Anyone who has visited the house, has seen my shameful addiction. I cannot resist recipe books and magazines. Granted, I learned a hell of a lot from my cooking encyclopedias and reference books, and I have a very old 1960s Vietnamese cookbook which has the best recipes I have ever cooked.
But, most of the books and magazine clippings just sit there. When I want to look something up, I find myself on the Internet checking out cooking advice and recipes. A recipe no longer seems complete without being able to read the reviews, advice and modifications left by others who have tried it out already.
I am finding far more useful and approachable recipes online than in a cookbook. A few weeks ago I was struggling to get sugar to properly caramelize for Vietnamese Caramelized Fish from a cookbook. I should have been here, seeing how to properly do it. (If you think that is good, try out the pork version.)
Processed food. If I go to Giant or an American grocery store and buy what I “need”, I end up with a cartload of crap and spend over $100. If I go to the big Korean store down the street and get everything I want, I end up with a cart full of fresh meat and seafood, fresh vegetables, curry ingredients, rice and noodles and spend $60 maximum.
Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing:
 Serving size, 2TB (yeah, right!)
 14 grams of fat
 140 calories
 260mg of sodium
Kirkland Meatballs from Costco:
 Serving size: 5 meatballs
 20 grams of fat
  270 calories
 610mg of sodium
That is just insane! I power-walk for 45 minutes on the treadmill to burn just under 500 calories. I predict a dramatic change in what goes into the refrigerator from now on.
We already do pretty good, since we eat Filipino food with rice every day and heavily emphasize fresh vegetables, etc. However, its the small things that are killing me. A soda or two, regular dressing on the salad, and these fake meatballs in the spaghetti are wasting the time that I spend working out.
Of course, if you think that 610mg of sodium is a lot, check out the amount of sodium in regular soy sauce sometime. 1200mg per tablespoon, almost half of what you should have in a day, is not unusual!
Resolutions for 2008:
 1. Subscribe to The Economist and read it. It’s better than reading cooking magazines isn’t it?
2. Learn to shave properly. Currently I only shave about twice a week. Letting my facial hair get a bit longer allows my skin to heal in between shaves and the longer whiskers cut better. This practice does not go over well on the home front, so something better is needed. Thus, a conversion to wet shaving with a proper razor is in order.
3. Post here more. Creating content is more difficult than consuming it. However, creating content can be cheaper than consuming it in all kinds of ways. Writing relieves stress (sometimes!), it makes you think, and it is one of the most difficult things to do well. My problem is that I have lots of things to post, but am never at a computer when I need to be. None of this assumes that anyone else would want to actually read the content I create. That’s just giving one’s self way too much credit.
coldworld.net has been idle for a couple of years now while I concentrated on helping, along with many other very talented people, to build and finally sell iDefense to VeriSign. The VeriSign people are cool and it couldn’t have been a better fit.
I’m currently working on porting the back-end of this site from MovableType to WordPress. MovableType has gone long in the tooth and are concentrating on their enterprise market, while WordPress has gained incredible momentum and maturity as an open-source product.
