I try to choose activities that also will increase my social circle. So, like, with learning an instrument, avoid piano, which tends to be more solitary, and go with viola, which, if you get decent, will put you in demand. Or if studying a language, pick one that people actually speak (I studied ancient Greek in college).
Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
861–870 of 876 posts
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#862Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny. When I shipped to Marine boot camp I was frightful my minor knee pain would get worse. Turns out I was just a wimp. Pain disappeared with exercise. I also had acid reflux and stomach problems for years that disappeared. Every single ailment that I've had that is not an injury disappeared when I got into shape (and read Sarnos book).
Which book?
Healing Back Pain, I had minor back pain but this mentality definitely made numerous small aches and pains disappear.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#863Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love cooking and have recently become obsessed with it, but doing it well is extremely time consuming. The best equipment is all meant to be washed by hand (knives, aluminum baking sheets, cast iron and stainless steel skillets, etc.) and cleaning all this easily takes over an hour per meal, never mind the time to actually cook the meal (which, depending on what I’m cooking takes 1-4 hours of active prep time). Als…
Xcelerate says > "The best equipment is all meant to be washed by hand (knives, aluminum baking sheets, cast iron and stainless steel skillets" Toss the cast iron and stainless steel skillets and buy nonstick skillets, cheap or expensive. When they wear out, replace them. I've gone through more than two sets of cast iron cookware trying to "season" them properly. "Seasoning cast iron" never works, either consistently…
I completely agree that a proper nonstick pans is easier to clean and sticks less, but cast iron has an incredibly high specific heat (and thermal mass) that makes searing food a breeze, and till recent years consumer grade nonstick pans couldn't even take the heat needed to do so.
Tangential anecdote: For a few years in college I had a single cast iron skillet as my only pot or pan. It's all you need to make tacos, soup, noodles, bread, shepherds pie, or a host of other things. Being deep enough to hold a few servings of food for a couple people and being able to go in the oven go a long ways toward its versatility.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#864Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few tips I learned from a professional chef that changed everything: — Mise en place (Get everything you need prepped) — Clean as you cook Get a bunch of small glass dishes and get all the ingredients you need measured, chopped and placed into those dishes. This will make combining them effortless when cooking. If you've done prep, you'll have some down time while cooking. As you finish using pans and utensils wash…
It took a short culinary program to really drill those into my head, but they are game changers for sure. Now I get a bit anxious when my “station” isn’t tidy, like I’m disappointing the chef. The other habit drilled out of me was watching food cook...very few things require constant attention and that’s all time that should be spent on prep and cleaning. I use stainless steel mixing bowls, lighter and cheaper than g…
I've found that listening to stovetop food sizzle will usually tell you what's going on. I imagine I'm generally hearing the amount of water left in the food?
But curious about any other approaches to "No look" you have!
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#865Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love cooking and have recently become obsessed with it, but doing it well is extremely time consuming. The best equipment is all meant to be washed by hand (knives, aluminum baking sheets, cast iron and stainless steel skillets, etc.) and cleaning all this easily takes over an hour per meal, never mind the time to actually cook the meal (which, depending on what I’m cooking takes 1-4 hours of active prep time). Als…
Xcelerate says > "The best equipment is all meant to be washed by hand (knives, aluminum baking sheets, cast iron and stainless steel skillets" Toss the cast iron and stainless steel skillets and buy nonstick skillets, cheap or expensive. When they wear out, replace them. I've gone through more than two sets of cast iron cookware trying to "season" them properly. "Seasoning cast iron" never works, either consistently…
> Toss the cast iron
Blasphemy! (As someone raised in the southern US)
In all seriousness, the biggest difference I've found in properly keeping up cast iron is using the right cleaning method.
Water. Or just a bit of highly-diluted dish soap.
I know there's ways to do proper coating (oven clean, etc), but most of the time I just hot fire mine on a gas burner with some oil. Works fine.
Also, there's no way in hell I'd cook cast iron on an electric top. (though I don't have experience with induction)
And finally... cook things with more fat. Bacon in the pan frequently goes a long way towards making it happy.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#866Earlier quoted context omitted.
It took a short culinary program to really drill those into my head, but they are game changers for sure. Now I get a bit anxious when my “station” isn’t tidy, like I’m disappointing the chef. The other habit drilled out of me was watching food cook...very few things require constant attention and that’s all time that should be spent on prep and cleaning. I use stainless steel mixing bowls, lighter and cheaper than g…
I've found that listening to stovetop food sizzle will usually tell you what's going on. I imagine I'm generally hearing the amount of water left in the food? But curious about any other approaches to "No look" you have!
As Alton Brown says "If its not sizzling, its burning"
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#867Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love cooking and have recently become obsessed with it, but doing it well is extremely time consuming. The best equipment is all meant to be washed by hand (knives, aluminum baking sheets, cast iron and stainless steel skillets, etc.) and cleaning all this easily takes over an hour per meal, never mind the time to actually cook the meal (which, depending on what I’m cooking takes 1-4 hours of active prep time). Als…
Xcelerate says > "The best equipment is all meant to be washed by hand (knives, aluminum baking sheets, cast iron and stainless steel skillets" Toss the cast iron and stainless steel skillets and buy nonstick skillets, cheap or expensive. When they wear out, replace them. I've gone through more than two sets of cast iron cookware trying to "season" them properly. "Seasoning cast iron" never works, either consistently…
My experience is completely opposite.
I ditched my (expensive) non-stick pans two years ago and bought a decent stainless steel pan and a cast iron pan (since then I've also upgraded to SS stockpots and sauce pans).
This was the best thing I've done in the kitchen. My cast iron pan is the best pan I've ever used and is as non-stick as any "non-stick" pan I have used. I cook pancakes, omelets, and fried eggs without any sticking and minimal oil. It is may daily cooker.
My stainless is okay for things like omelets and fried eggs but it takes more skill and understanding of the pan and I still sometimes end up with lots of sticking. But for things like meats, pan sauces, or grilled cheeses I love it.
My advice to any home-cook is to ditch the non-stick pans, buy a cheap 12" cast-iron pan, and a decent SS pan and watch a few videos about using them (e.g., SS pans needs to be heated to the point where the Leidenfrost effect occurs). These two things can transform your cooking and open a world of high-temp searing, pan sauces, and stainless steel tools (I can't stand using plastic spatulas any more, like when I use my teflon coated griddle).
Also, keep Barkeepers Friend on hand for cleaning SS pans (otherwise life is hard)
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#868Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a suspicion this kind of living, in part, explains why so many people are miserable. I feel like removing every inconvenient thing from your life, and "having someone else do it for you" must make your ability to handle discomfort atrophy to the point where the tiniest unpleasantness feels like a catastrophe. Like muscles, your brain, your immune system, etc., we need a little discomfort / struggle once in a w…
Cooking plus cleaning is usually a 2 hour experience. So you really need to enjoy cooking to do it or if you have no choice. Yes I see most cookers here omit cleaning which is part of the deal
This is why I used to hate cooking.
But one day I was watching Gordon Ramsey work with a home cook and the home cook was trying to keep up with Ramsey.
It was amazing because Ramsey kept his whole cooking area so clean and organized, and the home cook's area looked like a tornado passed through. At that point I had an epiphany and started trying to keep organized like Ramsey.
Pretty quickly I became very efficient and clean in the kitchen. This is a skill that takes practice and experience and is as integral to cooking as the actual cooking.
Now I think about the order I do things, the order I use my tools, tool placement, tool cleanup, and surface cleanup as I cook. The result is that very rarely do I have more than a single pan (or two) to wash after cooking, and the kitchen is usually cleaner when the meal is done than when I started.
I put this to the test, last Thanksgiving when I cooked a large meal for 5 people over the course of several hours and when I was done I did not have a single dirty dish (other than those being used for serving/eating) and my dishwasher was empty. It felt good because just a year prior I would have had a destroyed kitchen with a sink full of pots and pans and dirty counters.
I call it "kitchen craft" (like field craft) and if you work to practice it, it gets better every time you cook. And it makes cooking so much easier. For instance, making something like tortillas from scratch used to be a huge endeavor because I'd have such a big mess to cleanup afterword. It seemed daunting. Now I will make tortillas on a whim because I wan't a breakfast burrito and my kitchen will be clean before the pan is even hot enough to cook the tortillas.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#869I'm trying to write more! I forget where I originally read it, but I think Ben Horowitz said something to the effect of "Clear thinking is best expressed in writing, so you can refer back to it later and see if your logic was correct." Been blowing up Confluence at work like a fuckin' fiend, and been blogging a lot more on my personal site. I don't have any objective measures for this, but I think it's helped me a lo…
There's this blog post: Writing is Thinking: Learning to Write with Confidence https://blog.stephsmith.io/learning-to-write-with-confidence...
I wrote a reaction piece to that one! https://kishorbhat.com/writing/2019/10/14/the-words-dont-flo...
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#870Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not fully true, body weight can make you gain lots of muscle, but you do need to add resistance. However, resistance doesn’t need to be weight or bands, but do a more difficult version of the exercise. Push ups are easy for you? Do planche pushups or diamond pushups. Squats easy for you? Try pistol squats.
I drank a lot of the Reddit/HN koolaid that you can't get big/ripped on bodyweight fitness until I moved into a new place with an amazing back patio will full sunlight all day where I felt bad exercising anywhere else. Much less under the fluorescent lighting of my local gym. For a year I've been exercising in my backyard with a podcast in my ears, maybe during a group phonecall for work, while thinking between progr…
What’s funny is I’ve drank the Reddit koolaid in favor of body weight fitness, as the routine I do is the r/bodyweightfitness routine, with bordering mixed in for fun