CK Friday Links--Friday June 29, 2012

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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That whole "peak oil" thing? You can forget all about it. (Carpe Diem).

How to cut the perfect avocado every time. (Beyond the Peel)

If you want to lose weight, should you eschew carbs? (Food Politics) No... if you want to lose weight you should read more. (Pacific Standard)

Are natural sweeteners healthier? (Dietriffic)

Recipe Links:
Easy and in season: Chickpea and Tomato Salad with Fresh Basil. (GreenLiteBites)

Gluten-free, dairy-free--and practically cost-free too! Slow Cooker Chicken and Chickpea Curry. (A Mingling of Tastes)

Save money over store-canned Black Beans by cooking and freezing your own. (A Kat's Life

Off-Topic Links:
Unsolicited book recommendation of the week: The Invisible Gorilla by Chris Chabris and Dan Simons. A brilliant book exploring the limits, illusions and paradoxes of human knowledge and cognition. A great gift idea for the know-it-all in your life.

Should rich families leave their wealth to their children? (Consumerism Commentary)

What to do when there's too much online reading. (Zen Habits)

Productive people are ruthlessly decisive when it comes to what they let grab and hold their attention. (Tara Rodden Robinson)


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




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

Two People, Fifteen Days, Thirty Meals. Thirty-Five Bucks!

The purpose of today's post is to show a practical example of how you can eat a low-cost, healthy diet over an extended period of time, without having to spend hours in the kitchen every day.

Below is a recipe list, menu list and itemized grocery list you can use to feed two people a wide range of simple, healthy dinners for fifteen days. It can easily be scaled up for larger families, or used as a template for your own collection of favorite, low-cost recipes. And this is no hypothetical menu that looks good on paper but fails miserably in practice. I actually used this exact menu, made these exact food purchases and cooked these exact recipes during an actual fifteen day period a couple of months ago. This was a real 15-day trial carried out in real life.

It's deceivingly easy to assume that eating involves unavoidable tradeoffs: Healthy food has to be expensive. Cooking at home means spending hours slaving away in the kitchen. There's not enough time or money to eat well at home.

Forget all those phony tradeoffs. This 30-meal plan proves that things can be easy: Cooking low-cost, healthy food at home can be done efficiently, with surprisingly little effort and for a tiny fraction of the cost of eating out. Keep reading to see what I mean. At the end of the post, I'll explain some of the behind-the-scenes factors that helped make this trial much easier to execute than we expected.

The bottom line is this: cooking and eating healthy, low-cost meals for weeks at a time can be done--and it doesn't have to be hard work.

Recipe List:
Garden Gumbo - 1.5 batches
Black Beans and Rice - double batch
Viennese Potato Soup - double batch
Fresh Carrot and Cabbage Curry - double batch
Chicken Mole
Easy Lentil Soup with Chicken

Grocery List:
Produce aisle:
2 Green bell peppers: $2.05
Celery, bag: $1.99
Onions, 3 lb bag: $2.99
Garlic: 50c
Carrots, 2 lb bag: $1.79
Cabbage head, ~3 lb: $2.47
Potatoes: 5 lb bag: $3.49

Canned Foods/Beans/Dried Legumes aisle:
1 14.5-oz can red beans: 67c
2 lb bag brown rice: $1.79
4 14.5-oz can black beans: $2.68
3 29-oz cans stewed tomatoes: $3.00
1 lb dried lentils: $79c

Meat aisle:
Package bacon: $3.99 (note: we used about 1/3 of the bacon)
Value-pack chicken breasts: 5 lbs: $6.91 (we used 1.5 lbs in the Chicken Mole and we added 1.5 lbs as an extra ingredient to the Lentil Soup)

Grand Total Food Cost: $35.11
Schedule of Dinners
Day 1: Garden Gumbo
Day 2: Black Beans and Rice
Day 3: Garden Gumbo
Day 4: Black Beans and Rice
Day 5: Viennese Potato Soup with Fresh Carrot and Cabbage Curry
Day 6: Garden Gumbo
Day 7: Viennese Potato Soup
Day 8: Black Beans and Rice
Day 9: Fresh Carrot and Cabbage Curry
Day 10: Chicken Mole
Day 11: Fresh Carrot and Cabbage Curry
Day 12: Chicken Mole
Day 13: Easy Lentil Soup
Day 14: Chicken Mole
Day 15: Easy Lentil Soup

A few final notes:
1) Was this your entire food expense for the full 15 days?
No. Just dinners. However, the recipes in this meal plan will also cover quite a few lunches here and there from leftovers--at zero incremental cost. Your mileage (and caloric intake) may vary.

2) No, seriously, you actually ate all this food for just $35?
Look, no way was I going to lowball my costs and then crush the dreams of an excited reader who tried this meal plan but found his costs to be way out of line with mine. Admittedly, the de minimus cost of some common pantry items (spices, olive oil, bouillon cubes, optional white rice, etc) aren't included. More importantly, however, after the trial ended, we still had 2/3 of a package of bacon, about 2 lbs of chicken, most of a bag of onions, most of a head of garlic, several carrots, most of a 5-lb bag of potatoes, 1/3 of a bag of celery and the bulk of a 2-lb bag of brown rice still sitting in our kitchen. Had I calculated the meal costs based on the actual portions of the food we used, the total cost would have been as much as $9.00 lower.

In other words, technically, I could have titled this post Two People, Fifteen Days, Thirty Meals. Twenty-Six Bucks. There are always going to be errors and variability estimating exact food costs, but I made sure my error factor would be from overestimating the costs, not lowballing them. Many readers could do this trial for much less money.

3) Why did you say that the trial was easy? How could it possibly be easy?
Mainly for one reason: we made liberal use of CK's list of Best Laughably Cheap Recipes. Further, we took advantage of the fact that nearly all of the recipes here at CK are extremely scalable, meaning they can be made in double (or even triple) batches for very little incremental work.

One more trick you can use: cook double batches of dinner on two successive nights, and then alternate the leftovers over the following days. Face it: reheating food you've already made is by light years the easiest way to get healthy food on the table. And when you alternate two sets of leftover meals, you won't get sick of eating the same damn thing every night.

You'll notice one more thing about our meal plan. There isn't that much meat in it. Surprise! You've stumbled onto one of the unsung advantages of a low-meat, part-time vegetarian diet. Nevertheless, our protein requirements were easily met with this meal plan.

Finally, this 15-day schedule could easily be repeated with two or three other mini-collections of recipes culled from CK's Best Laughably Cheap Recipes. In theory, you could create a meal template for an indefinite period of time: just rotate in a new batch of recipes every two weeks. Result? Hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year saved on your food bill.

4) I'd feel like a total loser if I had to spend this little money on my food.
Ha! I'll go you one better: I built a spreadsheet to calculate my food costs--just for this post! Set aside your ego for a moment and understand the central point: there's actually no sacrifice involved here. This trial shows that you can eat extremely well for very little money--and even less time spent cooking. Try it, see for yourself... and feel free to spend your leftover money on something else.


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!

YMOYL Chapter 6: Valuing Your Life Energy By Minimizing Spending

New readers: This is an in-depth, chapter by chapter review and analysis of the book Your Money Or Your Life. Join us! You can buy YMOYL here, and you can find the first post in the series here. Finally, if you have any questions or issues about the book you'd like to discuss or debate, share them in the comments!
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Meet your needs differently.

This is the central idea of Chapter 6 and one of the most important ideas in the entire book.

Are you the kind of person who's interested in truly creative solutions for managing your expenses? Can you determine honestly and objectively whether a purchase is a real need, or if that "need" is based on mere social conditioning or status seeking?

Can you look beyond that thing you think you want to satisfy the core need beneath that want? Do you even have to buy something to satisfy that core need? Very few of our needs are material.

Sincere YMOYL readers will systematically ask these questions about all of their expenses with one goal in mind: to get your costs down--way down--so you can accelerate your progress toward financial independence.

If at this point you're asking "How? How do I get my costs down?" that's for you to decide, and it depends on how creatively you choose to address this challenge. Are you the kind of person who demands money-saving tips to come to you, but then shoot most of them down? Or do you actively choose to seek out ideas to save money--and actually apply them? After all, tips and ideas are everywhere: the internet is filled with personal finance blogs offering advice and solutions on how to save more.

I think that might be one of the reasons the authors radically revised this chapter in the current edition. In older editions, Chapter 6 contained a huge 23-page section called "101 Sure Ways To Save Money" that was loaded with all kinds of specific money-saving tips. In the 2008 edition, they cut out that section and refocused the chapter on more thematic savings advice. After all, YMOYL is less about offering specific individualized advice and more about helping readers think differently. I'm guessing the authors would prefer to create enterprising, solution-minded readers who will seek out their own answers to getting their costs down. Teach a man to fish, in other words. It's implied that readers must seek out their own solutions for their own specific needs.

That one tip that sets you off
Of course, any list of ideas for saving money--it doesn't matter whether they're in "specific tip" form or "general theme" form--will have both hits and misses for any given reader. Some will resonate with you, some won't. Some will sound smart, some will sound stupid.

And some ideas will make some readers so angry that they'll literally give up on the book.

Laura and I have an acquaintance who literally quit reading YMOYL right here, in this chapter. Why? Because she stumbled onto a tip to cut your own hair, and for whatever reason, that tip literally set her off. She even wrote an angry email to me about it, saying she couldn't believe this book would suggest this--and no WAY was she ever, ever going to cut her own hair.

So she put the book down and stopped reading.

There are two layers of tragedy here. First (and worst) is how her reaction to a tiny and irrelevant part of the book caused her to reject the entire body of work. It shouldn't surprise readers that this acquaintance has made zero financial progress since. Which raises a personal question I'd like to ask readers: Do you really seek solutions as you work on your financial situation? Or are you waiting, just waiting, for the first sentence that pisses you off and gives you a "reason" to throw the book across the room?

The second layer of tragedy was that our acquaintance never attempted to explore her visceral reaction. Why did she put down the book? What was it about this specific tip that made her throw the baby out with the bathwater?

When you read something that makes you out-of-proportion mad (and money-related topics tend to do this to lots of us) it usually means you're scratching at some important inner truths. That trigger, that feeling, that emotion... there's almost always something there, if you're willing to explore it. There might be an insight into a problem, or a solution to a mental block, or you might have uncovered an unconscious mental script in your mind that's somehow holding you back. Dig, and find out what's going on there. I'm betting that mental script impacts other areas of your life too, and you'll be glad you uncovered it.

On impressing others: Let's spend a moment on the theme of impressing people, because it also has two layers: an obvious layer and a not-so-obvious layer.

As the book says, if you stop trying to impress other people, you will save thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars. Obvious. And yet when I look back on my Wall Street career, I can think of many, many well-educated, thoughtful and extremely bright people who spent enormous amounts of money impressing others.

Why? Well, in most cases they somehow managed to convince themselves they weren't trying to impress other people--while they bought stuff to impress other people.

Which takes us to the not-so-obvious part. Your ego will always try to convince you that you never try to impress people. After all, that's something only an insecure person would do. You (it will reassuringly tell you) being the confident and highly self-aware person that you are, would never do anything that shallow. Right? Yep, that's your ego talking.

An exceptionally self-aware Porsche owner (photo by Michael Goldsman).

Your ego, which understandably wants you to have a good self-image, will therefore work very hard to convince you that you need that gazingus pin. Or Lamborghini. Remember this the next time you try and tell yourself you're not trying to impress others.

A final word before we get to the Appendix/Side Thoughts. I'd love to hear your creative and unusual ideas to save money as you work through this book. I'm looking for all kinds of ideas, because you never know what might help--or set off!--another reader who reads this series in the future. It could be anything: how you eliminated your car and started using Zipcar, ways you've creatively reduced your housing costs, creative bartering or job-exchanging arrangements with friends or neighbors, how you rethought family entertainment, baby-sitting, or even how you started using Couchsurfing on your last vacation.

If you've got a creative idea from your life that's lowered your expenses and helped you meet your needs differently, share it in the comments!

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Appendix/Side Thoughts:
1) Finding "quick wins" for saving money: There's no reason getting your costs down has to be unnecessarily difficult, so start by looking for steps you can take quickly and efficiently. Better yet, look for steps that serve you in multiple ways. A few examples: reducing the amount of meat in your diet, and you'll improve your health and save money on food. Using an inexpensive bicycle can help you save on gas, commuting costs, gym memberships and future medical bills. Buying a smaller home will save you tens (or hey, hundreds) of thousands of dollars on mortgage costs, energy costs and taxes. And so on.

2) On insurance: I could easily write a full post on insurance, but for now, let me just make this point: As you get out of debt and on your way towards financial independence, you will find you don't need the insurance you thought you did. Once you have several thousand--or even tens of thousands--of dollars sitting in the bank, you will be able to significantly increase your deductibles on things like auto and health insurance. This saves you hundreds or even thousands of dollars of per year in insurance premiums.

You'll also increasingly realize you don't even need to insure for many types of losses. Now that you're flush with liquidity--thanks to all the money you're regularly saving--what used to be a "catastrophic" loss simply isn't that catastrophic anymore. (PS: For more on this, I recommend Charles Givens' excellent books Wealth Without Risk and More Wealth Without Risk.)

3) Apply the "wear it out" concept to big-ticket items and save boatloads of money: Wearing a shirt for 30% longer might save you a few bucks, which is nice but not meaningful. But driving a car 30% longer (or heck, 100% longer) can drive gigantic financial results. Get your big ticket decisions done right and the smaller expenses don't matter so much.

4) Impulse purchases: According to the book, half of our purchases are spur of the moment (PS: I've found this clearly holds true with grocery shopping). This is awesome, because it opens up an enormous savings opportunity: by applying just a few minor techniques to minimize impulse-related purchases, you can slash your spending in half. Believe it or not, this tip is less obvious than it sounds.

5) Cost of children: There's a consensus out there that child-rearing simply has to be insanely expensive, which is one of the reasons behind this well-known joke about kids:

Q: How much money does it take to raise children?
A: All of it.

And yet if there's one thing my years on Wall Street taught me, it's that the consensus is often wrong. Often grievously wrong. With that in mind, I found it particularly interesting to read (on page 189) about how one couple applied the Fulfillment Curve to save tons of money on gift-giving for their children. Granted, Laura and I don't have kids, so I'm clearly out of my depth here--but I'd love to hear readers' views and ideas on creative ways to save money when raising children. And don't tell me there's no solutions out there.

6) Gift-giving: One more thought on gifts: one of the greatest days of my life was when my family changed our holiday gift-giving routine from "everybody buys everybody a gift" to "we put all our names in a hat and each person draws one name."

Suddenly, Christmas became one tenth as expensive and a million times less stressful. Recently, we took it one step further and dispensed with gifts altogether. Hey, the holidays aren't about gifts--they're about getting together with loved ones. Why not focus on that? What does your family do about gift-giving during holiday time?

7) On environmental stewardship and saving money: It goes without saying that the less you can consume, the better it is for the environment. From page 193:

Anything you buy and don't use, anything you throw away, anything you consume and don't enjoy is money down the drain, wasting your life energy and wasting the finite resources of the planet.

That said, don't let your concern for the environment make you into an easy mark for marketers. Keep in mind that "green" is slowly but surely being twisted into another aspirational market segment--designed to persuade you to spend more money of course. Don't be deceived: Should I buy a new one? is the wrong question. Do I need to buy this at all? is the correct question to ask.

8) "I'm enoughing" I love this expression and I'm going to start using it. Honey, I'm not going to buy that Fabergé Egg after all. I'm enoughing.

9) Lateral Thinking: One more book recommendation: Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step by Edward De Bono. This book has heavily influenced my thinking on brainstorming, idea generation and looking at problems in different ways. Most of the ideas I've dreamed up on how to "meet my needs differently" have come from using principles in De Bono's book.


Next Week: Chapter 7: Redefining Work











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 June 22, 2012

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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Providing love, care and attention with food. (5 Second Rule)

Food stamps now represent as much as 17% of the consumer food economy. (US Food Policy) But are food stamps just another form of corporate welfare? (Appetite for Profit)

Why food always looks better in ads. (The Daily Beast)

Most wine brands are effectively interchangeable. (1 Wine Dude)

Recipe Links:
Hilariously easy Roasted Chicken Drumsticks. (Daily Improvisations)

You'll feature these in your mouth all summer long: Pickled Radishes. (Thirty Bucks a Week)

Simple, elegant, authentic: Vichyssoise. (Dragon's Kitchen)

Off-Topic Links:
Heel-strike runners, you've been doing it all wrong! By the authors of ChiRunning: A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless, Injury-Free Running. (Chi Running)

Inspiring post on setting intentions--and living them. (Owlhaven)

How basketball helped me realized I'm not white. (The Good Men Project)





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


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

How Food Blogs Disempower Their Readers

[Readers incapable of abstract thought may be excused from this post. Go directly to recess.]

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

I want Casual Kitchen readers to think in an empowered way. I want you to be confident and informed about your food choices, not fearful, doubtful or weak. Sadly, however, anyone spending even the briefest amount of time reading most food blogs--and nearly all sites about food politics--will stumble repeatedly onto passive, weakness-inducing phrases like these:

The food industry make us fat.
Greedy food companies don't care about us, they put profits ahead of people.
If you want to eat healthy, it's gonna cost you.
Big Food is in bed with Big Government and they're screwing up our food supply.


Now, these sentences may ring true to you or they may ring false. That's not my point. Instead, rather than seeing them as either fact or fiction, I'd like you to think of these statements as lenses.

A quick sidebar on what I mean by "lenses." Let's say you pick up a blue lens and look through it. No matter how hard you try, as long as you're looking through that blue lens, you simply will not be able to see the color red. You might see magenta, or some kind of purplish color, but you'll never see anything approaching a real, honest-to-goodness red.

Let's take it one step further. Let's say you're peering through that blue lens when you look at your world... but you don't actually know that you're using a blue lens. You're walking around like you're in some Bono lookalike contest, but you're completely unaware of it.

me, just before writing this post

Imagine how the world would appear to you through these lenses: people around you would talk about some color they call "red" but you won't see any evidence of it, anywhere. You just won't see it. I mean, if there were really a color red there'd be at least some proof, right? Clearly those "red-seers" must be deluded--or biased, or even crazy. They just.. they just don't get it! Can't they see? Idiots.

Perhaps it even gets to a point where you start to get offended by all those idiots who claim to see red. You actively avoid those deluded red-seers, and you begin to surround yourself with like-thinking people who, like you, simply don't see or believe in the color red. You look great in your invisible blue wraparound sunglasses, and you (and everyone you've surrounded yourself with) believe you see the world exactly as it is.

In other words, it's easy to see how using a lens like this can distort your reality--without you even knowing it.

The practice of empowerment vs. the practice of victimization
Okay. Let's give those blue lenses back to Bono and head back to the reality of our food industry.

The food industry offers many foods at extraordinarily reasonable prices, but it also offers us various traps and challenges. Sometimes, it markets aspirational food products at prices totally divorced from their value. At other times it offers simple, healthy and unprocessed food at great prices. And, yes, it offers fattening foods that are delicious, heavily processed and unhealthy when eaten to excess.

But when you think about the food industry, what kind of mental lens do you use? Do you use an empowerment-based lens, or do you use a disempowering lens? Does the lens you use help you navigate your food choices effectively?

An empowerment-minded person will use a mental lens that helps her see herself taking effective action:

1) This food is healthy, that food is not. I choose the healthy food because....
2) These healthy foods are expensive. Let me look for other less-expensive alternatives.
3) I choose not to respond to that advertisement.


All of these statements are active. All are choices. And the person who uses these statements is most likely going to have good results navigating the food industry.

Let's consider the other side of this equation: What if you were to use a victim-based lens? A victim-minded person will use a mental lens that helps him see the world acting on him. Thus he might frame up his statements this way:

1) These food companies are feeding me unhealthy food. They deliberately design these foods to be irresistible.
2) The government should get more involved in our food supply to make things more fair (
or, the opposite: The government is already too involved in our food supply, introducing unfair distortions).
3) The food industry takes advantage of people.


These statements are all passive. They are reactive, rather than active. And a person using statements like these will likely have trouble finding foods that meet his needs, because he's chosen a mental lens that makes it more difficult to do so. You could even argue (particularly in the case of the third statement) that his choice of lens not only disempowers him, it leads him to assume other people are powerless too. Be careful what you wish for.

So, which lens helps you most when you decide what to buy and what to eat? Which lens helps you help others?

Readers, one of these lenses is effective, the other is clearly not.

One final thought: Note that I haven't addressed the trueness or falseness of either group of statements. In fact, both groups of statements could be true or false. It depends on the evidence you seek out to support or debunk the statements. And the evidence you choose to seek out depends on the kind of mental lens you use to observe your world.

It's disturbingly circular, isn't it? And yet it's also deeply empowering, because once you begin to pay attention to the kind of lenses you use to look at the world, you realize that you can actually choose the lens that helps you be most effective.

So which mental lens would you rather use: the lens that lets you be acted upon, or the lens that helps you take action? The lens that assumes you have no choices, or the lens that lets you see all of your choices?

By now it should be clear that I'm talking about much more than just how consumers interact with the food industry.

We hold much more power than we think. It's just that too many of us don't know it, or wear a lens that enables us to refuse to know it. This realization is the first step towards becoming a truly conscious consumer.

Readers, please share your thoughts!


This post draws inspiration (and steals ideas) from two sources: The Art of Confident Living by Bryan Robinson, and Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina. I'm grateful to both authors.







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!

YMOYL Chapter 5: Your Wall Chart

New readers: This is an in-depth, chapter by chapter review and analysis of the book Your Money Or Your Life. Join us! You can buy YMOYL here, and you can find the first post in the series here. Finally, if you have any questions or issues about the book you'd like to discuss or debate, share them in the comments!
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Chapter 5 gives us yet another easy exercise that backdoors readers into a state of higher financial consciousness: the Wall Chart.

Or the Closet Chart, depending on how much of a financial exhibitionist you are.

The Wall Chart is just a simple, graphical representation of your financial status. And mark my words: if you maintain it religiously, it will be a representation of stunning improvement in your financial status. Just wait a couple of years. You'll see.

The thing is, a weird things happens when you maintain a Wall Chart. Your expenses just... decline. From the book:

Those who get past the three-month hump will find their expenses leveling out at about 20 percent less than where they started--painlessly. These people report no feelings of deprivation, no struggling to keep a budget, just a natural decline. Knowing that you are not getting satisfaction proportional to the expenditure of life energy in a given subcategory of spending generates an automatic, self-protective reversal of your spending habits.

When you consciously consider your spending decisions--and when you know you're going to record them on a chart--all of your pointless, valueless spending simply goes out the window. You may see occasional spikes and month-to-month noise in your spending, but the overall trend of your expenses will be in one direction. Down.

What happens next, though, is far more powerful. All of that saved money can now go towards paying down debt (which lowers your expenses still more, see below) or towards funding income-generating investments (which raises your income, enabling still more savings). We'll cover this in future chapters, but for now, just trust the process and watch it work.

Imagine if you could transport yourself two or three years into the future. Imagine if you could know now what your Wall Chart will look like then. This is why you shouldn't laugh incredulously when our authors make the following statement:

As outrageous as this may sound at the moment, you should probably allow enough space at the top [of your chart] for your income to double.

Yes, it will take time to transform your relationship with money, and it won't be easy. But it will happen. Just keep recording the information on your Wall Chart and stay patient.

Your wall chart as regular reminder, feedback system and source of inspiration: Don't underestimate the value of having your chart visible to you every day. That's why it's an effective tool. It's not like you can cover your eyes and pretend it's not there.

Once again, this is how YMOYL makes ignorance of your now-improving financial situation literally impossible. It gives you consistent feedback so you can make adjustments. You'll see the impact of your actions right there in black and white (or whatever colors you're using on your chart). And it's hard to cheat the process when you're constantly facing such a visible and tangible reminder of your current (and improving) fiscal status.

On unusual expenses: The book gives you the option to take large, one-time expenses and prorate them over the course of a year. We don't do this. When an expense occurs, we pay it and book it. We don't prorate anything. It seems like every month has an unusual expense anyway, so this is the cleanest, simplest process for us. Readers, what are your key unusual expenses and how do you account for them?

Regarding different types of income: We're building our wall chart as I write this post, and we are planning to break out our income into two categories: active income (Laura's paycheck and my writing income) and passive income (our dividend and interest income from investments). We'll go much deeper into the discussion of investment income later in YMOYL.

Revealing your wall chart to others? Readers, would you ever show your personal wall chart to others? Would you leave it on your wall where friends and neighbors could see it? Would you share it as part of a YMOYL support group? The quote from the book about "Ivy" is instructive:

Her income was just her income. She could tell it to someone as easily as she could tell someone the color of her living room couch.

I mean, can you imagine having that wall chart out in your living room the next time you have a dinner party? Laura and I--well, we just couldn't. And this is in spite of the fact that I'm relatively open and candid about money. Part of the problem is when you bring your money situation out into the open, it's not just about the baggage you have about money, it's about the baggage others have about money. Readers, where do you stand on this?

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Appendix/Side Thoughts:
1) On feelings of deprivation: Recall this quote from above:

Those who get past the three-month hump will find their expenses leveling out at about 20 percent less than where they started--painlessly. These people report no feelings of deprivation, no struggling to keep a budget, just a natural decline.

Okay. You can save 20% of your expenses at the pitifully small cost of a minute or two of observation and thought per day--and even better, you won't feel deprived. But just think for a minute. What about those feelings of deprivation you used to feel when you attempted to cut your spending in years past? Why did you experience them then--but not now? What was the basis for those feelings, really?

2) "That gap has a name. It's called savings." This quote, on the middle of page 152, literally made us laugh out loud. We live in a culture where so few people know what it's like to save money--where so few people know what savings actually is--that the authors felt it necessary to define the word for readers.

3) The value of getting out of debt and accumulating savings: One significant source of savings for many readers will be debt costs. The expense reductions you'll achieve simply by embracing YMOYL's process will free up significant cash, and you can use that cash to aggressively pay down all debts. Obviously, paying down your debts drives your costs down still further, and that merely frees up still more excess cash flow.

The critical insight here is that most people just obediently make their payments when they're told, and they have no idea how much their various debts actually cost them. If they did know, they'd instantly recognize that those debts are misaligned with their goals and principles. Do you obediently do what you're told? Or do you do what's aligned with your goals?

4) On rethinking fulfillment: Haven't you always wanted to be less materialistic? Less shallow? Less caught up in owning stuff and advertising your superiority through the things you own? Pages 143-147 contain a ton of insights on these concepts, including this gem of a quote:

Now that the link between spending money and getting fulfillment is in place, a gazingus pin no longer automatically means satisfaction--quite the opposite.

Many of us used to define "giving up your gazingus pins" as denying yourself, being cheap, or as a form of punishment for wayward financial behavior. Now you know differently: there's nothing to give up. You're actually avoiding a waste of time and life energy. After reframing gazingus pin-like purchases, it's a lot easier to realize what they really are: an exchange of future hours of work and life energy for a brief flash of faux-fulfillment now. That's a crappy trade.

Not buying a gazingus pin now becomes a source of fulfillment because you yourself have determined that gazingus pins don't bring you fulfillment.

Now, you can see more clearly how you can both increase your fulfillment and spend less money. Now, you've broken the last of your robotic consumption patterns, and your spending is now in alignment with your true goals. Congratulations.


Next Week: Chapter 6: Valuing Your Life Energy By Minimizing Spending


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 June 15, 2012

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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How to keep canning more affordable. (Owlhaven)

The consumer products industry offers us only the illusion of choice. (Imgur, via Milehimama) Extra credit for thinking readers who can poke "logic holes" in this graphic's central thesis. I see at least four.

A rundown of all the various types of whey protein, and why whey should be an important part of your workout regimen. (Bodybuilding.com)

The truth wears off. Why no scientific study should be trusted, ever. (The New Yorker)

Life is like a bundt cake pan. (Food Woolf)

Recipe Links:
Delicious and surprisingly easy: Pound Cake. (Bibberche) Bonus Post: Summer Bounty Pasta Salad.

Forget those overpriced Lara Bars. Make these healthy and inexpensive Energy Balls instead. (Stalking Sarah)

A hilariously easy Peanut Lime Dipping Sauce. Don't forget to lick the fork! (Frugal Healthy Simple)

Off-Topic Links:
No, Virginia, there is no muse. From the author of the writing guide Wired for Story. (Writer Unboxed, via Monica Bhide)

Eleven tips for surviving air travel with kids. (Frugal Mama, via Tragic Sandwich)

Why being less than perfect is okay too. (A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa)






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


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

A Monster Collection of Fresh Produce Recipes!

Without further ado, the winner of The Farmer's Kitchen giveaway is Kelli at Rancid Raves! Congratulations! I'll be reaching out to you later today to get your address.

And readers, we've got a monster collection of great fresh produce-based recipes that I've linked to and organized in today's post. I'm telling you: this is why I try to make my giveaways more than just giveaways. I want readers to get extra value while they participate, and today, we've got 25 brand new, delicious and reader-tested recipes to show for it. Enjoy!

Louisa from A Chiffonade of Parsley brought us:
1) Avocados and beets
2) Roasted vegetable sandwich
3) The best salad recipe
4) Spinach sauce for pasta
5) Brussels sprout colcannon

Jessica at Oh Cake shared:
6) Farmer's Market Pasta
7) Carrot and Walnut Risotto
8) Gluten-Free Stuffed Zucchini
9) Farmhouse Salad

K at My Old New House brought us:
10) Asparagus-barley "risotto"
11) Insanely cheap veggie soup
12) Roasted tomato pasta sauce
13) Colcannon

Kelli (our winner!) at Rancid Raves shared:
14) Pumpkin Curry
15) Black-eyed Peas with Spinach and Coconut Curry
16) Chicken Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Bake

Chacha at Ombailamos gave us:
17) Spiced Persimmon Chutney

Mary at Owlhaven shared:
18) Creole Cobb Salad
19) Strawberry Rhubarb Jam

Jen at A Kat's Life shared:
20) Oven Baked Zucchini Strips

Anthea at In the Night Kitchen brought us:
21) Rhubarb Pie

Kathy J gave us:
22) Avocado Yogurt Salad Dressing (or Dip)
23) Tomato Pie
24) Sun Gold Tomato Pasta

And last but not least! Janet C shared her:
25) Kachumber (East Indian vegetable salad) recipe

Finally, let me take a moment to thank Julia at Grow. Cook. Eat. and her co-author Brett Grohsgal for helping make this giveaway happen.





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 Make Kitchen Cleanup Laughably Easy

Cooking seems sooooo easy on TV food shows, doesn't it? Martha Stewart, Ina Garten, Emeril, choose whichever TV chef you like: they all seem to whoosh into their studio kitchens and whip up amazing meals without any stress, annoyance or effort.

Of course it's no coincidence that in the entire history of broadcasting, no TV chef has ever washed a dish.

Hmm. That's why cooking seems so easy on TV! All that annoying and time-consuming cleanup happens off-screen, after the show's over. Some intern probably does it.

Sadly, we don't have interns here at Casual Kitchen. When I cook, the person who cleans up is... me. And, as many home cooks know, cleanup can take as long as the entire cooking process itself--which means that many of those seemingly easy recipes cooked on TV actually take twice as long to make once you consider cleanup time.

Finally there's the emotional cost involved in cleaning up. It's draining enough to try out a complex new recipe for the very first time, or to host a big dinner party for a group of friends or family. But once dinner's all over, and find yourself facing down a mountain of dirty dishes, crusty pots and greasy utensils precariously piled up in every corner of your kitchen....well, I don't know about you, but that's when I usually curl into a ball on the linoleum floor, whimpering.

I can't have my readers whimpering. So in today's post I'll share with you my top tips for managing and minimizing the challenges of cleanup. And PS: if you'd like to share any additional tips with all the readers here at CK, please add your thoughts in the comments!

1) Recipe Selection
Believe it or not, you can make a big dent in the dishes before you start cooking. How? By choosing the right recipes. Recipes that involve multiple steps or separate processes typically yield many more dirty dishes, mixing bowls and additional utensils--all of which will need to be washed. In contrast, big batches of soups (see tip #3 below) or healthy, simple and laughably cheap dishes like CK's own Black Beans and Rice will leave you with very little to clean up beyond a cutting board, a knife and the dishes you use to eat.

2) Clean As You Go
Possibly the most discouraging thing in all of cooking is a gigantic mound of dirty dishes in your sink at the end of a big dinner. Readers: don't whimper on your linoleum floor like I do. Instead, wash as many of these dishes as you can while you prepare the food.

You're likely to have frequent down-time periods while preparing most recipes. Perhaps you'll find yourself waiting for water to boil, waiting for an oven to preheat, or standing around doing nothing while a cake or casserole bakes. Put that time to maximum advantage by cleaning and putting away a few dishes. A few minutes here and there of efficiently-used "intra-recipe" time will keep you on top of the cleanup--rather than letting the cleanup get on top of you.

3) One Pot Dishes
There's a certain type of ideal recipe that's perfect for the dish-phobic cook. The one-pot recipe. Soups, stews and many sauces are classic examples. You make them by simply chucking everything into one pot. Best of all, when you're done eating you can put the whole pot right into the fridge to be reheated for your next meal. Heck, why not leave the ladle and spatula right in the pot too?

The result? Not only do you have only one dirty pot to wash, you can even defer washing it until days later--after you've finished off all the leftovers! See CK's Laughably Easy Lentil Soup, Groundnut Stew, Yellow Split Pea Soup, and the popular variation Fiery Sausage and Split Pea Soup for textbook examples of one pot meals.

4) Don't Wait--Do It Now
The only thing worse than a mountain of dirty dishes in your kitchen.... is a mountain of dried dirty dishes in your kitchen the next day. Keep in mind that dishes get harder to clean the longer they sit. Which means your cleanup task grows in duration and difficulty the longer you put it off. Don't wait and make this job even worse--get it over with now.

5) Enlist Help
Sure, you might not have your own unpaid intern at home. But many of us have kids, a roommate or--in rare instances--a compliant spouse. Any of these hypothetical beings might be surprisingly willing to trade cleanup duties up for a delicious hot meal. Here at Casual Kitchen, Laura and I have successfully used this technique for years to cajole each other into helping out. Face it: cleanup just isn't so bad when there's somebody else doing the cooking.

Readers, what are your favorite tips for making cleanup easier? What have I missed?


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!

YMOYL: Interlude: What We've Done So Far

In this week's installment of our in-depth review of Your Money Or Your Life, we're going to take a quick look back. We may have read only four chapters and 136 pages, but believe it or not, we've covered a ton of ground.

At this point, I wonder if readers see the same thing I see: this innocent little book is way sneakier than it appears.

Here's how it ropes you in. First, in the Prologue, it asks all sorts of provocative questions about modern consumerist life. Of course, anybody picking up the book will drawn in by that. Then, in Chapter 1, the book has you do the easy task of calculating your lifetime income--a sneakily encouraging exercise that shows readers they've actually earned quite a bit more money than they thought.

Next, in Chapter 2, you do another easy and seemingly innocent task: calculating your true hourly wage. The thing is, once you arrive at your number, you have little choice but to accept that your workaday life--in terms of both money and time--is far more costly than you thought.

What's next? In the second half of Chapter 2, you're assigned the job of tracking every penny you spend. This is the first exercise that sounds suspiciously like real work, and some readers may bump up against internal resistance (or even an intransigent spouse) at this point. But in reality, this step is just as easy as any of the others. Fast forward a few weeks, and you've tracked a month's worth of expenses before you know what hit you.

Hmmm. Now that all your spending information is sitting right there in front of you, it's no big deal to categorize it and organize it a little, right? Well, that's Chapter 3. And then, you take just one more teensy incremental step in Chapter 4 and put a few plus signs and minus signs next to your categories. Easy.

It was at this exact point of the book that Laura and I realized we'd been back-doored into a state of higher financial consciousness. In four chapters and a few simple exercises, this book literally vaporizes your ignorance about what's happening with your money. Four chapters.

Even more importantly, you're now entirely steeped in both the language and the perceptual framework of YMOYL. The dumb things that you used to waste money on are now "gazingus pins." Money isn't money anymore: it's now "life energy." You're now carefully measuring your expenses--and more importantly, objectively considering the value those expenses bring you.

By the time you've hit Chapter 4, you've had several irreversible flashes of financial insight. You simply can't go back. Whether you intended it or not, you now have a sophisticated awareness about your spending and your income--and how both fit in with your values.

Sometimes I think about what this book helps readers do in a mere 136 pages and I simply can't believe it.

One final thought: People pay thousands of dollars for debt counseling, financial consulting, therapy, classes and workshops to learn the things that you now know. And you're not even halfway through the book. Well done.


Next Week: Chapter 5: Your Wall Chart


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 June 8, 2012

Readers, don't forget to enter CK's The Farmer's Kitchen giveaway! Check out the post for a great collection of reader-shared recipes based on fresh produce. Which of your recipes would you like to share (and promote!) with all the readers here at Casual Kitchen?

PS: Follow me on Twitter!

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Does the ethnicity of a chef really matter? (A Life of Spice)

Five critical things to remember when reading media coverage of scientific studies. (Eating Rules)

A Paleo diet couple writes about the many downsides of blog fame. (Paleo Parents)

How to avoid being that family with that screaming kid in a restaurant. (Tragic Sandwich)

A reader rethinks her anti-hunter prejudice. (A Mindful Carnivore)

Recipe Links:
For a healthy, easy and easy-to-reheat breakfast: Spinach Mozzarella Egg Bake. (Kalyn's Kitchen)

Wholesome Spinach Dal Soup, from the brand new cookbook Quick-Fix Indian: Easy, Exotic Dishes in 30 Minutes or Less. (Kahakai Kitchen)

Raw, delicious and perfect for a hot summer day: Cucumber Melon Kiwi Juice. (Cafe Johnsonia)

Off-Topic Links:
A family realizes TV was their social crutch, and going TV-free made them completely rethink entertainment. (Milehimama)

Twenty-seven life lessons learned in one year of travel. (Anna Zalazar)

My mother was a mail-order bride. (My Broken Coin)





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


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

Giveaway! The Farmer's Kitchen

Today we've got a special treat for readers: a free giveaway copy of The Farmer's Kitchen: The Ultimate Guide to Enjoying Your CSA and Farmers' Market Foods by Julia Shanks and Brett Grohsgal!

The Farmer's Kitchen was one of my favorite books of 2011, and it's simply an awesome resource. It's partly a cookbook, and partly a universal guide for choosing, storing and preparing fresh produce. If you have any questions about fresh regional produce--what grows when, how to test for ripeness, how to choose and store (and cook!) any fruit or vegetable--this book is a must-read.

And there's more good news about this unique book: over the past few days, the authors received an unexpected surprise: First Lady Michelle Obama cited The Farmer's Kitchen as a key resource in her latest book, American Grown.

Here are the laughably simple rules to enter today's giveaway: Just leave a comment below, and if you have a fresh produce-based recipe from your blog that you'd like to publicize in front of all the readers here at Casual Kitchen, share a link to it in your comment!  Why not get the word out on what you've written--and make this giveaway into a resource for everyone?

To summarize:
1) Leave a comment below
2) Share an optional link to a produce-based recipe on your blog.
3) Sit back and enjoy while our readers cross-fertilize.

I'll make a random selection of the winner one week from today, on Thursday June 14th, at noon Eastern time.

Good luck! And let's start sharing recipes!





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!

More Questions On Fair Trade

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
--F. Scott Fitzgerald
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After all of the great comments and discussion on last week's post on Fair Trade products, I've got a few more questions I'd like to toss out to readers to get more of your thoughts. Tell me your opinions or views on any (or all!) of the following questions:

1) Quite a few readers said they buy Fair Trade to have some degree of certainty that their food isn't made/grown by slave or child labor (in product segments like chocolate for example). But what about the converse of this statement? Does this mean if you don't buy Fair Trade products, then your food is by definition made/grown by slaves or children?

2) And so, if only a tiny fraction of "regular" chocolate isn't unfair trade, what is the value in paying a big premium for Fair Trade?

3) How many people who buy Fair Trade products also buy Apple products? Is that hypocritical? Ironic? Or reasonable?

4) Do Fair Trade products help us to feel good about ourselves? How does an empowered consumer figure out how much extra to pay for this "product feature"?

5) Bonus question: How do we, as empowered consumers, know when a company is using our guilt against us?

Readers, share your thoughts!



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!

YMOYL Chapter 4: Answering The Three Transformative Questions

New readers: This is an in-depth, chapter by chapter review and analysis of the book Your Money Or Your Life. Join us! You can buy YMOYL here, and you can find the first post in the series here. Finally, if you have any questions or issues about the book you'd like to discuss or debate, share them in the comments.
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At last, a chapter of YMOYL that has us do some real work. In Chapter 4, we'll take a careful look at the spending and financial information we've gathered so far, and we'll apply some sincere and ego-free value judgments to it.

A quick review of the process: First, take the spending categories and subcategories you created in Chapter 3. Add up the money spent on each. Then calculate the hours of life energy spent, by taking the total cost of each category and dividing it by your real hourly wage. Not too complicated, right?

The next step, however, is the most involved--and by far the most important. We're going to evaluate each of our spending categories with the following three questions:

1) Did I receive fulfillment and value in proportion to life energy spent?
2) Is this life energy expenditure in alignment with my values and purpose?
3) How might this expenditure change if I didn't have to work for a living?


Under each of your spending categories, then, you'll assign a box for each of these questions, and in that box you'll put a plus sign, a minus sign or a zero.

For example, with question #1, a plus sign in a given category means you did receive fulfillment in proportion to life energy spent--in fact, you received so much fulfillment that you'd consider increasing spending on this category. A minus sign, however, would indicate you didn't feel your spending in this category was worth the life energy cost. With question #2, a zero means you're okay with the match between that spending category and your values, but a minus sign means that this spending category doesn't match your values, and should thus be reduced. And so on.

There's a basic example of this exercise on pages 110-111, and then some personalized and more complex examples on pages 127-130. Laura and I found these example charts to be extremely useful--they helped us organize our spending categories, and they gave us good ideas for how to organize the format of our chart.

Remember, this is your tool to use as you see fit. You can take it to a high degree of detail and evaluate literally every single spending event with the three questions, or you can be less detailed and just focus on broader spending categories. Your choice. Do what helps you be more conscious about your spending and your values.

The only specific recommendation I'll make to readers is this: don't blow off this step. Chapter 4 in general--and the three questions in particular--is where the proverbial rubber meets the road in YMOYL. It's a powerful framework that helps you see where your spending matches, or doesn't match, your goals. If you want to get maximum value from this book, don't skip any exercises. But most of all, don't skip this one.

Finally, if you see a lot of minus signs on your chart, don't be upset with yourself. Be grateful. You're simply making a long-overdue, honest analysis of how you spend your life energy.

Which takes us to the last and most important step: Use those minus signs to start making adjustments. Think about where you can change your spending so that you can replace those minus signs with 0s or +1s. It's time to start allocating your life energy in the way you choose, and make sure your purchases and your behavior are truly conscious and consistent with your goals.

Readers, when you completed this exercise, what did you see? Were you happy or unhappy with the distribution of plus signs and minus signs? What adjustments do you plan to make?

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Appendix/Side Thoughts:
1) The most important question: All three of the "transformative questions" are important, but in many ways Question #3 is the most important. Why? Because once you realize how you might increase (or decrease) an expenditure if you weren't working, why not make that change now? Essentially, Question #3 gives you your roadmap for living your ideal life today, rather than at some undetermined point in the future. This is mind-opening stuff. (PS: For more on this subject, I recommend the book A Year to Live by Stephen Levine.)

2) Uh-oh, that pesky ego again: When we're on the verge of great personal insights, our egos tend to push back--hard. People can become hyper-sensitive and even irrational when asked to question the things they've always done and the spending habits they've always borne. Yes, I can see I have a big minus sign under "shoes" but I deserve them. It's my money, and I don't want to deny myself.

But what are you denying yourself, exactly? Are you denying that those minus signs are sitting right there, in black and white, written in your own handwriting? Stop denying, and start reallocating your life energy so it truly meets your needs.

3) "In fact, no one is even listening" Although it's sort of a throw-away phrase on page 112, this quote is an excellent one to re-read if you feel your own ego cropping up in response to a poorly allocated expenditure.

Think about it. When someone else tells us to cut our spending, of course our egos rear up. But no one is telling you to do anything. No one is trying to take your gazingus pins away from you. In fact, no one is even listening. It's just you, alone, seeing with total clarity and finality the misallocation of your own life energy. Now, the real truth starts to become clear: Your gazingus pins are booby prizes.

4) Don't get wrapped around the axle defining fulfillment--let the book show you: In some ways, I think the authors made a mistake by starting off Chapter 4 with all of those questions about dreams and fulfillment. As an example, my blogging colleague Oil and Garlic, who's working through YMOYL on her own blog, got stuck on all the fulfillment questions at the beginning of Chapter 4. So did we.

But it's okay if you don't know exactly what fulfills you right away. Instead, use this chapter as a tool to help figure it out. At the very least, it will direct you away from activities that squander your life energy and lead you away from fulfillment. And at best, you might have the same result Oil and Garlic had: after a few weeks of rumination, she actually did arrive at some compelling goals and dreams. Let the book help you along on your process of self-discovery and you may very well surprise yourself.

5) Giving short shrift to Chapter 4: Here comes another confession. I warned readers above that skipping exercises would cost them both value and insights. Trust me: I know of what I speak. Laura and I gave short shrift to Chapter 4 when we first read YMOYL ten years ago. It was a mistake.

We carefully did the expense tracking as well as the other exercises in the first three chapters of the book. But in this chapter, we dropped the ball setting up our expense categories and applying the three questions. Essentially, we read the chapter, but we didn't do the chapter. It was our loss, and we missed out on some big opportunities for insight.

I'll give a quick example of what I mean by missed insights: Since 2008, I've been retired from full-time work, so I'm now asking Question #3 of myself in an unusually literal way. I'm literally "not working for a living" right now... and I'm finding that I don't have good answers for how my expenditures should change! I would have been much better prepared had I thought through these questions before I had retired--and I missed an opportunity to do so when we read this book for the first time in 2002. It was my mistake and I regret it.

I'm not going to repeat this mistake. This time, we're making a deliberate effort to follow every chapter to the letter.


Next Week: Interlude: A Look Back At What We've Done So Far





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!