Beauty Health for Life

Okay, you guys. I was going to start off by explaining that this is a massive links collection dating back to Christmas (which it is, and it starts a little further down). But a friend forwarded me this video yesterday, along with the blurb, “Someone has to tell her this is impossible.” You have to watch it right now:



Right?

Holy moly. She must be quadruple jointed. I need to start doing yoga. Or at least minimal stretching.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the top links of the last month. Enjoy!

1)Money Saving Mom: Celebrating a Major Financial Milestone
A lifelong frugalist, Crystal and her husband Jesse are now buying a house outright. 100% cash down. No loans necessary. I don’t think she’s 30 yet. They have three kids. Dare to dream, folks.

2) Three-way tie from The Kitchn
25 Money-saving Tips for Frugal Cooking and Shopping
25 Favorite Quick-and-Easy Weeknight Meals
Spice Storage & Pot Racks – Reader Storage Solutions
The Kitchn has been tearing it up the last three weeks, with countdown after countdown of their best posts from 2009. Nearly every comp is worth a gander, but these three stuck out to me.

3) Ruhlman: America – Too Stupid to Cook
Half smug rant, half caul critique, Ratio author Michael Ruhlman bemoans both the state and underestimation of U.S. home cooks. Read the comments for a fabulous, extended thoughtful discussion. (Thanks to Elise for the link.)

4) Jezebel: Taco Bell’s Drive Thru Diet isn’t Really a Diet After All
More fast food joints are pushing their menus as diet aids, with Taco Bell most recently jumping on the bandwagon. Marketing-wise, it’s pretty brilliant. Are-you-serious-wise … really? Taco Bell? The same people who placed a Fourth Meal ad (“The meal between dinner and breakfast!”) next to the one for their lower-fat Fresco menu? Hunh.

5) Chow: 10 Tips for a Healthy Diet
Resolution makers! This level-headed advice is an excellent way to kick off your 2010 dietary overhaul.

6) MSN Smart Spending: Are Weight Loss Plans Worth the Cost?
On the timely CBS piece exploring the efficacy and value of eight popular diet programs. South Beach walks away the clear winner at $3.25 per pound lost, while In the Zone runs a staggering $224 for the same. Yikes.

7) Gizmodo: You’re Doing it Wrong – How to Properly Buy, Maintain, and Use a Knife
Stupendous all-around tutorial on the most important piece of hardware in your kitchen. This will make cooking about 1000% easier. Id stake my socks on it.

8) Serious Eats: Resolution – Eat Less Meat
Looking to improve your health and bottom line immediately? Eat a few vegetarian or meat-lite meals every week. This quick rundown from Almost Meatless co-author Tara Mataraza Desmond is a good way to get started.

9) Casual Kitchen: How to Resist Irresistible Food
Worthy piece on how logic/thoughtful eating can conquer cravings/mindless eating. If you’re interested in visualization and behavioral modification (or, simply going mental), definitely check this out.

10) KGW: Portland culinary institute faces class-action lawsuit
When I first saw this headline, I thought, “Man, such entitlement here.” But further inspection reveals a much more complex issue. When a school promises to place you in cooking capacity at a major restaurant, and you end up as a busboy, do you have a right to raise a ruckus? Law school graduates don’t start in the mailroom.


HONORABLE MENTIONS

Bitten: Roasting Winter Vegetables
Vegetable + olive oil + salt-n-pepa + 30-40 minutes in a 400°F oven = wonderful January dinner. Don’t you love math?

Buffalo News: On a budget? Eat out in style by making smart choices
Quick, solid roundup of frugal restaurant strategies for newbies.

Cooking Issues: Crowded Wet Mushrooms – a Beautiful Thing
Hey! We’ve all been cooking mushrooms wrong. Dang. (Thanks to Eat Me Daily for the link.)

Food Politics
FDA warns Nestlé - Juicy Juice misbranded!
How Many Extra Calories Cause Weight Gain?
What’s up With Food and Nutrition in 2010?
Three solid quickies from Marion Nestle. The Juicy Juice thing is appalling.

Fox: Man Pays $72 for Taco
Frugality fail.

Get Rich Slowly: The Best Time to Buy Almost Everything
You may have seen Lifehacker’s recent roundup on this, but GRS is much more thorough.

MSN Smart Spending: Bean Counting and Bag Lady Dreams
Reflective piece in which writer Donna Freedman chronicles some tough times and the dreams that keep her going.

New York Times: Living on Nothing but Food Stamps
An increasing number of Americans have no income whatsoever, except for their food allowances. Scary.

Roger Eberts Journal: Nil by Mouth
Cancer robbed the movie critic of his ability to speak, eat, and drink. But he can still write like the dickens.

Serious Eats: Low-fat Brownies – Applesauce vs. Yogurt
Yogurt wins by a mile. Read on for reasons.

Wise Bread: 7 Quick Meals That Are Faster Than Pizza Delivery
Why pay and wait for shrimp when you can make it faster and cheaper in your own galley?


AND TO TOP IT OFF

Stereogum: The 12 Best Late Night TV Performances of 2009
Cheeky music blog selects the best mini-concerts from Fallon, Letterman, and more. Definitely check the near-flawless Phoenix set, as well as “Aeon” by Antony and the Johnsons. If you’ve never heard Antony Hegarty sing, you will not believe the voice that comes out of this guy. He’s been blessed.



Thank you so much for visiting Cheap Healthy Good! (We appreciate it muchly). If you’d like to further support CHG, subscribe to our RSS feed! Or become a Facebook friend! Or check out our Twitter! Or buy something inexpensive, yet fulfilling via that Amazon store (on the left)! Bookmarking sites and links are nice, too. Viva la France!

So much to love this week, so lets skip the pleasantries and get down to business. Like business people do. Harrumph harrumph.

1) The Atlantic: Confessions of a Picky Eater
This whole piece on selective foodies and their coping mechanisms is excellent, but I laughed most at the author bio: “Amy Sullivan is a contributing writer at TIME Magazine and a Michigan native. She has never tried scallops (or artichokes or green olives), but she does not like them.”

2) Almost Frugal: 9 Simple Tricks to Save $1000 Per Year on Coffee
Wonderfully creative ideas to cutting down on your $4 latte habit. The first bulletpoint (Starbucks vs. everybody else) is most informative, Captain.

3) San Antonio Life: Planning Key to Creating Healthy Meals
In which writer Claudia Zapata praises her mom’s weekly menu plans, and then shares tips for creating your own. I especially liked: “Plate everything in the kitchen, except the vegetables. Serve those family style to encourage healthy seconds.” Good call. (P.S. When you read the name “Claudia,” do you always think Babysitter’s Club? No? Uhhhh … me neither.)

4) The Epi-Log: The Science of Cilantro Hatred
Though I enjoy a good mouthful of herbage, many friends claim eating the happy little leaves is roughly equivalent to swallowing a tablespoon of Palmolive. As it turns out, there’s a scientific reason for that. The soapy-mouthed might be on to something.

5) Village Voice: Hot Dogs Are the New Foie Gras
Burgers and pizza are all the rage in gourmand circles these days, and Voice critic Robert Sietsema does not appreciate the trend. “The escalation of prices for what were once working-class food, is the true blowback of the economic downturn.” I don’t agree – if people can afford a $6 hot dog, let ‘em have it. Still, read on and let me know whatcha think.

6) CNN/Health.com: Fat Camps for Grown-ups – Do They Work?
You can probably guess what they discovered here, but if not, here’s the quoted expert: "Weight-loss camps are not an easy or quick fix. The short-term investment of time and money does not automatically equate to healthy weight management in the long term." This seems to go for all quick fixes, doesn’t it?

7) AP: How to eat well on a food stamp budget - $68.88
Three chefs attempt to prepare varied, healthy weekly family menus based off the current food stamp allotment (which 1 in every 8 Americans are now receiving). The first flat-out fails. The other two, one of whom is Iron Chef Jose Garces, do very well, even though both of them pay more for meat. Veddy interesting.

8) The Kitchn
How to Make a Breakfast Burrito
Skip the Microwave - Lunches That Don’t Need Reheating
What is the Best Way to Clean a Box Grater
The first two posts: invaluable for office workers. The last one: invaluable for me. I lost many a knuckle before realizing scraping downward was a bad idea. And yes, I went to college.

9) The Simple Dollar: Family Dinner Night
Show up, maybe bring a dish, select your meal from a homey assembly line, sit down, talk to loved ones. Great idea for inexpensive, casual, fun get-togethers.

10) Atlantic Food: Make Produce Safe – Share Your Ideas
The FDA is accepting electronically-submitted suggestions to improve the safety of U.S. food. This piece gives a nice overview of the whys and hows, and then provides an e-mail at the bottom. Go! Now! Tell the feds exactly what you think! (Er ... without too many four-letter-words.)


HONORABLE MENTIONS

Broke and Healthy
Inexpensive, nutritious meals from someone with actual professional cooking experience! (Meaning: not me.) Clean design, good pictures, step-by-step instructions. What more could you ask for? (Besides a rainbow made of bacon.)

Huffington Post Food: Becoming Better Cooks, or Why Sandra Lee Is Not Evil Incarnate
HuffPo’s new food section debuted this week, and among the first articles is this opinion piece by Ratio author Michael Ruhlman. He ruhlminates (haw haw) on Aunt Sandy’s place in the culinary world, finally deciding she’s defendable, because she gets people in the kitchen. I have nothing to add here, except: TABLESCAPES.


AND ALSO

Hyperbole and a Half
Hilarious and smart, profane and unendingly awesome, I can’t stop reading this comic strip/narrative blog. If you go, you gotta check “How a Fish Almost Destroyed My Childhood” among other things.


Thank you so much for visiting Cheap Healthy Good! (We appreciate it muchly). If you’d like to further support CHG, subscribe to our RSS feed! Or become a Facebook friend! Or check out our Twitter! Or buy something inexpensive, yet fulfilling via that Amazon store (on the left)! Bookmarking sites and links are nice, too. Viva la France!

A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) links too little sleep (six hours or less) and too much sleep (10 or more hours) with chronic diseases – including coronary heart disease, diabetes, anxiety and obesity – in adults age 45 and older. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) encourages patients suffering from these common chronic conditions to speak with a sleep medicine physician who can evaluate their sleep patterns.

“It’s critical that adults aim for seven to nine hours of sleep each night to receive the health benefits of sleep, but this is especially true for those battling a chronic condition,” said Dr. M. Safwan Badr, president of the AASM. “Common sleep illnesses – including sleep apnea and insomnia – occur frequently in people with a chronic disease and can hinder your ability to sleep soundly. So if you’re waking up exhausted, speak with a sleep physician to see if there’s a problem. If you are diagnosed with a sleep illness, treating it could significantly improve disease symptoms and your quality of life.”

“Some of the relationships between unhealthy sleep durations and chronic diseases were partially explained by frequent mental distress and obesity,” said study co-author Janet B. Croft, PhD, senior chronic disease epidemiologist in CDC’s Division of Population Health. “This suggests that physicians should consider monitoring mental health and body weight in addition to sleep health for patients with chronic diseases.”

In the study, published in the October issue of the Journal SLEEP, short sleepers reported a higher prevalence of coronary heart disease, stroke and diabetes, in addition to obesity and frequent mental distress, compared with optimal sleepers who reported sleeping seven to nine hours on average in a 24-hour period. The same was true for long sleepers, and the associations with coronary heart disease, stroke and diabetes were even more pronounced with more sleep.

“Sleeping longer doesn’t necessarily mean you’re sleeping well. It is important to understand that both the quality and quantity of sleep impact your health,” said Badr. “A healthy, balanced lifestyle is not limited to diet and fitness; when and how you sleep is just as important as what you eat or how you exercise.”

The study involved more than 54,000 participants age 45 or older in 14 states. Nearly one third of participants (31 percent) were identified as short sleepers, meaning they reported sleeping six hours or less on average. More than 64 percent were classified as optimal sleepers, and only 4 percent of participants were long sleepers.