How to Cook Better

10 years ago, I would not even think of buying a cookbook, let alone reading one as if it were a book.  How things have changed.  My favorite pastime includes reading cookbooks (especially ones that tell great stories such as "The Seventh Daughter" or "Gluten-free Girl and the Chef") and food blogs.  One of the reasons is that I realize I have to invest more time to eat better and to cook better - things which are in my control to maintain good health.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a 1-hour Nutrition 101 talk by food blogger and health writer, Darya Pino, whose website: summer tomato becomes an instant favorite of mine.  Just in 1 hour I learned how to cook better, several ideas for breakfast and lunch, what staples you should shop, how to eat (mindfully), how to snack and how to eat healthy when eating out, etc.

I especially like her 4 essential tips for cooking which she repeated in her blog here:

(1) Start with great and fresh ingredients;
(2) Do not overcook food especially veggies, meat and eggs (this is a big tip for me, yet the idea is so simple);
(3) Use more salt!  This may sound controversial.  Apparently 75% of sodium comes from the processed food we eat.  So if we do more home cooking, we will dramatically cut down on sodium anyway so a bit more salt in our food will not only make our food taste better but also will not do that much harm to our body.
(4) When in doubt, add some acid such as vinegar and lemon which will also brighten the food.

While Darya's food blog is filled with tips, colours, articles reviews and recipes, the stonesoup food blog in contrast is a minimalist blog which is extremely refreshing to look at, and has wonderfully simple recipes.  The blogger Jules Clancy also produces a video for each blog which is very easy to follow.  To round up my favorite blogs, here is an Asian-inspired food blog which is inspiring too.  When I run out of ideas to cook, I type in an ingredient and viola! several dishes come out. Then if you like Japanese food and bento-making, this colourful blog is just a delight to look at (Japanese is the Master of making everything looks so good). 

I am just thankful for the invention of web and blogs.

21 Days of Inspiration and Daily Challenge

It is still not too late to register for the Chopra Centre's 21 Days of Inspiration online program at http://www.chopra.com/.  Program has already begun on January 15 while registration ends on January 21, 2012 (I believe, U.S. Eastern Standard Time). It is all free.


I have already been inspired by the subject of transformation, gratitude and purification. Each day I will read a bit about the "Seven Spiritual Laws of Success" and ponder on the daily inspiration and explore a new activity.

To quote from today's Daily Inspiration:

As Ayurveda teaches, when we quiet our minds and listen to the wisdom of the body, it will tell us what we need to know. Tune into your innate knowing today and let it guide you.

This, the Daily Challenge (http://www.chopra.com/ ) from the Chopra Centre as well as this inspiring book called Beyond Wealth are giving me lots of new ideas to improve my overall well-being for the New Year, the Year of the Dragon.

Also here is the link for the registration for the 21 Day Meditation Challenge for Winter 2012 which will begin on February 20, 2012.

The Year of Distressed Sovereigns

In our investment process for emerging markets, we'd like to describe typical phases of market development of a country going from distressed, stabilizing, reforming to converging.  An emerging market can move backwards from its current phase too.  Therefore an emerging market may have emerged/converged, but due to bad economic policy or political leadership, the country submerges and goes back to the distressed phase e.g. several of the investment grade-rated Asian countries during the Asian Crisis in 1997-1998 or several of the Baltic countries during the 2008 global financial crisis.

We normally would not apply these dynamic phases of market development to developed markets including the US, Japan and Europe.  But there you have it.  This may look like the year of many developed markets going into the distressed phase.

A recent Bloomberg article calculates that the world leading economies have more than $7.6 trillion of debt maturing in 2012 ($8.8 trillion if interest burden is included) and face rising borrowing costs.   

6 habits of happiness

The Berkeley Greater Good Science Centre reminds us the 6 habits of happiness:  the one I like the best but is easily forgotten is gratitude.  Gratitude helps to bring you back to the present moment, appreciate what you have and not overly focus on what you don't have or your misfortunes.  This is especially important among couples who may easily complain what the better half is not doing right but forget to give thanks or praise to what the other is doing great.  It is good to quickly think about 3 things (whatever comes to your mind) on a daily basis you are thankful for, and try to tell your better half as often as possible: I appreciate it when you ......

Eating Mindfully

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all!

I hope to write about eating, one of the favorite activities during the holiday season.  Like many people, I  am concerned about what I eat, to make sure what I eat makes me healthier and stronger and on occasions brings me great pleasure and memories.  But then I realized I spent little time to think about how I eat.  I don't mean using forks or chopsticks to eat, but in what state of mind do I eat.

In October, when I was visiting my parents in Hong Kong, while we were having dinner at home, they commented that I ate too fast, did not seem to chew my food and even made slurping sound as if I were eating Ramen noodle!  Then I started to observe some other Chinese people eat say in a professional conference luncheon setting.  To my surprise, men and women alike usually do not eat that fast; they pause in between bites.  I was surprised because I thought Hong Kong is such a fast-paced city that every one is pretty much stressed and focused on efficiency and wants to finish her meal quickly. Now I found out I was the one who is stressed out!

Beautiful tribute to Steve Jobs from a fellow countryman

On the day of Steve Job's passing away, I am in Hong Kong.  By lunchtime on Thursday, people were handing out free newspaper on the street making tributes of this genius.  Even my 6-year-old nephew asked me with a serious concern, "would we have any more iPhones?" 

Steve Jobs' passing away aroused so much emotion and beautiful words about him that I could not but marvel at this man's influence on our daily lives.  I am particularly proud of this beautiful logo created by Jonathan Mak, a 19-year old student from Hong Kong, as a tribute to Steve Job.  Jonathan created this in August to honour Steve Jobs' departure from Apple.  With Jonathan's reposting of this logo on his blog upon Steve Jobs' death, he received 180,000 notes in one day and several job offers later because of his beautiful and thoughtful design.  He said that any funds raised because of this logo would be donated for cancer research.  Like him, I am a late adopter of Apples' products, but the impact on my life has been tremendous.

Gold stocks and gold updated

Another year of sovereign debt uncertainty in Europe/US and dollar debasement has led to gold price soaring by 33% year-to-date to today, and the gold ETF (GLD) tonnage increasing to 1290.76 tonnes or about 41.5 million ounces (equivalent to 48% of gold produced in 2010).  While gold price is surging, gold stock index (ETF: GDX) is sorely lacking behind.  While GLD (orange line) has doubled since July 2, 2009, GDX (green line) has gone up by "only" 61%, as these gold stocks are inherently more correlated with general stock market performance and are also impacted by rising operating costs and country risk.  If gold price stays at this kind of higher level, and the broader market stabilizes, gold stocks should do very well.

(Click to enlarge, source: Bloomberg)

I have updated my previous gold stock evaluation piece.  Here I rank the gold stocks by Enterprise value/gold reserves from the highest (most expensive) to the lowest (least expensive).

Among the larger gold miners, my own value screen likes Gold Fields, Anglogold Ashanti, Barrick, Newmont (representing one-third of the GDX ETF).  The emerging market gold miners (especially those in Russia and Central Asia) continue to trade very cheap e.g. Centerra Gold, High River Gold and Petropavlovsk.  Execution ability of management is a prized object.