I was helping my son learn to write and realized I’ve been holding the pencil wrong when I write. When I changed my grip to match how my son was learning, it was more comfortable. What have you learned that is different and better than something you’ve always done?
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In the winter, I used to stay warm by turning up the thermostat. Then I discovered (via HN) the Low-Tech Magazine article, "Insulation: first the body, then the home." [0] The article argued that it's much more efficient to focus on heating yourself rather than your whole living space.
I invested in high-quality wool clothes that I wear in layers and warm slippers. Now, I keep my home about 5 degrees F cooler than I used to for the same comfort, and it's a big reduction in oil and wood consumption for home heat.
[0] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/02/body-insulation-ther...
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The scarf goes on the inside of the coat.
If you put the scarf on the outside, like you think you've seen in TV and movies, it's just decoration. Put it on the inside and it's an insulation layer and it blocks the cold air from blowing down your front. Absolutely game-changing. (Also, have a good coat, but that one seems more obvious to people.)
At my local college there are a lot of people from the Bahamas. They often wear hoodies and sandals with socks in the winter! It can get to -20C here and hoodies just won't cut it and sandals with socks could very quickly mean frost bite.
Yes scarfs are great since necks are a prime spot to loose heat during winter. A scarf or even a hood both together are even better. Long coats too none of these waits level ones get a coat at least past your waist preferably past your butt.
Layers are important more for temperature control. Even a hoodies and some sweaters can be warm if you have enough and one outside with wind protection.
Boots not sneakers to keep warm and the grip. So many people wear sneakers all winter now it blows me away. They're slippery, cold, and they probably cost more than winter boots these days.
Hollywood doesn't know what winter is :P
I'm happy to pay the extra cost to heat the room I'm in with a space heater in the winter time.
I'm happy to pay the extra cost
As an aside, we've got the externalities of climate change all wrong. Oil is a non renewable resource. We can't just give the planet a bunch of money and have it produce more oil for us to burn when we're uncomfortable. This cost is not really borne by you; it'll be borne by future generations.
My favorite t-shirt is now a lightweight filson 100% wool shirt that is just as comfortable by itself at 80 deg as it is under a button up shirt at 30 deg.
And doesn't get cold when wet like cotton does.
It really does fit the "life changing" topic if you've never tried it.
(But if you've got some kind of super-insulated house, then never mind.)
Plus, y’know, winter clothes are the best clothes. Tweeds, woolens, gloves, coats, scarves, hats: all these are great!
I was amazed to find out that even in this air conditioned age we spend far more heating buildings than air conditioning them (four times as much, according to the first Google hit I just found). That means that it makes a lot more sense to dress warmly in the winter than lightly in the summer.
"radiant IR" (red glowing elements) type heaters are wonderful tools for heating the body instead of the air.
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/12/30/
I wish floor heating was more widespread where I live.
That's what happens when central planning makes the above observation.
Alternatively, keep some fingerless gloves around - or learn to knit/crochet/sew and make some (they aren't all that complicated for something basic). For around the house, you could honestly convert some socks if you aren't worried about how they might look. I'd get some of the no-fray glue they sell at craft stores if you go this route. These are great when you are idle.
https://pothies.co.uk/hotwater-bottle-carrier-from-pothies/
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/01/the-revenge-of-the-h...
(HN discussion from 2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30023681)
For instance, I've finally learned to embrace "long-john" style long underwear under my pants, but it's only possible because I'm working from home. They are amazing layers for warmth, but unlike additional shirts, hoodies, jackets, scarves, hats, long underwear can't be casually removed. You have to take off your shoes and your pants! So if (when) I was going into an office, I always made the choice to have cold legs during the commute but comfortable legs all day. Now I can wear them in the morning, take them off if the day warms up, and put them back on whenever the temp. drops again.
But overall I'll echo a few comments in here that some of the more expensive gear, even as base layers, really is better technology. And getting to know my body and my situational habits, it's been possible to figure out layering clothing that worked for me, but only because I was working in tech and felt like I had enough money to get it wrong a couple times... If I were still living on a student or even "average" budget, I would've been much shyer about trying some new $30 shirt just to see if it agreed with me.
You simply need layers and good enough deodorant. A bit of experience helps as well - you learn how warm to keep your base layer after some time. If you sweat in non-standard places (like under breasts), spray deodorant might be your friend.
I personally deal with this because of hormones - I'm a female in my mid-40s, so I get to have hot flashes and night sweats during part of my cycle right now.
But for a few years I lived in a very well insulated (smallish) apartment in a moderate climate. When it would get cold, I would turn the heat on. My bill would go up by a few dollars.
Then, I changed jobs and started working in a colder building. I spent more on warm clothes than I usually spent on heat! (And I had baseboard resistive heating, and I payed extra for wind power.)
A sweater and warm socks are game changers, as is a warm winter jacket and a good scarf. Add some tea and candles and the winter isn't half bad anymore. It's much easier to get through the cold months if you don't dread being outside.
[1] https://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/heating.html
So most likely you still need to keep heating on but it might not need to be super high - just enough to have convection from heater moving air at home and having some ventilation letting in a bit of outside air in and warm one getting moisture out.
I just moved and now renting a place with electric water heater with pump moving that heated water around via radiators. It is quite large apartment with shitty, to be honest, insulation. The difference between "I put several layers of clothes on" and "I am wearing a t-shirt" is about 600 kWh per month. The same amount of energy is needed to prodice 30 kg of aluminium or run a single rack in a datacenter for just 2 days.
Never in your life your energy consumption can be compared with industrial usage. Likewise, never in you life your water consuption can reach a visible fraction of agricultural irrigation. Stop listening to coprorate PR.
If every home ran a server rack for two days a month, or produced 30kg of aluminum, that would obviously add up extremely quickly.
Also, I'm not sure if there is an easy way to actually increase humidity without reducing the temperature. From my experience, increasing humidity while keeping the overall temperature at the same time requires additional energy.
Also, less humid air may allow you to actually wear less cloths as it is more difficult for the air to get energy off your body.
Congratulations...
At some point, I yelled, "It's like you don't even want to see any of my things when I'm not using them!" Then I stopped for a second. For the first time in my life, it made sense.
The whole point of putting things away is to hide them! No one wants to look at your crap when you're not using it.
The kids (4 and 5) have adapted to this wonderfully. It really helps them. It makes cleanup a trivial task because everything is known to belong somewhere specific.
Related to this: the recognition that everything is harder in a messy home. If you have stuff everywhere, you are paying a small tax any time you want to find or do something. Even cluttering your cupboards and drawers means you're tediously sifting through too much stuff or constantly worried about knocking something over while getting something else out. It's been especially good to avoid the dance of removing items to get the items underneath, then putting them back.
Finally: the lesson that when you keep stuff, you are paying a "tax" on keeping it. Throw away stuff you don't think you'll ever need again. It's cheaper to re-buy 1 or 2 things than to keep 100 of them for years and years. That storage space could be better used.
Bonus: If everything has a home, and you run out of homes, you quickly recognize that you have too much stuff and it might be time to make trade-offs. This puts an upper bound on the amount of stuff in our home.
Note that this could all easily sound super hardcore but it's not. It's just a general guide we have. We aren't forcing our kids to throw excess toys away and we're not writing a book about it. A flexible tool to guide behaviour, not enforce it.
I eventually realised he bought things without thinking about where to put them, when he got home with it. So it just sort of would get abandoned wherever. There was no assigned "away" for him, and I was assuming there was. Baffling, but at least it wasn't passive-aggressive like I had thought. Some of my habits eventually wore off on him, thankfully.
A related theme is: I don't have anywhere to put this even after thinking about it -- then you probably have too much stuff!
Conversation from last weekend -
"I want those brown shoes. They're so nice and fit like they're made for me"
"You're shoes are overflowing your side, into mine and now into the corridor. I think you have too many."
"I don't have any that are like boots. I want brown ones for the city.I'll wear to my $event"
"You got yellow ones last month. They look like boots"
"They're for a hike. These are for the city. I don't like being told about my shoes."
And then there were more shoes.
Same night -
"I need to donate my old clothes"
I was having a hard time thinking about what I'm doing wrong, but I think this is close enough. I'm so inspired to steal some variant of this disclaimer especially this part: "We aren't forcing x to do y and we're not writing a book about it."
They take up more cupboard and bench space around the house then the additional 2 people did before.
Makes it challenging in a house to find space when you need it, if it's already filled simply because there was a free space.
This, absolutely.
Does it count if everything goes into one big box?
Or if I just declare the living room as the home for my stuff?
“This is great for the kids!” Maybe! Or, equally plausibly it’s annoying, but they don’t tell you.
https://nathanwpyle.threadless.com/designs/we-own-things/hom...
Its just not even on my radar
I am not an organized person, I see a horizontal surface and I put stuff on it. But leaving doors open? I don’t think I even take my hand off the cabinet door when I open it. One hand for the door, one for the thing I’m getting.
The only door I leave open is the washing machine, so it can dry out. It gets closed the next time I’m in the laundry room though.
My better half has very few things that catch my attention in a less than positive way, one is not turning off the lights. It’s like a museum tour to learn what has been visited that day.
They have had the lights turned off for them their whole life despite being super independent otherwise. So I just used it as an excuse to install some Caseta wifi light switches and suddenly the lights were turned off before bed because it was remembered but too much work to do once in bed. But because the Apple Watch had an extension app it was easy enough to do. It doesn’t mean everything should be automated but it was one that kept a small thing into a fun and easy going solve. It made it easier to consider motorized blinds due.
It's funny you mention the cabinets. My wife and I can tell whenever my siblings have been over: they're all incorrigible cabinet goblins.
I still leave cabinets open, but it's typically because I'm using it as a reminder to return whatever I had taken from the cabinet. Of course, my Cabinet Sight still has a ways to go, so the thing doesn't get returned until I actually notice the open cabinet the next day.
When I hide things I just forget that I have half of them almost immediately. Let alone remembering where I have them.
I can have things that get "put away" i.e. in a container/cabinet/drawer/room IF that container will be something that I open and access at least every other day. Otherwise, things that get put away out of sight are GONE until I accidentally stumble across them years later.
Limited exception: if there is a tool or device or something that is so uniquely suited for a task that when presented with a task where it would be useful I will immediately think of the tool—and thus remember that I have it—I can safely store it away, as long as the place I'll put it is the first place that I'd look for it.
Then there is me looking for something for half an hour or more then finally finding it exactly where it was supposed to be.
Some people have mental disease that makes them annoyed where the flat surfaces are covered with immediately useful and easily accessible stuff and act up. "Oh look at those flat surfaces that don't get used for anything useful 99% of the time, how neat and tidy"
Some other kind of people have different disease of just leavin shit lying around for months and never use it, where it should be put back in storage (or bin) weeks ago already. "Don't touch my stuff, if you move it I won't remember where it is!" (then promptly forgets and wastes time searching thru clutter anyway.
Sane compromise is somewhere in the middle. Don't constantly hide the favourite knife every fucking day, ain't nobody got time for that shit. But probably clean it so the next time you use it you won't waste time on that. Cutting board can stay out, you use it every day, multiple times anyway.
Clutter intolerance can have a profound impact on daily life for sufferers. Many will engage in maladaptive coping strategies such as ritualistic tidying and avoiding cluttered rooms or spaces. Whether tolerance can be improved through therapy is an area of active research. Unfortunately, clutter intolerance is thought to be neurobiological.
This reminds me of the difference between 'tidy' and 'organised' .. They are independent properties and an area may be very tidy while being very disorganized and vice versa.. Eg. typical thing where if there is a pile of random crap on a table someone will dump it all into a drawer. The area is now more 'tidy' but also more disorganized.
Tidiness is superficial, whereas being organized has practical benefits.
Trust me, I suck at tidying and have a cluttered mess, so I'm not being Marie Kondo here.
Your logic works but only so far. If you put nothing "away" all your "working surfaces" will eventually be covered with crap -- except of course it's not crap, it's your things that you intended to keep easily at hand. It'll make it so that it's a chore to find things and also a chore to have a useful space to actually DO anything. Sure, leave out a set of favorite often-used stuff, like say, bread on the counter instead of away in a pantry, your most-worn shoes on the floor by the door, whatever. But curating that set of stuff that is important enough to be "just left out" is important, and it's a REAL challenge for me!!
Well, there is another reason. When your room has a consistent default state, it's easier to look around the room and notice anything that is unusual. It makes the room into a sort of sensor. When it is always changing states — things here one day, there another — any changes can be missed. Subconsciously, we usually feel calmer when we know what's going on around us, which is facilitated by an orderly living/working environment.
Yet compare that to if I'm staying in a hotel. I just look around on the 5 surfaces -- nightstand, dresser, desk, bathroom counter, bingo, of course it was in one of those places and it sticks out obviously. 10 seconds max.
Devil's in the details of course, and I haven't yet been able to declutter, but I intuitively know you're right.
It helped me to start putting things away in drawers and so on, but also to think about how often I use them, or if I still need them.
The tv show was about "proffesional organizers".
Pfff, fancy posh TV lady with her ACTUAL DEDICATED STORAGE SPACE in SPACIOUS HOME.
Our home has a two-stage "recycle bin" policy, though: some of my stuff "gets moved" to a random box in the cellar; if I don't ask for it for a few months, it gets "donated". You know.
Never.
I never would do that and my wife never did this.
Make your home work for you, don’t work for your home.
If that means the best way for you to live your life is to leave things out so you can find them more easily, then do that. Chances are though that having a “home” for everything (mentioned in other comments) is going to work better for you. It’s a process of learning and iteration.
She freaked out when I told her, but it came with two keys and I gave her one so she doesn't think I'm hiding anything from her.
Ideally I'd have ceiling-to-floor shelves EVERYWHERE.
GTD says your mind is not so much storing to-do's as for processing them. Likewise, the contents of spaces. Memorizing contents is unnecessary mind clutter.
If you’re in the bottom drawers, less closet space, back of the fridge, at the bottom of the pile, the the more awkward storage space, fewer drawers, appliances that like to be seen but not used, or more of your stuff is in storage it might not entirely be you.
At the same time it’s valuable to learn to build shared storage solutions jointly to let both (and little ones) put the items most used, important or at hand is a critical skill to develop together, early on.
Otherwise deferral or indifference can be quite tough when one of you might have a change of heart.
There are many thinna that happen in life where you will literally not remember to do.something (medication, etc) if it’s not sitting out on the counter.
In my experience women do this a lot. I don't know if it's some kind of an evolutionary thing. On the one hand that it was something women traditionally did and can't let go, on the other that it is/was a way to make themselves more important. You become very important when somebody needs you all the time to tell them where things are.
Cabinets without doors, and shelves without doors are critical too. I'm not sure why but if I do not have regular visible sight of things, they may as well not exist and I will quickly forget that they are there, leading to all kinds of chaos.
It talks about needing less space in general and being more free, simply by having fewer things, since things beget things; the more things you have, the more organizational containers you need, in turn creating yet more things and yet more space to store them in. Since then, I've tried to actively limit the amount of things and space they take up, since I hate clutter, but I hate organization as well.
Also I firmly believe really nice drawer hardware, like soft close and good runners can encourage this behaviour by making operation enjoyable. Grew up with very satisfyingly click put to open drawers, in retrospect not as functional as direct pulling, but man that click conditioned me to want to tidy.
It's also a battle because of the clutter, 10% of it is mine, and I never move their stuff.
The problem comes in when there's something that could reasonably be trash (usually a box that I might need to return something) gets tossed. :(
EDIT: change "private zones" to "public zones"
I realized also that this is a TERRIBLE reminder system. I started putting everything in OneNote and my calendar via the Getting Things Done Methodology, and I'm honestly upset that no one ever taught me such a system a long time ago. I've been told a million times to "use a planner", "write things down", "use a calendar", "use a notebook" etc. etc., but no one ever told me HOW to use those things. Getting Things Done is awesome because it told me almost exactly how to use that stuff, and the effect has been life-changing for me. My spaces have never been cleaner, and I've never been more effective in my life.
I think that it is rather to have them all in one place, and that they do not take the place of other things or are in your way.
The fact that they are hidden is because they are behind a door, probably to avoid that catching dust.
I notice this in reverse as well, it's probably best when moving in with someone to get a new place and set expectations early.
What was that HN article recently of Las Vegas and windows on buildings more of something causes distress and less is more soothing to a point.
You can't hide their makeup that they are not using, the 10 bottles of shampoo with different colors and allegedly different properties, the 7 bottles of hair conditioner etc etc
So everyday I wake up to something like this, but worse
https://i0.wp.com/blog.cliomakeup.com/wp-content/uploads/201...
Lucky us we have two bathrooms, so we can keep one tidy, right?
WRONG!
The second bathroom is for the exclusive use of our 2 cats.
Could I have a say about it?
Of course not.
Is it logical?
Absolutely not.
People don't want to see other people's crap, but are more than happy to live surrounded by their own.
If there's a paradise, many people deserve it just for going through all of this, every day.
I chose the word "yelled" because it was the simplest way to imply the frustration/betrayal/hurt I was feeling at the time. In retrospect, I could have said, "cried out," and captured the emotion/action more accurately without sacrificing brevity. But that phrase didn't occur to me at the time.
Words are hard.
Part of the motivation is the minor discomfort of seeing so many projects open and set aside. For me the solution is to complete projects, not categorize and hide everything.
Realizing that sitting for 8 to 12 hours per day coding is catastrophic for my health.
Understanding the incredibly high and hidden cost of conflict and anger. Films romanticize fighting the good fight. Avoiding a fight (legal, arguments, etc) until you absolutely can’t is worth a lot.
Creativity and intellectual progress happen in a quiet relaxed and happy environment.
Leadership starts with humility.
Big companies signal unassailable leads and competence but tend to be wildly dysfunctional which makes them vulnerable.
Yoga fixes lifelong back pain that drugs, swimming obsessively, chiropractors and workouts could not fix.
Confronting death isn’t that scary, even for an atheist.
We don’t deserve dogs.
Everyone is the main character in their story, including you.
You can be good at just about anything you love doing but can’t be good at many things.
You can’t buy time but managing your time obsessively has its own cost.
Early mornings are a very special time because no one else is up and it is the quietest and most productive part of the day.
For the exact same reason, so also are very late nights (~1 to 5am).
I used to look at dogs and think that if any other sentient species came by, the things we'd done to an apex predator would be sufficient to mark our species for quarantine at best, but I was playing with a friend's dog the other day and it occurred to me that we've aggressively selected for the happiest, most loyal, friendliest critters we can find - that's what we want, that's what we want to be around*. The world's complicated and our actions in it don't always reflect us at our best, but there's something redemptive about our choice in companions.
(*Yes, some dogs are bred to be dicks, and some people are dicks, but most dogs are good dogs, and most people are, too.)
In some countries, dog owners don’t give a shit and let their dogs poop everywhere (France for example).
Many dog owners can’t handle their dogs.
Dogs are scary for some people, especially children. Most dog owners don’t understand this and say "it’s a good dog, he doesn’t do anything" instead of doing the only sane thing: "you’re scared? I take the dog away".
It only takes one dick owner with a dick dog to instill fear in people (children) with significant and long-lasting consequences for their lives.
So yeah, some dogs are cute and whatnot, but unless you have a remote ranch or a huge property, and dogs can be dogs there, we actually need less dogs.
This is known to be great project management advice _and_ terrible relationship advice.
For interpersonal relationships, signaling misalignment early, directly, openly, with a sympathetic and reconciling demeanor, has been the best choice for me. Can't find sources anymore, sorry.
For projects, I won't expend more effort than what I have to.
Where does the project work stop and the interpersonal work starts, that's a vague art that demands a bit of intuition.
That resonates strongly with me. It's better to just take the loss because entering a conflict because of it will cost more, even if you win, in almost all cases.
> Yoga fixes lifelong back pain that drugs, swimming obsessively, chiropractors and workouts could not fix.
I'm healing a back problem that Yoga would definitely just make it worse
Chances are you already have a lot bacteria in your mouth and once you eat your breakfast (which for many is sugary) they immediately eat and consume this and produce acid. So, brush before breakfast, supposedly.
The solubility of enamel is insanely low so the effect should be minor at most, but still.
P.S. If you never tried these gizmos, get a portable, battery powered one, so you can use it over the bathtub (or in the bathtub). They tend to soak everything around you.
I've had the same base model for 10+ years going strong.
I destroyed my gums when my parents got me an electric toothbrush when I was 13 - and AFAIK - there's still not really any way to repair it.
Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong! Would make my day to be wrong.
As for your gums, they don't grow back I believe, but you can get surgery of sorts by using other parts of your mouth and stick them in your gums. See; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF6EgSM5TlA
Why does a 3 year old video for repairing Sonicare toothbrush have 425K reviews on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3PBPU2jXbo, with 2.8K upvotes and 192 downvotes. It breaks because a screw goes loose inside the toothbrush.
I recommend you avoid Phillips electric toothbrush completely. I used a oral-B electric toothbrush for at least 8 years with no issues. And Phillips breaks in 6 months.
If you're teeth-grinder at night, a few tiny pieces of eggshells help keep the grinding at bay, because you can grind on a piece of eggshell without danger and then relax again.
Btw. I went through bunch of cheap noname toothbrushes to realize there is reason you pay for Philips and Oral-B brands, all cheap toothbrushes will fail within few weeks/months due to humidity or other failures, didn't have such experience with those two famous brands, wife and me use Oral-B Pulsonic Slim for years (extremely slim and light, but less powerful), for son who had problem with teeth I bought a bit better (heavier but more powerful) Philips HX6511 (still quite cheap, next time I'd buy this also for myself). Daughter has still cheap Xiaomi, waiting when it will finally break (from 4 I bought 3 broken), then will probably go for same Philips.
Btw. be aware most of the electric toothbrushes still use old NiCd batteries with memory effect, so to achieve maximum battery life/longetivity you should NOT leave tootbrush in charger, but charge it only when it runs out of battery, if you keep it in charger stand it is significantly decreasing battery life with each charging to the point it is useless already by the end of warranty.
I finally tried a name brand brush from Costco when my wife insisted and it blew my mind. Actually excited to go to the dentist to see what they say this time when I’m not full of plaque for once
A few months later she went together with her sister to their annual dentist checkup. The dentist praised her sister for how clean her teeth were, while he told my gf hers were "OK". What was it that her sister was doing differently? She was using an electric toothbrush.
I'm pretty certain you can guess what was the very first thing my then gf did coming out of the dentist.
Clearly youve figured something out and I've been doing something wrong my whole life.
You’re ditching it because sometimes you lose track of the time (and don’t want to push the button again) for something that doesn’t have a timer at all?
If a basic model does it, I'd guess they all do it!
Also don't forget you can ignore the vibrations, just continue after the 2 minutes and count in your head if you need it.
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Same here. It's completely changed my life. For mini-me, the built-in timer helps them be sure to brush enough.
How did you get into the habit?
There’s a good little joke in here.
FWIW, I’ve gone back and forth on electric toothbrushes and settled on non-electric. I’ve found that a medium-firmness bristle and a rigorous and thorough brushing is what leaves me feeling cleanest. Plus it’s simple, easy to replace, and easier to properly dispose of.
Then again, maybe a super high end electric would change my mind.
Specifically, the one you connect to your phone coaches you on the right amount of pressure and time to use throughout your mouth.
Floss. For the love of God, floss. People carry around chronic gum infections in between teeth. Ask me how I know.
So have I. And several dentists have actually recommended manual brushing to me as well.
On the other hand, water flossing has been a boon against dental plaque and bad breath. I used to never floss.
Disgusting mistake... A lot of food particles get stuck in the teeth interstitial spaces, macerating in there overnight or even several days... Yuck. :x
Also most sauce recipes are probably overcomplicated. Most need less than 5 ingredients. You probably don't need all that onion and garlic, but one of them. Definitely not two tablespoons of dried oregano.
The way you cut onions and garlic changes the flavor a lot too. Finely minced garlic, from a food processor or garlic press can be overpowering yet not deliver the flavor. One trick is to crush the garlic and let the oil it's in carry the flavor. Half an onion can work really well in a sauce you cooking for half an hour.
1) Salt your pasta water! Pasta is meant to be cooked in salty water that, according and excellently-put by Samin Nosrat (Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat) - "is reminiscent of the sea".
2) Save and use a splash of ("dirty") pasta water - aka the water the pasta was just cooked in - when you're tossing the pasta with the sauce. The water is filled with delightful liquified starch from the pasta, and it helps the sauce coat the pasta more thoroughly.
Had lots of funny moments in my life relating to salting pasta water. Almost all the people I know put like two pinches of salt into the water. Which causes them to look at me like I'm a psycho when I pour salt in for almost a full second, straight out of the container.
I can +1 both of your tips, I follow them both since I learned to cook and they're a (small but effective) game-changer.
- A good ratio of salt/water is one tablespoon per litre (or gallon). Reduce if the sauce is going to be very salty already (eg carbonara). We're talking kosher salt here (specifically Diamon Crystal), if using table salt it's probably going to be half of that: salt density varies a lot depending on the type.
- Cook your pasta is _as little_ water as possible. For some reason there's some myth that you want to cook pasta in a large volume of water: that's BS. What makes pasta water "liquid gold" is the starch that comes from the pasta, you want that as concentrated as possible.
I was visiting a friend and had it all cooked together in the pan for the first time and it was eye opening.
My parents were on the lower end of rural middle-class so on the rare occasion we went to a restaurant, steak was avoided as the most expensive thing on the menu, and as kids, we didn't have the option of steak anyway. Our meats while growing up were mainly fish, chicken, pork, and hamburger. When I was a teen, my mom got a deal on a big box of steaks somehow and cooked them on the grill every other night for dinner. She made it sound like we were living like royalty but no matter what kind of sauces or seasonings I slathered on, they were always dry and tasteless. I voluntarily skipped a lot of dinners that summer and thought I just hated steak.
In my mid-20s, I befriended a Brazilian. He invited my spouse and I over for a barbecue. When we got there, I found out the only thing going on the grill was steak, a.k.a. Brazilian Beef. Basically thick chunks of steak "marinated" in rock salt then cooked over open coals to sear the outside, but never long enough to get the inside more than medium-rare. I probably mentioned not caring for steak but he assured me I was going to like it. And wow, he was right. So tasty, so juicy. Decades later, I still make it every chance I get.
My wife and I sometimes talk about how our parents basically ruined whole categories of food for us until we got out into the world and experienced (or learned for ourselves) how things were _supposed_ to be cooked.
BUT: Once I started cooking I started coaching her back. Specifically, I taught her to defrost her burgers before grilling.
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I remember Anthony Bourdain asking his Sicilian family this question, and the table erupted in hot debate. I'm not sure you are "wrong".
https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boi...
I've switched to his method. It works really well. Doesn't take as long to boil, uses less gas, uses less water, uses less salt (b/c you waste less in the water). Now I just heat the water to boiling, throw in the pasta, let it come back to a boil, stir a bunch, turn off the heat, and put the lid on. Works every time.
If you have a recipe in mind to make, look it up on Serious Eats. Their MO is to give you ideas on how to level up each recipe (compared to food network or similar) and explain the principles behind the techniques.
I usually sauté garlic in oil separately, discard the garlic and then use the oil as a sort of super garlic flavor concentrate.
I used to believe the actual ingredients were ~80% of the puzzle of cooking. I now believe they're closer to ~20% for most cases. The process you follow is way more important than anything else.
Just take a sweet onion for instance. The difference 2-3 minutes makes in a hot pan is incredible. If you simply chopped it up and threw it directly into whatever, you will wind up with something that tastes substantially less flavorful.
Why is this bad with rice? When I make a stew I often put some rice in, with the expectation that the rice will absorb some of the stew.
I think stew might be an exception, because you want it to be porridge-like. But for many sauces, that's too soggy. You usually want it to soak for a few seconds to minutes but not an hour.
You can just mix tomato sauce, oregano, salt, and pepper, then slap it on the pie. It cooks in the oven. No need to pre-cook it.
[EDIT] unless you're gonna use it for dipping. There's a reason places have a separate "marinara", often, for that purpose. Even giving your pizza sauce a quick simmer will make it a lot better for dipping. Raw pizza sauce is... palatable, but not great, for dipping.
1. Choose your soffritto base. Onion or garlic are fine, more exotic variations include scalogno or porro.
2. Choose your tomato. Canned, fresh, whatever, just keep in mind that fresh ones may need longer cooking times. As for canned, check that they contain no seasoning at all!
3. Choose your grease. Oil or butter are fine, the standard is olive oil though. It may be hard to find proper olive oil outside of Italy I'm told.
4. Start cooking. Put your oil in a large pan, enough to contain all the pasta you plan to use afterwards. Not too much oil: just enough to cover the pan with a thin layer. Don't start heating the pan.
5. Cut your onion or whatever in small pieces and add them to the oil. Now turn on the heat at a reasonable level. Not too high but not low. Don't touch the onion!
6. When the onion looks a bit browny (not dark brown), add the tomato and lower at minimum the heat. If you have a thermometer, ideally you don't want to cross 60 degrees celsius over all the cooking period. This period can vary between 10 minutes and 60 minutes, it gives different tastes (all good) to the sauce. If you opt for the shortest time, go back at step 5 and at the same time start the next step.
7. Put 1l of water for every 100g of pasta in a pot. Add salt. With experience you'll get the right amount, usually I use about a small fist for two people (160-200g). Heat up the water and wait until boiling.
8. Drop the pasta in the water. Start a chronometer. Almost immediately mix it or otherwise it will stick. Wait a couple of minutes and mix again.
9. Meanwhile the sauce will start bubbling and, depending on your kitchen, you may need to mix it. If you see large discrepancies in texture, definitely mix. Otherwise don't. If it becomes too dry, add some water from the cooking pasta to the sauce.
10. When the chronometer is at cooking_time_on_pasta_packaging - 2 minutes, take a glass of water and fill it with water from the pasta pot. Dry the pasta, and put it in the pan with the sauce. Make the heat level for the pan a bit higher.
11. Cook it until "al dente", that is still a bit hard at the inside, but not completely. If the sauce dries too much (it should, if not turn the heat higher), add the water you kept in the glass. This step is where science stops and art begins: you need to calibrate your taste to your desired results and in turn calibrate water and heating. During all this step, mix your pasta in the same direction continuously. This is called "risottatura". Taste the pasta while cooking often.
11. Take everything off the fire, serve, add parmisan.
Edit: look at maccard comment for water and salt because I don't recall the right quantities. After a while you go by eye.
Edit 2: preventing more comments on oil, that is merely my very limited experience and I'd say, as a rule of thumb (not incontrovertible truth), that if you like your oil alone with bread it is a good oil.
> Canned, fresh, whatever, just keep in mind that fresh ones may need longer cooking times.
Unless you know you've got _excellent_ fresh tomatoes, canned ones will win.
> Oil or butter are fine
Cooking your onion in butter is going to give a very very different result to using oil. Personally speaking, not one I would recommend.
> It may be hard to find proper olive oil outside of Italy I'm told.
High quality dop/docg olive oil is readily available all over the world, and there are plenty of places all around the mediterranean that have olive oil as good as Italian oil.
> Put 1l of water for every 100g of pasta in a pot. Add salt.
This is way too much water. serious eats[0] has an excellent article that is well worth reading if you care about pasta. You also should give an indication of how much salt to use - it's way way way more than you think it is. Like, tablespoon of salt per litre of water salty.
[0] https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boi...
Spanish and Greeks have nothing to be shy about here.
And when you add in the tomato puree (or your preference), add a tiny bit of sugar. If the sauce looks like it has a sheen, it's ruined. Just a tiny amount will do.
Do this and your sauce will taste 10 times better. Not a fan of anchovies, but you won't even be able to tell.
Make noodle soup and let it sit in the fridge for a week. It will expand.
Risotto would like a word.
Also different rices.
[0] https://enchroma.com/
The way they hire actors to play out wholesome videos and upload them to YouTube as if it's organic content, with massive fake users to comment and push up false claims and down vote brigade all negative comments should tell you all you need about this shady company.
This is when it would've been good to ask someone about it.
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This website doesn’t work on my iPhone’s screen. It’s impossible to discern most of the numbers, and the UI doesn’t instill confidence. Are they just using this garbage to hock their glasses to people who don’t need them?
This website is thoroughly broken, and nobody should even use it as a suggestion that they are or aren’t colorblind.
Me: "Why don't you turn on the shower, wait for it to get warm, then get in?"
Him, realizing he'd been using a shower wrong for over 6 decades: "... huh."
Then when you get in, you pull a cord and it releases the full pressure of nice hot water.
The Superman method: put your hand up to block the blast.
The Spiderman method: jump to the opposite side of the shower to avoid the blast.
The clever method: turn on the shower and wait outside.
This can save a lot of water if you're the type to let your shower run until it is warm. So some jurisdictions encourage their installation.
When you turn on the shower, the head operates normally while the water is cold. When the water becomes warm a valve in the head closes to stop the flow. There is a button on the head you press to open the valve, which then stays open until you turn off the water.
The idea is that many people turn on the shower to warm up but don't just wait around in the bathroom to jump in as soon as the water is warm. They go do other things like start their coffee machine or wake up the kids or check the news and weather. Between the time the shower warms up and they get around to coming to see if it is warm they might waster several minutes worth of warm water.
With this clever shower head they don't waste that water. Also, if they can hear the shower running from wherever they are doing other stuff when they hear it stop they know the warm water is ready.
As I understand it (and I am NOT a plumber) -- when you turn on the hot water, it pushes hot water up the line. Turn off the water, and that water will cool. But, if you add a one-way valve that allows flow from hot to cold, it will allow the higher pressure hot water line to flow into the cold water line so that it keeps hot water to the tap so that you don't have to wait (in my case) 5 minutes to flush out the cold water that has accumulated before getting to the hot water.
A plumber friend suggested this to me when I complained about my master bathroom (the furthest in the house away from the heater) taking SO LONG to warm up. Then he came out and installed it in about 15 minutes (which would probably amount to a one hour minimum charge for a plumber not doing it for free) plus a $10 part he had us buy on Amazon.
TLDR, now instead of taking 5 minutes to heat up from ice cold to warm to eventually hot, the hot water is warm from the second I open it, and hot within about 15-20 seconds.
This mainly saves time, but it also saves water if your shower mixer valve doesn't go to 100% hot. (It's generally good to keep the hot limiter below 100%, to avoid full-body scalding.)
With the method you described, it takes longer, with more water usage, to get into position, plus you let some water spray out into the rest of the bathroom as you transition inside it.
I wasted so much time and energy on this but as I get older I've realised there is so little of what we can actually control vs what we think we can do. Most of the time just saying Yes and waiting for things to actually happen is so much easier. A lot of time what you worry about never happens and if it does it isn't always as bad as you make things out to be in your head. A lot of times it turns out to be actually good and it would've been a shame to avoid it.
Also when you say yes to people, a lot of time the other person never actually follows through the thing you didn't want. Otoh if you would argue or say No beforehand it always has the opposite effect.
I guess for most people this is common sense but I did this wrong for a large younger part of my life.
> Also when you say yes to people, a lot of time the other person never actually follows through the thing you didn't want. Otoh if you would argue or say No beforehand it always has the opposite effect.
I recently started doing this and it's amazing. I was the one saying 'no' to so many 'offers' (as a full stack developer, from idea people), and always ended up being the negative guy that doesn't want to do things.
Recently I've started enthousiastically saying "Yeah, that sounds great! In order to get started, I'd need <whatever_thing_that_they_need_to_do> from you.". Up till now no one has followed up. When we talk about it next, I am as excited as in the beginning and mentioned the thing that they need to do again, and they usually go like "Oh yeah! I need to do that." and then I never hear about it again. It's a shocker to me.
It's really easy for people to put stuff on your to-do list, reflecting even a tiny task on them before you accept it makes so many requests go away.
Related to this for me, I generally make it clear that sending an email request does not mean a task is transferred to me. We need to have a conversation and agree before it goes on my list..
I subsequently realized that my “no” is often more involved because I actually have the idea more thought out than whoever was proposing the idea.
Then I realized that most “yes” in many contexts just means “no”. :-/ (And “no” means “no and you’re dumb” lol)
What I want to say is that there is time and place for worrying. And sure, worrying about everything is counter productive.
I do see the Illusion of Control aspect in myself and others, and it’s weird being on the other side of that now and trying to explain to people that what they want isn’t what they need and also that we can put as much effort in as we like or we can just plan to do it twice and get on with it.
The latter is a problem magnified by management, who don’t want to pay for anything twice and will apply huge social pressure in service of the sunk cost fallacy.
Can you give an example? Like “do you want to go ice skating Saturday?” also doesn't seem to fit your comment.
There are many ways of doing this, but consciously recognizing it and labeling is as such then allowing yourself to be okay with the possibility of the bad thing happening.
If it is a big worry sometimes you need to make it as specific as possible. Like getting fired. What exact steps would happen? What would your boss say specifically? And is that exact scenario likely to happen?
If you're still having trouble do the above, but at the end change who its about, to a co-worker for example, then ask again is this a likely scenario. And if it is then the outcome won't be that bad. If it isn't then you also have your answer.
Another is to describe the worry in detail to another person because to describe it you need to make it specific and linearize it. This is why talking it/rubber ducking out works so well. They can also point out gaps and whatnot. Usually my the time your done the worry is gone.
Many friends feel like they're not actually helping here, but just listening is the help and it makes a big difference. On the flip side you may feel like you're wasting the other person’s time because at the end there's nothing to do. His is also false, most people are happy to help even if they don't know what they did.
Anxiety/worry usually comes from unexamined fears which throw every possible bad result into your head. But pinning down specific stories you can eliminate many of them.
The reason I suggest therapy is because it can be a number of reasons for the underlying anxiety. I think it's mostly a symptom of something else, rather than a standalone issue.
Maybe you can acknowledge your worry, and rather than ruminating on it and letting it eat at you, you can come up with a plan to deal with the thing that's worrying you. Maybe that plan is to wait until it specifically requires your action, and give yourself permission to not worry about it for now.