A quick and healthy lunch that's cheap.

Here's a great video on how to make a quick and healthy lunch.  It's a sardine sandwich!

• It takes only a few minutes to make
• It's packed with omega-3, lycopene, and vitamins
• You can get cans of sardines in tomato sauce for 70 cents or less

It's not as fishy tasting as you might expect (it actually tastes less fishy than canned tuna, believe it or not).  If you're on a low budget, but you still want to eat healthy, give this recipe a try and let us know what you think!

buying vs. "brown bagging" your lunch

(photograph courtesy of AppleBooty)

For some of you who work by a place with cheap, healthy food, buying lunch may make the most sense. For the rest of us, food comes in one of several categories:

1) It's healthy and tasty, but is expensive (often $7+ in a city like New York City).
2) It's cheap and healthy, but the taste is pretty bad (e.g., buying boiled eggs every day).
3) It's cheap and tasty, but not healthy at all (e.g., fast food).

Do you want cheap, healthy, and tasty food? Get ready to brown bag. Now the main drawback to bringing your own lunch is that it takes time to plan your lunch and to actually make
your lunch. There are several ways to get around this:

1. Buy in bulk and prepare cooking for your whole week. We'll go more into detail on this topic in the future.


2. Pack your leftovers from dinner for lunch the next day. It saves on dishwashing and effort.


3. Buy easy to prepare, yet healthy and tasty foods. This is a whole other post itself, but just as an example, edamame is stored frozen, healthy, cheap, and tasty (addictive at that), and to make it, all you have to do is put them in the microwave for 2 minutes. No thought involved.

If you really want to commit to it, purchase a nice 'adult' lunchbox such as Mr. Bento. Besides the fact that there's a whole sub-culture bent on making nice looking lunches (search Flickr for 'bento porn'), it's great that it keeps your hot lunches hot and cold lunches cold. Mr. Bento works particularly well if you eat asian food often, but really works well for any type of cuisine.

On being a consumer...

You're a consumer whether you like to admit it or not. In order to survive in this world, you need to make use of other's skills. Though it may be nice to be able to know everything to survive on your own, in this complex lifestyle that we wll live, our daily lives make us a consumer. Being a consumer simply means we exchange our knowledge and skill expertise for other's knowledge and skill expertise. Why learn to make a coffee maker and manufacture it on our own when we can buy one in the store? Undoubtedly, it's more efficient to purchase a coffee maker than to make one on our own from materials we gather on our own (or mine from the Earth if we're going to start from scratch).

Can we be a better consumer? Of course we can. I'm going to touch on one facet of being a consumer, and that facet is consumer awareness.

It's astounding the number of items one can buy, and further amazing how this can change your life. It's no secret as any subscriber to David Allen's GTD (Getting Things Done) movement will say, the clutter can make your life more difficult to manage.

Back to consumer awareness, there are some wonderful items I've come across in the past few years that are wonderful products that actually do bring great value. So much value that, in fact, if more people were aware of them, the world would be a better place.

Let's go through some examples:

Charcoal lighter fluid vs. Weber Chimney Starter
People just do not know what chimney starters are, and if they did, they'd never buy charcoal lighter fluid again. The Weber Chimney Starter is cheap (low cost), quick to heat coals (low time), and is healthier because you're not using lighter fluid on your coals (high health). You won't have lighter fluid taste on your food, your coals will be red hot to cook in a shorter period of time, and this item is only $13 which is a fixed cost (vs. lighter fluid which you need to repeatedly purchase as your supply dwindles at barbecues).

coffee vs. yerba mateCoffee is caffeine that comes with 2 problems: the "high" is usually too high (i.e., you can't even concentrate on the task at hand due to jitters), and the "low" is usually too low (it puts some people to sleep). Instead, welcome to the world of yerba mate, of which my awareness all comes thanks to the insightful Tim Ferriss. Known to the atheletic world for some time, yerba mate can give you the mental awareness push that you want, but without the jitters or fallout after. It's less likely to irritate your stomach and you can definitely concentrate better on the 'high.' So why do people still drink coffee? Consumers are simply not aware of this wonderful drink that originated from South America where it's consumed on a daily basis. You can buy yerba mate for cheap online and at some specialty shops.

incandescent flashlight vs. LED flashlightsLED flashlights use less energy (less batteries), are cooler in temperature and energy efficiency, and are often cheaper AND brighter. I often carry a Princeton Tec Impulse on my keychain which comes in handy on too many occasions (walking up dark stairways, looking for items in closets, dropping something outside your car at nighttime, etc.).

These are just a few examples of great products that have totally eclipsed another product/technology in terms of value. If you liked these comparisons, there's more to come...

How to Streamline Your Life

What is life about? What is the meaning of life? How can I make sense of it? I may not be able to fully answer those questions, but I can lead you in the right direction. I believe everything in life can be narrowed down to the following attributes:

1. Health


2. Cost


3. Education


4. Time

If you can break down your everyday life into those 4 fields and you can streamline those factors, everything else of happiness will follow.

Interestingly, these 4 factors are often in conflict with each other. Let's take the example of food.

Fast food is cheap (low cost), quick to buy/eat (low time), but the health effects are also obvious (low health). You can buy healthy food (high health) at a deli or via pre-made meals (low time), but they are usually expensive (high cost). You could also make healthy food at home (high health), often saving money at the grocery store (low cost) and you learn how to make a meal (high education). But the amount of time you spend to make the food and for cleanup/shopping may make you think of alternatives (high time). Does everything have to be this way?

The short answer is no.

There are ways to maximize the value on each of the 4 items I mention above. And that is what this weblog is all about.

I'll be discussing the best methods to go about maximizing those 4 attributes for your daily life, letting you achive more of what you want and less of what you don't want.

Some of you may ask: what about other aspects? How about the social factor, for instance? How about the energy factor? How about the fun factor? I believe those factors are actually sub-factors. If you can streamline the above 4, you will undoubtedly maximize the value of any other sub-factors, including socialability (e.g., having friends), having energy to do things, and enjoying what you ARE spending your time doing (rather than wasting your time on things that are not fulfilling).

Stay tuned...

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