Update on Scott Lee needlework project

I started the Scott Lee piece on October 23 of last year.  I got behind from the get-go and had to work like a dog on it over Christmas while we were in Blowing rock.  Here's where I was on November 16:



Scott Lee 11-16-10



Here's a snapshot at December 23, 2010.  Notice all of the gold circles?  This stitch is called a Jessica and there are 148 of various sizes! 

Scott Lee 12-23-10

 And here is the piece as of yesterday.  I've finished the "Jessica Border."  Next is the "Rhodes Border."

Scott Lee 1-27-11

More later...

Week of January 23 - 29

Sunday - Emeril's Chicken, Andouille and Shrimp Jambalaya

Monday - Spicy Turkey Meat Loaf, mashed potatoes, English peas

Tuesday - Class Night, didn't cook

Wednesday - Szechwan Beef Stir-Fry

Thursday - Can you believe this?  Leftovers!  I cooked some Israeli couscous and added 4 oz of arugula at the end to wilt the greens.  I also added about a tablespoon of lemon juice and a little olive oil.  I plated this, then topped it with leftover meat loaf slices (from Monday.)  And Walter ate it!  It's a miracle.

Friday - going to Andrew-Michael tonight for a belated birthday dinner

Saturday - we'll be in Northwest Arkansas this weekend for my sister-in-law's wedding!!  It's been three and a half years since my brother died and we're so, so happy that Kathy and Mark are getting married.  We met him at Christmas and he's wonderful.   Here's a picture of Kathy with my nephew Andrew and my niece Lauren from last summer.  Lauren is getting married in April!

Andrew, Kathy, Lauren

Spicy Turkey Meat Loaf

Yield:  8 servings (serving size: 2 slices)


1 tablespoon butter
2 cups chopped onion
1 (8-ounce) package presliced mushrooms
3 garlic cloves, chopped
3/4 cup panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
1/4 cup fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
3 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon low-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon Sriracha (hot chile sauce, such as Huy Fong)
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 pounds ground turkey breast
1 large egg, lightly beaten
Cooking spray
1/2 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon dry mustard
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1. Preheat oven to 350°.

2. Melt butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add onion, mushrooms, and garlic to pan; cook 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat; cool 5 minutes.

3. Combine mushroom mixture, panko, and next 8 ingredients (through egg) in a large bowl; stir well to combine. Shape turkey mixture into a 9 x 5 inch rectangle on a broiler pan coated with cooking spray.

4. Combine ketchup, brown sugar, mustard, and nutmeg in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk. Spread ketchup mixture evenly over top of meat loaf; bake at 350° for 40 minutes or until a thermometer registers 160°. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.


Wine note: The topping is much like an Italian red sauce. Crane Lake Sangiovese 2006 ($5) from California, a lighter-bodied red, is an especially good choice with lean turkey and quite refreshing with spicy flavors. --Jeffery Lindenmuth

CALORIES 184 ; FAT 3.7g (sat 1.6g,mono 1g,poly 0.5g); CHOLESTEROL 69mg; CALCIUM 30mg; CARBOHYDRATE 15g; SODIUM 405mg; PROTEIN 23.2g; FIBER 1.2g; IRON 1.3mg

Cooking Light, OCTOBER 2009

Food for Thought - The Zodiac

I don't believe in the Zodiac.  Having said that, I do think it's a lot of fun and, over the years, it seems that I've incororated my classification in the Aquarius sun sign as part of my idea of myself.  After all, this is the Age of Aquarius, right?  Well, recently, the powers that be decided to redo the Zodiac - heresy!  My friend and fellow Aquarian, Belinda Rubens, sent me this poem yesterday that a friend wrote for her after someone mistakenly identified her as a Capricorn:


                                          

                                            Dear ______, tho I would not mind
                                           To write my name upon the line
                                           Of Capricorn's great list.

                                           Yet fate would have it otherwise;
                                            I cannot take another guise
                                            From that the gods do wist.

                                            'Twas accidental conjugation
                                            Of parents on the old plantation
                                            That set my date of birth.

                                            Young they were, and lusty, too
                                            When they lay them down and knew
                                            The oldest joy on earth.

                                            So nine month later from that time
                                            When long sere cornstalks sparked with rime
                                            I gave my natal cry.

                                            Cold it was, and all did shiver
                                            Across the Mississippi River
                                            In the City of Memphi.

                                            I, a first born, greeted raptest
                                            In the hos-pit-al called Baptist
                                            Came upon the earth.

                                            Since Zodiacal signs be various
                                            I came into this life Aquarius;
                                            Thus was it at my birth.

                                            And tho there be among Aquarians
                                            Anabaptists and Rotarians
                                            There also be those that follow:

Then there is along list of Aquarian luminaries including Lord Byron, Paul Newman and Babe Ruth.

My attitude is, "they" can change whatever they want - from now forward.  But they can't go back and make folks who have aligned themselves under a sign for upteen years to now be something else.  Tain't right!  So hurray for all sun signs, but especially Aquarius!

Week of January 16 - 22

This was pretty much a Cooking Light week!

Sunday -  Fettucine with Mushrooms and Hazelnuts  This doesn't sound good, but it was fantastic.
Monday - Pork Tenderloin with Red and Yellow Peppers  Also very good.
Tuesday - Had a meeting, so Walter was on his own
Wednesday - Honestly cannot remember what we ate...I just know I didn't fix what was on my list!
Thursday - Mexican Casserole with Charred Tomato Salsa
Friday - International Date Night - went to Huey's
Saturday - our favorite Memphis Pizza Cafe pizza

Mexican Chicken Casserole with Charred Tomato Salsa

(I'm sure you could just use some jarred smoky salsa, but this was delicious and not hard.)

Yield:  8 servings

Salsa:8 plum tomatoes, halved and seeded
3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1 small onion, peeled and chopped
1 seeded jalapeño pepper, quartered
Cooking spray
1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1/8 teaspoon black pepper

Casserole:1 cup chopped onion
1 cup fresh or frozen corn kernels
1 cup diced zucchini
1 cup chopped red bell pepper
3 cups shredded cooked chicken breast
1 tablespoon minced garlic
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 (10-ounce) can green chile enchilada sauce
1 (4-ounce) can chopped green chiles
12 (6-inch) corn tortillas
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1 cup (4 ounces) crumbled feta cheese
1. Preheat broiler.

2. To prepare salsa, combine first 4 ingredients on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray. Broil 20 minutes or until charred, stirring once. Remove from oven; cool slightly. Place tomato mixture in a food processor; add cilantro, lime juice, and pepper. Process until smooth. Set aside.

3. Preheat oven to 350°.

4. To prepare casserole, heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Lightly coat pan with cooking spray. Add 1 cup onion, corn, zucchini, and bell pepper; sauté 6 minutes or until tender. Add chicken and next 5 ingredients (through green chiles); sauté 2 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Remove from heat.

5. Spread 1/2 cup salsa over the bottom of a 13 x 9-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Arrange half of tortillas over salsa. Spoon 2 cups chicken mixture evenly over tortillas. Top with 3/4 cup salsa. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup of each cheese. Repeat layers, starting with remaining tortillas and ending with remaining cheeses. Bake at 350° for 25 minutes until bubbly.


CALORIES 331 ; FAT 12.3g (sat 6.1g,mono 2.8g,poly 1.2g); CHOLESTEROL 74mg; CALCIUM 242mg; CARBOHYDRATE 30.8g; SODIUM 535mg; PROTEIN 26.1g; FIBER 4.2g; IRON 1.6mg

Cooking Light, JANUARY 2011

Pork Tenderloin with Red and Yellow Peppers

Anchovies melt into the pepper mixture, adding a savory, salty quality. If you don't like anchovies, omit them and add 3 tablespoons minced olives. Serve with mashed potatoes.

(I substituted kalamata olives for the anchovies.)

Yield:  4 servings (serving size: 3 ounces pork and about 1/2 cup bell pepper mixture)


1 (1-pound) pork tenderloin, trimmed and cut crosswise into 1-inch-thick medallions
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary, divided
4 canned anchovy fillets, drained and mashed
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, cut into 1 1/2-inch strips
1 yellow bell pepper, cut into 1 1/2-inch strips
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar


Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle pork with salt and pepper. Add oil to pan; swirl to coat. Add pork to pan; cook for 5 minutes. Reduce heat to medium; turn pork over. Add 1 teaspoon rosemary, anchovies, garlic, and bell peppers; cook 7 minutes or until peppers are tender and pork is done. Drizzle with vinegar. Top with remaining 1/2 teaspoon rosemary.


CALORIES 215 ; FAT 10.1g (sat 2.7g,mono 5.4g,poly 1.2g); CHOLESTEROL 78mg; CALCIUM 26mg; CARBOHYDRATE 5g; SODIUM 441mg; PROTEIN 25.2g; FIBER 1.4g; IRON 2mg

Cooking Light, JANUARY 2011

Fettuccine with Mushrooms and Hazelnuts

Pasta of the Month.

Yield:  4 servings (serving size: about 1 1/2 cups pasta mixture, about 2 tablespoons cheese, and 1 tablespoon hazelnuts)


1 (9-ounce) package refrigerated fresh fettuccine
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup chopped blanched hazelnuts
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
3 (4-ounce) packages presliced exotic mushroom blend
1/2 teaspoon salt, divided
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons chopped fresh sage
2 ounces Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, shaved
2 tablespoons finely chopped chives


CALORIES 364 ; FAT 16.5g (sat 5.7g,mono 7.6g,poly 1.2g); CHOLESTEROL 56mg; CALCIUM 204mg; CARBOHYDRATE 40.2g; SODIUM 563mg; PROTEIN 16.8g; FIBER 3.2g; IRON 2.4mg

Cooking Light, JANUARY 2011





Look for blanched hazelnuts, which should have most or all of their skins removed.

1. Cook the pasta according to package directions, omitting salt and fat. Drain in a colander over a bowl, reserving 3/4 cup cooking liquid.
2. While water for pasta comes to a boil, melt butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add hazelnuts to pan; sauté for 3 minutes or until toasted and fragrant. Remove from pan with a slotted spoon. Add oil to pan, and swirl to coat. Add garlic and mushrooms to pan; sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon salt and black pepper. Sauté mushroom mixture for 5 minutes; stir in sage. Add pasta, reserved cooking liquid, and remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt to pan; toss well to combine. Remove from heat; top with cheese, toasted hazelnuts, and chives.

Week of Jan 9-15

Sunday - Walter out of town.  Made spaghetti and took some to Joyce and some to Becky B.
Monday - Walter still away; leftovers for Suzanne
Tuesday - Chicken Fried Rice with Leeks and Dried Cranberries
Wednesday - Lemony Chicken Saltimbocca, angel-hair pasta
Thursday - Master Gardeners' meeting; Walter ordered pizza
Friday - Memphis Area Association of Realtors banquet - Walter installed as Sec-Treas!
Saturday - out

Chicken Fried Rice with Leeks and Dried Cranberries

I substituted pork tenderloin for the chicken and it was delicious.  Next time I'll put in only half the cranberries, though, cause it was a little sweet.

Other Time: 26 minutes minutes
Yield:  4 servings (serving size: about 1 1/3 cups)


2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
1/2 pound skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
3 cups thinly sliced leek (about 1 1/2 pounds)
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 1/2 cups cooked, chilled long-grain brown rice
1 cup dried cranberries
1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage
1/4 cup dry white wine


CALORIES 452 ; FAT 11.1g (sat 1.9g,mono 6.2g,poly 2.1g); CHOLESTEROL 47.1mg; CALCIUM 70mg; CARBOHYDRATE 74g; SODIUM 433mg; PROTEIN 16.6g; FIBER 6g; IRON 3mg

Cooking Light, JANUARY 2011

1. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add 1 tablespoon olive oil to pan, swirling to coat. Sprinkle 1/8 teaspoon salt over chicken. Add chicken to pan, and sauté for 3 minutes or until browned, stirring occasionally. Remove the chicken from pan. Add leek, black pepper, and remaining 5/8 teaspoon salt to pan; sauté for 4 minutes or until leek is tender and golden. Add leek mixture to chicken.

2. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil to pan, swirling to coat. Add rice, stirring well to coat rice with oil; cook, without stirring, 2 minutes or until edges begin to brown. Stir rice mixture; cook, without stirring, 2 minutes or until edges begin to brown. Stir in chicken mixture, cranberries, and sage. Add wine; cook for 2 minutes or until mixture is dry, stirring constantly.

Lemony Chicken Saltimbocca

This is so good!  You'll want to double the sauce.



Serve over a bed of angel hair pasta or polenta to catch all the sauce.
Yield:  4 servings (serving size: 1 cutlet and 2 tablespoons sauce)


4 (4-ounce) chicken cutlets
1/8 teaspoon salt
12 fresh sage leaves
2 ounces very thinly sliced prosciutto, cut into 8 thin strips
4 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
1/3 cup fat-free, lower-sodium chicken broth
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch
Lemon wedges (optional)


1. Sprinkle the chicken evenly with salt. Place 3 sage leaves on each cutlet; wrap 2 prosciutto slices around each cutlet, securing sage leaves in place.

2. Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add 1 tablespoon oil to pan, and swirl to coat. Add chicken to pan; cook for 2 minutes on each side or until done. Remove chicken from pan; keep warm.

3. Combine broth, lemon juice, and cornstarch in a small bowl; stir with a whisk until smooth. Add cornstarch mixture and the remaining 1 teaspoon olive oil to pan; bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Cook for 1 minute or until slightly thickened, stirring constantly with a whisk. Spoon sauce over chicken. Serve with lemon wedges, if desired.

CALORIES 202 ; FAT 7.5g (sat 1.5g,mono 4.3g,poly 0.9g); CHOLESTEROL 77mg; CALCIUM 18mg; CARBOHYDRATE 2.3g; SODIUM 560mg; PROTEIN 30.5g; FIBER 0.2g; IRON 1.1mg

Cooking Light, JANUARY 2011

Food for Thought: Why We Read

"We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading is the search for a difficult pleasure."
- Harold Bloom

Why do you read?

Food for Thought - Too much information?

My street, 1/10/11

I've been thinking since the beginning of the year about this blog.  I don't know about you, but I'm finding that writing about my week and including my menus and recipes is pretty boring.  I find myself putting off (procrastinating, see below) doing the "Week of..." posts til later and later.  For example, here it is Tuesday the 11th and I've just now posted the first week of the year.  On the other hand, I've used the search function on the blog to find recipes several times, so it's been pretty convenient to have a place to find recipes. And it saved me having to go through my Sep-Dec issues of Cooking Light that were just cluttering up my countertop because I figured that if I hadn't tried something and posted it by now, it really didn't appeal to me. (How many times do you flip through a magazine as you're discarding it and tear something out and then never do anything with it, huh? huh? huh?)

Then last night Dotsie and John invited me over for chili (wonderful Walter is out of town) and we got to talking about how much information we're exposed to from a variety of sources and how it affects our ability to recall names, words, etc or to concentrate on a task for very long.  So I started thinking, am I adding to this information overload with this blog?  Or do my posts help me to catalog thoughts, events, and, yes, recipes that I want to keep track of? 

As it happens so many times when I'm mulling something over, two articles appeared that touched on these very questions.  The first was in the Commercial Appeal this morning, "Deep Reading."  The gist (see, I'm doing it myself!) is that we just skim for quick facts and interesting tidbits, we don't read for understanding and to be able to use the information or thoughts in a later, comprehensive way.  See if you can read the article all the way through!

The second article had to do with procrastination and was very interesting.  Here's the tantalizing last paragraph - I hope it moves you to read the whole thing, 'cause it's very deep.

 ♦  It’s hard to ignore the fact that all these tools are at root about imposing limits and narrowing options—in other words, about a voluntary abnegation of freedom. (Victor Hugo would write naked and tell his valet to hide his clothes so that he’d be unable to go outside when he was supposed to be writing.) But before we rush to overcome procrastination we should consider whether it is sometimes an impulse we should heed. The philosopher Mark Kingwell puts it in existential terms:

“Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing. . . . Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all.”

In that sense, it might be useful to think about two kinds of procrastination: the kind that is genuinely akratic (akrasia—doing something against one’s own better judgment...willingly deferring something even though you expect the delay to make you worse off.) and the kind that’s telling you that what you’re supposed to be doing has, deep down, no real point. The procrastinator’s challenge, and perhaps the philosopher’s, too, is to figure out which is which. ♦

In other words, how do we decide what is worth doing and then how do we make ourselves do it?  This is something I'll be thinking about for a while.  If you have any thoughts, please comment.

But to circle back to the beginning, I have decided that outlining the week's menus and posting the recipes is something worth doing, for me at least.  If it's not worth it to you to read those posts, well, don't.  But adding details about the week is not something I'll continue to do on a regular basis.  If something notable happens, I'll do a separate post, and I'll continue to include pictures because I like them.

What I have discovered is that I enjoy the Food for Thought posts.  I like to share interesting (to me) articles and ideas.  And I think it's a good exercise for my own intellectual improvement to try to articulate why I find something interesting, useful, etc.  So I'll continue to post periodically about books, ideas, and the like.  Hopefully, I'll become a deep reader!

View from my studio window 1/10/11

What does procrastination tell us about ourselves?

From The New Yorker 10/11/10

Books

Later

What does procrastination tell us about ourselves?

by James Surowiecki October 11, 2010

Procrastination interests philosophers because of its underlying irrationality.

George Akerlof found himself faced with a simple task: mailing a box of clothes from India, where he was living, to the United States. The clothes belonged to his friend and colleague Joseph Stiglitz, who had left them behind when visiting, so Akerlof was eager to send the box off. But there was a problem. The combination of Indian bureaucracy and what Akerlof called “my own ineptitude in such matters” meant that doing so was going to be a hassle—indeed, he estimated that it would take an entire workday. So he put off dealing with it, week after week. This went on for more than eight months, and it was only shortly before Akerlof himself returned home that he managed to solve his problem: another friend happened to be sending some things back to the U.S., and Akerlof was able to add Stiglitz’s clothes to the shipment. Given the vagaries of intercontinental mail, it’s possible that Akerlof made it back to the States before Stiglitz’s shirts did.

There’s something comforting about this story: even Nobel-winning economists procrastinate! Many of us go through life with an array of undone tasks, large and small, nibbling at our conscience. But Akerlof saw the experience, for all its familiarity, as mysterious. He genuinely intended to send the box to his friend, yet, as he wrote, in a paper called “Procrastination and Obedience” (1991), “each morning for over eight months I woke up and decided that the next morning would be the day to send the Stiglitz box.” He was always about to send the box, but the moment to act never arrived. Akerlof, who became one of the central figures in behavioral economics, came to the realization that procrastination might be more than just a bad habit. He argued that it revealed something important about the limits of rational thinking and that it could teach useful lessons about phenomena as diverse as substance abuse and savings habits. Since his essay was published, the study of procrastination has become a significant field in academia, with philosophers, psychologists, and economists all weighing in.

Academics, who work for long periods in a self-directed fashion, may be especially prone to putting things off: surveys suggest that the vast majority of college students procrastinate, and articles in the literature of procrastination often allude to the author’s own problems with finishing the piece. (This article will be no exception.) But the academic buzz around the subject isn’t just a case of eggheads rationalizing their slothfulness. As various scholars argue in “The Thief of Time,” edited by Chrisoula Andreou and Mark D. White (Oxford; $65)—a collection of essays on procrastination, ranging from the resolutely theoretical to the surprisingly practical—the tendency raises fundamental philosophical and psychological issues. You may have thought, the last time you blew off work on a presentation to watch “How I Met Your Mother,” that you were just slacking. But from another angle you were actually engaging in a practice that illuminates the fluidity of human identity and the complicated relationship human beings have to time. Indeed, one essay, by the economist George Ainslie, a central figure in the study of procrastination, argues that dragging our heels is “as fundamental as the shape of time and could well be called the basic impulse.”

Ainslie is probably right that procrastination is a basic human impulse, but anxiety about it as a serious problem seems to have emerged in the early modern era. The term itself (derived from a Latin word meaning “to put off for tomorrow”) entered the English language in the sixteenth century, and, by the eighteenth, Samuel Johnson was describing it as “one of the general weaknesses” that “prevail to a greater or less degree in every mind,” and lamenting the tendency in himself: “I could not forbear to reproach myself for having so long neglected what was unavoidably to be done, and of which every moment’s idleness increased the difficulty.” And the problem seems to be getting worse all the time. According to Piers Steel, a business professor at the University of Calgary, the percentage of people who admitted to difficulties with procrastination quadrupled between 1978 and 2002. In that light, it’s possible to see procrastination as the quintessential modern problem.

It’s also a surprisingly costly one. Each year, Americans waste hundreds of millions of dollars because they don’t file their taxes on time. The Harvard economist David Laibson has shown that American workers have forgone huge amounts of money in matching 401(k) contributions because they never got around to signing up for a retirement plan. Seventy per cent of patients suffering from glaucoma risk blindness because they don’t use their eyedrops regularly. Procrastination also inflicts major costs on businesses and governments. The recent crisis of the euro was exacerbated by the German government’s dithering, and the decline of the American auto industry, exemplified by the bankruptcy of G.M., was due in part to executives’ penchant for delaying tough decisions. (In Alex Taylor’s recent history of G.M., “Sixty to Zero,” one of the key conclusions is “Procrastination doesn’t pay.”)

Philosophers are interested in procrastination for another reason. It’s a powerful example of what the Greeks called akrasia—doing something against one’s own better judgment. Piers Steel defines procrastination as willingly deferring something even though you expect the delay to make you worse off. In other words, if you’re simply saying “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” you’re not really procrastinating. Knowingly delaying because you think that’s the most efficient use of your time doesn’t count, either. The essence of procrastination lies in not doing what you think you should be doing, a mental contortion that surely accounts for the great psychic toll the habit takes on people. This is the perplexing thing about procrastination: although it seems to involve avoiding unpleasant tasks, indulging in it generally doesn’t make people happy. In one study, sixty-five per cent of students surveyed before they started working on a term paper said they would like to avoid procrastinating: they knew both that they wouldn’t do the work on time and that the delay would make them unhappy.

Most of the contributors to the new book agree that this peculiar irrationality stems from our relationship to time—in particular, from a tendency that economists call “hyperbolic discounting.” A two-stage experiment provides a classic illustration: In the first stage, people are offered the choice between a hundred dollars today or a hundred and ten dollars tomorrow; in the second stage, they choose between a hundred dollars a month from now or a hundred and ten dollars a month and a day from now. In substance, the two choices are identical: wait an extra day, get an extra ten bucks. Yet, in the first stage many people choose to take the smaller sum immediately, whereas in the second they prefer to wait one more day and get the extra ten bucks. In other words, hyperbolic discounters are able to make the rational choice when they’re thinking about the future, but, as the present gets closer, short-term considerations overwhelm their long-term goals. A similar phenomenon is at work in an experiment run by a group including the economist George Loewenstein, in which people were asked to pick one movie to watch that night and one to watch at a later date. Not surprisingly, for the movie they wanted to watch immediately, people tended to pick lowbrow comedies and blockbusters, but when asked what movie they wanted to watch later they were more likely to pick serious, important films. The problem, of course, is that when the time comes to watch the serious movie, another frothy one will often seem more appealing. This is why Netflix queues are filled with movies that never get watched: our responsible selves put “Hotel Rwanda” and “The Seventh Seal” in our queue, but when the time comes we end up in front of a rerun of “The Hangover.”

The lesson of these experiments is not that people are shortsighted or shallow but that their preferences aren’t consistent over time. We want to watch the Bergman masterpiece, to give ourselves enough time to write the report properly, to set aside money for retirement. But our desires shift as the long run becomes the short run.

Why does this happen? One common answer is ignorance. Socrates believed that akrasia was, strictly speaking, impossible, since we could not want what is bad for us; if we act against our own interests, it must be because we don’t know what’s right. Loewenstein, similarly, is inclined to see the procrastinator as led astray by the “visceral” rewards of the present. As the nineteenth-century Scottish economist John Rae put it, “The prospects of future good, which future years may hold on us, seem at such a moment dull and dubious, and are apt to be slighted, for objects on which the daylight is falling strongly, and showing us in all their freshness just within our grasp.” Loewenstein also suggests that our memory for the intensity of visceral rewards is deficient: when we put off preparing for that meeting by telling ourselves that we’ll do it tomorrow, we fail to take into account that tomorrow the temptation to put off work will be just as strong.

Ignorance might also affect procrastination through what the social scientist Jon Elster calls “the planning fallacy.” Elster thinks that people underestimate the time “it will take them to complete a given task, partly because they fail to take account of how long it has taken them to complete similar projects in the past and partly because they rely on smooth scenarios in which accidents or unforeseen problems never occur.” When I was writing this piece, for instance, I had to take my car into the shop, I had to take two unanticipated trips, a family member fell ill, and so on. Each of these events was, strictly speaking, unexpected, and each took time away from my work. But they were really just the kinds of problems you predictably have to deal with in everyday life. Pretending I wouldn’t have any interruptions to my work was a typical illustration of the planning fallacy.

Still, ignorance can’t be the whole story. In the first place, we often procrastinate not by doing fun tasks but by doing jobs whose only allure is that they aren’t what we should be doing. My apartment, for instance, has rarely looked tidier than it does at the moment. And people do learn from experience: procrastinators know all too well the allures of the salient present, and they want to resist them. They just don’t. A magazine editor I know, for instance, once had a writer tell her at noon on a Wednesday that the time-sensitive piece he was working on would be in her in-box by the time she got back from lunch. She did eventually get the piece—the following Tuesday. So a fuller explanation of procrastination really needs to take account of our attitudes to the tasks being avoided. A useful example can be found in the career of General George McClellan, who led the Army of the Potomac during the early years of the Civil War and was one of the greatest procrastinators of all time. When he took charge of the Union army, McClellan was considered a military genius, but he soon became famous for his chronic hesitancy. In 1862, despite an excellent opportunity to take Richmond from Robert E. Lee’s men, with another Union army attacking in a pincer move, he dillydallied, convinced that he was blocked by hordes of Confederate soldiers, and missed his chance. Later that year, both before and after Antietam, he delayed again, squandering a two-to-one advantage over Lee’s troops. Afterward, Union General-in-Chief Henry Halleck wrote, “There is an immobility here that exceeds all that any man can conceive of. It requires the lever of Archimedes to move this inert mass.”
McClellan’s “immobility” highlights several classic reasons we procrastinate. Although when he took over the Union army he told Lincoln “I can do it all,” he seems to have been unsure that he could do anything. He was perpetually imploring Lincoln for new weapons, and, in the words of one observer, “he felt he never had enough troops, well enough trained or equipped.” Lack of confidence, sometimes alternating with unrealistic dreams of heroic success, often leads to procrastination, and many studies suggest that procrastinators are self-handicappers: rather than risk failure, they prefer to create conditions that make success impossible, a reflex that of course creates a vicious cycle. McClellan was also given to excessive planning, as if only the ideal battle plan were worth acting on. Procrastinators often succumb to this sort of perfectionism.
Viewed this way, procrastination starts to look less like a question of mere ignorance than like a complex mixture of weakness, ambition, and inner conflict. But some of the philosophers in “The Thief of Time” have a more radical explanation for the gap between what we want to do and what we end up doing: the person who makes plans and the person who fails to carry them out are not really the same person: they’re different parts of what the game theorist Thomas Schelling called “the divided self.” Schelling proposes that we think of ourselves not as unified selves but as different beings, jostling, contending, and bargaining for control. Ian McEwan evokes this state in his recent novel “Solar”: “At moments of important decision-making, the mind could be considered as a parliament, a debating chamber. Different factions contended, short- and long-term interests were entrenched in mutual loathing. Not only were motions tabled and opposed, certain proposals were aired in order to mask others. Sessions could be devious as well as stormy.” Similarly, Otto von Bismarck said, “Faust complained about having two souls in his breast, but I harbor a whole crowd of them and they quarrel. It is like being in a republic.” In that sense, the first step to dealing with procrastination isn’t admitting that you have a problem. It’s admitting that your “you”s have a problem.

If identity is a collection of competing selves, what does each of them represent? The easy answer is that one represents your short-term interests (having fun, putting off work, and so on), while another represents your long-term goals. But, if that’s the case, it’s not obvious how you’d ever get anything done: the short-term self, it seems, would always win out. The philosopher Don Ross offers a persuasive solution to the problem. For Ross, the various parts of the self are all present at once, constantly competing and bargaining with one another—one that wants to work, one that wants to watch television, and so on. The key, for Ross, is that although the television-watching self is interested only in watching TV, it’s interested in watching TV not just now but also in the future. This means that it can be bargained with: working now will let you watch more television down the road. Procrastination, in this reading, is the result of a bargaining process gone wrong.

The idea of the divided self, though discomfiting to some, can be liberating in practical terms, because it encourages you to stop thinking about procrastination as something you can beat by just trying harder. Instead, we should rely on what Joseph Heath and Joel Anderson, in their essay in “The Thief of Time,” call “the extended will”—external tools and techniques to help the parts of our selves that want to work. A classic illustration of the extended will at work is Ulysses’ decision to have his men bind him to the mast of his ship. Ulysses knows that when he hears the Sirens he will be too weak to resist steering the ship onto the rocks in pursuit of them, so he has his men bind him, thereby forcing him to adhere to his long-term aims. Similarly, Thomas Schelling once said that he would be willing to pay extra in advance for a hotel room without a television in it. Today, problem gamblers write contracts with casinos banning them from the premises. And people who are trying to lose weight or finish a project will sometimes make bets with their friends so that if they don’t deliver on their promise it’ll cost them money. In 2008, a Ph.D. candidate at Chapel Hill wrote software that enables people to shut off their access to the Internet for up to eight hours; the program, called Freedom, now has an estimated seventy-five thousand users.

Not everyone in “The Thief of Time” approves of the reliance on the extended will. Mark D. White advances an idealist argument rooted in Kantian ethics: recognizing procrastination as a failure of will, we should seek to strengthen the will rather than relying on external controls that will allow it to atrophy further. This isn’t a completely fruitless task: much recent research suggests that will power is, in some ways, like a muscle and can be made stronger. The same research, though, also suggests that most of us have a limited amount of will power and that it’s easily exhausted. In one famous study, people who had been asked to restrain themselves from readily available temptation—in this case, a pile of chocolate-chip cookies that they weren’t allowed to touch—had a harder time persisting in a difficult task than people who were allowed to eat the cookies.

Given this tendency, it makes sense that we often rely intuitively on external rules to help ourselves out. A few years ago, Dan Ariely, a psychologist at M.I.T., did a fascinating experiment examining one of the most basic external tools for dealing with procrastination: deadlines. Students in a class were assigned three papers for the semester, and they were given a choice: they could set separate deadlines for when they had to hand in each of the papers or they could hand them all in together at the end of the semester. There was no benefit to handing the papers in early, since they were all going to be graded at semester’s end, and there was a potential cost to setting the deadlines, since if you missed a deadline your grade would be docked. So the rational thing to do was to hand in all the papers at the end of the semester; that way you’d be free to write the papers sooner but not at risk of a penalty if you didn’t get around to it. Yet most of the students chose to set separate deadlines for each paper, precisely because they knew that they were otherwise unlikely to get around to working on the papers early, which meant they ran the risk of not finishing all three by the end of the semester. This is the essence of the extended will: instead of trusting themselves, the students relied on an outside tool to make themselves do what they actually wanted to do.

Beyond self-binding, there are other ways to avoid dragging your feet, most of which depend on what psychologists might call reframing the task in front of you. Procrastination is driven, in part, by the gap between effort (which is required now) and reward (which you reap only in the future, if ever). So narrowing that gap, by whatever means necessary, helps. Since open-ended tasks with distant deadlines are much easier to postpone than focussed, short-term projects, dividing projects into smaller, more defined sections helps. That’s why David Allen, the author of the best-selling time-management book “Getting Things Done,” lays great emphasis on classification and definition: the vaguer the task, or the more abstract the thinking it requires, the less likely you are to finish it. One German study suggests that just getting people to think about concrete problems (like how to open a bank account) makes them better at finishing their work—even when it deals with a completely different subject. Another way of making procrastination less likely is to reduce the amount of choice we have: often when people are afraid of making the wrong choice they end up doing nothing. So companies might be better off offering their employees fewer investment choices in their 401(k) plans, and making signing up for the plan the default option.

It’s hard to ignore the fact that all these tools are at root about imposing limits and narrowing options—in other words, about a voluntary abnegation of freedom. (Victor Hugo would write naked and tell his valet to hide his clothes so that he’d be unable to go outside when he was supposed to be writing.) But before we rush to overcome procrastination we should consider whether it is sometimes an impulse we should heed. The philosopher Mark Kingwell puts it in existential terms: “Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing. . . . Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all.” In that sense, it might be useful to think about two kinds of procrastination: the kind that is genuinely akratic and the kind that’s telling you that what you’re supposed to be doing has, deep down, no real point. The procrastinator’s challenge, and perhaps the philosopher’s, too, is to figure out which is which. ♦

ILLUSTRATION: BARRY BLITT

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/101011crbo_books_surowiecki?printable=true&currentPage=all#ixzz1AkjQ8m79

Deep Reading (Commercial Appeal 1/11/11)

‘Deep reading’ a declining art in digital age

By Laura Casey

Contra Costa Times

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. — The Oakland, Calif., apartment of Martha Mueller and her daughter, Nora, teems with books and magazines. Their library consists of fiction and nonfiction books, cookbooks and teen novels.

Martha, a librarian, says she’ll read just about anything.

“It can be the subject matter that attracts me or that perfectly written first sentence,” she says.

She comprehends what she reads, too. Ask for her thoughts on the “Millennium Trilogy” by Swedish writer Stieg Larsson, for example, and she’ll weave a tale about how the books, while interesting reads, seem overly violent. The main character is a victim, she says, and a sad one at that.

While Mueller loves sitting down with a good book, she may represent a vanishing breed. There is some concern in literary circles that even as electronic readers grow increasingly popular and book sales remain strong, many people are finding it difficult to sit alone with one book and simply read to comprehend.

“Deep reading,” or slow reading, is a sophisticated process in which people can critically think, reflect and understand the words they are looking at. With most, that means slowing down — even stopping and rereading a page or paragraph if it doesn’t sink in — to really capture what the author is trying to say. Experts warn that without reading and really understanding what’s being said, it is impossible to be an educated citizen of the world, a knowledgeable voter or even an imaginative thinker.

The concern that deep reading is going by the wayside is a phenomenon that author Nicholas Carr says in his book, “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” may have something to do with our use of technology and our habits while browsing the web.

Just last summer, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said he was concerned about what he sees as a decline in slow reading. Instant messages and 140-character tweets appear to be taking over our ability to concentrate on a single idea or theme in a book, he told Foreign Policy magazine.

It’s easy to forget the benefits of deep reading in an age in which anything worth doing is done fast, Canadian author John Miedema says. We surf the Internet, gather snippets of information and click hyperlinks that bring us to different topics and authors, he says. In less than a second online, we can go from reading about Beethoven the composer to watching a clip about Beethoven the St. Bernard.

“The Web is essentially a distraction machine,” Miedema says. “Hyperlinks are meant to take you away from where you are.”

In his book “Slow Reading,” Miedema argues that deep reading is like the slow food movement: It takes time, care and effort to read quietly and concentrate. “I can appreciate people’s desire to read faster,” Miedema says. “But if you want to have a deep relationship with a text and understand a complex idea, then slow reading is a preferred style. It’s good for pleasure, too. It’s not a rushed experience, and you can lose yourself in a text.”

Mirit Barzillai, a childdevelopment doctoral candidate at Tufts University of Boston who focuses on literacy, says researchers are just starting to study how people process what they read on websites.

“There are so many different and new places to read these days — online, with electronic readers, on the phone — that there isn’t a lot of research looking at the processes of reading and how technology affects it,” Barzillai says.

Barzillai is interested in the way children read and whether they will learn how to read deeply as they grow up in the digital age.

“Reading isn’t something we’re born with,” she says.

“Your brain has to form that reading circuit. And that circuit is shaped by what you’re reading. When (adults) came to the Internet, we came with those skills and experiences that were already developed. If children learn to read primarily online and through digital media, I wonder if we are encouraging or growing a different kind of reading process.” Nora Mueller, 17, notices that when she has to do a paper for school and researches it on the Internet, she rarely reads a whole page. She primarily clicks links and scans.

“I read so little about what’s actually there. I don’t feel like I absorb everything,” Mueller says.

“I’ll read the beginning of a paragraph, and then I’ll skip the rest.”

She says she can remember what she reads when she’s engaged in a book but retains little from the Internet.

Cynthia Lee Katona, an English professor at Ohlone College, wrote “Book Savvy” specifically to help people who have stopped reading get back into it.

Katona was late in picking up her first book — she didn’t start reading novels until she was 14 — but today she’s a voracious reader. She says reading is a highly social activity that builds the mind and social connections. If you read, she says, you simply know more and have more to talk about with friends, partners and acquaintances.

Deep reading also can take readers on trips around the world even if they are sitting in a livingroom armchair, Katona says. Also, it helps readers understand themselves and others and to develop thinking, writing and conversational skills.

“If you like beautiful things, authors put words together that are really beautiful and expressive,” she says. “If you want to write well — and there are lots of reasons to be articulate and to express yourself clearly — you should read.”

“I can appreciate people’s desire to read faster. But if you want to have a deep relationship with a text and understand a complex idea, then slow reading is a preferred style.”

JOHN MIEDEMA

Canadian author

Week of Jan 2-8

Sunday - Red Beans and Rice
Monday - Tex-Mex Pork
Tuesday - Spaghetti
Wednesday - Salisbury Steak, mashed potatoes, buttered peas
Thursday - Crab Cakes, salad, sweet potato fries
Friday - IDN
Saturday - Red-Cooked Short Ribs, Rice, Salad/Bread, Vanilla Budino

Vanilla Budino

Vanilla Budino

Adapted from Bouchon by Thomas Keller
2 1/2 cups heavy cream
2/3 cup whole milk
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
1 vanilla bean, split
6 large egg yolks

Heat oven to 300 degrees.  Arrange eight 6-ounce custard cups or other small ovenproof dishes in a deep baking pan.  (I used six 8-ounce ramekins.)

Combine the cream, milk and 5 tablespoons of the sugar in a large saucepan. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean with the dull side of a small paring knife and add to the pan along with the pod. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Remove from heat, cover and allow to infuse for 1 hour. Reheat the cream mixture until warm.

Whisk the egg yolks with the remaining 1/4 cup sugar in a medium bowl. Slowly add the warm cream mixture into the yolks, whisking. Strain through a fine-meshed sieve into a Pyrex measuring cup. Divide evenly among cups.

Transfer the pan to the oven and add enough hot water to the baking pans to come halfway to two-thirds of the way up the sides of the cups. Cover with a sheet of foil and bake 45-55 minutes, or until centers are set, but still slightly jiggly, like gelatin.

Carefully remove the cups from the pan and place on a rack to cool. Cover each with plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, at least 8 hours. It can be hard to wait that long, but warm custard isn’t as appealing.

Copyright (c) 2007 FamilyStyle Food

Red Cooked Short Ribs

Red-Cooked Short Ribs Red cooking refers to a Chinese technique of braising meat in a soy sauce and sherry mixture. The "red" comes from the color soy sauce acquires after long cooking. Steamed rice and green onions are classic accompaniments. Yield:  8 servings (serving size: 1/2 cup rice, 1 rib piece, 1/3 cup mushroom mixture, and 2 tablespoons onions) Cooking spray 2 pounds boneless beef short ribs, trimmed and cut into 8 equal pieces 2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger 1 tablespoon grated orange rind 4 garlic cloves, minced 1/2 cup dry sherry 2 cups sliced shiitake mushroom caps (about 3 1/2 ounces) 3/4 cup fat-free, less-sodium beef broth 6 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce 1 tablespoon honey 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper 1 (8-ounce) can sliced bamboo shoots, drained 1 (4-inch) cinnamon stick 1 (8-ounce) can diced water chestnuts, drained 4 cups hot cooked short-grain rice 1 cup (1-inch) slices green onions Heat a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add half of beef to pan; cook 3 minutes, browning on all sides. Remove beef from pan. Repeat procedure with cooking spray and remaining beef. Add ginger, rind, and garlic to pan; sauté 30 seconds or until fragrant. Stir in sherry, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Add mushrooms; cook 3 minutes or until tender, stirring frequently. Add beef, broth, and next 5 ingredients (through cinnamon); bring to a simmer. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 2 1/2 hours or until beef is very tender. Stir in water chestnuts; cook for 5 minutes. Discard cinnamon. Serve over rice; sprinkle with onions. CALORIES 331 (26% from fat); FAT 9.4g (sat 3.9g,mono 4g,poly 0.4g); IRON 3.8mg; CHOLESTEROL 46mg; CALCIUM 26mg; CARBOHYDRATE 40.1g; SODIUM 370mg; PROTEIN 19.8g; FIBER 2.7g Cooking Light, JANUARY 2008

This recipe is subject to copyright protection and may not be reproduced without Cooking Light's consent

Copyright ©2010  Time Inc. Lifestyle Group. All rights reserved.

Crab Cakes

Crab Cakes


Yield:  4 servings (serving size: 2 crab cakes)


3 (1-ounce) slices white bread
1/4 cup chopped green onions
2 tablespoons reduced-fat mayonnaise
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
2 large egg whites, lightly beaten
1 pound lump crabmeat, drained and shell pieces removed
1 teaspoon olive oil
4 lemon wedges

CALORIES 203 ; FAT 5.3g (sat 0.8g,mono 1.7g,poly 2.1g); CHOLESTEROL 69mg; CALCIUM 94mg; CARBOHYDRATE 14.2g; SODIUM 624mg; PROTEIN 23.4g; FIBER 0.8g; IRON 1.5mg

Cooking Light, DECEMBER 2010





1. Place the bread in a food processor; pulse 10 times or until coarse crumbs measure 1 1/2 cups. Combine breadcrumbs and next 9 ingredients (through crabmeat) in a large bowl. Divide mixture into 8 equal portions; shape each into a 1/2-inch-thick patty.
2. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add patties; cook 4 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Serve with lemon wedges.

This recipe is subject to copyright protection and may not be reproduced without Cooking Light's consent

Copyright ©2010  Time Inc. Lifestyle Group. All rights reserved.

Salisbury Steak with Mushroom Gravy

Photo: John Autry; Styling: Cindy Barr Salisbury Steak with Mushroom Gravy Other Time: 40 minutes minutes Yield:  4 servings (serving size: 1 steak and about 1/4 cup gravy) 1/3 cup grated onion, divided 1/2 teaspoon black pepper 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 garlic cloves, minced 1 pound ground sirloin Cooking spray 1 tablespoon butter 8 ounces cremini mushrooms, quartered 1/3 cup dry red wine 1 1/4 cups fat-free, lower-sodium beef broth 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar1. Combine 1/4 cup onion, pepper, salt, garlic, and beef. Shape into 4 (1/2-inch-thick) patties. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat. Coat with cooking spray. Add patties; cook 3 minutes on each side or until browned. 2. Melt butter in pan. Add mushrooms; sauté 4 minutes. Stir in wine and remaining onion; cook 2 minutes. Combine broth and flour; add to pan, and bring to a boil. Cook 5 minutes or until thick. Add patties and vinegar to pan; cook 2 minutes. CALORIES 192 ; FAT 7.9g (sat 3.8g,mono 2.7g,poly 0.7g); CHOLESTEROL 68mg; CALCIUM 20mg; CARBOHYDRATE 6g; SODIUM 380mg; PROTEIN 24.9g; FIBER 0.7g; IRON 2.3mg Cooking Light, DECEMBER 2010

This recipe is subject to copyright protection and may not be reproduced without Cooking Light's consent

Copyright ©2010  Time Inc. Lifestyle Group. All rights reserved.