Showing posts with label askcasualkitchen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label askcasualkitchen. Show all posts

What Recipes Are In Your Heavy Rotation?

A comment from reader Sarah S:

I'd love to read a post, or an ongoing series on what is currently in your heavy rotation.

Thanks for the idea! First, a quick explanation for newer readers on what "heavy rotation" actually means. From my post Seven Ways to Get Faster at Cooking, where I first used the phrase:

Heavy Rotation:
Build a short list of your cooking "hits"--recipes that are both popular with your family and that you can make quickly and easily. Then regularly rotate one or more of these hit recipes into your weekly menu. The key here: if you make the dish regularly you'll get faster and more efficient at making it until you can practically do it blindfolded.

I've found that if you have a short list of five or six truly easy-to-make "hits" and rotate one of them into your menu each week, you can use this system indefinitely without getting sick of any of the hit recipes. Believe me, that's a far cry from a typical radio station that plays the same song every three hours! Moreover, you will find that you get quicker and quicker in finding the ingredients in the store, keeping them handy at home, and preparing and scaling up the meal itself. If you double the batch size of your heavy rotation recipes, you can efficiently take care of 1/3 or more of your meals this way, depending on the size and appetite of your family.

If I might channel my inner Michael Pollan, we could boil this down to: Find easy recipes. Make them. Not too often.

Now, to answer Sarah's question. Right now, the recipes we've got on heavy rotation are:

1) Easy Lentil Soup (the last few times I've made this I've included four cups of homemade rich chicken stock, and this soup has turned out better than ever).
2) Hilariously Easy Slow Cooker Bean Stew
3) Black Beans and Rice
4) Homemade Burritos

What grabbed me about Sarah's comment was this: it made me realize that here at Casual Kitchen we have our own rotation of heavy rotation recipes. How meta! And there are specific commonalities to these heavy rotation collections beyond just their being easy-to-make recipes.

For example, usually our heavy rotation recipes include at least one highly scalable soup or stew (often vegetarian) that leaves us plenty of leftovers. We do this for a couple of reasons: First, when our key meal of the week is vegetarian, this often translates into big savings on our food costs--a central advantage of part-time vegetarianism. This simple tactic of building a heavy rotation around a double (or triple!) batch of vegetarian soup or stew probably saves us more time and money than anything else we do in the kitchen.

Second, we eat the leftovers of this scaled-up meal on alternate days with another recipe. Why alternate days? Well, while it's true that there's no easier way to get dinner on the table than reheating something you've already made, it's also true that eating the same thing for multiple days in a row gets... tiresome. Alternating leftovers solves this problem.

Another thought: we often have a crockpot recipe in our heavy rotation. This might be something like our Chipotle Crockpot Chile, Crockpot Beef Stew, or Easy Slow Cooker Beef and Barley Stew. All of these recipes are delicious, simple, and make a ton of extra food.

Finally, Black Beans and Rice tends to show up regularly in our heavy rotation just because it's hilariously easy and we never seem to get sick of it, ever.

So, readers, now it's your turn! Share a few of your family’s favorite, easiest recipes in the comments below, and feel free to include links back to your site. Let's help each other put delicious, easy home-cooked meals on our tables!

What recipes are in your heavy rotation?


Read Next: Fair Trade: Using Poverty To Sell... More



How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. 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.

Ask CK: How Do I Find Good Books To Read?

A reader writes in:

You often recommend books to readers in your Friday Links posts, and I read with interest your Voracious Reading Trial post and your Three Books in Three Days post.

My question is: how do you go about finding good books to read?

You've come to the right place. I’ll share a few of my own ideas on how to find good books to read--and readers, if you have your own advice for this reader, share it below!

1) Ask the most intellectual and well-read people in your life what they’ve been reading, and shamelessly copy them. Or, go even further and just ask them to suggest several books to you. Sidenote: it’s rarely a good idea to depend on people dumber or less literate than you for book recommendations. :)

2) Use the books you’re reading already as sources for more reading. There are a few ways you can do this. For example, in the next non-fiction book you read, look through the author’s endnotes, footnotes and index--in other words, the source literature the author used. Read anything and everything that grabs you. Then, with those books, do the same thing. You’ll quickly build a reading list of dozens--or hundreds!--of books. I did this exercise recently with Jared Diamond’s landmark book Guns, Germs, and Steel and I’m set for reading for at least another year.

3) Look into the contemporaries and colleagues of the author you just read. For example, a book like Viktor Frankl’s Man's Search for Meaning might send to you to explore the works of other “Austrian school” psychiatrists like Adler or Freud. Reading Dan Gilbert’s excellent book Stumbling on Happiness might get you looking through some of the works of other cognitive psychologists like Martin Seligman, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.

3a) You can do this with fiction too: If you liked the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, consider contemporaneous authors like H.G. Wells, Thomas Hardy, or, I don’t know, Jules Verne (and even better, you can find most of these authors' works for free in the public domain). If you're a fan of Virginia Woolf, why not try her contemporaries Ford Madox Ford, Joseph Conrad, or the attractive-looking G.K. Chesterton?

4) Finally, if you just read a book and agreed with it, do something intellectually honest: read a book that argues the exact contra-thesis. This was why I read The Food Police right after I read Appetite For Profit. After all, you wouldn’t want to mindlessly reinforce your already-held opinions, would you?

Readers, what suggestions would you offer? How do you find good books to read?


Related Posts:
To Kill A Good Idea
Dispute This! Negative Self-Talk And Better Health
The 4-Hour Chef: An Extended Review of a Terrible Book
Review: Wheat Belly by William Davis
Book Review: The Mindful Carnivore
Ask A Mindful Carnivore: Books For Further Reading

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. 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.

Ask CK: What If I Screwed Up a Big-Ticket Decision?

A reader asks:

Your big-ticket decision advice doesn't help someone who screwed up a major financial decision in the past. For example, I bought a house that I can't sell at anywhere near the price I paid. I have a big mortgage and it's killing me. But I already made this mistake, I can't do anything about it now.

Readers, is a legitimate reason for not taking steps to fix a problematic financial situation? Or is it an excuse that just sounds like a reason?

Everybody makes money mistakes. Everybody. And you don't have to be infallible to conquer your finances. But you do have to be willing to face your mistakes--and take mindful action to repair them.

So, that said, the first thing I'd suggest to this reader is get out of the mental framework of presuming there is no solution. That's just handwringing. Instead, brainstorm a list of solutions. Sit down and write down solutions--even ones that seem really dumb or implausible--until you've come up with at least ten. Or twenty. You'll be surprised to find that some of those "dumb or implausible" solutions are mere intermediary steps on the journey to other solutions that aren't so dumb or implausible. Choose a couple of these potential solutions and start executing them.

What I don't want you to do is wring your hands about this mistake, not fix it, and then use it to rationalize further spending and further big-ticket mistakes in the future.

And of course, one of the gravest risks of overspending on a house is the Diderot Effect. We want the things in our lives to match, thus it can become deceivingly easy to "need" a swimming pool in the backyard of that house you can't quite afford. Or, more self-parodyingly, to need a boat, matching Jaguars, and Stickley furniture to go with that house you can't quite afford.

Obviously, this is just yielding to defeat and further compounding the initial big-ticket mistake. Don't do it.



Related Posts:
An In-Depth Review of Your Money Of Your Life
How To Defeat the "Diderot Effect"
Six Tips to Fight the Diderot Effect in Your Kitchen and Home
Money Sundays: How To Make the Tax Code Work For YOU


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.

Ask CK: How Do You Do Your Friday Links?

A reader writes in:

One of my favorite features at Casual Kitchen is your Friday Links posts. How do you find all that material? You hardly ever feature the same blog twice, so you must read a zillion blogs, right?

It's ironic that I get this question just as I'm starting to publish my Friday Links posts less regularly! But it's true: I do read a lot of blogs--my feedreader contains 788 blogs at last count, which probably sounds ridiculous. But my process for digging up material for readers is simple: three or four times a week I spend about an hour or two a day wandering through my feedreader. I pick blogs and sites at random and wade through the past posts.

This is essentially my leisure reading, and when I see anything that really stands out, I'll cut and paste it into an upcoming links post. It took me a while to develop this system, but now I produce the majority of my Friday Links content as a natural byproduct of material I already read.

I also find about 10-20% of my Friday Links via Twitter, and finally, readers email me another 10-20%.

It's not always a perfect process however. Some weeks I'm buried in links to great recipes, but I can't find any interesting articles about food. Some weeks I'm buried in off-topic links to the exclusion of all else.

The last thing I do before queuing up each Friday Links post is use the 120% method. I fill up each links post with more links than I actually need. In my final edit, I go over the post one last time and eliminate (roughly) the worst 20% of the articles. I find that this dramatically improves the overall quality of each Friday Links post.

One final thought: I'd be remiss if I didn't take a moment to encourage those of you with your own blogs: do your own links roundups! Why not share with your readers the interesting (or controversial) things you read? You don't have to publish one every single week like I usually do. Ask your readers to share their thoughts, agreements and disagreements in the comments, and enjoy the conversation.

Links are the currency of the internet. This is how blogs and readers find each other, and it's one of the best ways to start conversations where we can all learn more.

As always, if you have any feedback, or if you'd like to share one of your posts with the readers here at CK, email me!

Related Posts:
How to Write A Killer Links Post
Ask CK: The Purpose of Friday Links and Using SEO
Ask CK: I'm Offended!

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.

Ask CK: Are Your Waffles Supposed To Be This Bland?

New reader Christie writes in (edited slightly for length):

Hi Dan,

First wanted you to know that my family seriously loved both the crock pot beef stew and the risotto. I admit I had my doubts while making the risotto, it seemed like an awful lot of liquid. My husband kept looking at the rice and making comments. But by the end it was super creamy and delicious!

My experience with your waffles recipe was less overwhelming. The texture of the waffles was absolutely perfect, light and airy. They were however, to be blunt, bland. My four teenage boys (not seriously picky I might add) each had about one (a minuscule amount for a bunch of teenage boys) and I threw out about a 1/3 of the batter – unheard of in this household! Any suggestions to improve the taste? I’ve always used the “Classique Fare Belgian waffle mix” from my local Wegmans, and the taste is decent. I’ve never found another brand to taste as good. However they are not nearly as light and airy as yours, and are sometime downright soggy. So I’d love to perfect your recipe. What is missing? Vanilla? I’m not sure.

Christie makes a good point. CK's waffle recipe isn't sweetened or sugared up like many store-bought waffle products. Instead, our waffle recipe is mild. In fact, I consider it a vehicle for maple syrup more than anything else. This might explain why kids might not like it, unless of course they can dump a ton of maple syrup on top. And please, please don't tell me you used fake syrup with these waffles.

However, if you're looking to turn CK's waffle recipe into something with more "pop" and a more assertive flavor profile, here are some variations to try:

Cinnamon. Add 1/2 to 3/4 of a teaspoon to the dry ingredients.
Vanilla, as you suggest. A teaspoon should be enough. Add to the egg yolks/milk/oil.
Chocolate bits. Gently fold in 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup as you fold in the egg whites.
Cayenne pepper. Yes, cayenne pepper! Add 1/2 teaspoon to the dry ingredients.

Here at Casual Kitchen we sometimes add oats to the recipe too (about 1/3 cup--also be sure to add a little bit more milk to keep the liquid/solid ratio constant), or we will add a combination of the ideas above: oats+cinnamon; vanilla+chocolate, etc. Finally, fruit and whipped cream could be a tasty, if less healthy, option to consider too.

Readers, what suggestions do you have for jazzing up breakfast waffles? And if you try out any of the variations I've shared above, let me know your results!


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.

Ask CK: I'm Offended!

I get this comment all the time, in a variety of forms: 

Daniel: I've been a CK reader for a long time. I love your blog, but I was appalled to see you post a link to ______ blog on this week's Friday Links. That post was offensive/stupid/mysogynistic/ill-informed/dehumanizing/ ignorant/wrong.

I hope you reconsider promoting things like that in the future.


I've said it before and I'll say it again: I didn't create Friday Links so we could all sit around a cushy bubble and agree with each other all the time. And I certainly don't want us policing each others' thoughts.

Long-time CK readers know that I make a point of sharing links that I don't agree with in order to foster reasoned debate and discussion. To borrow a favorite quote from John Stuart Mill: "He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that."

Clearly, not every link is going to resonate with every reader. However, if you do find yourself experiencing a strong, visceral reaction to something you read at CK or anywhere else, I urge you to ask yourself "why am I reacting in this way, and where does my strong reaction come from?"

Quite often that's where you'll find the most important insights.


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 Conversation With An Angry Vegetarian

From a recent reader comment on my Why I'm a Part-Time Vegetarian post:

There's never anything wrong with what or how you eat, & the way you write about it here sounds like you know there's something wrong with it, & that's why you are talking about it. That is inconsequential. My main point is, one cannot be a "part time vegetarian" You either are or are not a vegetarian. And the worst offender of your post is the assumption that the vegetarians are not healthy. You seem to live in the isolated world of the whites (I am taking a big risk of being branded a racist). But that's a myth propagated by those who have this opinion of themselves being superior to all else & that they are some god's gift to humanity. BTW, there's absolutely nothing wrong with you or any one putting meat in the vegetarian dishes. Just as long as you don't put it in the ones u're servbing to the vegetarians. & please, stop being a spokesperson for the pharmaceutical companies for the multivites & et all. I can only guess your background from your post, that you are one of the meat & potatoes person who uses the "part time vegetarian" status as a pretense for being modern & scientific & cutting edge & whatever. But you sure do not have any knowledge about the nutritional science, though you do have some information. And, I wonder who these friends of yours are who you think "use you for your cooking skills" There's much more to vegetarian cooking than the west will ever know.

From time to time I get comments like this. It's easy to discount them as simple, garden-variety narcissism (um, no pun intended). People who pound out an angry wall of text like this are usually writing to themselves more than to me.

But what's more important is how this comment actually accomplishes the exact opposite of what its author intends. Even with a blogger like me, who's as vegetarian-friendly as they come.

Here's the thing. Let's say you've taken some moral position--it can be a position on food, on a political issue, or whatever. Do you want others to be able to grasp your point of view? Do you want people to agree with you? Or do you want to push people away?

Imagine the reaction that a perfectly nice "meat and potatoes" person might have after reading a wall of text like this. Wouldn't they cling even tighter to their views? So, what does this comment really accomplish?

Readers, what do you think? Share your thoughts!


Related Posts:
Companies vs. Consumers: A Manifesto
How To Help the World... By NOT Going Local
A Simple Rule To Make Your Life Environmentally Sustainable and Worry Free
In Defense of Big Farms
Anticipated Reproach, And Why Vegetarians Are Such Jerks


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!

Ask CK: Butter Or Margarine? What's a Girl To Do?

If you have a question you'd like to ask Casual Kitchen, send it in!!
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Eleni asks:

I wonder if you could help settle a family debate. Do you use real butter, half-butter-half-vegetable-fat spreads, or olive oil-based spreads...or what? My mum will only buy real butter, and she slaps it on pretty thick. Subsequently, she has high cholesterol. She's not anywhere near overweight, and otherwise her diet's not bad - plenty of fruit and veggies and hardly any pre-packaged convenience foods. So...I blame the butter.

My sister came to visit me and was horrified when I produced a tub of half-butter-half-vegetable-fat "spreadable butter" for our toast. "Don't you know they're full of crap?" she cried! So what's a girl to do? What do you do in the Casual Kitchen?


This is a provocative question, mainly because so much of the science and health conclusions out there simply aren't clear. In fact, do readers remember (I think it was back in the late 80s/early 90s) a widely publicized study that claimed margarine was healthier for you than butter--and then shortly thereafter a different and equally well-publicized study came out and claimed the exact opposite?

Thanks for nothing guys.

In recent years, health experts have shifted the debate somewhat. Rather than helping us make a Morton's fork of a choice between butter or margarine, they now caution us from consuming excess trans fats. Of course, trans fats tend to show up more in margarine and other hydrogenated vegetable oils. Thus that's a strike against manufactured vegetable oil based spreads.

Then again, now that limiting your intake of trans fats is standard health advice, many manufacturers have reformulated their spreads to reduce--and in some cases eliminate--trans fats.

Once again, thanks for nothing. I still don't know which is better.

Now, with butter, we have a different problem. Butter contains very small amounts of trans fats, but there is some (mixed) evidence that the specific types of trans fats in butter are actually good for you. However, butter also contains cholesterol, which isn't in hydrogenated vegetable oils.

Confused yet? I'll confuse you more--because there isn't always a connection between the cholesterol you ingest and cholesterol levels in your blood. All of us have that annoying friend or family member who eats all the butter and egg yolks she wants and yet still has great cholesterol numbers. And my wife, despite her steady diet of oatmeal, exercise and red wine, has always had borderline bad cholesterol numbers.

What do we do here at Casual Kitchen? Well, as readers well know, we are true omnivores: we eat everything, but we eat nothing to excess (uh, with the exception of dark chocolate). Thus, we try to keep our fat intake at reasonable levels, and we try to keep our intake of hydrogenated oils at a very bare minimum.

And I'll confess in the interests of full disclosure, I have a bit of a personal bias against manufactured fats. The idea of a fat that's been deliberately modified so that it remains solid at room temperature, and the idea of putting something like that in my body--and later having it possibly floating around in my arteries... I mean, if I think about this too much I kind of lose my appetite.

Therefore, when we cook, we use olive oil. When we bake, we try to bias our ingredients towards butter. When it comes to "butter-like" spreads, we pretty much never use them. Instead, we try to cook and eat foods that taste great by themselves, and those kinds of foods ideally shouldn't need butter or butter-like spreads to taste better.

Last, my biggest confession of all--and proof that there's not an ounce of food absolutism here at Casual Kitchen, ever. On occasion, we will happily use hydrogenated oils--a textbook example being Laura's brilliantly perfect apple pie crust, which simply handles best with Crisco. Then again, in 2007, Crisco reformulated their shortening too, and they've now eliminated almost all of the trans fats from their product.

Hmmm... one more slice of pie for me!

So how do you know whether butter is better or manufactured spreads are better? Well, the short answer is, neither is good for you if eaten to excess. But likewise, neither will kill you if eaten in moderation.

And that, I think, is the real answer. Eat what you like, but please do so in moderation.

Readers, what is your take on the butter vs butter-like spread debate? How do you balance health concerns with taste? Share your thoughts!


Resources:
Trans Fat Fight Claims Butter as a Victim (New York Times)
Trans Fat is Double Trouble For Your Heart Health (Mayo Clinic)
Natural Trans Fats Have Health Benefits, New Study Shows (Science Daily)
Consumer Reports Weighs In On New Crisco (Consumer Reports)
Trans fat (Wikipedia)


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!

Ask CK: Okay, So How Are You Adjusting *NOW* to the Economy?

If you have a question you'd like to ask Casual Kitchen, send it in!!
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Brittany asks:

I'd be interested in an update to the "How are you adjusting to the economic crisis?" post now that we're 3 years in. I'm interested to see how many habits have "stuck," how many new tactics have been developed, and who's reached a new equilibrium that's swung closer or farther away from the "pre-recession" days.

I'm grateful that Brittany asked this, because this is exactly the type of crowdsourcing question that can unlock extremely useful ideas and advice from the insightful audience here at Casual Kitchen. Before I hand it over to you, dear readers, I'll share some quick context on what we're doing here at CK.

The bottom line for us is we've kept nearly all of the expense-reduction habits we took on back in 2008. We eat out far less often--in fact, I can't even remember the last time we went out to an expensive restaurant. With the (uh, enormous) exception of our townhouse that we bought at the very end of 2009, we've made very few big-ticket purchases, and any home improvement projects we've done have been modest and done over time. We haven't bought any cars and--knock on wood--really hope we won't have to for a long while.

We're always keeping our eyes peeled for ways to manage our fixed expenses downward, another habit that I'm thinking we'll maintain. This year for example, we made adjustments to our auto and health insurance coverage to get our premiums lower, and we're seriously thinking about taking a break from cable TV in 2012--after ditching cable in 2008 and actually enjoying the experience.

For us, our expense reduction habits have "stuck." Hey, it's possible that we might be in a mediocre economic environment for a while, and this a big part of why we're keeping our proverbial belts tightened.

Readers, now it's your turn! What are you doing now regarding your spending--and how does it compare to 2008 when the recession started? Which habits have you kept and which have you discarded? Finally, have you discovered any new savings tactics you'd like to share?

Share your thoughts in the comments!



Related Posts:
Ask CK: The Double-Batch/Too Many Leftovers Problem
A Simple Rule To Make Your Life Environmentally Sustainable and Worry Free
Where Going Generic Works... And Where It Doesn't
On the "Value" of Low-Calorie Food
How Have Your Tastes Changed Compared To Your Parents?

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!

Ask CK: Finding Time To Cook... With Small Children

If you have a question you'd like to ask Casual Kitchen, send it in!!
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Reader Jennifer writes in with a great question (I've edited it slightly):

Love your blog, and I love your no nonsense attitude. I'm hoping you and your readers can share some ideas. You often talk about how people use too many excuses about why they can't eat real, healthy, homemade food, and I wholeheartedly agree.

You say everyone can find the time to cook. But what I'd like to know, in practical terms, is how? I'd like to hear some real stories from people, especially those who have young children or for some other reason have little time to cook, who still manage to eat good quality food. I have a VERY energetic 1.5 year old, and by the time my spouse and I get home with him from daycare, we have about 1 hour 15 minutes from the time we walk in the door until the time we need to be upstairs doing the bedtime routine. In that hour, we all have to do the usual getting home activities (changing a diaper, changing clothes, getting the mail, etc), cook dinner, eat it, and clean up again, all with a toddler who by this time is usually tired, hungry, and uncooperative. And that's on a good day. Cooking anything from scratch ends up seeming like a Herculean task.

But I know people must do it, and probably people with many more challenges than myself! I guess I'm looking for some inspiration and encouragement from people dealing with similar constraints. What strategies do you use? Where do you compromise, and where do you hold firm?


I'll confess up front: when it comes to children, I'm as clueless as the day is long.

But I know that a large segment of CK readers actually do have children (in some cases lots of 'em) and have still successfully managed the challenge of cooking affordable, healthy food at home. And I also know that CK readers are always up for helping out other readers who face seemingly intractable challenges.

So here's my question to readers out there: what advice, strategies, suggestions--and encouragement--would you give Jennifer? Share your thoughts in the comments!


Related Posts:
What's Wrong With the Government Limiting Food Marketing to Kids?
Ask CK: The Double-Batch/Too Many Leftovers Problem
Ask CK: Do You Make Money Blogging?
Ask CK: Blogging Equipment and Comment Policies
Ask CK: Best Investing Books


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!

Ask CK: What Can I Buy Instead of a Food Processor?

If you have a question you'd like to ask Casual Kitchen, send it in!!
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Reader Chacha1 asks:

This may be a phenomenally stupid question, but I am curious and it seems like you're the guy to ask.

I don't have a food processor and have no intention of buying one. What combination of manual tools is best for [foods like your Feta-Walnut Dip, spreads like hummus or other] preparations of this type? Can I just beat it all up with a wooden spoon?


Sadly, I'm actually not the guy to ask... because I honestly have no idea.

And I hear what Chacha1 is saying. We have a simple 7-cup Cuisinart with one switch and no features that ran us a relatively steep hundred bucks or so, which makes it by far the most expensive gadget in our kitchen. (And the heaviest too: the base must be filled with uranium, and I herniate myself every time I try to drag it out of the cupboard). The thing is, though, when we can instantly whip up things like a batch of homemade hummus or our incredible Feta Walnut dip, it always feels like that $100 (and a stray hernia or two) is well worth it.

But I do know that I have some of the most inventive and insightful readers out there who probably do know the answer to this question. Readers, what do you think? What would you use in place of a food processor? Or would you try to convince Chacha1 to rethink her position? Are food processors really worth it? Share your thoughts below!


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me 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!

Ask CK: The Purpose of Friday Links and Using SEO

If you have a question you'd like to ask Casual Kitchen, send it in!!
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Why do you run your Friday Links posts? It's way too much to read! I don't have that kind of time.

I run my Friday Links for a few reasons. First, to share great posts and thought-provoking ideas from other sites. Second, it's a great way for my readers to scale off of huge amount of personal blog reading I do. Thus I can follow several hundred blogs and share the best stuff I find, while readers can avoid following several hundred blogs and get exposed to content they'd otherwise not see.

But the most important reason I run these posts is to give back. Early on in CK's life, two high-traffic blogs, The Simple Dollar and Cheap Healthy Good linked to some of my articles here, and that simple act basically put CK on the map. I've been trying to pay it forward ever since.

The thing is, there are so many bad blogs out there that it literally pains me to see a good blog go unread. Thus my goal with my Friday links posts is to take good stuff from insightful writers and share it with all of the amazingly insightful readers here.

One final thought. We are all running out of time. Don't waste still more time complaining about not having enough time. Instead, consider the ways you can use my Friday Links to help you manage your time better. For example, you can:

1) Skip it entirely.
2) Read one or two articles that grab you.
3) Or, you can read everything, using CK as your weekly clearinghouse for interesting blog content.


Each of the above methods should save you time, depending on your specific needs and wants as a reader. However, it's up to you to choose your reading needs and wants. Don't give away your power and let the internet, or me, or any other site impose themselves on you without you choosing first.


A question from a fellow blogger: how much SEO [search engine optimization] do you do with your posts?

None. None whatsoever. Partly it's due to my personal laziness, and partly it's due to the fact that text written with SEO in mind reads like, well, text written with SEO in mind:

How do you eat frugally? Eating frugally, or frugal eating, is extremely important, and a frugal diet with frugal recipes can help you spend less money on food, especially on frugal healthy food, which doesn't have to be expensive.

See what I mean? After a lead sentence like that, your readers will run screaming from your site. Time on page: 0:00.

I just can't bring myself to write that badly, even if it might significantly boost my search traffic. I'd rather write for my regular readers with the idea of starting thought-provoking conversations.

Further, I figure that the reason I get any search traffic at all isn't due to SEO optimized posts, it's due to inbound links from lots of other bloggers. That's why if you want to support other bloggers, the best way to do it (beyond directly supporting them by supporting their sponsors, affiliates, or buying Amazon products via their site) is to link to specific posts that you've found valuable. This is an enormous driver of search traffic, and it brings readers to sites that are actually written well--not written for the purpose of gaming Google's search algorithms.

Readers, what are 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!

Ask CK: The Double-Batch/Too Many Leftovers Problem

If you have a question you'd like to ask Casual Kitchen, send it in!!
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I have a question about the recipes you have here at Casual Kitchen, specifically the ones that you always say are "scalable" that you can easily double.

I love your recipes, and they are way cheaper than ordering takeout, so I've been cooking more, ordering takeout less, and saving money. But here's the thing: I live alone. I don't want to have a huge pot of soup or whatever sitting in my fridge to eat every night for a week straight. I'll get bored eating the same thing every day. What do you suggest for the single people out there?


You're asking the wrong question.

Instead of thinking of leftovers as a problem, view them as a solution. The thing is, you actually do want that huge pot of soup or whatever sitting in your fridge. Why? Because it gives you options.

On any night this week, you can choose to eat those leftovers--or not. If you're sick of a recipe and don't want to eat it three nights in a row, great. On that third night, go right ahead and order takeout. You'll still be money and time ahead, and you can always alternate back to leftovers on days four and five. But the bottom line is this: reheating something you've already made is by far the fastest, most efficient and least expensive way to get a healthy meal on the table.

One other scenario: Let's say you're a single person just returning home after a long workday, and you don't have any leftovers in your fridge. Just a jar of mustard and a bottle of beer. Your easiest and most affordable solution for getting dinner on the table, then, is..... nothing. You're either stuck cooking something from scratch until late at night, stuck ordering takeout again, or stuck paying an enormous premium in both time and money to have dinner served to you in a restaurant. There's absolutely nothing wrong with eating out or ordering takeout, but if you do it habitually, you'll end up spending far more money than you need to on food.

One other point: there are tons of recipes, including Chili, most stews, lasagna, my Chicken Mole, Groundnut Stew, Lentil Soup and many, many others that taste even better the next day. Focus your cooking on recipes like this, and rather than dreading that pot of leftovers, you can instead look forward to a meal that improves with age. Uh, only up to a point, of course.

A final suggestion, one that works wonders for anyone who works long hours and simply can't face the idea of cooking after a grueling day at work: Start with my collection of the 25 Best Laughably Cheap Meals at Casual Kitchen, invest an hour or so of your time on a Sunday afternoon, and make two laughably cheap meals. Then, alternate them over the course of the following week. You'll eat healthy food all week long for a hilariously small amount of time, effort and money. I promise you won't get bored.

And if you've made it this far through this post and you're still bothered by a big pot (or even better, two big pots) of delicious leftovers sitting in your fridge, I'm afraid you need more help than I can give you.

Related Posts:
On the True Value of a Forgotten Restaurant Meal
Seven Rules On the Value of a Food Experience
The Top Lame-Ass Excuses Between You and Better Health
Spreading the New Frugality: A Manifesto


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

Ask CK: More Cookbook, Less Tofu and Annoying Blog Advertising

Readers! As Casual Kitchen's readership continues to grow, I've been receiving more and more great questions via email, comments and Twitter. As always, I welcome your feedback, so please let me know what you think!
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My father needs to cut back on red meat and my mother wants to eat more vegetables. They both are good cooks but not inventive, and they always fall back on a handful of recipes and ways to prepare vegetables. They don't have Internet access, so cookbooks and occasional ideas shared over the phone are the only source of new inspiration.

So, I'm looking for a cookbook for my parents that's mostly vegetarian or light on meat, but one that's not heavily based on tofu and other soy products ("too granola" as my father would put it). Do you have any suggestions?

--Nathalie


The ideal cookbook for you is Almost Meatless. I wrote a rabidly positive review of this exceptional cookbook right after it came out. It's perfectly suited for your parents and others interested in reducing their meat intake but not interested in making the leap to full-on vegetarianism.

A couple of other possibilities: Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant and Moosewood Cooks at Home are both excellent. Both are mostly meatless yet also feature quite a few fish and seafood recipes. Cooks at Home tends to feature simple and quick recipes, while Sundays tends to feature more ethnic dishes. CK's Groundnut Stew (borrowed and modified from Sundays) is a typical--and delicious--example.

Finally, Jay Solomon's Vegetarian Soup Cuisine. It's out of print, but you can find a used copy at Amazon. It's purely vegetarian, but there isn't a single recipe in there that calls for tofu. It's full of amazing soups based on beans and a wide range of veggies (our Smoky Brazilian Black Bean Soup is a house favorite), and it's suitable for all seasons and palates.

And I agree with your father! Too many veggie cookbooks over-rely on tofu, as if it's some kind of obligatory meat substitute. To me tofu is a second-order food that I try to avoid. A truly well-made vegetarian recipe doesn't need a "meat substitute" to be delicious. And while this is a common way non-vegetarians think about vegetarian meals, I consider it a limiting belief that prevents people from experiencing veggie cuisine in all its diversity.


Why do you run that big ad above every one of your articles? I'm putting you on notice as a reader. In fact, why do you bother to run ads at all on your blog? They're annoying.

I'm always struggling with how to balance my readers' preferences with my desire to earn at least some revenue for the immense amount of time I put into writing and moderating Casual Kitchen.

Long term readers know I've been a consistent user of Adsense ads, and I've also experimented with lots of other ways to earn revenue--and hopefully minimize reader annoyance. I use Chitika's search ad platform (and found it wanting, quite honestly) and from time to time I use Sponsored Tweets. I've also run text-based advertising as well as one-off ads that I've sold to sponsors.

Of course, ads aren't the only way I earn money here. I earn proceeds from affiliate relationships with great content providers like Jules Clancy and Everett Bogue, and I earn revenue from being an affiliate with Amazon.com. The short answer is, I don't know what the best method is to earn money from blogging. But placing some ads here at CK seems like a reasonably unobtrusive way to balance the needs of my readers with the needs of my wallet. Either way, I will always try my best to respond to reader feedback, and if you disagree or want to share any thoughts, please do so via email or in the comments below.

A final point. If you really want to read Casual Kitchen and you cannot stand seeing any advertising whatsoever, there's an easy solution. Join some 1400 other readers and subscribe to Casual Kitchen via RSS (my preferred feedreader is Google Reader). Keep in mind: I earn no revenue from readers who subscribe to me via feeds--I only earn money from Google Adsense ads or any other sponsor or affiliate if you click through to CK's site and then click an ad. But using RSS is the easiest way to avoid all annoyances here at CK. Well, except for all of the annoying things I write. :)

Readers, what are your thoughts? Share them in the comments!





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!

Ask Casual Kitchen: What To Do With Excess Ingredients

Readers! As Casual Kitchen's readership continues to grow, I've been receiving more and more great questions via email, comments and Twitter. As always, I welcome your feedback, so please let me know what you think!
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Regarding your Vegan Potato Peanut Curry recipe: In my local stores, you have to buy a gallon (not literally, but way more than 2 TBS) of tahini. What do you do with the rest? I would end up tossing it, so wouldn't that raise the per-serving cost?

I would appreciate a reply via e-mail. You see, I am interested in the answer & I found this recipe post in a "greatest hits" post so it is not very probable that I would find this post again to look for the answers. Thanks.


Let me first say if I succeed in reaching my goal of doubling Casual Kitchen's readership in 2011, I'm going to have a problem satisfying readers like this who expect privately emailed replies to their questions. :)

However, CK's fundamental purpose is to help readers, so I'll tackle this question in two ways: first regarding tahini specifically, and later by tackling a broader and more important question that lies behind the narrow discussion of tahini.

But back to tahini, and where to get it in smaller and more affordable sizes. First, consider looking outside your regular grocery store. Depending on the size of your community, you should be able to find a health or organic food store, a Trader Joe's or a Whole Foods store--all of which should carry tahini in a range of sizes.

Better yet, visit the various ethnic or middle eastern food stores in your community. There, you should be able to find tahini in smaller sizes--and at laughably cheaper prices. As we've discussed elsewhere here at CK, the standard food retailer usually considers tahini to be an aspirational good, which means that unless you look beyond these standard retailers, you will needlessly overpay.

Finally, tahini keeps for a long time. I mean a LONG time. Do not just toss the rest. Our current 400 gram jar expires in two years, and I fully expect to ignore that expiration date for another 6-12 months afterward. PS: If you're looking for other recipes using tahini, CK ran a post of seventeen amazing hummus recipes that I guarantee will meet all the tahini needs you'll ever have.

But this brings to mind a bigger and broader question that many home cooks regularly face: what do you do with expensive leftover ingredients that are sold in quantities far in excess of your needs for a specific recipe? Four thoughts:

1) Before shelling out for an expensive ingredient, read my post How To Tell If A Recipe Is Worth Cooking With Five Easy Questions. Maybe you shouldn't make the recipe in the first place. If a recipe has an obscure, expensive or hard-to-find ingredient, use that as a decision factor.

2) If you still really want to make that recipe, then look for three or four other recipes that use that same ingredient. Cook them over the following days or weeks. Again, use my Five Easy Questions test to help you make a selection.

3) Scale up those recipes to consume still more of the excess ingredient. Many recipes are incredibly scalable, thus making a double or triple batch involves minimal incremental work. This is one of the key tools CK readers can use to cook far more efficiently. If you find a good recipe that's highly scalable, be sure to keep it in your cooking rotation.

4) Last, many ingredients last far longer than the expiration date says they last. Don't just pitch the rest out, assuming you won't use it. For more on this, see my post When Do You Throw Out Food--and be sure to read that post's incredibly useful reader comments too.

Readers what other thoughts would you add?


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!

Ask Casual Kitchen: Going Organic and Bagging Your Groceries

Readers! As Casual Kitchen's readership continues to grow, I've been receiving more and more great questions via email, comments and Twitter. Some of these I'll turn into full posts, but from time to time (uh, like today) I'll run an "Ask Casual Kitchen" column to tackle a few questions at once.

As always, I welcome your feedback, so please
let me know what you think!
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Q: Which food/categories are worth 'paying up' for organic? And why?

A: I wrote a post on balancing the cost and value of organic foods several weeks ago, and it drew quite a bit of controversy--mainly because there are many people out there who won't (or can't) accept any middle ground in this debate.

But from a purely cost/value perspective, you'll probably get the best value out of your organic dollar by focusing your spending on foods which are normally grown using pesticides, are difficult to wash thoroughly and which are typically eaten whole (think fruits like strawberries, raspberries and peaches). You'll get the least value with fruits or veggies that have thick rinds and thus can be eaten safely no matter how much pesticide use is involved in their production (think melons, grapefruits, oranges, lemons, limes or bananas).

Keep in mind that there's a philosophical (sometimes I want to say a religious) aspect to this subject that skews peoples' views. If you rigidly object to any use of pesticides or chemicals at all, no matter what the reason, then you'll have to stake out different ground on this debate. However, if you are conversant with the small but growing body of scientific studies that argues that there is little to no incremental health benefits in organic foods at all, then you may not find any value whatsoever in going organic. Read up on the issues, decide where you stand, and then buy accordingly.

Q: Do you have any suggestions for how to deal with the baggers at my grocery store who repeatedly put raw chicken in grocery bags with other foods? These kids have no idea about the risks of raw chicken.

A: You shouldn't have to explain the concept of not wanting chicken goo smeared all over your food. But in my experience, most grocery baggers tend to be young kids who don't do their own food shopping, and thus are often oblivious to how to pack groceries appropriately.

One easy solution is to grab one of those clear plastic bags from the produce section and put your chicken package in there. The register/scanner will still be able to read the label, yet the extra bag will protect your other food. Barring that, you can also look for a grocery store in your area offering a "bag your own" checkout aisle.

Readers, what thoughts would you add?


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!

Ask Casual Kitchen: Blogging Equipment and Comment Policies

Readers! As Casual Kitchen's readership continues to grow, I've been receiving more and more great questions via email, comments and Twitter. Today's questions address some of my blogging practices.

As always, I welcome your feedback, so please
let me know what you think!
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Q: Can you please tell me what kinds of computer equipment you use to blog with? And what do you use for your photos?

A: I'm glad I got this question recently, because until about 18 months ago, I did most of my blogging on a laughably ancient (and I mean ancient) Gateway PC that I've had since 2000. That machine was just enormous--it took up the entire surface of my desk and was louder than a jet engine. But that PC had great writing karma--I wrote some of my best posts on it.

Now, however, I use a basic Dell Inspiron laptop for all of my writing. It cost only $400 and it's nothing fancy.

As for the photos here at Casual Kitchen, I mostly use a simple Canon Powershot point-and-shoot digital camera. Laura also owns a more expensive Canon SLR that (if I ask really nicely) she'll occasionally use for my recipe posts. (Note: a general rule on the photography here at CK: The good food photos are Laura's, the amateurish ones are mine.)

The bottom line is this: it doesn't take expensive equipment to create a good quality food blog.

Q: What's your policy on links and self-promotion on blog comments?

A: If someone leaves an insightful comment or helps along the conversation here, I don't mind at all if that someone promotes their blog with a link or a tagline. When I comment on other peoples' blogs I generally sign my comments with Dan @ Casual Kitchen and include a link back to my blog. It would only be fair if I encouraged the same thing here.

I delete any obvious comment spam, however, and I super-duper-double-delete the comment spam linking to sites selling Viagra and/or Costa Rican real estate.

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!

Ask Casual Kitchen: Best Investing Books

Readers! As Casual Kitchen's readership continues to grow, I've been receiving more and more great questions via email, comments and Twitter.

Today's column is an off-topic Q&A covering useful investing books that I'd recommend to readers. As always,
I welcome your feedback.
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Q: You used to work on Wall Street, so are there any books on investing that you'd recommend to regular people? And do you think it's a good time to invest in stocks right now?

In my view Jim Cramer's 2005 book Real Money is one of the best books on navigating the modern stock market. The key insight in this book (and sadly, one that many professional investors don't even grasp) is his explanation of business cycle investing. In other words, which stocks and sectors do well when the economy is reaccelerating, and which do well when the economy is heading towards recession? This is extremely useful stuff for every investor, regardless of skill level.

Cramer's most recent book Getting Back to Even is also extremely useful. I just finished it (and recommended it in a recent Weekend Links post), and I was impressed with some of his intermediate and advanced investing strategies, a few of which I've already (profitably, fortunately) put into practice myself. I know it's hard to believe that a guy who behaves like such a crazed buffoon on TV can be such a great teacher, but it's true.

Stocks for the Long Run by Jeremy Siegel. Another great resource, although it's a cruel irony that the central thesis of this book (that long-term stock ownership is the best way to build wealth) was dead wrong over the past decade. But I recommend this book now because Siegel's thesis is likely to be true for the next few decades.

One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch. Many people today don't even recognize this weird-looking white-haired guy, but he was a legend on Wall Street thanks to his stellar performance managing Fidelity's Magellan Fund (another cruel irony: this fund began sucking wind shortly after he stepped down in 1990 and has sucked ever since). Lynch's book focuses on all the things regular investors can do to capture advantages over the pros. Today, of course, there are more resources available to the average investor than ever before. Thus when you combine this book with Siegel's and Cramer's books, you can start to grasp why the next few decades could truly be a new era for the individual investor.

I can't have a list of investing books without including The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America, which is available for free here. Yep, that's right, free, because the material is simply a compendium of the best content from his company's annual reports, and thus everything is in the public domain. (If the link is dead or isn't working, just send me an email with "Buffett Book" in the subject line. I'm happy to share my copy with any reader who asks.) Put the time and effort into digesting Buffett's ideas and I promise you will profit.

Finally, a book that's less about investing and more about taking your power back over money: Your Money or Your Life. Laura and I read it for the first time more then 10 years ago and we've returned to it many times over the years. It changed everything for us.

There are zillions of great books out there to read on investing, but these specific titles have been particularly important in shaping my thinking over the years as both a professional and individual investor. I'm more than happy to recommend them all.

Okay. Your second question, about whether this is a good time to invest, is the type of question I just dread. I suppose I can say it's a better time to invest than, say, three years ago when the DJIA was at 14,000. But, honestly, I have no idea.

And by the way, when you listen to all of those confident-sounding pundits in the media telling you that now is either a good or terrible time to invest, please remember: they have no idea either.










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!