CK Friday Links--Friday December 31, 2010

Happy New Year everyone! Here's yet another selection of interesting links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts, your Viagra and your feedback.

PS: Follow me on Twitter!

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Win a free copy of Dianne Jacob's book Will Write For Food and a free seat in Monica Bhide's online food writing class! Hurry, contest ends tomorrow. (A Life of Spice)

Are you overweight because you choose to be? (344 Pounds)

You can replace 5-6 chemical cleaners in your home with these two inexpensive pantry items. (Raising Knights)

For all the urbanites out there who romanticize the idea of raising your own chickens, please read this post. (Backyard Farming)

Recipe Links:
A Brazilian Black Bean Soup recipe that's intriguing, vegan and laughably cheap. (Eats Well With Others)

Laughably easy and quick Comfort Chili. (A Sweet Life)

Disappearing Chocolate Chip & Peanut Butter Puffy Rice Treats. (Shoots & Roots)

Off-Topic Links: (Note: Astute readers might detect a theme in today's off-topic links...)
How a minimalist hunts zombies. (Far Beyond the Stars)

The only thing you can change. (mnmlist)

What happens when a minimalist wears the exact same outfit to the office every day for seven weeks straight? Surprisingly, not much. (Castles In the Air)



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 Jules Clancy's exceptional new e-cookbook 5 Ingredients, 10 Minutes (see my rabidly positive review here). Or, support CK by buying Everett Bogue's revolutionary book The Art of Being Minimalist. (These are both affiliate links, so if you decide to make a purchase, you'll 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!

A Thank You To Readers, And the Best of Casual Kitchen 2010

2010 was another great year for Casual Kitchen: I published about 85 articles this year, more than 50 weekly Friday Links posts, and I had quite a few guest posts published at various other sites: notably, at Cheap Healthy Good (where, amusingly, a couple of commenters called me "simplistic and naive"), at Eating Rules, at Fooducate (twice) and at A Sweet Life.

And you, my dear readers, responded with record pageviews and a record number of amazing and insightful comments. Casual Kitchen had some 350,000 pageviews this year, and I'm grateful for your attention and participation. Without you, there's no point to Casual Kitchen even existing.

I know I've said this before (uh, like a year ago at this same time), but it bears repeating: 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'm deeply grateful to have some of the most insightful and thought-provoking readers any blogger could ever hope to have. Thank you!

With that, let me share with you my selection of the top ten articles and the top five recipes at CK during 2010. Enjoy--and if there are any posts you think I unfairly overlooked, please let me know in the comments!

1) The Do-Nothing Brand
Read this post and you'll never again think the same way about branded foods. One of CK's most controversial posts.

2) Avoiding the "Yes, But" Vortex
This post, part of a three-part series on the psychology of food, might very well be the most important thing I've ever written here at CK. Be sure not to miss the follow up posts as well as the great back-and-forth discussions in the comments.

3) How to Feel Less Hungry on Fewer Calories: Hacking the Satiety Factor of Food
Most of us are aware of the connection between how filling a food is and how many calories it has, but that relationship isn't quite as simple as it seems. In this post I'll teach you how to help your body and subvert your appetite by hacking your food's "satiety factor."

4) The Worst Lie of the Food Blogosphere
I made more enemies with this post then any post in CK's history. But I strongly believe that when we whine and complain about the evils of Big Food, we simply give our power away to the food industry. That stops here and now.

5) Weight Is Just a Number
Your body weight is the answer to the wrong question. There are several better and more meaningful metrics you can use to measure your body's health and fitness.

6) Meat Versus Miles: Why Less Meat is Better Than Going Local
The conclusions here were controversial, but once you think through both the math and the economics you'll have no choice but to rethink the value of a high-meat diet. Quite a few militant locavores were infuriated by this post, which was based on data from the excellent book Cooking Green.

7) Trusting Your Own Taste in Wine and Food
Enslaving your preferences to others is the polar opposite of consumer empowerment, and it's contrary to everything Casual Kitchen is all about. Don't pattern or reframe your taste preferences based on what some stupid "expert" says. Think and choose for yourself, and you'll be happier with the results.

8) Why Do Products Go On Sale?
This post was the sleeper hit of the year. It started with a seemingly simple question from a reader, and it led to a post explaining how consumers can take advantage of the natural rhythm of the retail industry. Ultimately, however, this question inspired me to write an entire series on the consumer products industry, and my multi-part Understanding the Consumer Products Industry series is still in progress!

9) Knowing When Not To Be a Food Snob
Normally this blog doesn't go out of its way to criticize food writers, especially well-known and well-liked ones. But the behavior of Michael Ruhlman and his friends at a midwestern restaurant was such a monumentally offensive example of arrogant cultural snobbery that I had to write this post in response.

10) On the Earthquake in Santiago
Earlier this year Laura and I spent nearly four months reincarnating our Spanish in the amazing city of Santiago, Chile. We also had the singular fortune of experiencing Chile's enormous 8.8 earthquake while we were there--and this popular off-topic post describes our experiences. (See also my follow-up post on the inaccurate and deeply misleading media coverage of the quake, which ultimately inspired an entire series of posts on the media that I'll be running in 2011 on my writing blog, Quick Writing Tips.)

Honorable Mention:
On the Benefits of Being a Part-Time Vegetarian
Breaking Your Own Frugality Rules
Why Davis Baking Powder Put in a 23% Stealth Price Hike
Best Practices to Raise the Level of Discussion on Your Blog

Top Five Recipes of 2010:

1) Roasted Zucchini and Chickpea Soup -- In my humble opinion, this was the runaway best recipe of the year. This elegant and easy-to-make soup tastes absolutely incredible and costs a mere 99c a serving!

2) Vegan Potato Peanut Curry -- Simple, exotic-tasting and extremely popular among readers. One of cheapest and easiest recipes in Casual Kitchen's history.

3) Indian Mung Bean Stir Fry -- Don't let the unusual main ingredient, sprouted mung beans, scare you away from this amazingly healthy and laughably cheap recipe. PS: this post will also teach you how to sprout your own mung beans at home--it's way easier than you'd think.

4) Hamburger Corn Pone Pie -- The most popular recipe of the year, and a Koontz family favorite.

5) North African Lemon Chicken -- Oddly enough, this delicious dish was inspired by a badly written recipe in a badly written cooking magazine that I happened to find--in all places--at my dentist's office. The fact that it went on to be one of CK's most trafficked recipes of 2010 proves that good cooking inspiration can be found literally anywhere.



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:

Eight Tips to Make Cooking At Home Laughably Cheap (December 2006)
This post was inspired by a know-it-all friend from Manhattan who claimed it was cheaper to eat out than to cook at home. Fool. I later created the meme Laughably Cheap and a ton of laughably cheap recipes to go with it, and well, the rest is history.

Wintry Tomato Vegetable Soup (December 2007)
This easy and inexpensive soup recipe has been a long-time favorite here at CK, and it's an absolutely perfect meal for a freezing winter day.

Capitalize on Your Cooking Core Competencies (December 2007)
Turn your household into a well-oiled cooking machine with the tips in this post--the final installment in my series on How to Team Up in the Kitchen.

Blog Improvement 101 Links (December 2008)
What are your plans to make your blog even better in the coming year? I put together this list of the ten best articles on blogging from 2008, and I'm still referring to each of them in my efforts to improve Casual Kitchen. These articles are as useful today as ever.

A Short Guide to Common Nicaraguan Foods (December 2009)
Laura and I spent a week in Nicaragua last year (we were there with a team of eye doctors giving free eye exams), and we simply fell in love with this country and its delicious and unpretentious foods. This post gets a surprising amount of search traffic--and a ton of comment spam from people selling Costa Rican real estate. Go figure.

How to Use Food and Wine Jargon Without Sounding Pretentious (December 2009)
I learned two important things after writing this post: First, the people who really should read it most likely won't. Second, never create "composite characters" made up of people from your old career. I had three separate colleagues from my former Wall Street days ask me if this post was about them.


Help support Casual Kitchen by buying Jules Clancy's exceptional new e-cookbook 5 Ingredients, 10 Minutes (see my rabidly positive review here). Or, support CK by buying Everett Bogue's revolutionary book The Art of Being Minimalist. (These are both affiliate links, so if you decide to make a purchase, you'll help fund all of the free content here at CK!)


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 24, 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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It turns out the food industry is only making us half as sick as we thought. (Food Politics)

Five reasons to eat more fermented foods. (A Nutritious Palate)

Eleven things a food blogger doesn't need in 2011. (Cream Puffs in Venice)

More than 20 creative ideas for what to do with boring old canned tuna. (Cheap Healthy Good)

A blogger risks destroying the universe by cooking offal in a sous vide of 4Loko. Hilarious. (Salty Seattle)

Recipe Links:
Easy, and perfect for a cold winter day: Corn and Leek Chowder. (Cafe Johnsonia)

A healthy and nutritious recipe you can make in under 20 minutes: Indian Spicy Cabbage and Peas. (Chow and Chatter)

Seasonal, intriguing and incredibly easy to make: Smoky Sweet Potato Soup. (Eating Appalachia)

Off-Topic Links:
How to ask for stuff--and get yes for an answer. (White Hot Truth)

Be ready the next time someone tries to "kafkatrap" you. (Armed and Dangerous)

Using mind control with difficult people. (The Change 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 Jules Clancy's exceptional new e-cookbook 5 Ingredients, 10 Minutes (see my rabidly positive review here). Or, support CK by buying Everett Bogue's revolutionary book The Art of Being Minimalist. (These are both affiliate links, so if you decide to make a purchase, you'll 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!

Share Your Best Post of 2010!

Did you write a post or an article for your blog during the past year that you're particularly proud of? One that you'd like to put in front of a wider audience?

Then share it this week with the other readers here at Casual Kitchen!

One of my goals here at CK is to help match up my amazing readers with the many exceptional bloggers and thinkers out there--especially those who ought to be more widely read. It's the reason I created my Friday Links posts, and it's a key reason why I use Twitter. It's also my way of paying it forward to other writers.

Therefore, today I'd like to give the floor to you, dear readers, and give you a chance to use Casual Kitchen to get the word out on your best work from the past year. It's my way of thanking you for your incredible support.

And so, if you have a post you consider among your best of 2010, share it in the comments! It can be your most popular recipe from the year, a great piece of food writing, or even something from outside of the world of food blogs. (And if you're one of the rare bloggers who's too shy to share your own work, feel free to pay it forward and nominate a great post from someone else's blog.)

Here's all you have to do: paste a link to your best post from 2010 in the comments section below, and add an explanatory sentence or two on what your post is about. That's it!

Finally, as Casual Kitchen's fourth (!) year draws to a close, let me take a moment to thank you, my incredible readers, for all your support. The audience here at CK is bigger than ever (we're at 40,000 pageviews a month and over 1,200 RSS feed subscribers--and still growing!). I know I say this often, but it bears repeating: I'm deeply grateful.

So tell me--what would you like to share?

Here's to still more great writing from all of us in 2011!


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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Readers, if you'd like to support Casual Kitchen, please consider doing so by using Amazon.com via any of the affiliate links here CK. It's perhaps the easiest way to support your favorite blogs--every purchase you make pays a modest commission to Casual Kitchen, and there is absolutely no extra cost to you. Thank you!

This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

Mastering Kitchen Setup Costs (December 2006)
You'll want to be careful managing both the cost and the quality of the items you buy when you first set up a kitchen. Otherwise, you could suck all the fun out of cooking for years. This post (which was CK's very first high-traffic article by the way) contains all the advice you'll need to build a well-stocked kitchen at a reasonable cost.

Three Strategies to Create Space in Your Kitchen (December 2007)
Do you have a tiny kitchen? Are you and your family members climbing all over each other rather than cooking? If so, then this post is for you.

How to Divide and Conquer Your Cooking Labors (December 2007)
Make cooking with your family members a breeze with these tips and hints on dividing up cooking tasks and workflow.

Pernil: Puerto Rican-Style Roast Pork Shoulder (December 2008)
I'm not kidding when I say that this was one of the best Christmas meals I've ever had in my life. And it's hilariously easy to make.

Mint Melts: Teaching Kids to Cook With an Easy Cookie Recipe (December 2008)
I know, I know--cookies aren't all that healthy. But they are an ideal teaching tool to get your kids interested in cooking. Here's how.

Cheap Eats in Honolulu: Nine Inexpensive Restaurants You Should Check Out in Waikiki (December 2009)
Believe it or not, you can find surprisingly inexpensive restaurant meals in one of the United States' most expensive vacation spots. These nine restaurants are by far the best and cheapest restaurants in the Waikiki district of Honolulu.


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 17, 2010

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

PS: Follow me on Twitter!

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Is food blogging too much work? (Will Write For Food)

Why we should just dump our national dietary guidelines. (Stuffed Nation)

Creating healthy holiday traditions. (Freaking Fitness)

Yet another formerly militant vegan justifies her switch back to meat in a wide-ranging blog interview. (Let Them Eat Meat)

Recipe Links:
The best cookie you'll eat this holiday season: Lime Meltaways. (Closet Cooking)

How to make Lassi, India's favorite drink. (Aapplemint)

Possibly the easiest recipe of the year: Slow Cooker Mexican Beans. (Cheap Healthy Good)

Off-Topic Links:
What is nonviolent communication? (Rhiannon Laurie)

Brilliant and strikingly concise thoughts on the nature of education and learning. (Ombailamos)

How to slash your writing time in half. (Write to Done)

On radically rethinking holiday gift-giving. (Zen Habits, via 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!


Help support Casual Kitchen by buying Jules Clancy's exceptional new e-cookbook 5 Ingredients, 10 Minutes (see my rabidly positive review here). Or, support CK by buying Everett Bogue's revolutionary book The Art of Being Minimalist. (These are both affiliate links, so if you decide to make a purchase, you'll 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!

Eight Things Frugality Taught Me

Frugality taught me:

To feign polite interest in peoples' latest gadgets.

To ignore the open-mouthed stares when I tell people I hardly ever watch TV.

To judge value based on my wants and needs, not society's.

To give many of my things away. The things collecting dust in your home could be useful to someone else.

That most people live in a state of constant fear of being different, and one result of that fear is our culture's voracious consumerism.

That many people will perceive your lifestyle choices to be a threat to their lifestyle choices, and they will project their insecurities onto you.

To accept that most people carry heavy psychological baggage about money.

That you can live on a lot less than you think--and you will actually be happier as a result.

What has frugality taught you?

This post is gratefully dedicated to Trent Hamm of The Simple Dollar.

Related Posts:
A Reader Asks for Help
Breaking Your Own Frugality Rules
Price is Just a Number
Ask Casual Kitchen: Best Investing Books
Avoiding the "Yes, But" Vortex
Ask Casual Kitchen: Do You Make Money Blogging?
Trusting Your Own Taste in Wine and Food
The Art of Being Minimalist


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 Have Your Tastes Changed Compared to Your Parents?

Years ago, my mother used to subscribe to Good Housekeeping, and one day when I was maybe eight or nine years old I remember her laughing at a joke in one of the articles. It went something like this:

You know you've had a long and successful marriage once you buy your second bottle of Tabasco.

That's just hilarious. And I'm not sure if it's funny because of how tastes have changed, or if it's funny because of how marriage has changed. Maybe both.

Of course back then the largest size bottle of Tabasco you could find was the tiny 2-ouncer, and one shake of that stuff was all people could handle. Particularly my parents, who grew up in rural Ohio eating mild, midwestern cuisine.

The irony, though, is a 2-ounce bottle of Tabasco is barely enough to make one batch of Paul Prudhomme's Cajun Meatloaf. Heck, you can buy Tabasco in 1-gallon jugs now, and Laura and I go through a 5-ounce bottle of Tabasco every month or so. (Wait--what does that say about our marriage?)

The bottom line is this: tastes change enormously from generation to generation. It certainly keeps modern cuisine interesting, doesn't it?

So, readers, here's your chance: What's different about your tastes compared to your parents--and your kids? Share your thoughts in the comments!




Related Posts:
The History of Tabasco
How to Make Your Own Tabasco Sauce
Casual Kitchen: Seven Ways to Jazz Up Your Morning Eggs

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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Readers, if you'd like to support Casual Kitchen, please consider doing so by using Amazon.com via any of the affiliate links here CK. It's perhaps the easiest way to support your favorite blogs--every purchase you make pays a modest commission to Casual Kitchen, and there is absolutely no extra cost to you. Thank you!

This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

Using Salt = Cheating (December 2006)
Salt, when overused, blinds your taste buds and covers up your food's true flavors. Here's how to de-condition your palate away from salt. With a bonus recipe for Easy Split Pea Soup.

Seven Ways to Get Faster at Cooking (December 2006)
Seven practical and specific tips that will make you into an efficient cooking machine. This was one of the first high-traffic posts in CK's history.

Shrimp in Garlic Sauce (Camarones Ajillo) (December 2007)
A spectacularly good and shockingly easy recipe from one of my all-time favorite cookbooks, Daisy Cooks. I promise it will be one of your best meals of the year.

Pasta With Roasted Red Pepper Sauce (December 2008)
It's almost unfair that a sauce this good can be this easy to make.

Survivor Bias: Why "Big Food" Isn't Quite As Evil As You Think (December 2009)
Who's really selecting the foods on our grocery store shelves? We are. That's right: fattening and unhealthy foods are on our store shelves because we put them there. Read this post to see how and why.




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 10, 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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Marion Nestle attempts to explain why greedy food companies should have their First Amendment rights taken away. (Food Politics)

What's the difference between expeller-pressed oil and solvent extracted oil? A lot, it turns out. (Fooducate) Bonus post: PowerBar Energy Bites are just another cheap processed food sold at high prices.

A Malthusian explains our "ecological plight" in six easy steps. The logic sounds air-tight... but is it? (Growth Is Madness)

Interested in learning the secrets of healthy, minimalist cooking? Jules at stonesoup has agreed to provide Casual Kitchen readers a special, buy-one-get-one-free promotion at her stonesoup virtual cooking school! (stonesoup)

Recipe Links:
A recipe Every Man Should Know: Beef and Beer Chili. (Eats Well With Others)

A lighter, healthier and more veggie-forward Chicken Cacciatore. (Clean Cuisine and More)

Split Pea Sausage Soup that you can make for five bucks. ($5 Dinners)

Off-Topic Links:
Procrastination isn't laziness, it's a failure to outsmart your future self. (You Are Not So Smart)

On long blog comments. (The Aleph Blog)

Never show your writing to your lover or your mother. (Writer Unboxed, via @elizabethscraig)



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 Jules Clancy's exceptional new e-cookbook 5 Ingredients, 10 Minutes (see my rabidly positive review here). Or, support CK by buying Everett Bogue's revolutionary book The Art of Being Minimalist. (These are both affiliate links, so if you decide to make a purchase, you'll 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!

Roasted Zucchini and Chickpea Soup

This elegant and strikingly delicious soup is like nothing I've ever tasted before. It's laughably easy to make, and at a cost of just 99c a serving, it's literally hilariously cheap.

We knew as soon as we tasted this soup that it was going to be a heavy rotation recipe in our kitchen. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

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Roasted Zucchini and Chickpea Soup
(Inspired by and modified from Bittersweet Blog)

Ingredients:
2 medium zucchini, sliced thickly and quartered
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
1 28 ounce can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
4-5 cloves garlic, unpeeled
2-3 Tablespoons olive oil
Salt and black pepper
5 cups stock or broth

Directions:
1) Spread the coarsely chopped onions, sliced/quartered zucchini, unpeeled garlic cloves and drained chickpeas onto two baking sheets (Note: for easier cleanup, you can cover the baking sheets with foil beforehand). Lightly drizzle everything with the olive oil, and then season with several dashes of salt and black pepper.

2) Place in a 400F oven for 35-40 minutes, until the vegetables are well-softened, browned in places, and beginning to blacken at the edges.


3) Let the veggies cool slightly, and then peel and mince the garlic cloves. While doing this, bring the 5 cups of stock or broth to a boil in a large stock pot. Add the minced garlic and the rest of the roasted vegetables to the pot, simmer for 5-10 minutes. Serve immediately, with optional bread or crackers.

Serves 4-5.

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Recipe Notes:
1) The total time needed to make this soup is roughly one hour, but don't let that seemingly long time commitment scare you away. After all, 35-40 minutes of that hour is unoccupied "oven-time" that you can spend doing something else. The actual active time needed to make this delicious soup is more on the order of 20-30 minutes.

2) Modification ideas: This soup is eminently modifiable, and you could make use of almost any roastable vegetable. Some ideas: carrots, mushrooms, green bell peppers, tomatoes, cauliflower--and I'm sure there are many more possibilities that you can come up with yourself. Further, if you stick to in-season veggies, you'll save even more money on the cost of this recipe.

3) Meatify! While this soup is a vegan recipe as written (assuming you use veggie stock and not meat stock as your broth of course), there's no law that prevents you from adding meat. Roast turkey or perhaps pieces of skillet-browned sausage would definitely complement this soup. Another idea: add frozen (meat or cheese) tortellini to the soup.

4) Regarding the use of homemade broth or stock: I always encourage my readers to make their own vegetable stock or meat stock, but there will on occasion be instances when you just don't have a supply handy. In a pinch, then, a simple light broth made of 5 cups of water with 2 or maybe 3 bouillon cubes will function perfectly. I recommend avoiding store-bought stock or broth, especially if it contains excess salt or other loud or superfluous flavorings. This is supposed to be a mild, subtle soup, and it should not be overwhelmed by the taste of the broth.

5) It wouldn't be a Casual Kitchen recipe if I didn't spend a moment quantifying the laughable cheapness of this dish, would it?

Chickpeas $1.48
Onions 50c
Garlic 10c
Zucchini $1.75
Spices/Oil 5c
Bouillon cubes 8c (if used)

Total: $3.96, or a laughable 99c per serving.

Related Posts:
The 25 Best Laughably Cheap Recipes at Casual Kitchen
Savory Moroccan Chickpeas
The Hummus Blogroll: 17 Easy to Make Hummus Recipes
Smoky Brazilian Black Bean Soup

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!




Why Davis Baking Powder Put in a 23% Stealth Price Hike

So they used the exact same size canister and just put less stuff in it? And charged the same price?? Buttheads!

This was Laura's reaction after I brought home a new can of Davis Baking Powder, pulled the old can out of our cupboard and set them both in front of her. Here's what she saw:


Note the discrepancy in net weight. The canister on the left contains 10 ounces, while the one on the right contains 8.1 ounces.

Ladies and gentlemen: this is a textbook stealth price hike. That vanishing 1.9 ounces may not seem like much, but if you sit down with your calculator and do the math, this equates to a twenty-three percent price increase.

That's right, twenty-three percent. I've railed against stealth price hikes before, but this is one of the biggest and hairiest ones I've seen.

Look, I come from Wall Street, so I'm the first person to raise the free-market argument that this company has the right to charge whatever it wants. Further, long-time CK readers know that if a company does something we don't like, it's pointless to whine, complain and give our power away.

This is why I write so forcefully here about how we consumers must empower ourselves, when necessary, with absolute brand disloyalty--especially when we see this kind of stealth price increase. We have an important obligation to call, write or otherwise give vociferous feedback so companies clearly understand our views.

After all, how can consumer products companies give us what we want if we won't tell them?

So I decided to walk my talk by writing a blunt and somewhat, uh, caustic email to the parent company of Davis Baking Powder, which is a family-owned, Indiana-based food products firm named Hulman & Co. And to my great shock (and to Hulman's immense credit), the company's executive director of marketing, Lori Danielson, spent half an hour on the phone with me explaining the company's decision.

I'm still not happy about this price hike, but I'm going to share with you the company's side of the argument. And I'm going to share it not only because it's only fair to hear them out, but also because it gives a fascinating sneak peak at the pricing and marketing strategies behind the products on our store shelves.

Essentially, there were two key reasons behind this price hike:

1) The company says customers wanted smaller cans of baking powder.

Based on feedback from customers, a full 10 ounces of baking powder was simply too much to use before it goes bad (according to the company, baking powder will keep for two years in an unopened can, and for just 6-8 months once opened). They consider an 8.1 ounce can to be a better fit for the average home baker's needs.

(Readers, there are two--maybe three--holes in the logic behind this "reason." If you can identify them, share in the comments).

2) Second, the company faces raw material cost increases.

I think most of us are aware, thanks to our country's horrendously misguided ethanol policy, that the price of corn has increased significantly in recent years. Furthermore, corn proliferates throughout our food chain in everything from animal feed to HFCS to corn starch. And guess what? Corn starch happens to be the single biggest ingredient in baking powder. Worse, prices have also increased for two other key baking powder inputs, sodium aluminum sulfate and monocalcium phosphate.

(It's understandable that the company would want to find a way to pass these price hikes on to their customers. Fair enough.)

This is the company's viewpoint, and on some levels, it's reasonable.

But there's one more thing that I've learned while researching this piece: The competitive landscape of the baking powder segment is about to change. And whether this is good or bad depends on whether you're a company selling baking powder--or a consumer buying it.

Until recently, the baking powder segment has been a quiet and uncompetitive little corner in our grocery stores. Hulman & Co.'s Davis and Clabber Girl brands dominate the segment, although there's some desultory competition from store brand products, as well as from Kraft, which owns the Calumet brand.

Now, however, a new player is looking to enter the marketplace, and reportedly, it's a new offering from Argo, the maker of the familiar cornstarch brand. This means consumers may soon be witness to ... a baking powder war.

(Put your investor's hat on and you can see that Hulman chose a brilliant pre-emptive pricing strategy: put in a huge stealth price hike now, and create some breathing room to offer price cuts down the road if necessary. You never know if Argo will come in and bomb pricing to gain market share--but if they do, Hulman can now respond by cutting prices from a much higher starting point. Well played.)

I'll summarize. The company feels justified making this stealth price hike--although they prefer using the more euphemistic phrase unit volume reduction. They've earned a ton of my respect for reaching out to me to explain their position. Further, they took great pains to make me understand how carefully they considered this decision and how they tried to balance the needs of their customers with the needs of their company's bottom line.

I understand the logic here, and I respect it. As I've said already, we live in a free market, and Hulman has the right to charge any price they want for their products.

But here's the thing: we consumers also exist in a free market, and we have the right not to be separated from our money, especially by stealth pricing techniques. And being an empowered consumer means we must exercise yet another of our rights: to find substitutes whenever the price of a product exceeds its value.

One final piece of disturbing news for any of you who claim Davis or any other brand of baking powder is superior: baking powder is a commodity. It is a standardized mix of four ingredients: corn starch, sodium bicarbonate (a.k.a. baking soda), sodium aluminum sulfate, and monocalcium phosphate. That's what makes your cornbread rise, people. Other than a heartwarmingly familiar label, there is little to differentiate this product from any other baking soda brand.

Punish all stealth price hikes. As an empowered consumer, you must let a company know, by word or by wallet, that you will not tolerate a price increase of this magnitude. Companies must compete for your hard-earned money, not take it away by stealth.

Readers, what's your reaction?


Help support Casual Kitchen by buying Jules Clancy's exceptional new e-cookbook 5 Ingredients, 10 Minutes (see my rabidly positive review here). Or, support CK by buying Everett Bogue's revolutionary book The Art of Being Minimalist. (These are both affiliate links, so if you decide to make a purchase, you'll help fund all of the free content here at CK!


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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Readers, if you'd like to support Casual Kitchen, please consider doing so by using Amazon.com via any of the affiliate links here at CK. It's perhaps the easiest way to support your favorite blogs--every purchase you make pays a modest commission to Casual Kitchen, and there is absolutely no extra cost to you. Thank you!

This Week in History at Casual Kitchen:

How to Whine About "Big Food" (December 2009)
Quite a few readers missed the point of this post and took my ironic tone entirely literally. Ultimately, however, it went on to become extremely widely-read, and the first of several articles written at CK on the theme of consumer empowerment.

Spicy Sauteed Beets (December 2009)
You can get this recipe on the table in just 30 minutes from start to finish. This post got somewhat of a collective yawn from CK's readers when it first ran, but it's since gone on to become a highly searched-for recipe.

15 Creative Tips to Avoid Holiday Overeating (December 2008)
I went outside the box--way outside the box--to share some of my most powerful habits and tactics to help you manage your food intake during the dangerous holiday months. Warning: a few of these tips are downright weird.

How to Team Up in the Kitchen (December 2007)
When Laura and I first got together, the kitchen was the site of some of our biggest turf battles (think two Napoleons trying to work together). Eventually, however, we figured out how to collaborate as cooks, and this post, the first of a series, contains our best secrets.

Why I'm a Part-Time Vegetarian (December 2006)
My first post ever at CK, in which I haltingly outlined some of my earliest views on avoiding rigid dietary labels--and rethinking the amount of meat in the standard western diet.

Mock Wild Rice: An Insanely Easy To Make Side Dish (December 2006)
Possibly the easiest recipe in all of CK's archives, and simply delicious. An all-time favorite in our home.


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 3, 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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Before we get to the links, we have a winner for this week's cookbook giveaway--and (uh, bam!) the winner, drawn by random, is Keya, the author of the blog L.I.N.D.A., who will receive a free copy of Emeril Legasse's exceptional cookbook Emeril at the Grill: A Cookbook for All Seasons. [Please send me an email and I'll be sure to mail the book to you.] Thanks to all my readers for sharing such an exceptional collection of ideas on how to live and eat more frugally.

And now, on with this week's links!

A fascinating eight-minute TED Talks video on how pigs are used in an astonishingly wide range of products. Vegetarians, you may not want to watch. (TED Talks, via Rhiannon Laurie)

Water weight raises the price and reduces the value of second-order foods. And it fools our minds too. (Penniless Parenting, via @celestialpetuni)

Are vegans brainwashed? (Martin Striz) No, but some sure can be jerks. (The Blog of the Wandering Douche)

Possibly the most disturbingly narcissistic article on food snobs in the history of modern media. (Newsweek, via Alosha's Kitchen)

Recipe Links:
An unusual and intriguingly spiced Stormy Weather Meatloaf. (A Sweet Life)

Easy, healthy, laughably cheap--and just a little bit unusual: Penne with Beets, Beet Greens and Mushrooms. (A Mingling of Tastes)

Delectable Chocolate Walnut Tortes, baked in--believe it or not--soup cans. (A Life of Spice)

Off-Topic Links:
Unsolicited Book Recommendation of the Week: Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. This is one of the best books I've ever read on psychology--it's so good I'm in fact reading it for a second time. Gilbert's book completely changed how I think about my personal happiness. Highly recommended.

What you can learn from the regrettably named Craigslist Penis Effect. (I Will Teach You To Be Rich)

How to overcome the curse of being a writer. (C. Hope Clark)



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 Jules Clancy's exceptional new e-cookbook 5 Ingredients, 10 Minutes (see my rabidly positive review here). Or, support CK by buying Everett Bogue's revolutionary book The Art of Being Minimalist. (These are both affiliate links, so if you decide to make a purchase, you'll 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!