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|  | December 18th, 2012 | | | | Posted 1 day ago by  markbittman to bittman |  1 | | Last month, Sam Sifton and I took up the job of cooking for 15 people at a friend’s home in Brooklyn. The idea was to feed and impress friends, family members and colleagues without driving ourselves nuts. It’s possible. And to do so, we decided not to spend more than eight hours obsessing over, shopping for and preparing the meal. We endeavored to buy all our ingredients in the morning and then cook through the afternoon. Dinner was called for 6 p.m. There’s a simple logic in putting together a big holiday feast. You want variety — even vegans are pretty easily satisfied by bounty — but you don’t want to be cooking individual meals for each person. A couple of easy decisions at the beginning start a cascade of choices that generate a menu. We wanted a high-low meal: a beautiful yet manageable dinner bookended by an impressive starter and an eye-popping dessert. In order to pull this off, we first had to decide on a main course, a meat dish. After rejecting pork (too obvious), beef and lamb (too expensive), we settled on chicken. We were near Sahadi’s, the Middle Eastern market on Atlantic Avenue, so Sam resolved that the chickens would be roasted with preserved lemons. Golden and crusty, with a zing from the salty, acidic taste of the lemons, they would be a perfect bridge from our opulent appetizer into our decadent dessert. For sides, we settled on pilaf, a salad and roasted root vegetables, which are as seasonal as it gets this time of year. Read the rest of this article, see the video, and get the recipes here. | | | Posted 1 day ago by  Kate Rinsema to Holy Kaw! | | A long break is looming on the horizon, for some full of family visits and hectic preparations, for others, an extended period of time where cabin fever can easily creep up on vacationing kids. While some people seem to have that crafty gene that can make five paper plates and a role of tin foil into Etsy-worthy decorations, the rest of us need a little help figuring out how to craft with our kids. For our sakes, Fran Berkman at Mashable has rounded up eight YouTube videos to keep the kids busy until the school bell rings in January. Embedded media -- click here to see it. Embedded media -- click here to see it. Full story at Mashable. Holiday crafts for kids. | | | Posted 1 day ago by  SmartBrief to Holy Kaw! | | The interesting thing about new marketing opportunities is how quickly brands will jump into the fray without really understanding how a tool really works and how to best utilize it. Take social media, for example — as it grew and pulled in more audiences, brands of all sizes raced to launch their social media campaigns, often with horrific results. Does anybody remember the Pepsi Refresh Project? Don’t worry if you don’t — even with tens of millions spent on it, few people know that it ever even existed. In short, it was a strategy that was supposed to change how brands used social media forever but ended up just being another example of how even the most savvy marketers often misread a new landscape and miss the mark with their audiences. Full story at SmartBrief Social Media. More SmartBrief stories. Photo credit: Fotolia | | | Posted 1 day ago by  Futurity to Holy Kaw! | | Is it better to have a few close friends or a wider circle that’s perhaps less deep? Economic circumstances may play a part. “In the age of Facebook, many Americans seem to opt for a broad, shallow networking strategy. Yet cross-cultural research has shown that having many friends is not always viewed positively outside the United States,” write Shigehiro Oishi, a psychology professor in the University of Virginia, and Selin Kesebir of the London Business School. When times are prosperous, your friends are less likely to need much help, whether it’s covering a hospital bill or providing babysitting, and so a broad network of friends is easy to maintain. But when times aren’t as flush, having more friends might incur huge costs in terms of both time and resources, the researchers say. Full story at Futurity. More research news from top universities. Photo credit: Fotolia | | | Posted 1 day ago by  Amazing Pics to Amazing Pics | | 2 | | We were captured by this image in Boston.com's Big Picture: 2012 Year in Pictures. From Boston.com "A man rides a horse through a bonfire, Jan. 16, 2012 in the small village of San Bartolome de Pinares, Spain. In honor of San Anton, the patron saint of animals, horses are riden through the bonfires on the night before the official day of honoring animals in Spain. (Jasper Juinen/Getty Images)" | | | Posted about 23 hours ago by Kate Rinsema to Holy Kaw! | | 1 | | 239 years ago last night, one of the most famous events in American history took place, the Boston Tea Party While most people can scrape together an outline of the revolutionary act of rebellion or at least recognize that it had nothing to do with Washington sharing a cuppa with the redcoats, Christopher Klein has ten pieces of trivia you may not have known about this political protest. 1. The “tea partiers” were not protesting a tax hike, but a corporate tax break. The protestors who caffeinated Boston Harbor were railing against the Tea Act, which the British government enacted in the spring of 1773. Rather than inflicting new levies, however, the legislation actually reduced the total tax on tea sold in America by the East India Company and would have allowed colonists to purchase tea at half the price paid by British consumers. The Tea Act, though, did leave in place the hated three-pence-per-pound duty enacted by the Townshend Acts in 1767, and it irked colonists as another instance of taxation legislation being passed by Parliament without their input and consent. The principle of self-governance, not the burden of higher taxes, motivated political opposition to the Tea Act. 2. Commercial interests, perhaps more than political principles, motivated many protestors. The Tea Act was a government bailout for a company on the brink of financial collapse, the flailing East India Company, which was deemed to be, in modern terms, “too big to fail.” The legislation gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade, allowing it to bypass colonial merchants as middlemen and to even undercut the price of smuggled Dutch tea, which was widely consumed in the colonies. Thus, the Tea Act directly threatened the vested commercial interests of Boston’s wealthy merchants and smugglers, such as John Hancock, who fomented the revolt. Full story at History.com. Know your American history. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons | | | Posted about 23 hours ago by Kate Rinsema to Holy Kaw! | | 1 | | When you think of great leaders of American history, Abraham Lincoln, the president who brought the country back from the brink of implosion is bound to rank in the top three, so what can a leader today learn from this mighty man? Stephanie Vozza at Entrepreneur was watching the recently-released Lincoln with leadership in mind, and took away these four tips from the film. 1. Say no to 'Yes Men.' At a time in history when the United States was at war with itself, Lincoln surprisingly chose to fill his cabinet with a team of his rivals. These were men he considered to be the best and brightest minds in the country, and they were unafraid to challenge Lincoln and assert their opposition. A self-confident man, Lincoln welcomed strong opinions as it provoked thoughtful debate as well as inner reflection. It proved to be an important tactic during his presidency… 2. Be decisive. While it's helpful to get more than one opinion, strong leaders know when and how to make decisions. Cabinet members could have argued forever, but Lincoln had the ability to know when he had all of the information he needed. Walking away to seek solitude, he was able to determine the best solution and make a decision without wavering… Full story at Entrepreneur. Lessons in leadership. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons | | | | |
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