The Economics of Wasteful Foods

1) Cooking time for regular oatmeal: 4-5 minutes.

2) Cooking time for "quick oats" (essentially regular oats cut up into slightly smaller pieces): 2-3 minutes.

3) Cooking time for instant oats, which are pre-flavored, have the texture and consistency of glue and cost as much as 3-4 times per serving as regular oats: 1-2 minutes.
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After reading the information above, can you tell me why, as a society, we manufacture and sell "foods" like instant oats?

They're a textbook example of a second-order food. They cost more--up to 42c per serving, vs. 9-10c for generic oats and 13-14c for branded oats. And, arguably, they taste worse.

Are we really that busy? And is it a good use of society's collective time to save two minutes at the cost of triple the money? (Um, especially when there's a solid chance the average person is likely to waste those minutes many times over by watching TV or obsessively checking email?)

Why do I bring this up? Well, the other day my wife and I were having a deep conversation on the value proposition of various types of oats (hey, the fun never stops here at Casual Kitchen), and the conversation climaxed with yet another of Laura's pithy sayings:

"You know, instant oats are a metaphor for everything that's wrong with our civilization."

I think she might be right. So, I'll ask it again: Why do foods like this exist?

Here's the short answer: they exist because it's a free country. When you live in a free country, you'll find many of the foods on your grocery store shelves aren't all that tasty, healthy or even tolerable. Some of them cost appalling amounts of money and will kill you if eaten to excess. And don't try to tell me you don't have your own horrendously unhealthy food that's your guilty pleasure (mine is Cool Ranch Doritos).

The thing is, these foods don't exist to please you, they exist for the people who buy and sell them.

In a free society, neither you nor the government gets to decide what foods stores can sell. Nobody gets to tell people what they can or cannot buy. If people want to buy Fruit Roll-Ups, chlorinated pre-made mixed salads, Velveeta, Marshmallow Fluff, ranch dressing or mayonnaise, it's their right.

Yep, that brief list of vile foods I just quoted (and listed in order of increasing vileness in a subtle example of my subclinical OCD) is part and parcel of our free society. Hey, freedom ain't always pretty.

Back to oatmeal. Look, if you can get past the taste and texture, regular "old-fashioned" oatmeal is perhaps the easiest and most laughably cheap breakfast out there. I can't stand oatmeal in any form, but I make it nearly every morning for Laura. It keeps her full for hours, costs pennies, and helps manage her above-average cholesterol. Some might even consider it evidence that I'm a halfway decent husband.

But think about it: if the food industry had its wits about it, it should be charging more for regular oats. Call them "unprocessed oats," promote their all-natural taste and texture, tout the health benefits and the high fiber levels--and then charge triple the price. They could make humble oatmeal into yet another aspirational good, and millions of people would happily pay up for it!

I can hear the ad now, with a testimonial spoken by an earnest-looking, blonde, thirty-something actress: "My parents and I ate instant oats, but I think it's worth it for my family--and especially for my kids--to experience the superior taste, quality and health benefits of natural, unprocessed oats."

Sadly, this kind of marketing is also part and parcel of a free society, as are consumers who mindlessly internalize and obey said marketing. And heck, it was so easy to come up with that ad copy that it makes me wonder why I spent all those years working on Wall Street.

But here's the bottom line. Free economic systems, just like free societies, produce both traps and opportunities. Casual Kitchen readers know this. They know, for example, that there are pricing idiosyncrasies ripe for the taking throughout the food industry (a perfect example would be to eat plain oatmeal at pennies a serving while skipping the $5 box of tooth-achingly sweet cereal). CK readers also know that instant oats are just another hilarious example of a second-order food, with extra branding and processing costs that they do not need to pay.

It can surprisingly easy to beat the free-market food industry at its own game, but you have to be awake and aware. You must keep your mind open to creative ideas and solutions, and you must avoid whining and giving your power away to the evil food industry. Remember, freedom means we are empowered to make our own choices.

Let me add a final tangent to this oddly tangent-laden post: by far the vilest breakfast food I've eaten in my life was a big bowl of Čokolino (pronounced Choh coh LEE no) that I tried in Slovenia back in 2008. The taste and texture were indescribable--the best I can say is it tasted like a foamy and slightly rancid protein shake.

Was this yet another free-market food? Another metaphor for the decline of society? Well, no, not exactly. This "food" was a relic from the former Yugoslavia, back when it was under Tito's dictatorship!

I guess Winston Churchill was right when he said democracies produce the worst food, except for all the other forms of government.

Readers, what processed foods really turn your stomach? Would you ban them (warning: trick question) if you had the power to?

Related Posts:
Why Do Products Go On Sale?
Who Really Holds the Power in Our Food Industry?
Survivor Bias: Why "Big Food" Isn't Quite As Evil As You Think It Is
Let Them Eat Cake! Thoughts About Wealth, Power and the Food Industry


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 August 27, 2010

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

PS: Follow me on Twitter!

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The fundamental hypocrisy behind the concept of "corporate social responsibility." (Food Politics). Bonus Post: The Huffington Post takes the other side.

How the diversity of products in the beverage industry is pure illusion. (Accidental Hedonist)

How to use a chef's knife with a proper claw grip. (Beyond Salmon)

17 ways to save money in the shower. (Almost Frugal)

A fascinating digital exhibit of war-era food posters. (Good-potato.com, via Freckled Citizen)

Recipe Links:
How hard can it be? Easy Roasted Lemon Potatoes. (Christie's Corner)

A delicious and impossibly easy Layered Eggplant Bake. (Thirty Bucks a Week)

An intriguing and simple Raw Spinach Bisque recipe. (The Bite Me Kitchen)

Off-Topic Links:
A powerful and deeply thought-provoking post: regrets of the dying. (Inspiration and Chai)

Some much needed common sense on global agriculture and water policy. Long, but stick with it, it's well worth it. (Greenbiz.com)

Your view of yourself is simply one perspective, and often it's an inaccurately harsh one. (Climb the Rainbow)

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!


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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 Eat More

Readers: Either you'll catch the irony in today's post, or I'm going straight to that special place in hell where they put bad writers.
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Our bodies and brains have developed a number of adaptations over the millennia that many so-called "food experts" and alleged "dietitians" claim are useless--and even dangerous--to the modern eater.

Bunk. Some of us out there want to eat as much as we can, as quickly as we can.

Listen, after age 25, the average person can look forward to gaining some 5-10 pounds of fat per decade. Why wait around? Furthermore, there are some 400 million obese people on the planet. That's an enormous market--more than two Brazils, twelve Canadas, or two hundred Slovenias. What are we food bloggers doing to help these people? Finally, somewhere out there is a young kid who dreams of being the next Takeru Kobayashi. What are we doing to help him reach his goals?

What we really need are some helpful tips and advice on how to eat as much as possible, as efficiently as possible, and with as little effort as possible. Here are seven tips you can put to use right now:

1) Avoid fruits and vegetables
Only a fool eats fruits and veggies. They're so high in fiber and water content and they require so darn much chewing that you'll never gain weight eating them. This is a complete waste of time and stomach room.

2) Trust Only the Highest of High-Fat Foods
High-fat food helps you in two ways--it's energy dense (meaning it contains a lot of calories per unit of volume), and it's highly palatable (meaning it requires very little chewing before swallowing). As a result, fat-laden food can be eaten extremely quickly, and because of its energy density, it allows you to inject calories into your body with stunning efficiency.

What are the best foods? You guessed it: second-order foods. Cookies, chips, cakes, store-bought muffins and candy bars are ideal because they enable you to wolf down hundreds of calories without a second thought. You can also include on this list almost all restaurant foods, most of which are engineered for maximum hyperpalatability by the evil and greedy restaurant industry. Heck, all it takes for any of these foods is a couple of swishes around your mouth--and then whoosh, down it goes! On to the next bite.

3) Speed is of the Essence
Remember, fullness occurs with a lag. It takes 20-30 minutes after you actually are full before your stomach breaks the news to your brain. Hence, those 20-30 minutes represent truly precious time during which you can eat relentlessly without your brain knowing what you're doing. If you work quickly, you'll be able to eat double the amount of food you actually need. Get going!

4) Make the Priming Reflex Work for You
Here's another one of humanity's supposedly "useless" reflexes: when we're in the presence of a large store of appetizing food, we become instinctively hungry, even if we've recently eaten a large meal. Just think how you can use this to your advantage--you can actually trick yourself out of feeling full!

5) Put Complete Trust in Your Appetite
Our appetites would never trick us into eating more than we should, right? Learn to ignore other cues from your body and listen solely to what your appetite tells you. When you're hungry, eat. Don't think so much about it. A second point: be sure to keep plenty of unhealthy foods in your home so you'll have something to get into when hunger hits you.

6) Eat Mindlessly
Don't pause to think carefully about the food you eat. Don't savor your food. Never pause at the table or eat slowly, bite by bite. There is simply no time for this silliness. Remember, you've only got 20-30 minutes. Before you know it, your brain is going to figure out that you're full. If you don't watch out, you'll happily push back from the table with thousands of potential calories left uneaten. You're wasting precious time!

7) Eat Still More the Next Day
Have you ever eaten a huge meal one night and been shocked when you wake up hungry the next morning? This is yet another opportunity! Go for it, take advantage of that hunger and get started eating all over again. You can do it!

After all, we should always mindlessly obey our appetites, right?

Readers, what "tips" did I miss? Share your thoughts in the comments!


Related Posts:
How to Resist Temptation and Increase Your Power Over Food
Hacking the Satiety Factor of Food: How to Feel Less Hungry on Fewer Calories
The Worst Lie of the Food Blogosphere
Trusting Your Own Taste in Wine and Food
How to Master Last-Minute Meal Preparation
Make Your Diet Into a Flexible Tool

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 Interview in the South Florida Food and Wine Blog

Just a quick update for readers: Casual Kitchen is featured in an interview at the South Florida Food and Wine Blog today!

Blogger Christine Najac reached out and asked if I'd participate, and I'm glad I did. The interview is wide-ranging, covering subjects like my best single piece of food-related advice, my most memorable blogging experience, and the seemingly small event that brought about the creation of Casual Kitchen back in 2006. I think readers--especially long time readers--will enjoy that last story in particular, because I've never really decribed in full detail how my Wall Street career went off the rails, and how that seemingly bad thing gave rise to all of the good things that flowed from starting Casual Kitchen. (One other irony--Casual Kitchen also outlived the enormous financial services firm I used to work for).

Of the relatively short list of interviews I've done over the course of my life, this one was easily the most fun and thought-provoking.

Stop over at the South Florida Food and Wine Blog and have a look--and if you're a food or wine blogger and you're interested in an interview with Christine, contact her via email or Twitter!

Related Posts:
Best Practices to Raise the Level of Discussion on Your Blog
How to Write A Killer Links Post
Ask Casual Kitchen: Advice for a New Blogger
A Reader Asks for Help

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:

Turning a Bad Recipe Into a Good One: Lime and Chipotle Shrimp (August 2007)
Some recipes look great on paper, but suck in reality. Here are tips on how we took a recipe flop from Simply Recipes, made a few key modifications, and turned it into an amazing addition to our recipe collection.

Countdown: Top Ten Low Alcohol Drinks (August 2008)
These beverages generally have 1/2 to 1/3 of the alcohol in a typical standard drink, so you can keep your head about you during a night on the town. Just like my Top Ten Alcoholic Drinks of Summer, and my Top Ten No-Alcohol Drinks, this post captures a ton of search traffic. Also, see the debate raging in the comments about the exact components of a Shandy.

The Food Spending Poll: Results and Conclusions (August 2009)
I decided to do an informal poll of Casual Kitchen readers to see how much of our disposable income we spend on food. The results were, quite frankly, a shock.

Southern Black-Eyed Pea Soup with Collards (August 2009)
I share tons of inexpensive yet healthy recipes here at Casual Kitchen, and I even coined a term, laughably cheap, to describe recipes that are so wholesome and cost so little that you can't help but laugh out loud. This recipe is one of the greatest examples of "laughably cheap" ever: a healthy, hearty stew that weighs in at a preposterous 45c-65c a serving.


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 August 20, 2010

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

PS: Follow me on Twitter!

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On Gandhi's rejection of veganism. (A Mindful Carnivore)

Are you spending more than you need to on cleaning products? (Small Notebook)

Best tips for travelling while vegetarian. (Cheap Healthy Good)

168 tips to stretch your dollar. (Beingfrugal.net)

48 things frugality has taught me. (The Simple Dollar)

A sad day for wine. (Red, Green & Blue, via @TishWine)

Recipe Links:
An addictive and easy-to-make Minty Pea Dip. (Dinner: A Love Story, via Thirty Bucks a Week)

And interesting and easy spin on the boring old chicken breast: Involtini di Pollo. (Mangiandobene)

Three exceptionally easy and delicious Homemade Salad Dressings. (Macheesmo)

Off-Topic Links:
Unsolicited book recommendation of the week: Despite all of the controversy surrounding Dr. Laura and the ignominious end of her radio show, I will say that we found one of her older books both extremely helpful and surprisingly insightful: The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands.

Twelve excellent Buddhist blogs. (Bookbird)

Journalism warning labels: (TomScott.com via @BehindTheKnife)



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!

Help support Casual Kitchen by buying Everett Bogue's exceptional book The Art of Being Minimalist. (This is an affiliate link for an e-book I strongly recommend to my readers--and if you decide to make a purchase, your purchase will help fund all of the free content here at CK!)

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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!

Who Does the Cooking In Your Home? The Results May Surprise You

Who does the bulk of the cooking in your home, and how did you decide?

Recently, I asked this question to my Twitter followers (follow me!), and I was stunned to find that in about 80% of cases women still do the vast majority of the cooking at home.

Admittedly, this was an anecdotal sample. But it turns out that most of the respondents found themselves in one of two situations: either the female partner simply enjoyed doing the cooking more (or in some cases she hated it less), or the female partner had more abilities in the kitchen when the relationship began (which says a lot about the value of feigned incompetence).

It appears as if dividing cooking responsibilities along gender lines is a more comfortable and productive arrangement for both parties.

Here at Casual Kitchen, however, I do almost all of the cooking. I suspected it was an atypical arrangement, but I never guessed it was that atypical.

And to my female readers: I wouldn't read this gender-based division of kitchen labor as proof that feminism failed. In fact, from what I've seen, men are involved in the kitchen more than ever, even if they don't prepare the majority of household meals. In quite a few cases, for example, men shared in the cooking, took responsibility for weekend meals, or were willing to take on the dreaded kitchen clean-up duties.

Phew. I don't think we're heading back to the 1700's just yet.

So, readers, here's your chance to hold forth: Who does the cooking in your home, and how did you and your significant other decide?

Related Posts:
When Do You Throw Out Food?
A Reader Asks For Help
Reader Questions and Answers on Raw Foods and My Raw Food Trial
Ask Casual Kitchen: Advice for a New Blogger

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!

Road Eats Secrets: How to Find the Best Local Food When You're On the Road

How do you find the best places to eat out when you're on the road? Today's post is an effort to share our thoughts on finding the best road foods, based on our experiences as veteran road trippers. I'll then open it up to readers to share their secrets.

Laura and I both have a long history of monster road trips. We both took cross-country trips in our early 20s (thank you, Jack Kerouac); I've repeatedly driven from New Jersey to Dallas to visit my sister and her family there; we've driven from New Jersey to Prince Edward Island, Canada (a 14-hour monster of a drive that we did in one day on our return); and we've done thousand-mile-plus road trips in both Chile and New Zealand.

And in one of our favorite vacations ever, Laura and I flew to Albuquerque, NM, rented a really cheap P.O.S. car, and put 1,200 punishing miles on it during a week of sightseeing all over the Four Corners region. That trip, by the way, single-handedly caused Alamo Rent-a-Car to ditch the slogan "All the Miles are Free."

I can therefore say--with a fair degree of authority--that finding interesting and good quality food on the road is frustrating, takes up precious travel time, and is generally more difficult than it should be.

But it makes logical sense that it would be difficult, right? If you were a local restaurant, would you be out near the interstate in a location where not a single one of your customers lives? (For the business-challenged of you out there: Um, no. You wouldn't.) And if you were a small, family-owned local restaurant, would it be likely that you could afford the cost of an enormous billboard out on the interstate to lure in drivers from out of town?

No, no and no. Billboards and easy-on/off locations are costly. Thus, they are almost always the calling cards of national restaurant chains and other high-volume restaurants. And this yields our first Road Eats Secret:

Road Eats Secret #1: If it's on a highway billboard, don't bother.

I'll take this secret one step further. The entire national highway system in the USA pretty much misdirects every honest attempt at finding good local eats. Heck, you could even argue that superhighways devastated thousands of local towns across the country. After all, communities with the "good fortune" of being located too near the highway evolved into glorified exits adorned with gas stations, fast food joints and heavy truck traffic. And those communities too far from the highway often died away, stranded from the primary tourist routes.

Look, our national highway system is in many ways the envy of the world. It makes it easy to drive and ship goods cheaply and (relatively) efficiently all over the country. However, it's also one of the all-time worst examples of the law of unintended consequences. Why? Because I can guarantee beyond a shadow of a doubt that good old President Eisenhower, when he championed the building of a massive network of interstate highways, had absolutely no idea what the word "Generica" would eventually come to mean.

All of this brings us to our second Road Eats Secret:

Road Eats Secret #2: Get off the superhighway and onto secondary roads.

Face it: the center lane of a six lane highway just isn't that great a vantage point for seeing America. Instead, get off the superhighway and get onto the secondary roads, and you'll find real restaurants in real places where real people eat--and most importantly, you'll experience the amazingly diverse range of local foods that make traveling across the USA such an unforgettable experience.

Bake in an extra hour or two to arrive at your destination, and dedicate that time to a more leisurely drive on some interesting side roads. And rather than eating at one of 15,000 identical Ruby Tuesdays or Olive Gardens, enjoy a slower meal at a locally-owned place that advertises with a tiny little sign on the side of the road. That's how to really find the wide range of foods out there in the grand old US of A.

Of course, the other key advantage of getting off the superhighways and getting down into real towns and communities across the country is this: it puts you in closer contact with local people. Which brings us to our third and most obvious Road Eats Secret:

Road Eats Secret #3: Ask a local.

The fastest way to the heart of any town's best restaurants isn't through some impersonal billboard, it's through the help of local people who actually know what's good in their community. And it may sound like a tautology, but everybody lives someplace, and therefore every place has locals. All you have to do is ask them where to eat! It really is that simple.

However, there's an important wrinkle to asking locals, which brings us to our fourth and final Road Eats Secret:

Road Eats Secret #4: Ask locals in the right way.

What exactly do I mean by asking in the right way? I'll explain with a not-so-hypothetical example: Let's say you're visiting South Texas and you're looking for a great local tex-mex joint. The thing is, you're an obvious northerner, mainly because your accent, white sneakers, fanny pack and T-shirt saying "Remember the Alamo!" collectively conspire to give you away.

Further, let's say you ask the nice young man working the front desk of your motel to suggest a good tex-mex place. This nice young man can't help but see you're from the north, and as such, he doesn't want to send you to his favorite tex-mex joint, because he's worried the food there would burn a hole through your gastrointestinal tract. This would make him feel bad, and it would mean that he wasn't performing his customer service duties to the best of his ability.

Therefore, this nice, considerate local person will recommend a joint in town that's more suitable for tourists. Sure, the food's not as spicy, and it's not a place he would go to, but hey, it's what people from "away" are more likely to want.

Here's the problem. You don't want that place. You actually want to go to the tex-mex joint that's gonna burn a hole through your GI tract. And that's why you have to word your question a bit carefully when you ask for a local restaurant recommendation. Instead of asking, "Can you recommend a good [insert name of cuisine] restaurant?" you have to ask "What is your personal favorite tex-mex restaurant in town?"

It's simple, and a touch ironic. You don't actually want what he thinks you want, you literally want what he wants for himself.

Whenever we're traveling in the southern states, for example, we always ask this question: "What's your personal favorite BBQ place that's relatively close by?" Then we ask for directions. Easy. And if we ask two or three different locals and hear the same restaurant named more than once, we know we're going to be in for a world-class meal.

We have never missed with this strategy.

Readers, what tips did I miss? What secrets do you rely on to find great local food?

I'd like to thank reader Galnoir for spurring my thinking on this post.

Oh, and one other thing: If my math is right, this is CK's 500th post. I can hardly believe it. Let me thank you, readers, for taking the time to participate in what I'm doing here. Thanks for sharing in the conversation!




Related Posts:
Ten Rules for the Modern Restaurant-Goer
A Short Guide to Common Nicaraguan Foods
Cheap Eats in Honolulu: Nine Inexpensive Restaurants You Should Check Out in Waikiki
How Do You Define Truly Great Restaurant Service?


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. PS: follow me on Twitter
!
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This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

Blueberry Coffee Cake: Nostalgia Foods (August 2007)
There's an sincere joy in eating childhood foods as an adult. Somehow, it unlocks just a little bit of that childlike happiness that we tend to lose as we get older. Here's one of my favorite childhood recipes, straight from my mother's kitchen.

Navy Bean and Kielbasa Soup (August 2008)
Right in the middle of the most humble cookbook I own was the most simple and delicious soup ever. This easy-to-make recipe costs a laughable 77c a serving.

How to Make Creole-Style Coffee (August 2009)
Use the rich, smoky sweetness of a secret ingredient to turn your regular cup of morning java into something truly special.

Let That Other Guy Pay! Saving Money in Two-Sided Markets (August 2009)
The "two-sided market" is a peculiar feature of the modern consumer-driven economy, and it offers unexpected opportunities for savvy consumers to save boatloads of money. Read this post to see what I mean. (And speaking of two-sided, that pretty much described readers' reactions to this post too: some though it was too eggheaded, others found it fascinating. You just can't please 'em all.)

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 August 13, 2010

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

PS: Follow me on Twitter!

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When you modify someone else's recipe, at what point does it actually become yours? (Will Write for Food)

A brilliant essay on Nutritionism, a word that describes how consumers can be fooled into believing that processed foods are healthier than they are--just because food companies add nutrients back to them. (Cheap Healthy Good)

An interesting discussion on the definition of "public health." See also the first 10 or so comments before the debate gets off-track. (Food Politics)

Is it really worth it to pay up for expensive EVOO? (stonesoup)

Scientific studies will never be able to tell you which diet is best. This is why. (The Last Psychiatrist)

Recipe Links:
Delicious, savory and quick: Corn and Basil Cakes. (Cook, Pray, Love) Bonus Recipe: Hilariously easy Five Minute Indian-Syle Cabbage.

Yessss! Grilled Citrus Tequila Shrimp. (White On Rice Couple)

A delicous and easy make-ahead appetizer: Chinese Salt and Pepper Tofu. (Veggie Belly)

Off-Topic Links:
This week's unsolicited book recommendation: Getting Back to Even by Jim Cramer. This book contains extraordinarily useful content. See in particular Chapters 7 and 8, which explain various low-risk investing strategies using stock options. For intermediate-level investors.

A useful list of do's and don'ts for making good conversation. Be sure to read the comments. (Ben Casnocha's Blog)




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!

Help support Casual Kitchen by buying Everett Bogue's exceptional book The Art of Being Minimalist. (This is an affiliate link for an e-book I strongly recommend to my readers--and if you decide to make a purchase, your purchase will help fund all of the free content here at CK!)

SponsoredTweets referral badge

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!

Yes-Butting and You: Answers and Final Thoughts

If you haven't read Part 1 of this series, be sure to do so before continuing with today's post.
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In the other day's post I shared a particularly dangerous variation of the yes, but conversation script that I call the yes, but by proxy script. Today, we're going to dive into what actually happens behind the scenes in this soul-sucking conversation vortex.

First, let's quickly review the script. Be as objective as you can while re-reading each of White's responses (and remember, don't get sucked into the vortex!):

Yes, But By Proxy:
White [whining slightly]: Healthy food is too expensive.
Black: You could try eating more lentils, or potatoes. They're extremely healthy foods and practically free.
W: Yes, but there are lots of poor people living in food deserts in the inner city who don't have the resources to take advantage of foods like lentils.
B: You can find lentils almost everywhere, even in the inner city. And they are so inexpensive! You can buy a pound for like $1.50 and eat them for days.
W: Oh sure, your solutions are great for you. But people who don't know how to cook, and people who don't have all the knowledge that you have, can't just "whip up" a batch of lentils.
B: You'd be surprised how laughably easy it is to boil up a batch of lentils. Seriously, anybody can do it.
W: Look, people working multiple jobs just to keep their bills paid just don't have the time to cook like that.
B: Okay. But there are lots of other foods which even easier to cook and are also inexpensive: potatoes, beans, carrots, celery, leafy greens like collards and swiss chard--
W [Interrupts]: Sure, easy for you, but people who live 15-20 miles away from the nearest Whole Foods can't take advantage of these foods the way you can.
B: Uh, wait, if you want to cook healthy food for less money, living 15-20 miles from a Whole Foods is an advantage, not a disadvantage--
W [Interrupts again]: Whatever. But just because you can eat healthy for less doesn't mean we all can.


First, an observation. White's responses all have one thing in common--they all discuss hypothetical people: a hypothetical person living in a food desert, a hypothetical person who doesn't know how to cook, a hypothetical person working multiple jobs, a hypothetical person who lives 15-20 miles from the nearest Whole Foods. And so on. Each of these hypothetical people has a hypothetically insurmountable obstacle preventing them from considering each of Black's suggestions. Convenient, right?

Which brings us to the fundamental problem with White's responses--and yours too, if you ever play White's role in a yes, but script: None of these hypothetical people is you. Yet people use the existence of this hypothetical person as an excuse for not taking action.

Sure, it's entirely plausible that a person working multiple jobs might have a hard time with some of the above solutions for finding healthy, inexpensive food. But why would you invoke a hypothetical third party with these hypothetical problems as a reason for you not to embrace a possible solution?

Ah, here we go again: White isn't trying to solve his own problem, he's seeking validation. For whatever reason, Black's ideas are a threat to White's ego. And since White has run out of reasons why he himself shouldn't embrace these solutions, he resorts to employing someone else in the conversation, someone projected from his own mind. And conveniently, that someone has hypothetical disadvantages that are insurmountable:

Well, that guy over there doesn't have an internet connection, he can't read, he lives in a food desert, and he works ten jobs. There. Beat that. I win. Lentils suck.

A brief sidebar: It should be obvious to any thoughtful reader (especially those readers who actually read posts in their entirety before commenting), that I'm in no way denying that there are people out there who live in food deserts, or work multiple jobs, or don't know how to cook, or live in poverty, etc. And it's pretty certain that there are millions of people out there (including me, actually) who live 15-20 miles from the nearest Whole Foods.

Look, disadvantaged people do exist, and in no way do I intend to commit the singularly insensitive act of pretending this isn't true.

But here's the critical point: why make a false conclusion for yourself using a hypothetical disadvantaged person? I can't imagine anything more defeatist than to create a straw man with hypothetically insurmountable disadvantages as a reason for you not to consider your own possible solutions.

Moreover, it's hard to think of anything more condescending than to blithely assume that someone else can't surmount a disadvantage just because you imagine it to be insurmountable for them. For one thing, "disadvantaged" people may not be as helpless as you presume. Read some of the comments on various posts here at Casual Kitchen and you'll be shocked at how readers have surmounted all sorts of problems, setbacks and economic handicaps in their efforts to eat well for less. And yes, this includes most of the types of hypothetically insurmountable disadvantages White lists above.

But here's the thing: the hypothetical failures of these hypothetically disadvantaged people are the ultimate secret behind White's success in this conversation. By shifting the debate from his own excuses to the imagined excuses of a hypothetical, third-party proxy participant in the conversation (again, this is why I call this conversation script yes-but by proxy), he gets to bring an ally into the debate.

It's kind of like bringing an imaginary friend into an argument--but you get to pretend he's real.

Voila: White instantly captures the moral high ground, he achieves ego validation, and he has a bulletproof excuse that allows him to avoid taking action. Best of all, he wins the debate.

Furthermore, White can also attack Black by saying that by offering all of these so-called solutions (that are easy for him because he's so privileged, of course), he's being presumptuous, pretentious and/or ignorant of the condition of disadvantaged people.

Poor Black. He thought he was just sharing a few helpful ideas. Now he's a bad person.

Brilliant isn't it? And utterly ironic, because White is actually showing far more profound condescension to the poor and disadvantaged than Black.

How? In two ways:

1) By automatically presuming that disadvantaged people are too incompetent to take advantage of any solutions that might work for them, and

2) By rejecting legitimate ideas for himself, when he could use his decisions and purchasing dollars to help drive the food industry in the right direction.

By his inaction, White actually hurts the very people for whom he claims to have sympathy. Think about this the next time you're involved in either side of a yes-but by proxy conversation script.

Of course, nobody can really win this "conversation." Black was just trying to help, but he walks away wondering how he suddenly became a privileged, heartless, insensitive jerk who has no sympathy for the poor and disadvantaged.

White may have a wonderfully validated ego, but he unknowingly uses the hypothetical excuses of a hypothetical person to justify taking no action to improve his situation.

Everybody loses. Nothing gets solved.

Why am I talking about this? Because nearly every time I read (or write) an article on how to eat healthy food for very little money, every time I read or write posts talking about how many easy, quick and laughably cheap recipes there are out there, somebody inevitably invokes the yes- but by proxy script and cites a hypothetical disadvantaged person with no cooking knowledge, living in a food desert, who's bored by lentils, who works multiple jobs, who has no time, etc., etc., etc., to try and shoot down any and every possible solution.

Look, it won't work. That person is not you.

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Postscript
This is a blog about finding solutions and solving problems, so let's spend the final words of this post discussing how to disrupt, repair and reroute a conversation that's been hijacked by a yes-but script.

First of all, how often do you recognize yourself in conversations like the one above? Have you ever found yourself disagreeing repeatedly and fiercely with someone who's just trying to offer you a few ideas and solutions? Have you ever been anti-solution in your thoughts and speech when discussing something with others? You owe it to yourself, and everyone around you, to stop and ask yourself why.

Unfortunately, once in the middle of an increasingly heated conversation, it's nearly impossible for people in White's role to step outside their egos and recognize the fundamental corrosiveness of what they're doing.

Therefore, the vast majority of the responsibility for stopping this conversation script lies in Black's hands. It's Black's job, once he hears the second or third "yes-but," to disrupt the script. Stop offering suggestions--just stop--and instead, validate the person by saying back to them a rephrased version of what they just said to you. A couple of examples:

So you think potatoes are boring huh?
So what I'm hearing is you have concerns for people who live far from Whole Foods.


Another possible solution (courtesy of commenter Little Les in yesterday's post): Black can take the initiative and reframe the conversation from the beginning by saying something along the lines of Yes, it can be expensive, but I know how to cook healthfully for very little money, would you like some tips?

These are both examples of pre-emptive validation (for lack of a better term), and in both cases they reduce the potential threat level (in White's mind, that is) of the conversation.

And then shut up. Let your act of validation--and your silence--disrupt the yes-but script. Watch what happens next.

It's up to us to try to help our friends, family and readers avoid indulging in repeated, robotic excuse-making. Take action.


Related Posts:
How to Give Away Your Power By Being a Biased Consumer
Ten Tips on How to Cut Your Food Budget Using the 80/20 Rule
A Recession-Proof Guide to Saving Money on Food
Death of a Soda Tax


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!

The Worst "Yes, But" of All

Last week, we talked about the pernicious defeatism of the yes, but conversation script.

In today's post we're going to discuss a different and slightly twisted version of the yes-but script. And the reason I want to go over this particular conversation script is for one reason: This specific yes-but script prevents more people from embracing healthy and affordable food solutions than any other single cause.

Learn to recognize this conversation script. Know it. And the next time you hear a friend, acquaintance or family member start to play this script, pull them out of the vortex.

I call this conversation script type yes, but by proxy, and I'll give an example below, using the exact same conversation starting point that I used in my last post. See if you can spot the psychological implications behind White's responses, and watch what happens as the conversation quickly goes off the rails:

Yes, But By Proxy:
White [whining slightly]: Healthy food is too expensive.
Black: You could try eating more lentils, or potatoes. They're extremely healthy foods and practically free.
W: Yes, but there are lots of poor people living in food deserts in the inner city who don't have the resources to take advantage of foods like lentils.
B: You can find lentils almost everywhere, even in the inner city. And they are so inexpensive! You can buy a pound for like $1.50 and eat them for days.
W: Oh sure, your solutions are great for you. But people who don't know how to cook, and people who don't have all the knowledge that you have, can't just "whip up" a batch of lentils.
B: You'd be surprised how laughably easy it is to boil up a batch of lentils. Seriously, anybody can do it.
W: Look, people working multiple jobs just to keep their bills paid just don't have the time to cook like that.
B: Okay. But there are lots of other foods which even easier to cook and are also inexpensive: potatoes, beans, carrots, celery, leafy greens like collards and swiss chard--
W [Interrupts]: Sure, easy for you, but people who live 15-20 miles away from the nearest Whole Foods can't take advantage of these foods the way you can.
B: Uh, wait, if you want to cook healthy food for less money, living 15-20 miles from a Whole Foods is an advantage, not a disadvantage--
W [Interrupts again]: Whatever. But just because you can eat healthy for less doesn't mean we all can.


Just like the sample conversation from my last post, you might think this conversation seems contrived and unrealistic. Nobody would be so ridiculous as to repeatedly fire off comments like the answers from White, right?

Uh, think again. In fact, the last three responses from White are actual statements someone wrote in another blog in response to my post The "It's Too Expensive to Eat Healthy Food" Debate. Go ahead, see for yourself. Sadly, this "made-up" conversation is all too real.

Okay. It goes without saying that White is being defeatist, and even a bit ridiculous. But there's a deeper problem with each one of White's statements that makes his position totally indefensible. Can anyone see what it is?

Readers, share your thoughts in the comments section, and I'll come back tomorrow with a follow-up post that discusses the answer.

Related Posts:
A Reader Asks for Help
The Worst Lie of the Food Blogosphere
The 25 Best Laughably Cheap Recipes at Casual Kitchen
Spreading the New Frugality: A Manifesto

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:

Cajun Meatloaf (August 2007)
Sure, meatloaf might be the most derided food in all of midwestern American cuisine. But once you try this recipe, adapted from my all-time favorite Cajun-Creole cookbook, you'll look at meatloaf in a whole new way. Possibly the single least healthy recipe in all of CK's Recipe Index, but also one of the most profoundly delicious.

Doing Your Favorite Thing: How to Spend Exactly the Right Amount of Money For an Important Celebration (August 2008)
When celebrating significant achievements and events in life, have you ever noticed how there's often a shockingly low correlation between what you spend on the celebration and what value you get from the celebration? One of my early efforts at exploring frugality and mindful consumption.

Sauteed Penne with Broccoli and Chickpeas (August 2008)
This is a quick, delicious and healthy meal, perfect for an evening when you don't have a lot of time to cook. And with a bit of practice you make it in under 20 minutes.

Spreading the New Frugality: A Manifesto (August 2009)
If there was ever a time for the frugal lifestyle to go viral, with all of the financial and environmental side benefits that accrue with it, it's right now. It could make an enormous difference across the whole of our society.

A Question of Food Quality (August 2009)
When I wrote my highly controversial post Guess What? We Spend Less Then Ever on Food, one reader wondered if the quality of food today is meaningfully worse than the quality of the food in our grandparents' era. Here's how I tackled the question.



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 August 6, 2010

Here's yet another selection of 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 good friend of mine just closed his restaurant, Bellavitae, in New York City. Here's why. (Bellavitae Blog)

Eat appropriately for the type of workout you're doing. (Physical Gateway)

Seven excuses keeping us overweight. (344 Pounds)

The present moment is all that matters when you're appreciating wine. (1WineDude)

Recipe Links:
Delicious, easy and detoxifying: Simple Broccoli Soup with Smoked Paprika. (A Mingling of Tastes)

Laughably easy Beer Batter Shrimp. (Aaplemint) Bonus Recipe: Tropical Pineapple Fried Rice.

A great way to enjoy fresh, in-season corn: Grilled Corn and Pineapple Salsa. (Dad Cooks Dinner)

Off-Topic Links:
It's clear that humans are terrible at dealing with unknown outcomes, but the biggest problem is that we actually think we’re good at it. (Behavior Gap) Bonus post: The dumbest question in the investing world.

How do you decide when it's the appropriate time to go to the doctor? (The Simple Dollar)

Excellent ideas and insights on making a living as a writer. (Literary MacGregor via @elizabethscraig)

How to give a competent and effective man hug. (Wehr in the World)


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!

Help support Casual Kitchen by buying Everett Bogue's exceptional book The Art of Being Minimalist. (This is an affiliate link for an e-book I strongly recommend to my readers--and if you decide to make a purchase, your purchase will help fund all of the free content here at CK!)

SponsoredTweets referral badge

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!

Avoiding the "Yes, But" Vortex

For attention-span challenged readers: today's post is a relatively long 900 words, and it goes beyond food into psychology, conversation scripts and victimhood. Just a friendly warning.
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There are plenty of people out there who have a real knack for whining and complaining--about food prices, about how much time it takes to cook, about big food and so on.

Of course, long time readers know exactly how Casual Kitchen feels about whining and complaining: It isn't allowed. Instead, I ask my readers to seek out solutions and take action.

However, there's a special, nearly irresistible "complaint script" that I'm seeing crop up lately in other food blogs and in interactions among commenters here and elsewhere. I want CK readers to be able to recognize this complaint script--and more importantly, not get sucked into it.

This script was first identified by the psychiatrist Eric Berne in his popular and controversial book Games People Play. Here's a standard example, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Why Don't You/Yes But:

White: I wish I could lose some weight.
Black: Why don't you join a gym?
W: Yes, but I can't afford the payments for a gym.
B: Why don't you speed walk around your block after you get home from work?
W: Yes, but I don't dare walk alone in my neighborhood after dark.
B: Why don't you take the stairs at work instead of the elevator?
W: Yes, but after my knee surgery, it hurts too much to walk that many flights of stairs.
B: Why don't you change your diet?
W: Yes, but my stomach is sensitive and I can tolerate only certain foods.


And so on. This conversation script goes on and on until Black gives up in frustration and White triumphs, having proven that his problem cannot be solved.

Why am I talking about this? What role could this bizarre conversation script have in a cooking blog?

Because this script, in all of its negative, soul-sucking glory, shows up surprisingly often in some of the conversations we have right here at Casual Kitchen. Let's look at another imaginary example, one that I suspect might sound rather familiar to long-time Casual Kitchen readers:

White: [in a whining and defeatist voice] Healthy food is too expensive.
Black: You could try eating more lentils, or potatoes. They're extremely healthy foods and practically free.
W: Yes, but nobody wants to eat lentils.
Nobody wants to live like that.
B: Well, what about potatoes? They are really healthy!
W: Yes, but potatoes are boring.
B: Well, there are lots of different recipes containing potatoes. Look--here's a recipe for scalloped potatoes!
W: Forget it, there's no way I'm going to turn on the oven in my apartment in the summer.
B: Well, wait--this recipe is for scalloped potatoes on a stovetop... it only takes like 20 minutes!
W: [Pauses, thinks] Yes, but do you really think I'm going to slice all those potatoes? I'll go crazy!


Sigh... and so on.

In this case, White subverts a truth (that healthy and inexpensive foods might actually exist) by offering up "yes, but" statements on irrelevant aspects of the argument (potatoes are boring). This allows White to reject Black's entire suite of ideas, regardless of how useful, logical or compelling they are. This is ankle-biting in its worst form.

You could perhaps argue that the conversation above is an unrealistic caricature of a real conversation, but the truth is, it's not. You'd be shocked (then again, maybe you wouldn't) at how often people will go around and around and around, on progressively thinner and thinner rhetorical ice, in order to repeatedly shoot down even the most creative ideas and thoughts.

My point in sharing the conversation snippet above is simply to show how White's closed mindset, negative tone and endless yes-butting sucks the life out of both participants.... and solves nothing.

Some psychology-speak for a brief moment: Obviously, the yes, but conversation above isn't really about the cost of healthy food. That's a trap, a misdirection play. Black thinks the conversation is about healthy food, but it isn't. The conversation is really about the validation of White's feelings and ego.

Sadly, the worst irony of the standard yes-but conversation is how White remains blithely unaware that he's fiercely defending his ego at the cost of rejecting a whole range of potentially useful ideas and solutions, most of which would likely make him happier, healthier and more personally effective. You'd think at some point White would recognize that he's firing off an unending supply of excuses and rationalizations and step out of this ridiculous feedback loop. Unfortunately, his ego is too invested in being a victim of an insoluble problem.

Does this sound at all familiar? How many people would rather sit around and claim, for example, that the food industry is too powerful for the average consumer to do anything about it? That hyperpalatable foods are too irresistible? That healthy food is too hard to find at a reasonable price? That food companies are evil, or worse, are specifically plotting to make us all fat? How many us can see ourselves in the two sample conversation scripts above, wanting to lose weight or wanting to eat healthier, yet we fail to take action--and worst of all, fight off every idea or suggestion that comes our way?

Why am I writing about this? For one reason: even though the readers of Casual Kitchen are full of exceptional suggestions for even the most distraught and downtrodden readers, the bottom line is, no matter how creative, helpful and insightful your ideas are, you are simply doomed if you get caught up in this script.

Defeatism comes in many forms. Don't let yourself get sucked into this vortex.

Readers, please share your thoughts!

Update 8/11/10: There's a lot more to say about the so-called yes-but script, and I've since written two follow-up posts to this article. They address a special type of the yes-but script, one I believe that prevents more people from embracing healthy and affordable food solutions than any other single cause:

1) The Worst Yes-But of All
2)
Yes-Butting and You: Answers and Final Thoughts






Related Posts:
Why Spices Are a Complete Rip-Off and What You Can Do About It
Scarred For Life By a Food Industry Job
The Pros and Cons of Restaurant Calorie Labeling Laws
Guess What? We Spend Less Than Ever 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!