A really short post today. Readers know I've been on a bit of a heuristic kick lately, and the other day I stumbled onto a really good one.
For a quick rule to differentiate between food to avoid and food worth eating, just ask this question:
Would someone from 1900 recognize this as food?
It's not my idea, not even close, and unfortunately I can't remember where I found it. But I'm definitely going to steal this question and use it whenever I'm in doubt about whether a food is good for me or not. And of course the answer will be a clear negative for any processed, heavily advertised, manufactured second-order foods.
What about you?
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You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Showing posts with label rules. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rules. Show all posts
Four Frugality Heuristics [That Will Make You Rich If You Use Them]
Frugality tips are nice, but frugality heuristics are better.
Heuristics--rules of thumb--let you function on a strategy level rather than on a mere tactical level. A few well-thought-out heuristics can take the place of a million specific tips and tactics.
Look, we know retailers and consumer products companies become more and more sophisticated by the day in persuading us, manipulating us and extracting money from us. It is my hope that today's post will help you avoid most, if not all, of the traps and pitfalls awaiting us in the consumer marketplace.
Frugality Heuristic #1: Don't use money to solve problems.
This rule helps you consider alternatives to solving a given need without automatically defaulting to the marketplace to make a purchase. If it's an item you need: could you borrow it, freecycle it, or use something you already own? If it's a service, can you learn to do it yourself, or trade/barter for it? Better still, can you just "don't want!" it? And so on. Bonus: by using this heuristic over the long term, you'll build enormous adaptability, flexibility and resourcefulness.
Frugality Heuristic #2: If they're offering it to you, it's profitable for them--and unprofitable for you.
Notice that things are sold to you if and only if it's worth doing so. It must be meaningfully profitable to the entity doing the selling. Faithfully using this heuristic will protect you from products and services like extended warranties, upsells, excess insurance, most high-fee investment products[1], etc.
Frugality Heuristic #3: If it's advertised, you don't want it.
Remember: You the consumer pay for all advertising. Ad costs are always passed through to the end customer in the form of higher prices, yet despite this, the advertising-consumption model is perhaps one of the best systems ever devised for triggering desires and then separating us from our money. Do not play this game. At the very least, find an equivalent product that isn't advertised. A savvy and intelligent consumer thinks about the enormous cost of heavy advertising, knows that she ends up paying for it, and thus lets advertising become a stimulus not to buy.
Frugality Heuristic #4: Avoid all payment plans.
Payment plans obscure the true price you pay for something, and they almost always substantially increase your final cost[2] while substantially increasing profits to the company offering the payment plan (see Heuristic #2). This heuristic will also save you enormous amounts of money over the course of your life by stopping you from buying things that, if you're honest with yourself, you can't actually afford.
Readers: What other frugality heuristics would you add?
READ NEXT: Good Games
Footnotes:
[1] Note that this goes double for investments, and triple!!!!11! for complex investments like variable annuities, universal life insurance policies, unit investment trusts, etc. Which gives us Investment Heuristic #2a: Do not invest in any investment that is sold to you.
[2] This includes those seemingly attractive 0% financing arrangements from car dealers that calculate your monthly payment by way of a complicated and opaque process. You think you're getting a great deal on a too-good-to-be-true interest rate, while they are likely arranging things such that you pay more than you think. Once again, see Heuristic #2 for the real reason these plans are offered to you in the first place.
***********************
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
Heuristics--rules of thumb--let you function on a strategy level rather than on a mere tactical level. A few well-thought-out heuristics can take the place of a million specific tips and tactics.
Look, we know retailers and consumer products companies become more and more sophisticated by the day in persuading us, manipulating us and extracting money from us. It is my hope that today's post will help you avoid most, if not all, of the traps and pitfalls awaiting us in the consumer marketplace.
Frugality Heuristic #1: Don't use money to solve problems.
This rule helps you consider alternatives to solving a given need without automatically defaulting to the marketplace to make a purchase. If it's an item you need: could you borrow it, freecycle it, or use something you already own? If it's a service, can you learn to do it yourself, or trade/barter for it? Better still, can you just "don't want!" it? And so on. Bonus: by using this heuristic over the long term, you'll build enormous adaptability, flexibility and resourcefulness.
Frugality Heuristic #2: If they're offering it to you, it's profitable for them--and unprofitable for you.
Notice that things are sold to you if and only if it's worth doing so. It must be meaningfully profitable to the entity doing the selling. Faithfully using this heuristic will protect you from products and services like extended warranties, upsells, excess insurance, most high-fee investment products[1], etc.
Frugality Heuristic #3: If it's advertised, you don't want it.
Remember: You the consumer pay for all advertising. Ad costs are always passed through to the end customer in the form of higher prices, yet despite this, the advertising-consumption model is perhaps one of the best systems ever devised for triggering desires and then separating us from our money. Do not play this game. At the very least, find an equivalent product that isn't advertised. A savvy and intelligent consumer thinks about the enormous cost of heavy advertising, knows that she ends up paying for it, and thus lets advertising become a stimulus not to buy.
Frugality Heuristic #4: Avoid all payment plans.
Payment plans obscure the true price you pay for something, and they almost always substantially increase your final cost[2] while substantially increasing profits to the company offering the payment plan (see Heuristic #2). This heuristic will also save you enormous amounts of money over the course of your life by stopping you from buying things that, if you're honest with yourself, you can't actually afford.
Readers: What other frugality heuristics would you add?
READ NEXT: Good Games
Footnotes:
[1] Note that this goes double for investments, and triple!!!!11! for complex investments like variable annuities, universal life insurance policies, unit investment trusts, etc. Which gives us Investment Heuristic #2a: Do not invest in any investment that is sold to you.
[2] This includes those seemingly attractive 0% financing arrangements from car dealers that calculate your monthly payment by way of a complicated and opaque process. You think you're getting a great deal on a too-good-to-be-true interest rate, while they are likely arranging things such that you pay more than you think. Once again, see Heuristic #2 for the real reason these plans are offered to you in the first place.
***********************
You can help support the work I do here at Casual Kitchen by visiting Amazon via any link on this site. Amazon pays a small commission to me based on whatever purchase you make on that visit, and it's at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
And, if you are interested at all in cryptocurrencies, yet another way you can help support my work here is to use this link to open up your own cryptocurrency account at Coinbase. I will receive a small affiliate commission with each opened account. Once again, thank you for your support!
How to Handle Raw Chicken So That You’ll NEVER Get Food Poisoning
I've been told the way I handle raw chicken borders on abject paranoia. But I've also gone my entire life and never had, and never caused anybody to have, a case of chicken-related salmonella or food poisoning. In today’s post, I’ll share with you my routine for the safe handling of raw chicken in the kitchen.
Even a cursory look at large scale chicken processing techniques reveals them to be pretty messy, to put it diplomatically. And this recent data on salmonella prevalence isn’t exactly encouraging. The bottom line is that salmonella and other food-borne bacteria are commonly found in and on raw chicken.
My goal today isn’t to disgust you so thoroughly that you’ll never eat chicken again (although some of the links above might do exactly that…). Instead, I want you to have a good grasp of how likely it is that you’ll meet up with microorganisms when you handle raw chicken, or any raw meat for that matter. Hopefully, this will give you all the reason you need to apply the following seven rules of chicken-handling safety. You too can have confidence that nobody will get sick on your watch!
1) Thaw Carefully
It goes without saying that if chicken isn’t all that clean when it comes out of the processing plant, it can become a perfect culturing medium for bacteria if you don’t take precautions when you thaw it.
Usually the best way to thaw frozen chicken is to put it in the fridge overnight. If you must speed things up, you can leave the chicken out on the counter for a few hours at most. Certainly never leave raw chicken out at room temperature for much longer than that. It’s never a good idea, for example to put raw meat out on your counter in the morning, take off for work, and then come back in the evening to cook it. That’s simply too long for uncooked meat to sit out at room temperature. Don’t risk it.
2) Rinse the chicken thoroughly in extremely hot tap water
Chicken, especially when it is mass-produced, is often sprayed with disinfectants or detergents and then rinsed (hopefully rinsed well) before being packaged for consumption. So we don't just have salmonella or e. coli to worry about--we also might be ingesting cleaning chemicals along with our chicken too.
You never know for sure how clean your chicken is. I solve this issue by running hot water (as hot as I can stand it) out of my kitchen sink tap, and I rinse each individual piece of chicken well under the faucet. Then I’ll place the fully rinsed chicken on paper towels on a plate before seasoning them and cooking them. If I’m cooking a whole chicken (or turkey for that matter), I run hot water in the inside of the bird too, just to make sure there aren’t any pockets of bacteria or anything else where I might put stuffing.
You’re never going to sterilize a piece of meat perfectly. We ingest bacteria all the time by eating all sorts of foods. What makes you sick, however, is when you get exposed to a critical mass of bacteria at one time. Rinsing under hot running water is a great way to kill off and physically remove most (if not all) of the bacteria so that this can’t happen.
3) Pay careful attention to everything the chicken touches
There’s a scene in “The Bourne Identity” that (weirdly) describes my philosophy on handling raw meat. It’s the scene where Jason Bourne and his girlfriend Marie wake up after spending a night in a youth hostel in Paris:
“You've already cleaned the room?”
“I wiped the whole place down for fingerprints.”
“Can I walk around or is that gonna leave any footprints?”
“You can walk around. It's no problem. But we'll just keep track of everything we touch. I just think it's better if we leave a room that we're not gonna leave a trail.”
Setting aside all my personal issues with paranoia about being chased by bad guys, I actually think it helps to think about raw meat in this way too. Any time you take meat that might be contaminated, touch a surface with it, and then touch that surface to anything else, you risk spreading food-borne bacteria. Therefore, I pay careful attention everything that the chicken touches and everything that the packaging touches. I also try to limit the workspace area I use when I’m handling raw meat of any kind. And then I carefully wash with hot soapy water (see #7 below for more on this) every surface, every dish and every utensil that came in contact with the raw chicken. I don’t want to leave a trail of food-borne bugs.
4) Be an obsessive hand-washer
Of course you should always wash your hands before beginning to cook any food. You should also wash your hands immediately after handling any raw meat, and before touching any other food or utensils. And then, I suggest you wash your hands one or two extra times, just for kicks, at various other times while preparing the meal. Here’s one instance where Lady MacBeth had it right. Of course, use hot running water and lots of soap.
5) Use high heat to sear the meat
When I’m making my house favorite Chicken Mole recipe, or searing the chicken pieces for Thai Pasta Salad, I of course want to cook the meat thoroughly enough so that I kill whatever hardy bacteria might survive steps 1 through 4.
But I don’t want to have to gnaw on dried-out, overcooked chicken. So I needed to strike a reasonable balance between healthy cooking and tender meat. I think I’ve found it. If it’s a dish where I need chunks or pieces of chicken meat, I sear it for a short time in very hot olive oil.
Here’s my technique: I heat up a quarter-inch layer of olive oil to high heat on the bottom of a non-stick pan. Once the oil is good and hot (at this point it will just be starting to smoke a little), I’ll dump in the chopped chicken pieces, cover it, and let it sizzle violently for 3-4 minutes. Theh, I’ll lift up the lid and flip over the chicken pieces so they can have both sides directly exposed to the hot oil. The process is a bit splattery, so I suggest using a deep non-stick pan if you have one. Searing chicken meat at high heat will kill ALL the bacteria, but it will also seal the juices into the meat and prevent it from tasting dry.
Granted, not all recipes allow for cooking chicken this way. If I’m broiling chicken parts, or roasting a whole chicken, I’ll make sure to follow the old adage: cook until the juices run clear. But I’ll also use a meat thermometer to make sure the chicken is at least heated up to 185F in the center, just to assuage my paranoia and make sure I kill off any potential bad guys in there.
6) Dispose of everything carefully
Once again, you need to pay attention to everything the chicken touches, and this means everything. Put all remaining chicken parts, disposable packaging, paper towels and any other disposable items that came into contact with the chicken into a grocery bag, tie a knot in the top of the bag, and then put that bag into the garbage. Now you and anybody else in your household will have absolutely no risk of inadvertent contact with raw chicken, even if you need to reach into the garbage can! Total safety.
7) Clean and sterilize your workspace
Remember, we’re being paranoid here. Everything that the chicken touches could potentially have bacteria-laden chicken goo on it. This is where we take Lady MacBeth to a new level and clean everything that the chicken may have touched:
Even a cursory look at large scale chicken processing techniques reveals them to be pretty messy, to put it diplomatically. And this recent data on salmonella prevalence isn’t exactly encouraging. The bottom line is that salmonella and other food-borne bacteria are commonly found in and on raw chicken.
My goal today isn’t to disgust you so thoroughly that you’ll never eat chicken again (although some of the links above might do exactly that…). Instead, I want you to have a good grasp of how likely it is that you’ll meet up with microorganisms when you handle raw chicken, or any raw meat for that matter. Hopefully, this will give you all the reason you need to apply the following seven rules of chicken-handling safety. You too can have confidence that nobody will get sick on your watch!
1) Thaw Carefully
It goes without saying that if chicken isn’t all that clean when it comes out of the processing plant, it can become a perfect culturing medium for bacteria if you don’t take precautions when you thaw it.
Usually the best way to thaw frozen chicken is to put it in the fridge overnight. If you must speed things up, you can leave the chicken out on the counter for a few hours at most. Certainly never leave raw chicken out at room temperature for much longer than that. It’s never a good idea, for example to put raw meat out on your counter in the morning, take off for work, and then come back in the evening to cook it. That’s simply too long for uncooked meat to sit out at room temperature. Don’t risk it.
2) Rinse the chicken thoroughly in extremely hot tap water
Chicken, especially when it is mass-produced, is often sprayed with disinfectants or detergents and then rinsed (hopefully rinsed well) before being packaged for consumption. So we don't just have salmonella or e. coli to worry about--we also might be ingesting cleaning chemicals along with our chicken too.
You never know for sure how clean your chicken is. I solve this issue by running hot water (as hot as I can stand it) out of my kitchen sink tap, and I rinse each individual piece of chicken well under the faucet. Then I’ll place the fully rinsed chicken on paper towels on a plate before seasoning them and cooking them. If I’m cooking a whole chicken (or turkey for that matter), I run hot water in the inside of the bird too, just to make sure there aren’t any pockets of bacteria or anything else where I might put stuffing.
You’re never going to sterilize a piece of meat perfectly. We ingest bacteria all the time by eating all sorts of foods. What makes you sick, however, is when you get exposed to a critical mass of bacteria at one time. Rinsing under hot running water is a great way to kill off and physically remove most (if not all) of the bacteria so that this can’t happen.
3) Pay careful attention to everything the chicken touches
There’s a scene in “The Bourne Identity” that (weirdly) describes my philosophy on handling raw meat. It’s the scene where Jason Bourne and his girlfriend Marie wake up after spending a night in a youth hostel in Paris:
“You've already cleaned the room?”
“I wiped the whole place down for fingerprints.”
“Can I walk around or is that gonna leave any footprints?”
“You can walk around. It's no problem. But we'll just keep track of everything we touch. I just think it's better if we leave a room that we're not gonna leave a trail.”
Setting aside all my personal issues with paranoia about being chased by bad guys, I actually think it helps to think about raw meat in this way too. Any time you take meat that might be contaminated, touch a surface with it, and then touch that surface to anything else, you risk spreading food-borne bacteria. Therefore, I pay careful attention everything that the chicken touches and everything that the packaging touches. I also try to limit the workspace area I use when I’m handling raw meat of any kind. And then I carefully wash with hot soapy water (see #7 below for more on this) every surface, every dish and every utensil that came in contact with the raw chicken. I don’t want to leave a trail of food-borne bugs.
4) Be an obsessive hand-washer
Of course you should always wash your hands before beginning to cook any food. You should also wash your hands immediately after handling any raw meat, and before touching any other food or utensils. And then, I suggest you wash your hands one or two extra times, just for kicks, at various other times while preparing the meal. Here’s one instance where Lady MacBeth had it right. Of course, use hot running water and lots of soap.
5) Use high heat to sear the meat
When I’m making my house favorite Chicken Mole recipe, or searing the chicken pieces for Thai Pasta Salad, I of course want to cook the meat thoroughly enough so that I kill whatever hardy bacteria might survive steps 1 through 4.
But I don’t want to have to gnaw on dried-out, overcooked chicken. So I needed to strike a reasonable balance between healthy cooking and tender meat. I think I’ve found it. If it’s a dish where I need chunks or pieces of chicken meat, I sear it for a short time in very hot olive oil.
Here’s my technique: I heat up a quarter-inch layer of olive oil to high heat on the bottom of a non-stick pan. Once the oil is good and hot (at this point it will just be starting to smoke a little), I’ll dump in the chopped chicken pieces, cover it, and let it sizzle violently for 3-4 minutes. Theh, I’ll lift up the lid and flip over the chicken pieces so they can have both sides directly exposed to the hot oil. The process is a bit splattery, so I suggest using a deep non-stick pan if you have one. Searing chicken meat at high heat will kill ALL the bacteria, but it will also seal the juices into the meat and prevent it from tasting dry.
Granted, not all recipes allow for cooking chicken this way. If I’m broiling chicken parts, or roasting a whole chicken, I’ll make sure to follow the old adage: cook until the juices run clear. But I’ll also use a meat thermometer to make sure the chicken is at least heated up to 185F in the center, just to assuage my paranoia and make sure I kill off any potential bad guys in there.
6) Dispose of everything carefully
Once again, you need to pay attention to everything the chicken touches, and this means everything. Put all remaining chicken parts, disposable packaging, paper towels and any other disposable items that came into contact with the chicken into a grocery bag, tie a knot in the top of the bag, and then put that bag into the garbage. Now you and anybody else in your household will have absolutely no risk of inadvertent contact with raw chicken, even if you need to reach into the garbage can! Total safety.
7) Clean and sterilize your workspace
Remember, we’re being paranoid here. Everything that the chicken touches could potentially have bacteria-laden chicken goo on it. This is where we take Lady MacBeth to a new level and clean everything that the chicken may have touched:
a) Wipe EVERYTHING down with hot soapy water.
b) Wash EVERYTHING that touched the chicken in hot soapy water.
b) Wash EVERYTHING that touched the chicken in hot soapy water.
You can see now why I told you in step #3 to minimize your raw chicken workspace, right? The more space that you use, the more surface area that needs to be carefully washed. Finally, all you need now is a last, careful wash of your hands in hot soapy water.
Congratulations! You can enjoy your chicken with complete safety and confidence that you’ll never get sick.
Congratulations! You can enjoy your chicken with complete safety and confidence that you’ll never get sick.
Ten Rules for the Modern Restaurant-Goer
Today's post isn't exactly about cooking. Instead I bring you ten rules that I hope will help you enjoy eating. Eating out, that is.
1) Go out to a really nice restaurant once in a while. It doesn’t have to be a daily thing, obviously. If you’re budget-conscious, think of it as a reward for yourself. Enjoy life a little bit by spending a little extra money once in a while for a great culinary experience.
2) Make a point of patronizing owner-operated restaurants rather than chain restaurants. Forget the Olive Gardens and the Red Lobsters and the Macaroni Grill. Does it really help the world if you give business to huge corporations like Darden Restaurants or Yum Brands? Help support a local entrepreneur in your town instead.
3) Try at least one appetizer. Or better, order two and split 'em with your dinner companion.
4) Try one of the house specials. Learn what the chef is good at. Ask the waiter or waitress "what's good here?" and make a point of ordering that dish.
5) I wish I didn't have to include this one, but it goes in anyway: Never speak on your cellphone in a restaurant. You’re just not that important. Turn your phone off for once and try and enjoy the here and now.
6) Order drinks, or try a new wine you’ve never tried before. Laura and I have a weakness for the occasional margarita (rocks, and I'm sorry but I must admit it, extra salt).
7) If the restaurant has a sommelier, use him. Yes, I know this sounds snobby, and you don't have to do this EVERY time. But it's actually kind of fun. Tell him something cryptic like "I like red" or "I like sweet wines" and let him go to work. Then write down all the information on the label--and even a jot down note or two on whether you liked it or not and why--and keep those notes somewhere. Heck, file them with your 401(k) statements--you might cheer yourself up this way.
8) Don't clean your plate. Take some of your food home with you. This will give you room to follow rule #9, which is…
9) Leave room for dessert! It's an especially good idea to ask the server for a suggestion or a favorite recommendation when it comes to dessert.
And finally,
10) Tip 20%, never less. This isn’t the 1980s anymore. Make the universe a plentiful place. We're in the era of outflow. If service is atrocious, tell the server politely (and keep an understanding and sympathetic smile on your face while telling) and still tip 15%.
I'd love to hear any additional rules that readers out there think I should include. We'll update this one as needed.
Related Topics:
Using Salt = Cheating
Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Your Life
by Shakti Gawain
The International Sommelier Guild
1) Go out to a really nice restaurant once in a while. It doesn’t have to be a daily thing, obviously. If you’re budget-conscious, think of it as a reward for yourself. Enjoy life a little bit by spending a little extra money once in a while for a great culinary experience.
2) Make a point of patronizing owner-operated restaurants rather than chain restaurants. Forget the Olive Gardens and the Red Lobsters and the Macaroni Grill. Does it really help the world if you give business to huge corporations like Darden Restaurants or Yum Brands? Help support a local entrepreneur in your town instead.
3) Try at least one appetizer. Or better, order two and split 'em with your dinner companion.
4) Try one of the house specials. Learn what the chef is good at. Ask the waiter or waitress "what's good here?" and make a point of ordering that dish.
5) I wish I didn't have to include this one, but it goes in anyway: Never speak on your cellphone in a restaurant. You’re just not that important. Turn your phone off for once and try and enjoy the here and now.
6) Order drinks, or try a new wine you’ve never tried before. Laura and I have a weakness for the occasional margarita (rocks, and I'm sorry but I must admit it, extra salt).
7) If the restaurant has a sommelier, use him. Yes, I know this sounds snobby, and you don't have to do this EVERY time. But it's actually kind of fun. Tell him something cryptic like "I like red" or "I like sweet wines" and let him go to work. Then write down all the information on the label--and even a jot down note or two on whether you liked it or not and why--and keep those notes somewhere. Heck, file them with your 401(k) statements--you might cheer yourself up this way.
8) Don't clean your plate. Take some of your food home with you. This will give you room to follow rule #9, which is…
9) Leave room for dessert! It's an especially good idea to ask the server for a suggestion or a favorite recommendation when it comes to dessert.
And finally,
10) Tip 20%, never less. This isn’t the 1980s anymore. Make the universe a plentiful place. We're in the era of outflow. If service is atrocious, tell the server politely (and keep an understanding and sympathetic smile on your face while telling) and still tip 15%.
I'd love to hear any additional rules that readers out there think I should include. We'll update this one as needed.
Related Topics:
Using Salt = Cheating
Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Your Life
by Shakti GawainThe International Sommelier Guild
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