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Tell me please; if I have 128 GIGA-bytes (that’s 128 billion bytes) of storage on my iPhone, and with each gigabyte I can store 240 high-quality 4-minute songs (based on 128 kbps AAC files) - for a total of more than 85 days worth of music - then why can’t it hold more than a dozen voicemails?
Damnit! Who put my BIOS in Danish?!
1. Break up the day into manageable chunks. Your kids can’t sit still without a recess at school, what makes you think they can do it at home? Consider the Pomodoro Technique. This is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s which uses a timer to break work into 25 minute chunks separated by short breaks. The “Pomodoro” (tomato, in Italian) comes from the tomato-shaped kitchen timer he used to keep track. The technique helps breaking large projects into smaller, more manageable ones, supposedly improves creativity and concentration, and use your breaks to check I with the kids and have a recess.
2. Rowdy kids? I make them do burpees. I tell my kids, “You’re either going to get smarter or you’re going to get stronger, and right now you’ve chosen to get stronger.” I usually start with ten but escalate to 15 or 20 if I get any lip at all. If they complain I’ll add more, and let them know that, “pain is just weakness leaving your body.”
a. Pro tip: During schooltime (M-F 9am-3pm) I make them respond to every order I give them with, “aye aye captain” and a small salute. This ensures they know I mean business.
3. Going to jump on a work call? Put a sock on the doorknob. That’s their signal not to interrupt.
4. Checklists, checklists, checklists. Make one for you and make one for the kids. You cannot give your kids one task at a time; that’s just not efficient. Make a list, write it down, and have them check items off as they go throughout their day. Not only does this give them direction (when you may still be on that one-hour call - 90 minutes later), but it gives them a sense of accomplishment – and a chance for you to reward them. Incentivize them to make a stretch goal and reward them for hitting it – or even for a strong effort.
5. Prep meals ahead of time and keep plenty of snacks on hand. Batch process a stack of PB&J’s, make sure you’ve got all the ingredients for Triscuit nachos, hoard those boxes of Stouffer’s French Bread pizza, pre-slice 5 apples at a time, stock big bags of organic baby carrots, break out that Crock Pot (or better yet, the Instant Pot). Now is your chance to make that slow-roasted recipe that makes several meals at once.
6. Let the kids take advantage of all the amazing media out there – now is not the time to ration their screen time. You can use it as a reward for them to watch their favorite slime videos (anyone else have a 6 year-old girl?), sure, but there are phenomenal apps, podcasts, and YouTube channels to augment their education.
a. Khan Academy is a staple in our home – there is the Khan Academy app, the YouTube channel, and now there’s a Khan Academy Kids app as well.
b. The Brilliant app is great for math.
c. There are TED Talks galore that discuss subjects your kids might be into.
d. Have a burgeoning entrepreneur? Let them watch Shark Tank!
Good morning eggs and spinach and cheese,
with my Stonewave I'll assemble you in a breeze.
No more non stick metal over fire that's frenetic.
Now I'm ceramic and electromagnetic
I've slacked off for quite some time making my own beer and decided to get back into it. I have mostly brewed "that which cannot be bought," because, what's the point? You're not saving any material amount of money making it yourself. A good batch of beer is still going to set you back $45, and after you factor your time spent, you're in the hole for sure. Having said that, brewing things that weren't available on the shelf back in the 1990's was pretty easy. I made a Mocha Stout and a Raspberry Wheat, both of which should be pretty easy to find at a decent bottle shop these days.
Another recipe from back in the days include a Lime Agave Ale, which I did twice, the second batch receiving a fresh Chile de Arbol dropped into each bottle. Keep in mind, this predated Tequiza (for better or worse) by about a year, and Habanero Skulpin by at least a decade. The agave extract was available at my local homebrew supply store, the amazing Steinfillers, and both batches turned out excellent. The base Agave Ale was crisp and refreshing. The lime wasn't overpowering, and despite going through the fermentation process, still tasted fresh. The essence of the agave still came through and provided a hint of a Margarita.
The chilies added a whole new dimension however, which if you've ever had a chili beer, you'll know. These were pretty hot, and got spicier as they spent more time in the bottle. Two bottles was about my limit, any more and you would begin to sweat and start to feel the endorphins kicking in. It is not an entirely terrible feeling, who knows, maybe it would even be helpful for arthritis.
One of the more... adventurous brews I whipped up back in the 1990's was a Kava Cranberry Wheat. If you're not familiar with Kava Kava, it is a drink made from the powered root of a pepper plant, piper methiscum, and mixed with water. It is consumed ceremoniously all over the South Pacific, most famously in Vanuatu and Fiji.
I was first introduced to Kava sitting next to a BYU-Hawaii student on a plane while he was coming home for summer break. I was a junior in high school at the time in Hawaii checking out the University of Hawaii at Manoa - baffled that I was completely unaware that there was a BYU there. If I converted to Mormonism, I could go to school on the North Shore, not the South Shore - how did I miss this?!
In any case, he was bringing home a huge bag of Kava, which even with its mild sedative effects, are OK from a doctrinal perspective in Mormonism, and not against the "word of wisdom." I was intrigued. It was 1996, he was roommates with Donny Solomon, and while I'll never remember his name, we had some deep convos on the way back to the mainland.
When I landed, I nearly immediately sourced a pound of Kava and brewed a batch of wheat ale with it. For those of you who haven't had Kava, there's a reason why you're not going to find Kava Shiitake Risotto. It isn't an unsung culinary herb that no one has discovered yet. Not that it doesn't pair well well with other flavors, it's more because it tastes like bathwater.
If you haven't seen a Kava ceremony, watch a snip here; notice they don't savor it, they pound it - and while the Kava beer definitely tasted like the Kava, there needed something to make it palatable. Enter Cranberry. Sweet and sour. I kept adding cranberry until the result was drinkable. I may have kicked up the alcohol a few percent in the process, but the end result ended up pretty good.
I also brewed a series of Multi-grain Ales, both Multi-Grain Pale and Multi-Grain Dark. These are brewed with barley, wheat, rye, oats, and rice. They have a very complex and layered malt profile and body. After so many years of playing with hops I started playing with the grains. I'll admit, playing with the grains is much more subtle, and isn't nearly as fun, but it does make you think beyond the first dimension.
Most beers coming out these days are huge hop bombs, and while I love them, the hops wash out any inkling of flavor from the malt. They are such a stark contrast to the fizzy brown-water that had been American beer for decades. Sure there are great brewers out there brewing with a malt-forward attitude. They're just the exception right now. Every-other new bottle I see on the shelf is some variation of a high-octane piney bitter-bomb. This will change.
The people's palate is a pendulum.
The current wave of IPAs remind me of Napa Cabs in the late 1990's. Dot-com IPOs were everywhere. The stock market was hot, and everything was labeled "extreme." People had money to burn, and the "Cult Cab" phenomenon was in full effect. These were big, high-alcohol, over-oaked, and over-priced cabs. If is said Napa on it, it sold; and if it said 15% alcohol on it, it sold even better.
But that too passed, and sooner or later people started to enjoy other foods with wine besides a charred Cowboy Ribeye. The people found more subtle wines that paired with dishes other than burnt red meat - wines like Pinot Noir. I think the movie Bottle Shock in 2008 was an indication that the Cult Cab movement was over, and America was starting to develop a more refined respect for elements besides ethanol and oak.
It is worth noting that while wine drinkers often poke fun at boxed wine (like Franzia), or wine spritzers (like Bartles & Jaymes), wine industry members recognize that these were the best things to happen to them in decades, maybe ever. They got millions of Americans to try wine for the first time. Wine spritzers Franzia are gateway wines, just like Zima is the gateway to a headache.
Beer will settle into a more refined moment, mark my words. Right now it is just oiled-up and flexing in front of the mirror, making plans to attack Sparta. Like "Napa" in the 1990's, anything with the letters I-P-A on it sells. I am literally sipping on a "Black IPA" right now. That doesn't even make sense. The "P" is for Pale - how can you be Black and Pale? There's a Michael Jackson joke in that - but I'm not going to go there. Anyway, one day soon 6.5% will be the new 8.5%, hops will stop yelling at the screen, and there will be a host of new flavors to choose from.
It's going to be huge.
I saw Chip Heath speak during his book tour for Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work which illustrates how people make decisions, and how to make better ones. Chip is not only a Stanford professor and a great speaker, but he and his brother Dan are the authors of other great books such as Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, and Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.
They have some very insightful tips in the book and they detail how many poor decisions are the result of 4 "villains." Then they distill how we can overcome these villains with the simple acronym WRAP. The villains are as follows:
- Too narrow of focus. We too often think of binary decisions - should I do this, or that?
- Confirmation bias. We make a quick decision and then seek out information that backs it up.
- Short-term emotions. We are too concerned with how we're going to feel in the short-term.
- Overconfidence. We jump to conclusions, and it is OK to do so, because we're so smart.
Enter WRAP.
W - Widen your options. What is the third option? Is there a good fourth option?
R - Reality-test your assumptions. Actively look for information that goes against your first reaction.
A - Attain distance before deciding. Ask yourself, what would I tell my best friend to do in this situation?
P - Prepare to be wrong. In fact, you should be used to it by now.
So I've been trying my best to apply these heuristics to my everyday decision making and, at times, I am amazed at how just a little introspection into how my brain is making decisions, allows me to truly make better decisions. I find that I am more focused on the long term ramifications, I find evidence contrary to my gut reaction that makes me shift course. And, I go into more situations knowing that I make need to modify because I'm already aware that I could be wrong in the first place.
But when it comes to the kids... this all seems to go out the window.
We try our best to get them to follow all the same decision trees with WRAP. In fact, the simple act of asking them, "Is that a good decision?" elicits a response that is sometimes profound for a toddler. Sometimes, sure, they continue with their actions that they've already themselves deemed to be a bad decision. But sometimes, just having them stop and survey the situation allows them the chance to see the folly around the corner. Just asking them - wow, it is amazing.
Unfortunately in the heat of the Battle Against The Toddlers (BATT, it's real!), I'm the problem. It is my narrow focus and my inability to widen my options why we end up in sub-optimal situations. And it wasn't until a recent conversation with an old friend of mine that I figured out the core issue. It is the result of hundreds of hours spend in my prime formative years watching Nickelodeon and Marc Summers host the wonderful game show... Double Dare.
Now, when pressed in to a corner by one of my cunning, yet devilish little minions, my third option for them nearly always resembles a Physical Challenge. If you are unfamiliar with the Physical Challenge, do yourself a favor and click the link. In our house, it often goes something like this:
Me: "Eat your broccoli"
Child: "No"
Me: "Eat your broccoli, or go to your room"
Child: "No"
Me: "Eat your broccoli, or go to your room, or... do 100 jumping jacks while I pour maple syrup on your head and shoot your with your Nerf gun"
Child: "Whaaaaaaat?"
Me: "You heard me"
Child thinking about it...
Me: "Eat your broccoli."
A new year, a new list.
There is something refreshing about a clean slate, a rebirth; like a Phoenix emerging from the ashes, each January brings a jubilee to reinvent ourselves. This is the time where we give ourselves carte blanche to sign up for a gym, a yoga class, Blue Apron - we spend money in order to force our own-hand to make changes in our own-lives. And for better or worse, the financial commitment works, even if it is only temporary, writing that check gets us off our asses and doing something out of our comfort zone.
It is important to have skin in the game.
Me? I bought a Groupon for 10 Bikram yoga classes. It was great. I sweat out most of the holiday ham, and the fruit-and-nut chews out of me. My knee felt better. My balance was better. I felt more centered.
I went to 4.
I told myself, "I'm an early riser, and they only had 6am classes 2 days a week." "I couldn't go after work, I would miss out on time with my family." "The weekends are especially precious." "I worked a long day today, I'm going to sleep in tomorrow."
The inner negotiations are real, and they're kind of hilarious once you step back from your own inner voice and realize what you're doing, "I'm tired. Instead of working out tonight, I'll set my alarm and work out in the morning." "It is just a fun size Snickers, I won't have any carbs for the rest of the day." "I've had a long day, I don't have time to cook so I'll just get Taco Bell and start my diet tomorrow."
Me? I started swimming, again, for the first time in about 6 months. It was amazing how quickly my body embraced the water. The odd aches went away before the end of the first 1000 meters. My breath noticeably improved in the first 30 minutes. I felt energized all day thereafter.
I've gone 4 times.
"It is cold outside, and I'm going to an outdoor pool. That's going to suck" "It's like, really cold, I don't want to get sick." "It is raining, all my stuff will get wet." "I'll go tomorrow to make up for it."
The next time you bail out of a workout, the next time you hit snooze, the next time you eat a half-pint of Ben and Jerry's - listen to your inner monologue, or dialog, or whatever it is, and think to yourself, "who am I negotiating with?" It is always there, and it has always been there. No one ever hits snooze without talking themselves out of getting up at that moment. "I have time, that's why I set it early." "I'll only go to the gym for 30 minutes, but I'll make it really count this morning."
Me? I told myself I'm going to start writing for fun again. I can do this. I'll set an easy task - two posts per month. Due by the 15th and the 1st of each month. I'll drag a friend into the challenge and we'll hold each other accountable. It'll be fun. I can write about whatever I want.
Hello February 1st - First post (I'm 2 behind)
"I write enough stuff for work." "I don't have any time." "I haven't done any good research" "I don't want to just throw some word vomit down, I want it to be meaningful."
Who is that inner person that is constantly talking you out of becoming the person you strive to be? What is the evolutionary purpose of that naysayer? Is there a divine purpose behind us all being average? Is the key to success as simple as putting a muzzle on that voice that talks you out of doing the right thing?
Me? I started Paleo. I got a ton of veggies from the store. I started using more veggies from the garden. I got organic, grass-fed beef. I meal-prepped food to take to work. I knew I was doing well for my body, and I felt like I had more energy.
I lasted 4 days.
I told myself, "I don't want to be that guy ordering something weird - with a bunch of questions - with a client at lunch." "I'm not that hungry, I'll just eat what I made for the kids tonight, Mac and Cheese." "Everyone's ordering breakfast burritos? I'm in!"
So here we go Paleo (Here we go) - and meet Taco Bell's Naked Chicken Chalulpa. At work: "We're making a 'Run for the Border', and everyone's getting one." "That's kind of Paleo, right? There's no tortilla!" "It's a novelty, it's not like I'm going to get them all the time."
Well, I'm only a little ashemed to admit - it was delicious.
I haven't posted much in a long while; I've been kind of busy, but that's just a sorry excuse for not trying hard enough. I made this blog to inspire me, to create more, and not get dragged into a rut of routine. I loathe routine.
Routine is the trestle to death.
I'm in making a winter resolution to write more. Post more. Take more pictures. Sing more. Laugh more. Live more. Tell my wife that I love her. Grab life by the balls and take it with me wherever I go. I'm feeling inspired and I don't want this feeling to go away.
To the both of you that read this, I suggest that you do the same.
Salty Girl Seafood is a sustainable seafood distribution company that bypasses the traditional supply chain to ship seafood directly from fishermen to restaurants and markets. Collaborating with non-profit organizations to certify our claims of sustainability and building a network of partner fishermen allows us to provide fresh and fully traceable seafood products under a trusted brand name.
They're at Jack in the Box. Maybe you forgot them when you were dunking a Hella-Peño Munchie Meal down your neck last night.
Quinoa Stuffed Peppers
4 bell peppers (red or yellow)
1 cup dry quinoa
2 cups chicken broth or water
¾ lb ground turkey
1 cup yellow onion, chopped
1-2 carrots, fine dice
1 14oz can of tomato sauce
1 tsp garlic powder
½ tsp onion powder
⅓ cup chopped parsley
1 cup crumbled feta cheese, plus extra for topping
½ tsp salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut bell peppers in half lengthwise, removing seeds and ribs. Place in a large backing pan, drizzle lightly with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper, then place into the oven until slightly tender, about 10-15 minutes.
Place quinoa in a sauce pan with 2 cups liquid (broth or water) and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, cover and cook until all the liquid is absorbed (10-15 minutes). Set aside.
Heat 1 tablespoon oil over medium heat in a large saute pan and add onions and carrots. Cook until tender, about 3-5 minutes then add in turkey meat breaking it up with a spoon as it cooks. Once turkey is cooked through stir in tomato sauce, spices, cooked quinoa, parsley and 1 cup feta.
Place stuffing into slightly cooked peppers (removing any liquid that has accumulated in the pepper beforehand), then sprinkle tops with the extra feta.
Place back in the oven and bake for 25-35 minutes, or until cooked through and slightly brown on top.
Enjoy!
Serves 6
The kid from from the show Modern Family, played by Nolan Gould, show us how to make use of the kitchen while the 'rents are still at work. Good, clean comedy. Enjoy.
"Tired of serving the same donuts your guests they've had before, now your guests think you're such a bore. And it's never any fun when you try and share just one. No Problem.
Step into the Big Top Donut Shop. The fast, fresh, and easy way to make delicious donuts that are as big as you head... Sure everyone loves donuts, especially when they are 25 times bigger!"
It is not a joke. There is also Big Top Cupcake and Big Top Cookie too.
photo by iwantamonkey
Flamin' Hot Cheetos have been one of my favorite snacks ever since they came out. When they upped the ante with Chile y Limon Hot Cheetos (that's Lime and Chile for you gringos), I didn't think snacks could get any better. But when I tried Takis for the first time, I knew I was in 7-11 heaven.
The funny thing is, I don't eat snacks. I don't really eat chips much or pretzels or candy bars. It's not that I'm above it, I just don't eat snacks much. I'm not a snacker.
But I've been on the Takis kick for about a year now. I often find myself eating them for breakfast, with a cup of coffee, with chopsticks at my desk so that I don't get neon red dust on everything.
If you haven't tried Takis yet, you are missing out. If you haven't tried Chile Y Limon Hot Cheetos, you are missing out. If you haven't tried eating your Flamin Hot Cheetos or Takis with chopsticks, you are missing out.
And just when I thought Takis couldn't get any more fetch... a friend sent me this!
I finally got around to gathering up all the photos from our trip to Garmany and France last year. The best part? Dragging an 18 month old around of course! Thanks to Ned and Mona for hosting, they were most gracious.
biergarten in tubingen
Dried seaweed and algae as snacks. Low in calories, low in carbs, heaps of vitamins and minerals. And don't forget about iodine, which is going to make its big comeback this year. Since no one is eating iodized table salt and everyone has gone Kosher salt, goiter is going to rear its ugly head and the only thing that's going to save us is kelp chips.
Kale is still hot. Kale chips with truffle salt. Kale, chopped fine, makes a divine intervention into otherwise plain white rice. Kale juice is the next logical step because it takes so much masticating to consume it.
Almond butter is coming back. I just re-upped at the health food store with the "grind-your-own" machine. Peanuts kill. Almonds are one of the more civilized nuts. Throw a tablespoon in your kale smoothie - not kidding.
Chia remains on its warpath. Like a platoon of Incan warriors marching up the coast, chia continues to work its way into the parlance of the water cooler. This superfood is not only beginning to dethrone Flaxseed as the big Omega 3 champ, but it is dipping its mitts into baked goods too as a fat substitute.
Hempseed is seeing another renaissance. Not since Bill Clinton didn't inhale have I seen as many hemp products on the shelves of Main Street. It is also high in Omega 3, protein, fiber, and tastes great. Tastes like the '60's as I'm told.