I was asked for my chili recipe today, which is a shame because I don't have one. This is both because I never wrote it down and because every time it is different. But I do feel that I have something going, so if I were to make chili today, here's how I'd start out.
- Cans of beans, red, black, white, navy, kidney (drain and keep the juice)
- chopped green and red peppers
- chopped onion
- pineapple chunks (optional)
- meat, like bacon, steak, spicy sausage or ground beef (or any combination of those)
- hot peppers (Anaheim, jalapeño, habenero)
- brown sugar (more than you'd think)
- chili powder
- garlic
- cumin or a packet of chili seasoning mix (optional)
- a very tangy BBQ sauce (hot and sassy, rich and sassy), up to a full bottle
Toss all of that in a Crockpot and let it cook. As for the relative quantities, I usually go for color and texture first, which might be backwards. If you'd like, use the BBQ sauce and bean juice to make it more soupy. If you're going with spicy peppers, remember that the spiciness will take a while to show up, so don't over do it.
In my mind, what makes a good chili is that the flavor is consistent with every bite. Of course the flavor changes with what you put in, but cooking it long allows you to make changes to the flavor.
A friend just send me a link to another great speech from Ted. In short, Mr. Pink thinks that we haven't learned much from science in regards to truly motivating people to greatness. From the speech: "There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. And here’s what science knows: 1. Those 20th Century rewards and motivators we think are the natural part of business do work, but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. 2. Those if-then rewards often destroy creativity 3. The secret to high performance isn’t rewards and punishments but that unseen intrinsic drive –the drive to do things for their own sake, the drive to do things that really matter." Incentives for superior performance in cognitive and creative tasks cause poor performance. I've seen this in my kids. When I challenge them to race to complete a difficult task they only become more frustrated and the rewards of victory actually stand in the way of real effort. Simplified to a common task, I can barely rein them in. Back to my life, if I have something simple to do, like dig a ditch for a sprinkler pipe, I yearn for a contest to make the menial task become challenging and rewarding. Incentives can work, but they don't work in every instance. Move away from carrots and sticks towards real motivators that science has shown to work. • Autonomy - the urge to direct our own lives • Mastery - desire to get better and better at something that matters • Purpose - the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves Examples of programs that increase Autonomy • Fedex Days - You have 24 hours to deliver something. • Google Labs. Enough said. • ROWE (results-only work environment) - no schedules, mandatory meetings - just get the work done.
I just started working for a new company and have had the pleasure to setup my new box.
So I've been watching a lot of new shows lately. I found Hulu.com and like a new shiny toy I've been giving it a lot of undeserved attention. One of my favorite shows is Stargate Atlantis and I've watched every episode on the site. After that I started watching Kings, which I might continue to after they make some more episodes. I dabbled in Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, the Dresden Files, the Legend of the Seeker and sister-show Stargate SG-1. I found a real gem in Firefly, which only had 14 episodes before it was cancelled. It took me one and a half episodes to figure out that it was supposed to be sci-fi show in a western motif. What I'm finding is that I'm having a hard time finding new good shows to watch. And the ones that I have found seem to have been cancelled or had just a limited run. Why is that? Are my tastes so rare that Today, I'm watching Eureka, which is about a town of geniuses. If this doesn't work, then I'm pitching a new idea to the big wigs at the TV studios... are you ready? Check this out: So you know all the sci-fi shows where they run into alien technology or they all the sudden have a great new technology: ships, guns, transporters? Think of all the stuff in the Star Trek series, the Stargate series, the X-files, right? Where do they take that stuff? That's what my show would be about - the geeks in the basement labs that get to play with the new tech and make major jumps in innovation and invention. Sound good? I'll let you know how it goes.
We took the boys caving at Nutty Putty cave the other night. 45 minutes around the lake, another 30 minutes down a bumpy dirt road and then a 10 minute hike up a hill - this got us to the proximity of the cave. Our guide couldn't find it right off, we had to spread out and look for it. When we did we all piled in, but I was the only one that came back out. The initial opening was alright, but the opening at the bottom of that opening was tiny. Tiny like for badgers. More later...