I had a great conversation the other day with a friend who is still struggling with the student loans he took on at the turn of the millennium. He’s been knocking on those loans for twelve years and still has several years to go. One thing my friend said that really stuck with me was
The post Teaching the Value of a Dollar appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
It's always been a suggestion that if you want to help with digestion (or just get over that bloat of eating way too much) that you take a quick walk around the block. As the New York Times points out, there's actually science to back up the benefits.
Two different studies have shown that a post-meal walk can aid in digestion. One study in 2008 showed that walking sped the rate at which food moved through the stomach. Other studies have shown that walking also decreases blood sugar after meals, which decreases cardiovascular risk and potential signal diabetes. Essentially, walking after a meal clears glucose from the bloodstream to lower blood sugar, and helps move food through your system quicker. Which is to say: that old suggestion to take a walk after a meal really is beneficial.
Really? The Claim: Taking a Walk After a Meal Aids Digestion | The New York Times
If you're just learning to cook, or you're on a budget, it's a good idea to make your pantry staples a set of ingredients that you can mix and match into multiple dishes without getting bored of them. They don't have to be a huge part of each meal, but they can offer you enough flexibility that you'll never be short on meal ideas. Here are a few with those properties.
Starches like rice, potatoes, and pasta can be both the base of or the filler in a number of meals, but you don't have to accept them at face value. Here are a few of our favorite base starches you can mix and match into unusual or interesting ways:
Ah rice, the most consumed food on the planet. If you think the only thing you can do with rice is toss it in a pot or rice cooker and eat it on the side of your meal, you're dead wrong. Rice is extremely versatile, but before you can really learn what to do with it, you need to understand the different types of rice and what makes them all different or special.
You'll usually see short-grain, medium-grain, and long-grain rice, along with "wild rice" in the grocery store:
By and large we'd suggest you get a nice medium grain—it's the most universally applicable. Even so, don't be fooled into thinking there's nothing else to rice than the length of its grain. Skip the Uncle Ben's and the instant rice, and look for some of these words on your store shelves:
Aromatic Rice includes most types of rice that, when cooked, have a fragrant or nutty smell associated with them. Jasmine rice, Basmati rice, Wehani rice, and so on. Most of these types are medium to long grain, and personally I find Jasmine and Basmati rice to be incredibly versatile and useful in different cooking methods. Give them a try. Also, look for glutinous rice if you're looking for that sticky, clumpy feel. Sticky rice or sweet rice fall into this category, as does "waxy rice, " and they're named like this not because they're particularly high in gluten, but just because of the consistency they take when cooked. For example, risotto, the creamy italian dish that comes in so many flavors and styles, is made with Arborio or Carnaroli rice—both of which are glutinous. Look for those, too.
You'll see other words used to describe rice types, like "japonica" and "indica," which really refer to the original cultivation point for the rice. If all of this sounds complicated, it is! There are over 40,000 varieties of rice, and that doesn't even include things like couscous (actually a dish, made with Semolina and not rice at all), that people often confuse with rice. For more detail on the various types of rice, check out this list of varieties, and this glossary about the different types of rice. Both go into far greater detail than we have time for.
Long story short, take some of the names we've mentioned here into the grocery store with you. Look for medium grains. Aromatics like Jasmine and Basmati tend to add a little fanciness to standard rice dishes. Brown rice is healthier, but it'll take longer to cook and is less flexible than white rice. Glutinous rices like "sweet," "sticky," and "sushi" rice clump together really nicely and are also flexible. With so many options, there's no reason to buy minute rice ever again.
Potatoes can be just as complicated as rice, but thankfully they're a little easier to boil down (see what I did there?) They're just as flexible—you can just boil them up and eat them whole, smash them to your preferred texture and eat them mashed, mash and cook them for pancakes, chop them up and use them as an ingredient in something else—the preparation methods for potatoes are nearly endless, especially when you consider how many types there are:
You'll also see "petites" or "fingerling" potatoes, which usually correspond to one of the above types, just in smaller sizes and can be used in similar ways. Petites are often specifically thin, and for that reason are best roasted or fried, and fingerlings can be pan fried, roasted, mashed, whatever you prefer. For even more potato types and details on these, check out this guide from The Cook's Thesaurus.
In any case, the thing that's important to pay attention to with potatoes is their starch or water content, which will determine how they're best cooked. The video above from America's Test Kitchen explains nicely what you should watch out for when you pick up potatoes at the grocery store. You can do almost anything with potatoes, but knowing which type you have means you can pick the perfect applications for it.
Ramen noodles may seem like cheap college students' food—and let's be honest, they are—but that doesn't mean they're not versatile on their own. They're not exactly the most nutritious, but when you ditch the flavor packet that comes with them and cook them yourself properly, they can be a real meal, not just a late night snack or what you have to lunch when nothing else is around.
Instead of getting into the differences between asian noodles, instead we'll point you to this list of 30 different ways to hack your ramen noodles courtesy of our friends at Serious Eats. If you've never bothered to take those packet noodles, cook them in your own broth, and add a little meat to the mix, you'll want to. They even suggest making a cast iron skillet shepherd's pie with ramen noodles on top instead of potatoes.
Similarly, check out this guide to ramen dishes that aren't soup from HuffPo Taste. They suggest creative preparations like ramen salad, a kimchi-ramen grilled cheese, ramen trail mix, and even a ramen omelet that's actually surprisingly good. They may be cheap and somewhat empty calories, but they're some of the most versatile things you can put in your pantry if you have a little imagination.
Okay, we've had our starches. It's time to move on to the things that are actually good for you. Here are a few health-friendly fruits and veggies you can mix and match into interesting and creative meals that beat just cutting them up and cooking them:
You might think that bananas are pretty plain and straightforward, and they can be if the only way you've ever eaten them is peeled and straight, or sliced on a bowl of cereal. You've probably also had them sliced on toast, or a peanut butter and banana sandwich, but swap out the peanut butter for Nutella and you have a completely different experience. If that's too mainstream for you, keep them around to toss into fruit smoothies—bananas can offer added thickness and sweetness to a smoothie without adding too much of its own characteristic banana-ness to the mix. They're even useful to thicken up veggie smoothies.
Similarly, while banana bread and banana pudding tend to bring a lot of the banana's own flavor to the party, they're definitely transformative ways to make use of bananas without just eating them straight up. If you don't believe us, check out Endless Simmer's list of over 100 recipes and preparations that involve a banana. Some are sweet, like the Thai candied bananas and some are savory, like the roasted squash soup with maple glazed bananas. If you're not feeling that fancy, just brush them with rum and honey and toss them on the grill.
The term "pepper" captures a remarkably wide class of foods (they're botanically fruits, but often referred to as vegetables in culinary circles). For our purposes, we'll be talking about common peppers like bell peppers, and some chili pepper varieties like poblanos and jalapeños that are more versatile than their exceptionally spicy cousins. You may think a pepper is a pepper, but the number of methods that peppers can be prepared and served make them worth keeping in your fridge for a rainy day.
First, a point of order: green, yellow, and red peppers are all the same, just harvested at different times. Every pepper starts off green, and when harvested at that point they're crisp, slightly bitter, and don't have the trademark sweetness that develops if you leave them to mature. With a little time, green peppers eventually turn orange and yellow, and develop more fruitiness and sweetness. If you leave them even longer, they'll go full red. Red peppers are the sweetest and fruitiest, and have almost none of the bitterness of green peppers.
For that reason, even people who can't stomach green peppers often fall in love with red peppers, especially when they're roasted to bring out even more sweetness. Roasting peppers all but creates an entirely new vegetable, with new uses and properties, and you can do it at home.
These transformations—all from the same plant—make peppers extremely flexible, even if you sauté some green ones with some red ones and serve them together. Preparation-wise, bell peppers can be served raw as a snack, sliced up over salad, used in stir fries, sautéed with sausages or other meats, chopped up fine and added to eggs, salad, rice, or almost anything else you want to add that crispness or sweetness to. You could serve them whole and stuffed with just about anything you enjoy, or pickle them to preserve them for the long haul.
Chili peppers, on the other hand, like poblanos and jalapeños, are just as flexible, and while they don't change color in the same fashion, they can just as easily be stuffed, or sliced up and used to add some spiciness and heat to another dish. The sheer fact that all of these pepper varieties can be a main dish or a side item or an ingredient in something else makes them useful far beyond a humble crudite platter.
Finally, if you really want to be able to do incredible things with these—and any other flexible food you love—you'll need some ways to amp up and tweak the flavors so they don't always taste like what you've had before. We've talked about how to make your own spice mixes and putting together "spice kits" of your favorite spices, but a well-stocked spice cabinet is the key to using the same foods in drastically different ways.
While you're at it, keep a few flavor enhancers on hand to add a spicy or savory punch to your meals. When we talked about improving your home cooking with science, we mentioned keeping "umami bombs" like soy sauce, anchovy, or marmite on hand for a quick savory boost when your dishes need them. You could use the chili peppers we mentioned for a spicy boost, but a little cayenne pepper or spicy sesame oil in the spice cabinet can help too. If you keep one or two ways to inject sweet, spicy, savory, or even bitter into a dish up your sleeve, you can do almost anything—even with takeout or otherwise boring foods.
Photos by Francis Storr, Provasilich (Shutterstock), cookbookman17, Thomas Wanhoff, Melodie Turori, Serious Eats, Ginny, and chascar.
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Sulfur continues to offer promise in the energy storage realm. Low- cost lithium sulfur batteries were just a research topic a few years ago, and are now moving closer to practicality with new developments that could offer four times the energy storage of lithium-ion batteries.
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a technique that uses a solid electrolyte to produce a stable, low-cost, sulfur-based battery. "The new ionically-conductive cathode enabled the ORNL battery to maintain a capacity of 1200 milliamp-hours (mAh) per gram after 300 charge-discharge cycles at 60 degrees Celsius. For comparison, a traditional lithium-ion battery cathode has an average capacity between 140-170 mAh/g. Because lithium-sulfur batteries deliver about half the voltage of lithium-ion versions, this eight-fold increase in capacity demonstrated in the ORNL battery cathode translates into four times the gravimetric energy density of lithium-ion technologies."
Sulfur is a plentiful element, and is often a waste product of industrial processes, making it very cheap and readily available. Sulfur based batteries are also said to be less prone to instability and accidental fire than present lithium ion batteries are in part because the electrolytes are solid rather than liquid.
Sulfur has been part of large-scale sodium sulfur batteries for many years, but that technology requires high temperatures, and is best suited for industrial applications. The new developments offer the possibility of bringing sulfur-based batteries to consumer level applications.
image: sulphur and calcite CC BY-SA 3.0 by Didier Descouens/Wikimedia Commons
via: Treehugger (HT: Megan Treacy)
Alongside the new PCs that Samsung announced today, the company has also introduced HomeSync Lite, a software solution that allows users to use their computers -- rather than an external device -- for personal cloud storage. As Samsung sees it, the key benefit exists with the ability to backup and access multimedia content from any Samsung device, all without any fees. Since the software also supports external drives, users can store and retrieve gobs of pictures, videos, music and documents while on the go. HomeSync Lite supports up to five Samsung accounts, and works with up to six Samsung devices per account. Thankfully, the software also supports personal folders, which allows individuals to keep private documents from the rest of their family. Naturally, the software appeals best to families of Samsung devotees, but if you're among that bunch, go ahead and take a peek at what's in store.
Filed under: Storage, Internet, Software, Samsung
Source: Samsung (YouTube)
Ask anyone how long a workday is, and they'll probably say eight hours. How did that become the standard? Is eight hours beneficial for productivity, or should we rethink that number? The team at social sharing app Buffer wanted to find out.
One of the most unchanged elements of our life today is our "optimal work time" or how long we should work–generally, every person I’ve spoken to quotes me something close to eight hours a day. And the official statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirm that: The average American works 8.8 hours every day.
And yet for most of us, it's obvious that how long the average person works every day has little to do with how efficient or productive that person is. At least, that's what I've found for my own productivity. So what’s the the right hourly rate? With success stories from people working 4 hours a week to 16 hours a day, it’s hard to know if there's an optimal amount. So instead of going with my gut, which often fails me, I looked at research on work time and how to optimize it for happiness and success.
The typical work day is around 8 hours. But how did we come up with that? The answer is hidden in the tidings of the Industrial revolution. In the late 18th century, when companies started to maximize the output of their factories, getting to running them 24/7 was key. Now of course, to make things more efficient, people had to work more. In fact, 10-16 hour days were the norm. These incredibly long work days weren’t sustainable and soon a brave man named Robert Owen started an 8-hour workday campaign. His slogan was, “Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.”
It wasn’t until much later that Ford actually implemented the 8-hour workday and changed the standards:
“One of the first businesses to implement this was the Ford Motor Company, in 1914, which not only cut the standard work day to eight hours, but also doubled their worker’s pay in the process. To the shock of many industries, this resulted in Ford’s productivity off of these same workers, but with fewer hours, actually increasing significantly and Ford’s profit margins doubled within two years. This encouraged other companies to adopt the shorter, eight hour work day as a standard for their employees.”
So there we have it. The reason we work 8-hours a day isn’t scientific or much thought out. It’s purely a century-old norm for running factories most efficiently.
Without wanting to fall into the same trap, it’s time to ask a better question. How many hours we work every day is barely important anymore in today’s creative economy. Instead, the right focus is your energy, according to famous author Tony Schwartz:
“Manage your energy, not your time.”
Schwartz explains that as humans, we have four different types of energy to manage every day:
One of the things most of us easily forget is that as humans, we are distinctly different from machines. At the core, this means that machines move linearly and humans move cyclically. For an efficient work day that truly respects our human nature, the first thing to focus on is the ultradian cycle.
The basic understanding is that the human minds can focus on any given task for 90-120 minutes. Afterwards, a 20-30 minute break is required for us to get the renewal to achieve high performance for our next task again. Here is a better representation of the ultradian rhythm:
So instead of thinking about “What can I get done in an 8-hour day?” I’ve started to change my thinking to “What can I get done in a 90-minute session?" Now it’s time to break down those 90-minute sessions further.
In a stunning research project, Justin Gardner found that to actually focus on something our brain uses a two-step process:
1. Sensitivity enhancement: It means you see a scene or setup and take all the information in that's presented. Then you focus in on what needs your attention. Kind of like “a blurry photo that slowly starts to come into focus."
2. Efficient selection: This is the actual zooming in on a task happens. This allows us to enter into what Mihály Csíkszentmihályi calls “Flow” state. Now our actual work on a task happens.
The following figure probably describes it best:
In figure A, as our brain is presented with only one task, we're able to separate out distractors (blue) from what’s actually important (yellow). In figure B, as we are presented with multiple tasks at once, our brain is increasingly easy to distract and combines the actual tasks with distractors.
The key conclusion that Gardner suggests from his study is that we have to both:
Sounds fairly obvious right? And yet, getting it actually done every day is much easier said than done. The good news is that we can even actually change our brain structure by learning to focus. Here are some hands on tips:
For my daily workflow at Buffer, I’ve made four distinct changes to better implement the above research. Here's what worked the best so far:
Personally, my life has been pretty much turned upside down after implementing these findings over the past few weeks. And I couldn’t be happier. I get both more done and feel happier at the same time.
The origin of the 8 hour workday and why we should rethink it | Buffer
Leo Widrich is the cofounder of Buffer, a smarter way to share on social media. Follow him on Twitter @leowid, and read his thoughts on life, marketing, and startup lessons at his blog.
Image remixed from Dusan Zidar and Ljupco Smokovski (Shutterstock).
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At 6 AM, most of us are lucky if we have the energy to reach for a cup of coffee. Mornings may be rough, but hold off on sleeping in. There are perks to waking up with the sun, and we've got some tips on making it easier.
The old “I’m just too tired” complaint may be more than a sorry excuse for waking up late. Research suggests there are biological differences between early larks, who wake up at the same time every morning and feel most active around 9 AM, and night owls, who get more stuff done once the sun goes down [1]. One survey found more than half of Americans fall into the morning category, saying they’re at their “personal best” from 5 AM to noon. And it may get easier to greet the day at dawn as we get older, thanks to body clock changes as we age [2].
It turns out the early bird may get more than the worm. According to self-reports from college students, those who wake up earlier feel more optimistic and proactive than those who rise later. Other studies have found morning larks tend to be harder working and conscientious than night owls. (Still, it’s not clear whether waking up early actually makes someone more productive or optimistic.)
And perhaps the secret to a 4.0 isn’t only hitting the books: Another study of university undergraduates found those who said they function better in the morning received higher grades than those who preferred the evening [3]. That’s possibly because morning risers are more likely to get to class on time or to forgo late-night partying. Researchers also suggest memory may improve during sleep, so getting to bed earlier in preparation for a morning alarm could help those exam notes soak in.
Being a morning person may actually be good for our health, too. When UK researchers questioned adults about their sleep habits, they found people who stay under the covers on the weekdays until 9 AM are more likely to be stressed, overweight, and depressed than those who get up at 7 AM. Another study found teenagers who went to bed and woke up late were less inclined to hit the gym and more likely to be overweight than those who went to bed and woke up early [4]. Talk about waking up on the wrong side of the bed. (Again, remember it’s not clear that waking up early causes stress, depression, or weight gain.)
Night owls aren’t totally out of luck. One study found evening lovers are more productive than morning people are at night [5]. Still, being a morning person may be more advantageous for most people’s work schedules and routines, since the workday typically starts around 9 AM and the office is (usually!) not open at midnight. Regardless of the situation, there are ways to reset the body clock and happily greet the day:
Hey, Sleepyhead! How To Be a Morning Person | Greatist
Laura is the Growth Director at Greatist, and when she's not hanging at HQ with my best buds (aka co-workers) you can find her training for marathons, writing, or searching for the perfect bloody mary. She has an odd obsession with mountains, and is passionate about helping others become happier and healthier.
When someone thinks (or writes) about personal finance, there’s a big temptation to focus on the big stuff instead of the small stuff. When you write about big things like buying a car, you can immediately point to how one action can save you thousands. When you write about buying a house, you can point
The post Why the Small Stuff Matters appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2013/06/19/why-the-small-stuff-matters/
via The Simple Dollar
The BC Search and Rescue Association is raising concerns about a set of free, high-resolution topographical backcountry maps released by the provincial government on Tuesday.
The eventual demise of Google Reader gave existing services like Feedly an opportunity to land hundreds of thousands of new users, but the sudden gain of popularity demands an infrastructure that can handle the load. By opening its APIs to the masses today, Feedly says it's officially making the transition "from a product to a platform," supplying developers and RSS users alike with a painless migration path from Google's soon-to-be deceased reader. To go along with that, the company also announced a novel version of Feedly on the web, one which doesn't require any extensions or plugins and is accessible via browsers such as Internet Explorer and Opera.
As the image above shows, the freshly minted cloud platform already offers support for a slew of third-party applications, and Feedly says numerous other devs are currently working on their own for the near future. Now, if you didn't think Mountain View's recent spring cleaning could have a huge influence in such a short span of time, hear this: Feedly's touting that its user base has more than tripled since the announcement, making the jump from 4 to 12 million through the end of last month. Only time will tell if Feedly ends up being a worthy Reader replacement, so perhaps now would be the perfect instance to start deciding whether or not this will be the proper solution to all your RSS needs.
Source: Feedly
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