goodandevil

 The Good | Family-Sized Dinners for the Single Budget

    At the end of this summer I took over cooking the dinners for my family. The first few weeks were mine to experiment, getting a feel for tools and making sure I was up to the challenge and not worrying as much about how much it cost to learn.

    Eventually though, I knew I could cut down on costs. All food can relatively expensive, but in the grand scheme of things eating healthier doesn’t cost nearly as much as I thought it might, especially with the trade-off of looking and feeling better.

     While I usually make healthy eating decisions I am certainly no stranger to frozen convenience food or reserving a table at KFC once every couple months. If you’re like me, though, your body and wallet can only sustain that for so long.

      Convenience is one thing, as we can’t always easily change how our lives are run or affected by other people, but we can make smart decisions about how our money’s spent. In my experience I can make healthy things I’d actually want to eat at the same cost or cheaper than what I used to get pre-made.

     As an example, why pay Papa John’s seven bucks for ten elongated chicken nuggets when I can get three pounds of chicken for fifty cents less? A good spice is always worth its money but I know spice racks out there that I’m more than happy with that I could buy a whole container of for the remaining fifty cents.

     To that end, I have gathered the budgets for seventeen of the recipes that I started with, and drawn them out into full-blown recipes just as I prepared them. These are doable things that I’ve invented or adjusted from online sources, and tried hard to make as healthy as possible for as many people as possible.

     Most usually take a half hour or less from start to finish. The prices listed were current as of last month with my local Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, and have successfully satisfied a 3 to 4 person family, often with enough remaining to prepare leftovers for someone’s lunch the next day. They’re also pretty good about freezing if you  live by yourself but still wish to make them at the given size.

     Without further ado: (PDF, 137kb)

The Evil | Once more, for the first time

    If elephants never forget, then I call shenanigans on the fact that they’re used to represent a segment of politicians. I’m not out to attack any candidate — I am careful not to say “either” — but rather a general practice.

    In most recent debate, the second for the two most likely Presidential hopefuls, we heard talking point after bullet point after soundbite, endlessly. While that’s boring it’s not especially evil all by itself.

    Thing is, this decade to date has seen people get more into treating politics like a game, and boy they’d love for their side to win. While it’s not always genuinely good research for the sake of making an informed decision, tools like the Internet have allowed potential voters to fact-check and discriminate against everything they hear or read. That’s where the issue lies.

    Not only did I hear several handfuls of things I heard in the original debate, but the same attacks had been proven as lies, either by commission or omission, as long as months before the televised event. Nevertheless, the percentages and perceived motives were provided not only as if they were new information, but as if they were damning evidence to boot.

    Is it laziness, or a lack of time with busy schedules, on the part of the candidates? Is it an assumption, only partially accurate, that the laziness and fatigue of the average American would either not catch these transgressions or be indifferent to them?

    I hate to say get some new material, since the platforms aren’t supposed to really change during a race, but modern Presidential candidates were never especially good at presenting platforms to begin with. If they were people, wouldn’t be tested as being unable to associate each candidate with their respective beliefs as they did four and eight years ago.

    You know a great deal about their personal lives, and whatever they were advised to believe, but it seems like story and star power rule the day.

    So keep that material, but present it in an interesting way. Here’s a thought — you are supposed to be masters of public speaking. Dredge your mind for all the tips you learned in school on doing so extemporaneously and spill your anger in context to make it at least sound new, even though the public has easy access to all sides and to the true knowledge that you’re duping.

    Look at it this way, Senators. You’re not supposed to be biased, but you are. You’re fighting to lead one country, but it’s totally fine that you believe just one way is going to do the trick. That’s a healthy bias, considering your chosen profession.

    A reasonable person, though, wouldn’t just come out and champion their one side  outright. They would show you both sides and say “Hey, there are advantages and disadvantages all around, but here’s why my solutions are better.”

    Why do you think people run in droves to support Obama? He could have no experience besides being a graphic designer from Queens, and yet his, as it has been described, “all hands are dirty” speech on race was fantastic and awe-inspiring, even to people that wouldn’t vote for him on a dare.

   Speaking of debate principles, and I do now from experience, stop agreeing with each other. If you’re asked by the moderator if approaches or plans gel in much the same way, yes, nod. Otherwise don’t kill your argument by saying there’s less and less difference between you. In my own debate classes, it wasn’t just about making your case or your choice more appealing, but strongly enough to make it worth everyone’s while to put forth the resources to institute the change.

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