CK Friday Links--Friday August 30, 2013

Links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts.

PS: Follow me on Twitter!

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Stuffed Tomatoes with Rice and Herbs. (Kalofagas)

More ideas to use up those extra summer tomatoes: An easy Tomato Vinaigrette. (Dorie Greenspan)

Mollie Katzen, still cooking. And releasing a brand new cookbook: The Heart of the Plate: Vegetarian Recipes for a New Generation. (New York Times)

A balanced and exceptionally thorough article about the risks and advantages of soy. Long. (Food Revolution Network, via Steve Pavlina)

Kids, go to college... or you'll die alone. In misery. (Matt Walsh, via OwlHaven)

Beware of giraffes in your data! (GigaOM)

Money represents many things. (Early Retirement Extreme)

Which of 2013's TED Talks are really worth watching? A useful ranking from best to worst. (Who Has Time For This?)





Do you have an interesting article or recipe to share? Want some extra traffic at your blog? Send me an email!


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.

Rules For Thee, But Not For Me

Readers: Set aside your opinions and preconceptions on food policy for a brief moment and read the following (not entirely hypothetical) dialog:

Person A: There's got to be a way to stop all these greedy corporations from making soda. They spend billions on advertising. They waste [science-y sounding number] liters of water for every liter of soda they produce. Worst of all, they exploit us for profit, and they're making us all fat!

Person B: Well, okay, don't drink soda then.

Person A: But this isn't for me! It's for people who don't know any better. These drinks are incredibly unhealthy, and there are uneducated people out there who don't even know it! We have to change our standards to get away from these liquid calories... we've got to do something!

Readers, what's your take on Person A's thought process? Do you consider it to be empowered? Logical? Do you consider Person A's behavior here to be arrogant in any way--or even narcissistic?

There's a lot happening in this short conversation, and I want to hear your take on the dynamics that you see. Share your thoughts below!

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.

CK Friday Links--Friday August 23, 2013

Links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts.

PS: Follow me on Twitter!

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Time to get pickling! Spicy Pickled Dill Carrots. (Dad Cooks Dinner)

An inexpensive and intriguing Turkish Pilaf recipe. (My Humble Kitchen) Bonus: 21 Zucchini Recipes. (!)

What every parent should know about food marketing to kids. From the author of French Kids Eat Everything. (Karen Le Billon)

A dietitian weighs in on the surprising health benefits of four common spices. (A Life of Spice)

Don't wash your chicken. (DrexelNow, via Steve Tallant)

Four myths about the Glycemic Index. (Fooducate). Bonus: 2012 was the year with the lowest soda consumption since... 1987!

The beauty of making deliberate mistakes. (99U)

The "common belief" fallacy, and why you shouldn't fear your electric fan. An excerpt from David McRaney's brand new book You Are Now Less Dumb. (Big Think)





Do you have an interesting article or recipe to share? Want some extra traffic at your blog? Send me an email!


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.

When Do You Use Coconut Oil Versus Other Oils?

Recently, I was the lucky recipient of a sample* of coconut oil from Nutiva, and I wanted to ask you, dear readers, for your thoughts and advice.

Coconut oil is a striking, unusual oil. It’s more expensive than standard cooking oils (like olive oil, soybean oil or corn oil), but yet it's also superior in some ways. After all, regular oils are bland--they’re supposed to be!--and they just do their jobs: lubricating a cooking surface, acting as medium to sauté veggies and temper spices, and so on.

Coconut oil does these things too, but with some added bonuses. It’s solid at room temperature (it melts at about 76F/24C) so it makes cooking, handling and cleanup a lot easier. It has a relatively high smoke point of 350F/175C, higher than butter, although somewhat lower than some other typical cooking oils.

But the biggest bonus is of coconut oil is that it’s fragrant--temptingly and deliciously so. And yet therein lies a challenge: a fragrant oil will really help out some recipes... but perhaps hinder others.

And here’s where I'd like to ask my readers for their advice. What recipes would you use coconut oil with?

I can imagine many Asian and Indian recipes benefitting immensely with coconut oil. I've repeatedly made my Easy Fried Rice with coconut oil and it comes out better than ever. My Coconut Curry with Collard Greens and Black-Eyed Peas and Thai Tofu in Lime Sauce are obviously suitable recipes too. Even this week's delicious and easy Curried Chickpeas and Tofu would benefit from coconut oil instead of a plain-jane oil.

And yet, I’m not sure I want my next batch of fresh basil pesto to smell like coconuts, so I’d probably continue to use olive oil with that recipe. But then again, maybe coconut oil would be an intriguing idea here too?

Readers, what oils do you use for which types of cooking? Have you tried coconut oil, and what did you think? Share your thoughts below!




How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.


* Other than receiving two small trial containers of coconut oil from Nutiva, I was not compensated for this post. I was also quite impressed with the product. As always, my opinions here at Casual Kitchen are my own.

Easy Curried Chickpeas and Tofu

Readers, I bring to you today a laughably easy recipe that can be made in under 20 minutes for about $1.25 per serving. It's a modified version of a recipe from the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home (an exceptional cookbook, by the way--I recommend it). After testing it here at Casual Kitchen, I've simplified the recipe to make it even easier for readers.

I hope you enjoy this dish as much as we did!
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Curried Chickpeas and Tofu

Ingredients:
One medium onion, coarsely chopped or slivered
2-3 garlic cloves, chopped or pressed
1/2 teaspoon hot pepper flakes (or 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper), to taste
2-3 Tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
Fresh ground black pepper and (optional) a dash of salt, to taste
12-14 ounce block of firm tofu, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 14.5-ounce can chickpeas, with liquid kept in reserve
1 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes

Directions:
1) Saute the onion, garlic and hot pepper flakes (or cayenne pepper) in the olive oil on medium high heat for a few minutes until softened. Add cumin, coriander, turmeric and black pepper.

2) Add the tofu, stir gently until combined. Then add the chickpeas, along with about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of the chickpea liquid from the can. Stir gently, and simmer for 1-2 minutes. Add the diced tomatoes, combine well, and simmer for another 5 minutes. Serve immediately over rice or brown rice.

Serves 4-5.





How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.

CK Friday Links--Friday August 16, 2013

Links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts.

PS: Follow me on Twitter!

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Our taste buds are spectacular acrobats. Reclaim them. (Attune Foods)

Don't let your kids get fat. (Grerp)

Born into consumer culture with no "immune system." (Early Retirement Extreme)

Be aware: there are lots of scary websites out there. And they're not looking out for your interests. (Pragmatic Capitalism)

Wait. Bono... Bono?... changes his mind and now believes the secret to eliminating poverty in Africa is entrepreneurial capitalism. (The Beacon)

Do you have an interesting article or recipe to share? Want some extra traffic at your blog? Send me an email!


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.

More On Big Ticket Decisions

Readers: a quick addendum to the other day's post on big-ticket decisions:

Some big-ticket decisions can hide in plain sight... by masquerading as small decisions. Consider:

1) Making (or failing to make) a one-time decision to contribute regularly to an IRA or 401(k) plan.

2) Making (or failing to make) a one-time decision to set up an automatic savings plan to build up a portfolio of income-generating investments like dividend-paying stocks.

3) Creating (or failing to create) an emergency fund of at least 1-2 years of expenses so you'll never have to borrow and pay interest when an unexpected large expense happens.


These may not look like big-ticket decisions today, but ten or twenty years from now, trust me, they will be gigantic decisions. In retrospect. The thing is, you have to make them correctly now, before the window of opportunity begins to close. You can't get these decisions right if you put them off.


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.

Money Sundays: Get Your Big Ticket Purchases Right. The Rest Takes Care of Itself

Since I left my Wall Street career back in mid-2008, I've been spending a decent amount of my time helping people make better saving, investing and retirement planning decisions. Today, I want to share a gigantic piece of financial advice that I find myself sharing with nearly everyone who comes to me for help:

Get your big-ticket decisions right and the rest will take care of itself.

There are three primary areas of your financial life where you can apply this concept and make a significant impact:

* Make sure you have a modest mortgage that you can easily afford (for couples, this means "afford easily on one income").
* Buy inexpensive but reliable cars and drive them for a long time (I'd say 7-9 years at a minimum).
* Pay down all debt aggressively and relentlessly.

Make these three decisions properly and you'll free up hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars per month for you and your family. Every month, forever. Which means over the course of your life, these decisions will be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra wealth. Perhaps much more.

The converse is true too: making these decisions improperly will cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost wealth.

The problem, of course, is that there's an entire system built around us that encourages people to overextend themselves on major life purchases.

So don't let yourself get played by the system. Readers, I want you to play your game with your big ticket decisions--not society's game or the consumerism game. Don't reach financially for major purchases. Instead, avoid them or defer them until they are no longer reaches. Get these big-ticket decisions right and you'll face a tiny fraction of the financial stress of the average person.

If you think about it, this is the 80/20 Rule applied yet again: a few really big spending decisions will drive the vast majority of your financial success. Or failure. Home, car and debt decisions are usually by miles your largest and most important key decisions. Getting them right--or fixing them if you've gotten them wrong--will make your financial life easier by light years.

Now. There's one more element to this issue that seals the deal. It has to do with discipline. And it's not what you think.

Much of the financial advice that gets shoveled onto us involves canned ideas, like bringing your lunch to work rather than buying it, or cutting out your daily $5 latte or whatever. The problem with these smallish daily decisions is that they require constant daily discipline. Therefore they're kind of hard to do, and they need to be repeated--constantly--to have any impact.

But when you buy a far less expensive home than you can afford, or rent an apartment well beneath your means, or purchase a car that costs far less than what you can afford, you create enormous, sustainable savings with a single, one-time decision.

You have to decide to cut out your daily latte every single time--and even then it only saves a few bucks. Big decisions can be made once and only once--and they pay huge, repeated financial dividends for years.

Hey, there's nothing wrong with eliminating your daily wasteful expenditures. I'm cool with that too. But I think my readers can and should aim much higher. You are all capable of driving far more significant and powerful financial results.

After all, if you get these major decisions right, the cost of a daily latte won't even matter.

Readers, what would you add? What big-ticket financial decisions have you gotten right... or wrong? Share your experiences and what you've learned!

Related Posts:
Retail Ninja Mind Trick #6: Rationalization and Justification
The 80-Second Latte
How to Own the Consumer Products Industry--And I Mean Literally Own It
Prices, Zombies and the Advertising-Consumption Cycle
Divorce Yourself from the False Reality of Your Grocery Store


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.

CK Friday Links--Friday August 9, 2013

Links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts.

PS: Follow me on Twitter!

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How to filet a fish. (Table Matters)

The top five myths of GMO seeds, busted. (NPR) For your own good, skip the comments--you'll lose your faith in the critical thinking skills of your fellow humans.

Looking to cut costs by substituting meats and fish in a recipe? Here are two golden rules. (Stonesoup)

We're raising a nation of wimps. (Psychology Today)

Curing your clown-like car habit. (Mr. Money Mustache)

Ditch the mythology of the financial crisis and look at the real culprit. (Harvard Business Review)

Book Recommendation: The Spirit of Enterprise by George Gilder. This was a surprisingly inspiring book on the role of entrepreneurs in an economy. I loved it. It's a somewhat obscure book: you might have to buy it used (or get it from your local library), but very much worth a read to understand the nature of our economy's primary engine.

Speaking of books: Which author appears twice on Bill Gates' summer reading list? (Quartz) Related: Here's Gates' full reading list.





Do you have an interesting article or recipe to share? Want some extra traffic at your blog? Send me an email!


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.

What Made You Decide To Make a Change?

There are many readers here at CK who have made major changes in their lives.

Some readers switched from mostly eating takeout to mostly cooking at home. Others decided to embrace simple, healthy, low-cost home cooking. Still others lost significant amounts of weight--and kept it off.

I have readers who started saving money aggressively, who paid off substantial credit card and student loan debts, who started tracking their spending, who began exercise programs, who quit drinking, quit smoking, quit eating meat, went vegan, un-went vegan, and more.

For some of you, the catalyst may have been a health issue--perhaps a severe health issue--that drove you to make a change. Others hit a major financial crossroads, and decided what they had been doing just wasn't good enough any more. I'm also guessing the recent financial crisis was a catalyst for many of us to rethink how we spend, save and live.

The thing is, something brought about your decision. Something was the catalyst. Maybe it was a specific event, or something someone said to you. Maybe it was a realization of how your future might look if you didn't change things.

And then you decided enough was enough, and you took action.

What was it? What was it that caused you to change?


This post was inspired by Andrew at Eating Rules.


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.

To Kill a Good Idea, Part 2

Last week I wrote up a short post called To Kill a Good Idea. It was a conversation between two people where one person presented an unusual idea and the other person quickly rejected it.

It turned out to be one of those conversations where LOTS of things were going on, much more than it seemed at first (even to me, and I wrote up the post!). The more I thought about the quick back-and-forth between person A and person B--and the more I thought about your comments--the more I began to see all of these toxic elements:

1) Snark: Sure, snark can be funny, but it is also fundamentally destructive to new ideas. Better to avoid it.

2) Condescension: Person B is being superior for no good reason. It's also entirely possible he or she doesn't even realize it.

3) Ego defense: It's easy for Person B to slam down an unusual new idea if his or her ego sees it as some kind of existential threat.

4) A "Not Invented Here" mentality: If somebody else has a good idea and you didn't think of it (the idea wasn't invented "here" in your brain) it is stunningly easy to denigrate that idea. After all, if you didn't think of it, it can't be any good... right? This is yet another form of ego defense.

5) Confabulation: Reacting negatively (and emotionally) to an idea, but then unconsciously confabulating a plausible and intellectual-sounding rejection (as in: Wait, no clothes... no *underwear* for a year?). The progression is emotional response-->limbic reaction-->intelligent-sounding rejection made up on the spot. The brilliant book You Are Not So Smart addresses this rapid-fire mental progression repeatedly (and hilariously).

6) Extreme reach fallacy: Several commenters nailed this one. Person B jumps to an extreme interpretation of The Great American Apparel Diet, taking it to mean that you cannot buy underwear for a year. Obviously the idea now sounds completely stupid, and Person B get to feel superior.

7) Having a scarcity mentality about good ideas--or more broadly speaking, having a generalized scarcity mentality about things like success, reputation, credit, ideas, concepts, strategies and so on. There is an unlimited abundance of good ideas: The "Person B's" of the world could take comfort in knowing that it's okay when someone else comes up with a good idea once in a while! This doesn't mean Person B's relative status is somehow lowered.

It's incredible that all of this destructive thinking can happen so quickly and so... unconsciously ...in such a short conversation. Imagine being person B, and going through all your days fiercely defending your ego from... everything. How many amazing ideas would you miss out on over the course of your life?


A quick postscript: I'd like to thank my readers for your attention and comments as I continue to explore subject areas tangential to cooking. I'm trying to work these things out for myself and I'm grateful to have all of you along for the journey!

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.

CK Friday Links--Friday August 2, 2013

Links from around the internet. As always, I welcome your thoughts.

PS: Follow me on Twitter!

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Corn is in season right now in New Jersey, and this really easy Jalapeno Popper Corn Fritters recipe is on my mind. (Closet Cooking)

Healthy, easy and delicious: Zucchini-Tomato Gratin. (Vegetarian Times, via Single Sustainable Mom)

How to say no to special occasion calories... even to a food pusher. (Frugal Healthy Simple)

Five ridiculous locavore myths. Good critical thinking exercise. (AlterNet)

Fresh fruit shouldn't become a casualty in the sugar wars. (Well/New York Times)

The post-industrial revolution is here. Do you care enough to teach your kids to take advantage of it? (Seth's Blog)

This is where the criminal decides if you are safe to attack. (No Nonsense Self Defense)

Twelve extremely useful investing insights, thanks to Daniel Kahneman. (25iq)


Do you have an interesting article or recipe to share? Want some extra traffic at your blog? Send me an email!


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
For those readers interested in supporting Casual Kitchen, the easiest way is to do so is to do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site. You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.