Just because Nespresso pods are less than more expensive pods doesn’t mean they aren’t expensive. We have a Nespresso in our house—it is convenient when my wife just wants a quick cup. But you pay for the convenience, as compared to a more conventional coffee maker. Hell, I’ve got a Salvatore Semi-Auto Espresso maker…

Just because Nespresso pods are less than more expensive pods doesn’t mean they aren’t expensive. We have a…

Technivorm Moccamaster. At $300, it isn’t the cheapest for what it does, but it is a helluva lot cheaper than the aggregate price of all the ones I’ve bought that have bit the dust or failed to perform. This guy is simple, makes great coffee, and is bulletproof:

Technivorm Moccamaster. At $300, it isn’t the cheapest for what it does, but it is a helluva lot cheaper than the…

I’m going to disagree a bit here—the important part isn’t how well it holds heat, it is just as important to have something that transfers that heat into something else quickly. See http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2012/…

Given heat transfer rates out of metal v. out of stone, I’m going to say that a well heated cast iron pan is probably a better method for cooking pizza than a typical pizza stone. However, as recommended by Kenji of Serious Eats, the Baking Steel is really the way to go. If you don’t want to spend that much, I’m…

I’ve found the best instrument for skimming fat is a fine mesh spoon like this: http://www.amazon.com/MIU-France-Sta…. I’ve tried gravy separators and even suction bulbs, but nothing seems as easy to me as the mesh strainer. Fat globs tend to not go through it, but stock does. First time I used it I ended up with a…

I go with short grain for Japanese, whether sushi or otherwise. Coming from a Japanese household, I can’t imagine using it for anything else.

My favorite piccata recipe doesn’t actually use white wine at all... See

That’s interesting... Might have to try that as an alternative. I’m pretty decent with a knife going horizontally, but the choices towards the end aren’t great—two pieces with really thin bits or two pieces of different size (one of which has a thin bit). This might help. Now if I can only figure out a way to made the…

I use a meat mallet and sheets of parchment paper, but basically do the same thing after I slice them. Chicken breasts today seem... Mae West proportioned. I find that with halving them and flattening them, they fit in my 12" saute nicely and a single breast is sufficient to fee both my wife and I.

One of my easy “go to” recipes during the week. I like splitting the chicken breasts in half so they are thin and cook quicker when using that protein. But this also works really well with white fish varieties—butter, olive oil, shallot, caper, parsley, lemon... What’s not to love?

That is $15K in *credit card* debt. That doesn’t include home mortgages, auto loans, or educational loans. And while I believe education is a factor, it is hard to use a card if you don’t have one to begin with. When things start going bad, rationalizing bad decisions starts becoming easy. So remove temptation.

Fair enough, but a lender also calculates how much you have to pay to service the debt you have when deciding to make a loan.

You win most unhelpful comment of the day.

As I noted, I’ve got a stellar credit rating and have never had issues with the home mortgage process or construction loans, and I’ve had plenty. I did have cards, and paid them off, which may have helped, and have cards now, but that didn’t affect my credit rating 8 years ago when I bought my last house. I seem to…

I hear this, but don’t believe it. I’ve got a credit rating over 800 and didn’t use credit cards for probably 20 years—I’ve had home mortgages continuously throughout that period, however. And I thought I understood that credit rating agencies didn’t factor in cards that weren’t being used. That said, if you use the…

If you have that discipline, that’s great. I think I pointed out that I have that discipline now, and use them all the time—and never pay interest. But for the overwhelming majority of credit card users that discipline doesn’t exist. So for most people, having a credit card is a temptation that can’t be resisted—that…

I generally use the AMEX. I’ve used the debit card in the past only because there are places that don’t take AMEX. And my bank has decent fraud policies.

The real sneaky thing they do is to induce you into spending money you don’t have. One of the best things I ever did, upon graduation, was paying off all my credit cards and closing all my accounts. Everything that required a card was paid for with my AMEX or debit/ATM card, so everything got paid off every month.…

The better thing to do is poison your co-workers?

Can you imagine the horrible market consequences if a wireless company [^Google] were able to subsidize access to a wireless [^search/email/video/photo/cloud storage] service with the lure of “free” access and how bad that would be for consumers and choice because they could arbitrarily favor some companies over…