Constructive Use of Time

This is Bob’s Valentine’s Day treat: Homemade KitKat Bars. I wasn’t in the mood to start a kitchen project last Sunday and almost didn’t make them. But the recipe is super easy and the results fantastic. Anything with that much sugar and butter can’t be wrong.

I think I’ve already told everybody this but my new favorite website is Serious Eats.

In December I put my entire life under a bright light in the context of time management and trying to accomplish more writing. That actually could be its own post but I’m not sure I could do it without starting an argument so don’t expect it.

I reprioritized and changed stuff around but the biggest thing was coming down hard on my Internet usage. I eliminated almost everything I regularly read and keep the browser closed and made rules about how much time I’m allowed on time-wasting sites. Gawker media did me a big favor with that dreadful redesign. More time for Serious Eats except ditching io9 is probably why I didn’t know about Watson until my husband made me watch Jeopardy last night. (Which I loved.) Oh, I still read The Awl but I didn’t’ read the Jeopardy item yesterday morning because I thought it looked boring.

Hm. I’m getting off track here.

Back to Serious Eats, I learned about it following my favorite former Cooks Illustrated writer and now secret boyfriend J. Kenji Alt so I added in a new big time suck website after I just cleared a bunch out.

Serious Eats is awesome. It’s all about making, enjoying and talking about food and they have zillions of recipes. They’re funny, too. Here’s a recipe for boiled water.

Look, today they have a recipe for Cookie Stuffed Cookies!!!!!.

They have photos of yummy food in Photograzing which is handily divided into categories like “cupcakes” and “bacon.”

They have instructive videos and fun ones. I loved this video at a dumpling factory.

When I first started reading I thought they had the best commenters and they do have high quality commenters that have interesting insights to share. But (like everywhere) they also have a bunch of lame commenters like the most pedantic nitpickers on typos, and people who insist that a recipe for X can only really be called X if includes this certain ingredient. Relax people and finish what’s on your plate.

They also write about restaurants, street food, ingredients, gadgets and probably stuff I never even noticed. Highly recommended for people who like food.