to-explain concepts.

There's more. Jargon can be a useful signalling device (a doctor can easily reveal himself to another doctor by tossing off a few key technical terms and phrases), and jargon can act as a barrier to a profession (lawyers create a comprehension barrier around their field by using a sort of shadow language of terms and expressions). At its worst, jargon can allow two insiders to have an entire conversation in front of an outsider without the outsider comprehending a single word (think two doctors discussing your case in front of you as if you aren't even there).

Food and wine, however, are different. After all, everybody eats, many of us drink, and most of us are on a mission to learn more about what we're eating and drinking. So it's inevitable that we'll pick up at least some eating and drinking terms, if only to help us talk about what we're experiencing.

But there's a distinct line between discussing a subject and slinging jargon like a sanctimonious blowhard. Which reminds me of a former Wall Street colleague named Bentley*, who, in the few short years I knew him, gave me a lifetime's worth of amusing food and wine snob stories.

Within days of deciding that he wanted to become an expert in wine, Bentley began asking for the "head sommelier" at all of his business dinners. He'd then sling ten minutes' worth of inaccurately-used jargon at the poor sommelier, oblivious to the wincing of everyone around him--including the wincing of the sommelier himself, who would be a fool in any event to correct a customer on an expense-account meal. At long last, Bentley would invariably select the most expensive wine on the menu, leading us all to wonder: why ask for a sommelier's help when you knew you what you were going to pick all along?

So, when in the company of friends, family or colleagues, how can we discuss food and wine intelligently without sounding pretentious? Here are a few ideas:

1) If you're the only person at the table slinging jargon, you're being pretentious. It doesn't matter if you're being insightful, it doesn't matter if you use every term correctly, and it doesn't matter if you're absolutely right about everything you say. Just stop.

2) Read the people around you. If you think you might be at a higher food or wine "level" than the people you're with, cut way back on the jargon and terminology. Don't create a situation where the people you're talking to can't understand what you're talking about.

3) Listen. Let others speak and share their experiences, thoughts and preferences. You might be surprised at how much you learn.

4) Ask questions, don't hold forth. Ask other people around you what they think about what they are eating and drinking. Help out by getting the conversation going, and don't expect to be in the center of it.

5) Finally, you can always use finger quotes and a self-deprecating tone of voice whenever you find yourself forced to use a jargon term. After all, finger quotes are the cure for everything, aren't they?

Readers, what else would you add? And do you have a favorite wine- or food-snob story to share?

* Note: Bentley is not (quite) a real person. He's a composite of several people I knew from my Wall Street years, and for obvious reasons I've completely disguised his identity--after all, Wall Street is smaller than you might think.

Related Posts:
How to Start a Casual and Inexpensive Wine Tasting Club
27 Themes and Ideas for Wine Tasting Club Meetings
How Do You Define Truly Great Restaurant Service?
Ten Rules for the Modern Restaurant-Goer
On the True Value of a Forgotten Restaurant Meal

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Retro Sundays

I created the Retro Sundays series to help newer readers easily navigate the very best of this blog's enormous back catalog of content. Each Retro Sundays column serves up a selection of the best articles from this week in history here at Casual Kitchen.

As always, please feel free to explore CK's Recipe Index, the Best Of Casual Kitchen page and my full Index of Posts. You can also receive my updates at Twitter.
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This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

Using Salt = Cheating (December 2006)
In which I explain why the recipes here at Casual Kitchen almost never contain any salt.

Seven Ways to Get Faster at Cooking (December 2006)
I discuss the use of economies of scale, parallel processing and "heavy rotation" to help you become a far more efficient cook. One of the first posts to generate some serious traffic here at CK.

Three Strategies to Create Space in Your Kitchen (December 2007)
Creative ideas on how to work more effectively with others in a small kitchen.

15 Creative Tips to Avoid Holiday Overeating (December 2008)
Tips on managing your food intake over the course of the day, and then more tips on controlling how much you eat at that big holiday dinner.

Blog Improvement 101 Links (December 2008)
This post featured links to what I considered to be 2008's very best articles on blogging.

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

A Short Guide to Common Nicaraguan Foods

I thought I'd share few details about the food we've enjoyed while we're here in Nicaragua (recall, Laura and I are here with a team of eyecare professionals giving free eye exams in several villages here in the country).

First, the food is really good here. Really good. Simple, straightforward, unpretentious and delicious. We've had gallo pinto (simple beans and rice) with nearly every meal, whether morning, noon or night, and we've really grown used to this wonderful comfort food. I have to find out a way to copy the special way they make it here.

Another common food here is vigaron: cabbage salad. It's thinly sliced cabbage in a light vinegar sauce that's found alongside nearly every meal. Nicaraguans consider it like a side salad. Again, it's basic, unpretentious and really good.

Also, queso frito or fried cheese. They have a simple white cheese here that is salty and firm. When fried, this cheese doesn't melt--it gets just a bit crispy on the outside. It's a common appetizer or side dish here and it's utterly delicious. One of the best meals we had during our entire trip was a simple platter of queso frito, fried plantains and a side of gallo pinto--along with a Toña, one of Nicaragua's national beers:

Finally, a delicious fish we've had the pleasure of having here: guapote. It's a mild white fish, typically grilled and served up whole. It's kind of a beastly looking fish that looks like it belongs in the Jurassic era, but it's easy to eat, not too bony, and well worth ordering.

Guapote con salsa tomate, arroz (rice), tostones (fried plantains) y vigaron:

Guapote, detail:

We didn't come to Nicaragua for the food, but we've been really surprised and happy with everything we've eaten on this trip. And we've been overwhelmed with all of the people we've met and the things we've seen here. This is a friendly and inexpensive country that is patient with tourists. It's almost as if they've seen enough tourists to appreciate them, but not too many to get sick of them or try to take advantage of them.

If you're considering a visit to Nicaragua, both Laura and I would highly encourage it, and if you want to ask any questions, feel free to reach us via email or by leaving a comment below.

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me from your own blog, or by subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

CK Friday Links--Friday December 18, 2009

Here's yet another selection of particularly interesting links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts and your feedback.

PS: follow me on Twitter!
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A classic, hilarious, 1987-vintage video of Julia Child on David Letterman--back when Letterman was still funny. (Youtube, via Eater)

From Roman emperors to Richard Nixon to Ann Coulter, the long, messy history of throwing food at people. (Gawker)

Fact: 63% of consumers want to recognize every ingredient listed on a food label. (Dana McCauley's Food Blog) Now I wish I hadn't taken the time to learn what sodium hexametaphosphate was!

Enjoy the 12 days of Christmas cookies with a cookie recipe every day this month! (Lottie + Doof via Beach Eats) Two of my favorites: Mexican Chocolate Cookies (Day #8) and Toasted Coconut Sables (Day #9).

Recipe Links:
A delicious and easy Moroccan-Inspired Braised Chicken. (Sense & Serendipity)

How to make restaurant-quality Falafel and conquer your fear of hot-oil frying at the same time. (The Oyster Evangelist)

Simple instructions on how to make your own homemade Ricotta Cheese. (The Claytons Blog)

Off-Topic Links:
A useful guide to "greener" giftwrap. (Beingfrugal.net). Bonus post: 6 Holiday Shopping No-Nos.

How to live cheaply for the long term, rather than making short term emergency belt-tightening moves. (WiseBread)

Can you live on half your monthly income? (The Simple Dollar) A side note: based on our experiences, this strategy solved nearly all of our money issues in just a few short years.

This 78-page guide to non-violent revolution was an important handbook behind the overthrow of dictatorships in Serbia, Georgia and the Ukraine. And it's available free on the internet. (From Dictatorship to Democracy at Google Books)

Do you have an interesting article or recipe that you'd like to see featured in Casual Kitchen's Food Links? Send me an email!



How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Cheap Eats in Honolulu: Nine Inexpensive Restaurants You Should Check Out in Waikiki

Now that winter is coming on in the northern part of the USA, we can't help but dream about the extended stay we were lucky enough to have nearly a year ago in the Waikiki district of Honolulu.

Unfortunately, as any visitor to Hawaii quickly discovers, it can be difficult to find affordable restaurant meals in Waikiki. But if you're willing to wander off the beaten path just a bit, you can find really good food at surprisingly reasonable prices.

With that, here are nine of the best cheap eats in Waikiki. Hopefully this post will encourage you to visit one of our favorite places in the world!
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Fanny's Chinese
464 Ena Rd
Honolulu, HI 96815
(808) 941-8155

This hole-in-the-wall restaurant serves Chinese food at prices ranging from $5-$8, possibly the lowest dinner prices in all of Waikiki. But go early--by 6pm, Fanny gets flooded with takeout orders and she'll shoo you away.

Phuket Thai
1960 Kapiolani Blvd
Honolulu, HI 96826
(808) 922-7960‎

This casual restaurant serves excellent Thai food at reasonable prices. Located just a few blocks north of Waikiki on the corner of Kapiolani and McCulley Streets.

Ramen Nakamura
2141 Kalakaua Ave
Honolulu, HI 96815
(808) 922-7960

Many people consider Nakamura to be the best ramen in Honolulu. The food is excellent and the prices are quite reasonable.

Ezogiku Ramen
2146 Kalakaua Ave
Honolulu, HI 96815
(808) 926-8616

We affectionately call this restaurant "the other ramen place" and we actually prefer it to the more popular and slightly more expensive Ramen Nakamura. The service is friendlier, the dining area is a bit bigger, and the entire experience is more casual and relaxing.

Rainbow Drive-In
3308 Kanaina Ave
Honolulu, HI 96815
(808) 737-0177‎

Just a few blocks' walk from Waikiki. The clientele at Rainbows is predominantly locals getting their fix of delicious island-style comfort food. If you want to try a traditional favorite, try the artery-clogging loco moco. My personal choice: the combination platter.

Pho Old Saigon
2270 Kuhio Ave # 1
Honolulu, HI 96815
(808) 922-2668

Excellent Vietnamese food. This restaurant is almost always crowded. Don't expect to be impressed with the decor (or the adult video store next door), but do expect to be impressed with the prices.

Pho My Lien
1831 Ala Moana Blvd
Honolulu, HI‎ 96815
(808) 955-4009‎

Situated on the second floor of a run-down building, this mom and pop restaurant serves excellent home-cooked Vietnamese food at very reasonable prices.

Siam Square
408 Lewers St
Honolulu, HI‎ 96815
(808) 923-5320‎

Exceptional Thai Food, friendly service and reasonable prices. This place is hidden away a little bit on the second floor above street level--just look for the ABC Store on the corner of Kuhio and Lewers Street, walk a few feet north on Lewers, then look up and to the left. You can't miss it.

Due Divino Pastaria
432 Ena Rd
Honolulu, HI‎ 96815
(808) 955-4142‎

Hidden away on Ena Street, just past Hobron Street, is an excellent little family-style Italian restaurant. We were impressed with their simple yet delicious food, and we loved the comfortable and relaxed atmosphere.

Related Posts:
Hawaii and its Love Affair with SPAM
POG: The Official Drink of Hawaii
How to Prepare and Eat a Rambutan Fruit
Our New Zealand Travel Blog
On the Road with Casual Kitchen: Asheville, NC and 12 Bones Barbecue

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Survivor Bias: Why "Big Food" Isn't Quite As Evil As You Think It Is

Lots of food writers and bloggers, myself included, love to criticize Big Food. It's such an easy target. After all, shouldn't everyone be against an industry that earns billions by force-feeding us unhealthy foods?

Of course, you can only make a statement like that (and keep a straight face) if you view the world with a conspiracy-theory mentality. If that's your primary mindset, stop reading this post right now. Because I am about to suggest an alternate explanation for the realities of the food industry--one that doesn't involve the a priori assumption that our destiny is under the control of an evil cabal of greedy food lords.

A warning though: this explanation involves a quick detour to statistics class, and a quicker detour through my former career on Wall Street. But in just a short few minutes, you'll see that someone else is behind the curtain selecting the foods on our grocery store shelves.

My quick detour starts with a financial question: what happens to a mutual fund that really sucks? (Don't worry, this will be brief. I promise.)

Well, a mutual fund can get away with suckola performance for a few years, but if it significantly underperforms its peer group for much longer, it will be closed down and killed off. It gets pulled from the newspapers, its performance record vanishes, and it gets washed down the memory hole as if it never existed.

Here's the point: this regular mercy-killing of bad mutual funds creates a deeply misleading picture of past performance. Since the worst-performing funds are regularly removed from the data set, the past performance of mutual funds in general looks better than it actually was. What you see isn't really a true picture of past performance--it's just the past performance of the survivors.

Statisticians call this phenomenon survivor bias, and it gives a whole new meaning to the expression "past performance does not guarantee future returns." (Even though I left Wall Street more than a year ago, I still throw up in my mouth a little bit whenever I hear that awful, awful phrase.)

Okay. The point of this article isn't to tell you to be suspicious of the mutual fund industry, that's just a freebie side benefit you get from reading a food blog written by a retired Wall Street analyst. The point is to apply this concept of survivor bias to the food industry, and specifically to the foods sitting on our grocery store shelves.

Many of us like to think that all the deliciously unhealthy foods in our grocery stores are there because evil food companies engineer them that way on purpose. What we don't see, and what few of us think about, are all the foods that weren't quite popular enough with consumers, and were therefore killed off. The food industry is littered with the corpses of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of foods that have come and gone. Just like underperforming mutual funds, these unpopular or ill-conceived food products die off because they didn't perform well.

If you were to look over the thousands of foods that came and went over the past 50-75 years, you'd find foods of all types. Some would be healthy, some extremely unhealthy. Some would be terrible and tasteless, some would be delicious but for whatever reason unpopular. Some of these foods never made it past regional test markets or focus group testing. Some had huge ad budgets behind them, while some quietly came and went with no ad spending at all.

In every case, however, what really mattered was this: consumer demand was insufficient to support the products that didn't survive. And so they died. The remaining foods on our grocery stores shelves, however unhealthy they may be, are the product of survivor bias. It's quite simple: the foods most heavily demanded by consumers always survive.

So, who's really behind the curtain choosing the foods on our grocery store shelves?

It's us. We are behind the curtain. That's right: fattening and unhealthy foods are on our store shelves because we put them there.

This is why consumers have such a critical role in deciding what is available to us in our stores and markets. Exercise your power by spending your money accordingly.

Readers, share your thoughts!

Note: I owe a debt of gratitude to two exceptional books by Nicholas Taleb: Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan. Both were instrumental in helping me think through issues raised in this post. Things are not always as they seem.


Related Posts:Who's Watching the Watchdogs? Ethical Problems in the "Ten Riskiest Foods" Report By the CSPI
The Pros and Cons of Restaurant Calorie Labeling Laws
How to Give Away Your Power By Being a Biased Consumer
Brand Disloyalty
A Rebuttal of "The Last Bite"

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Retro Sundays

I created the Retro Sundays series to help newer readers easily navigate the very best of this blog's enormous back catalog of content. Each Retro Sundays column serves up a selection of the best articles from this week in history here at Casual Kitchen.

As always, please feel free to explore CK's Recipe Index, the Best Of Casual Kitchen page and my full Index of Posts. You can also receive my updates at Twitter.
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This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

Mock Wild Rice (December 2006)
A laughably easy and laughably cheap rice recipe that's a staple side dish in our home.

How to Team Up in the Kitchen (December 2007)
Part 1 of a four part series of posts on how to work more efficiently and effectively with your family in the kitchen.

Mint Melts (December 2008)
An interesting cookie recipe that would be a great way to get your kids interested in cooking. A few readers took issue with my tagging this post with the search term "angioplasty."

Pernil (December 2008)
A surprisingly easy recipe for Latin-American style roast pork shoulder. An extremely popular post that gets a ton of search traffic.

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

CK Friday Links--Friday December 11, 2009

A quick note to readers: Laura and I will be in Nicaragua for the next ten days. Laura will be joining a team of other eye doctors to give free eye exams in two villages there, and I'll be joining the support team helping out.

In the meantime, stay tuned for two brand new articles that I've queued up for next week during my absence! I'm not sure what kind of internet access I'll have while we're on the road, but I'll be sure to respond to your comments and feedback as soon as I return.

PS: If you're curious about the organization that hosts these volunteer eye missions, it's called VOSH: Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity. This will be Laura's fourth VOSH trip, it will be my second. These trips are hard work, but they are also deeply fulfilling.

Otherwise, as always, here's yet another selection of particularly interesting links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts and your feedback.

PS: follow me on Twitter!
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Ten tips for enjoying holiday cooking, including this gem, which I'll paraphrase: Don’t get sucked into food drama by picky eaters. Have a variety of protein, fresh fruits and vegetables available and you can accommodate almost any diet. (Spinach Tiger)

What does it mean to be a "freegan?" Admittedly, you could have a field day with some aspects of this philosophy, but some of the ideas are worth open-minded consideration. (Freegan.info, via Hohlistic)

Stunning cappuccino foam art, including an interesting how-to video at the bottom of the page. (Woman's Day, via My Last Bite)

Are you brave enough to say no to a high-stress holiday season? Thought-provoking reading. (Alternet.org)

Recipe Links:
An easy recipe for Spanish Rice. You'll never bother with regular white rice again. (Alosha's Kitchen)

Easy and flavorful Colombian-Style Roasted Chicken Legs. (My Colombian Recipes)

A laughably simple and delicious homemade Ginger Ale recipe. (30 Bucks a Week)

You'll never believe how easy this traditional French recipe is: Scallops with Champagne Beurre Blanc. (To Catch a Cook)

Off-Topic Links:
An economic argument for never giving another gift. (Slate)

An exceptional post on the do's and don'ts of effective web typography. (Web Design Ledger)

You will be inspired to take a CERT class (Community Emergency Response Team) class after reading this post. (Erin Pavlina's Blog)

You may as well embrace minimalism now, because like it or not, it is in the process of embracing you. (More Minimal)

Do you have an interesting article or recipe that you'd like to see featured in Casual Kitchen's Food Links? Send me an email!



How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

How to Whine About "Big Food"

Big Food is an easy target. Too easy.

No one can deny that Big Food deploys armies of scientists who design irresistible snacks engineered for maximum deliciousness. And doesn't the industry spend billions of dollars on pernicious advertising that compels us to buy and eat their fattening snacks and treats? And what about all those toxic fruits and vegetables they greedily soak in pesticides, splash with e. coli for good measure, and then truck thousands of miles across the country (burning fossil fuels all the way) to unsuspecting people like you and me? Consumers are totally helpless against such a powerful enemy.

Seriously, if Big Food really cared, they'd fill grocery store shelves with healthy foods rather than processed, salted, sweetened and fat-laden foods. Wouldn't they? Of course those wouldn't exactly be "snacks" and nobody would buy them, and, well, that might put a dent in the industry's grand scheme to make us all too fat to move, but if you think about it, it's all just more proof that they sell us all those unhealthy, irresistible snacks out of pure venality.

Conspiracy theories are fun, aren't they? Once you've preemptively decided someone or something is greedy and bad, you can explain away almost anything. And the arguments always sound compelling because few people recognize, and fewer people challenge, circular logic based on a flawed premise.

And complaining about a greedy industry (or government, or our education system, or capitalism, or socialism, or the Dutch, or anyone and anything but ourselves) enables us to pass off a big chunk of our personal responsibility. It enables us to hold the limiting belief that the challenges of managing our diet and our health are out of our hands and beyond our control.

Just accept that you're totally powerless against that bag of chips or that box of cookies. Admit your impotence and cede your will, and it won't be your fault you ate them--it's those greedy bastards at Big Food.

With such powerful forces arrayed against us, how do consumers stand a chance?

Readers, what do you think?

Related Posts:
15 Creative Tips to Avoid Holiday Overeating
Ten Strategies to Stop Mindless Eating
Why Spices Are a Complete Rip-Off and What You Can Do About It
Applying the 80/20 Rule to Diet, Food and Cooking

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Spicy Sauteed Beets

This Indian-cuisine-inspired recipe takes about 30-35 minutes to make, it's vegetarian-friendly and it's truly unusual. Once you make it, you'll never look at the humble beet in the same way again.

And be warned: this dish is spicy! I'll share a recipe modification below for readers who prefer a milder version.

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Spicy Sauteed Beets
(inspired by the Ahaar blog)

Ingredients:
2 Tablespoons oil
4-6 medium uncooked beets, peeled and diced into small cubes
2 dried chili peppers (or 3/4 teaspoon dried hot pepper flakes)
1 teaspoon (whole) mustard seeds
1 pinch asafoetida (optional, see below)
3-4 curry leaves
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 cup water, roughly

Directions:
1) Heat oil in a large saucepan. Add mustard seeds, chili peppers (or hot pepper flakes), curry leaves and optional asafoetida, and lightly brown the spices on medium high heat for 3-4 minutes.

2) Add the diced beets, turmeric, cayenne pepper and 1 cup of water. Combine everything well, bring to a boil and simmer for 20-25 minutes, until the beets are tender yet firm to the bite and the water is mostly cooked away (if the liquid starts to cook away before the beets are done to your liking, feel free to add some extra water). Serve over rice.

Serves 3 as an entree, serves 4-5 as a side dish.
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Recipe notes:
1) I'm sure readers unfamiliar with Indian cuisine are wondering what in the world is asafoetida. For me, it is the butt of an endless supply of sophomoric jokes here at Casual Kitchen. For everyone else, it is a spice common to many Indian dishes. Asafoetida can be well-near impossible to find in a regular grocery store, but any Indian specialty foods store will carry it.

Note also that asafoetida powder (sometimes spelled asafetida) has a strange and downright unpleasant smell. Do not be afraid. When used (sparingly) in recipes, it imparts an aroma and flavor somewhat like onions, leeks or garlic. If you can't find this spice in your community, you can either replace it with a pinch of garlic powder or onion powder or you can omit it altogether.

2) And one more thing about asafoetida: Rumor has it that this powder helps reduce flatulence. Not only will this spice be an unusual addition to your spice rack, it may add meaningfully to the bliss in your household.

3) You are also unlikely to find whole mustard seeds and whole curry leaves in the typical American grocery store. Again, any Indian specialty foods store will carry them. If you are looking for a reason to do some culinary exploring in your community, this easy recipe will give you all the excuse you need!


4) Finally, if you want a milder version of this recipe, use just one dried chili pepper (or 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon dried hot pepper flakes) and also cut the 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper in half.

Related Posts:
Red Lentils and Rice: Two Cooking Lessons From A Cheap and Easy Dish
Curried Pork With Apples
11 Really Easy Rice Side Dishes
How to Tell if a Recipe is Worth Cooking With Five Easy Questions

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Retro Sundays--And a Thank You to Readers

With Casual Kitchen today entering its fourth year, I've created a new weekly series called Retro Sundays to help readers easily navigate the very best of this blog's enormous back catalog of content. Each Retro Sundays column will serve up a selection of the best articles and essays from this week in history here at CK. Readers (especially my newest readers): please let me know if this series provides value to you.

As always, please feel free to explore CK's Recipe Index, the Best Of Casual Kitchen page and my full Index of Posts. You can also receive my updates at Twitter.

One final note: It wouldn't be a real "blogiversary" if I didn't thank you, my readers, for your attention, comments, feedback, thoughts and emails. Your participation has helped Casual Kitchen--and its author--grow and improve. Thank you!
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This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

Why I'm a Part-Time Vegetarian (December 2006)
The very first post ever at Casual Kitchen, in which I explain one of CK's bedrock concepts. This post also features a spectacular Spanish Chickpea Soup recipe.

Why You Should Never Use Cooking Wine (December 2006)
An angry rant that features an excellent and easy recipe for Casbah Curried Chicken.

Shrimp in Garlic Sauce (Camarones al Ajillo) (December 2007)
Possibly the easiest and best recipe in this entire blog. Mind-numbingly good.

Pasta with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce (December 2008)
This recipe puts an interesting tweak on traditional pasta sauce and it's quite a bit cheaper than the store-bought jarred stuff.

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

CK Friday Links--Friday December 4, 2009

Here's yet another selection of particularly interesting links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts and your feedback.

PS: follow me on Twitter!
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Did you buy an organic Christmas tree? Did you even know that there was such a thing as an organic Christmas tree? Helpful tips on how to find one. (Katonah Green)

Ten really easy tips on how to healthify any recipe. (Cheap Healthy Good)

A nutritionist challenges the widely-held belief that HFCS is behind the obesity epidemic. Read this post to learn a lot about sweeteners. (Kathryn Elliot's Blog)

Is foodie culture a direct result of sexual dissatisfaction? Yikes. (BlogHer, via Food Philosophy)

A minute and a half video with great ideas for green juice fasting on the go. (Inspire2Act)

Recipe Links:
Here's a great way to use up any leftover turkey from Thanksgiving: a delicious and easy Southwestern Turkey and Black Bean Soup. (Dad Cooks Dinner)

A laughably easy recipe for Middle Eastern Flatbread. (The Oyster Evangelist)

So delicious it oughta be illegal! Baked Eggs in Bacon Baskets. (Stacey Snacks)

Step-by-step instructions on how to make a traditional Pasta Amatriciana. (Cream Puffs in Venice)

Off-Topic Links:
An excellent summary of the horrendous "Climategate" scandal. (UK Times Online)

Give experiences, rather than things, this holiday season. (The Simple Dollar)

Are you setting your own standards, or others set your standards for you? A particularly thought-provoking essay. (Rock Your Day)

Further proof that Canadians are the funniest people on Earth. (Goodie Bag TV)

Do you have an interesting article or recipe that you'd like to see featured in Casual Kitchen's Food Links? Send me an email!



How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Casual Kitchen's Top Five of the Month: November 2009

This once-a-month post is for those readers who may not get a chance to read everything here at CK, but who still want to keep up with the best and most widely read articles.
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Top Five of the Month for November 2009:

1) The Seven-Day Raw Foods Trial: Full Archive

2) Speed-Weaning: How to End Your Caffeine Addiction in Just Three Days

3) Four Final Conclusions From My Raw Foods Trial

4) How to Write A Killer Links Post that Everyone Will Want to Read

5) The Pros and Cons of Restaurant Calorie Labeling Laws


From the Vault: Top Five Posts from One Year Ago:

1) Ten Tips on How to Cut Your Food Budget Using the 80/20 Rule

2) How to Make a Simple Frittata

3) How are You Adjusting to the Economic Crisis? A Question for CK Readers

4) The Macchinetta: Stovetop Espresso Coffee

5) A Recession-Proof Guide to Saving Money on Food


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!