Kung Fu Your Food

It sounds like something off of a bad infomercial—black-clad ninjas, blenders, and, if you order now, a zirconium ruby that can withstand the pressure of a full elephant’s weight! But we didn’t get the Ninja Master Prep Professional—a six-cup pitcher and three two-cup prep bowls–from an infomercial. Santa’s up to his old tricks again. The dirty dog one-upped me and gave it to my wife for Christmas.

Most blenders and food-processors use a single blade at the bottom of the container. When you make thicker smoothies, this means you have to stir and poke the chunks to the bottom. When you chop vegetables, it means that sometimes the stuff on the bottom turns to soup while larger chunks whirl around on top. And when it’s time to serve or remove the contents, you have to deal with the blades.

But the Ninja Master Prep turns all that on its head. It uses multiple blades–one each at the bottom, middle, and top. You hold the motor in your hand. This configuration processes the food quickly and evenly. For example, we had 48 ounces of thick, perfectly-blended smoothies made from frozen strawberries in thirty seconds. And serving was a breeze because we simply set the motor aside, pulled the blade column out, and were left with a normal pitcher.   

If you’re looking for a new blender or food processor, give the Ninja Master Prep Professional a try. You can find it at Sam’s Club, Target, Kohl’s, and many places online, including Amazon.com.

Now, Grasshopper. You must learn respect–Hee-yah!

Easy Eating

One of the best changes we can make in our diets is to include more fruits and vegetables. I’ve found one of the easiest ways to do this is to order a weekly boxful from Bountiful Baskets (BountifulBaskets.org), a co-op which has hundreds of pickup locations in ten western states.

The produce is cheap. And because you don’t choose what you’re going to get, you’re introduced to vegetables and fruits you might not otherwise try. Some might think that leads to eating less produce, but we’ve found it’s actually the reverse.

One of the biggest headaches of cooking is planning the meals. In fact, I think having a menu is most of the battle. Bountiful Baskets eliminates a good portion of that planning and required shopping. Instead of trying to figure out what to cook, we know what we have to cook. It’s right there in the basket. All we need to do is build a number of the week’s meals around the produce. A few clicks on allrecipes.com and we’re ready to go.

If you want to eat a more healthy and delicious diet, give Bountiful Baskets a go.  

Be Happy

It’s the holiday season and a joyous time for many people. But it’s also the worst time of year for others. We recently had another suicide in our little county. Some people might prefer we sweep such things under the rug. But it breaks my heart. Especially since such tragedy is avoidable. And I’m not talking about removing the problem with medication, although sometimes people do need to treat chemical imbalances. For many, much, if not all, of their depression is fueled by specific types of thoughts.

These thoughts are not wacky, crazy things. In fact, they may seem innocuous or normal to some. But they are deadly all the same. Identifying and shining the truth on these thoughts takes some work, but the liberation is worth every ounce of effort.

It’s unrealistic to expect to be full of joy every minute of our lives. But it’s also not necessary, nor is it normal, to live a life dominated by feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, pain, and self-loathing. If you or someone you know seems to feel these things on a regular basis, please, get a copy of Feeling Good by David Burns. Just read the first hundred pages and perform the techniques found there. And if you need some help being consistent, find a counselor to help you.

Along with the jolts and pains, life provides an abundance of joys. Don’t let yourself, or those close to you, miss them.

They stole his kidney . . .

A friend of a friend of mine is a frequent business traveler.  To keep his identity safe, I’ll call him Bill.  Bill was recently in Atlantic City for an important meeting with some new clients.  Afterward, he went to a local bar to kill some time before his flight and took a seat at a table. 

He’d just finished one drink when an attractive woman approached and asked if she could buy him another.  He was surprised, but flattered (Bill isn’t exactly a Brad Pitt).  He accepted the drink.  The woman walked to the bar and brought back two more drinks—one for her and one for him.  He thanked her and took a sip. And that was the last thing he remembered . . . before he woke up, disoriented, lying in a hotel bathtub, his body submerged in ice.

He looked around frantically, trying to figure out where he was and how he got there.  Then he spotted the note:

DON’T MOVE. CALL 911.

A cell phone rested on a small table beside the bathtub. He picked it up and called 911, his fingers numb and clumsy from the ice. The operator seemed oddly familiar with his situation. She said, “Sir, I want you to reach behind you, slowly and carefully. Is there a tube protruding from your lower back?”

Anxious, he felt around behind him. Sure enough, there was a tube.

The operator said, “Sir, don’t panic, but one of your kidneys has been harvested. There’s a ring of organ thieves operating in this city, and they got to you. Paramedics are on their way. Don’t move until they arrive.”

Incredible, isn’t it?

More importantly, do you think you could remember enough of that, without review, to tell it to someone tomorrow?

My guess is that you could. And if you did, you’d be spreading one of the most successful urban legends of the past fifteen years.  

But I didn’t tell you the story to focus on urban legends. There are a lot of stories people tell one another that don’t go viral.  What makes this one different?  In fact, what makes any idea stick effortlessly, like this one does, in someone’s brain?

Are you a teacher? In school, at home, or at your business? Do you give presentations?  Do you ever need to advertise something—a product, service, or yourself? If so then you’ve had this question.

Maybe you’ve uncovered some of the secrets. Maybe you haven’t.  But there’s no reason to despair: Chip and Dan Heath have written the book on it. It’s called Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die and is one of the most fascinating and practical reads I’ve come across in the last few years.

The brothers Heath spent hundreds of hours researching sticky ideas: urban legends, advertising campaigns, wartime rumors, proverbs, conspiracy theories, jokes, some of the nation’s best teachers—you name it; if it was sticky, they looked at it. They asked questions like what makes some urban legends so compelling? Why do some chemistry lessons work better than others? Why do some political ideas circulate widely and others fall short? What they found was that sticky ideas exhibit six traits. And it was relatively easy for someone, once they understood those traits, to make almost any idea stickier.

I can see the traits in some of the things that I’ve done that have been sticky. I can see other ways to improve. The cool thing is that I’m not going to be guessing as much. If you need to make your ideas stick, let me recommend you get this book.  If you want a preview, go to madetostick.com.

Recipes that actually work?

I was once induced, through insidious mind control, to purchase a cookbook that included all sorts of tempting dishes. I prepared a number of the recipes, and every one of them was a bust, especially the cinnamon flank steak with eggplant, which I think Nellie and I chewed for about six hours until our jaws dropped off.

Not satisfied to learn my lesson once, I soon purchased another book on making bread the Old World way. Despite our best efforts and many valiant attempts, all we could produce were loaves that were so bitter and sour they could have been used at Guantanamo Bay to threaten captured Talibanists to talk.

Let’s just say that after a few more of these, I finally beat back the mind control. I’ve been gun-shy of cookbooks ever since. We’ve been very selective over the years, and this has saved me some money. Unfortunately, I think all of those lessons learned are going to go out the window.

I was recently watching the Create channel and saw an episode of Cook’s Country where they showed how to make coleslaw that wouldn’t get all watery and a grilled chicken with traditional Southern white BBQ sauce that had me slavering in my seat. During the show they talked about testing these recipes and their failures.

I learned that the folks there had just finished an eleven-season series called America’s Test Kitchen (where was I all that time?). In the series, they tested hundreds of recipes five ways to Sunday to come up with ones that really worked.

When the episode of Cook’s Country finished, the old cookbook mind control had risen to full force. This time, though, I was able to exercise some restraint. Instead of buying fifty cookbooks, I started a 14-day trial to Cook’s Country magazine, a thirty-four page, oversized, bi-monthly that’s full of recipes that have been tested. 

One of the neat features is that they don’t simply present the recipes, they also include the stories behind the testing so a reader can learn from their failures and successes right along with them. In fact, the stories of the tests were so interesting I made Nellie sit down while I read them to her. The magazine also includes cooking tips and product ratings. In the issue I received, I learned, for example, which egg wash proved, through testing, the most successful on pies and which graham cracker tasted best in recipes. One of the best things about the magazine is that, unlike many magazines that have three sentences of content and forty pages of advertisements, Cook’s Country has zero advertisements. Zero! It’s nothing but cooking.

We’ve tried five recipes so far. Three of them have been clear winners for all the tasters in this family. There other two were good, but not spectacularly so. Still, there weren’t any cinnamon flank steaks! 

In the next set of reviews, I’ll share their potato salad recipe that had us all oohing and aahing. And maybe the chocolate éclair cake we adjusted to perfection. I’m going to continue the subscription and give their family cookbook a try.  I’ll report my results. In the meantime, I suggest you look at Cook’s Country magazine online at cookscountry.com or watch the show on Create.