I'm Rebecca Lando.
I'm an award-winning writer, producer, and editor and upcoming cookbook author based in New York City.
In 2009 I launched Working Class Foodies, a cooking show that creates affordable meals from local, seasonal, and/or sustainable ingredients. Working Class Foodies is a part of YouTube Next Chef and airs on NBC New York's Nonstop Foodies.
I wrote, produced, and edited FilmFan, an award-winning weekly movie review show, for MSN from 2010-2011.
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WORKING CLASS FOODIES
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Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
So be Patriotic. Go out there and get rich. Get so obnoxiously rich that when that tax bill comes , your first thought will be to choke on how big a check you have to write. Your 2nd thought will be “what a great problem to have”, and your 3rd should be a recognition that in paying your taxes you are helping to support millions of Americans that are not as fortunate as you.
Mark Cuban (via urban-fervor)
Probably the only time I’ll ever reblog a Mark Cuban quote.
The tax hike only applies to income over that threshold. When you go from $250,000 to $250,001, you only pay a higher tax rate on that one extra dollar. Your taxes will go up by a few cents. If you earn $300,000, you will pay a slightly higher tax rate on the last $50,000 of your income — less than a couple thousand dollars. Even people making half a million dollars a year won’t be ‘taxed at rates similar to those who make $5 million,’ because only half their income will be taxes at the top rate.
I’ve been banking with Chase since 2004 - when it was still WaMu. In those 6 years, my savings interest rate has slowly decreased from its starting high of 2.1%.
I’ve been a loyal customer to Chase/Wamu for over 6 years. For the past 2 months, my interest rate has bottomed out to .01%. I called them to see what they could do for me. The answer: nothing.
So I’m transferring my savings to a ridiculously better AmEx Savings Account. All but the bare minimum I have to maintain to keep free checking at Chase. File this under: things I should have done a lot sooner.
In re: yesterday’s conversation about peanut butter.
2 lbs of organic peanuts: $3.50
That’ll make about 38-42 oz of peanut butter, with peanut oil and honey. About 3 jars worth of store-bought peanut butter for the price of 1 jar.
Some things aren’t worth saving money on. Like Peanut Butter. Krasdale peanut butter sucks. It’s just total crap. Life isn’t worth Krasdale. It’s terrible. It’s SO BAD. It’s like if I got you a less attractive version of Christian who was able to get you discounts everywhere you went. Wouldn’t be worth it.
Greg “what the problem is” Thomas (via adriennes)
Solution: buy organic peanuts at Whole Foods. Salted, unsalted, honey, cinnamon, whatever your flavor. Get 16 oz. minimum. Mix and match types. Have fun.
Pop your peanuts and about 1/4 cup peanut oil in your food processor. Grind, grind, grind. Add honey or salt or cinnamon according to your tastes. Add more oil for favored consistency.
Store in fridge. Stir before eating to re-incorporate oil. Revel in the most amazing peanut butter you’ve ever had, at a fantastic price.
Just bought this gorgeous piece of equipment. Hope it’ll fit on my desk.
Gonna be super broke for a depressingly long while now.
Pledge not to donate to any federal candidate unless they support legislation making congressional elections citizen-funded, not special-interest funded.
After you make the pledge, put this image on your site/blog and direct others to make the pledge as well.
And please reblog this.
Have Bernanke and Obama made the dollar weaker? Has the response to the crisis, which started with the Bush administration in the summer of 2008, debased the currency? Not really. The broadest measure of the dollar’s strength is the trade-weighted dollar, which measures the dollar’s value against a basket of currencies of our trading partners. Here’s a long-term chart of the trade-weighted dollar index. What it shows, first of all, is that since the onset of the crisis in earnest—which I’d date to the spring of 2008, when Bear Stearns failed—the dollar has actually gained ground against the currencies of our biggest trading partners. It spiked in reaction to the panic in the fall of 2008, as investors sought a safe haven in the dollar, then fell back in 2009 before turning up again recently. It currently sits about 7 percent higher than the low of mid-2008 and almost exactly where it did in the fall of 2007, before the troubles started. A two-year chart would thus show a currency that hasn’t been debased much at all.
I don’t have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It’s like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GDP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing.
Pitchfork Top 10 Albums, In US Sales
1. Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion 131k
2. Dirty Projectors Bitte Orca 48k
3. the xx xx 35k
4. The Flaming Lips Embryonic 75k (estimate)
5. Raekwon Only Built For Cuban Linx Part II 141k
6. Grizzly Bear Veckatimest 132k
7. Bat For Lashes Two Suns 36k
8. Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix 205k
9. Fever Ray Fever Ray 23k
10. Girls Album 19kI don’t know the economics of this at all, but it’s hard to imagine an indie band even paying its grocery bills with such measly record sales. If we assume Animal Collective cleared $3 per album, then each member of the band would have got about $100,000 from US sales of Merriweather Post - less than what a mid-level Senate staffer makes.
And we can safely say that no mid-level Senate staffer made anything nearly as great as Merriweather Post this year.
I wonder what the Pitchfork Effect looks like and what the sales numbers will be a month from now.
That’s right. I AM A GOD.
Creating an operating plan for 2010
This time of year, many venture backed startups have created or are putting together their operating plan for 2010.
Few suggestions for early stage/pre revenue companies:
1. Start with the ending. What do you want to accomplish by the end of next year and why?
2. Set quarterly objectives
Quarterly objectives help your board identify what’s going well and not well at the company. Are the goals realistic? Are we understaffed? Do we have the right people in the company? Does the company execute well? Is the product on track?
Some early stage companies are hesitant to create quarterly objectives. I know it can be challenging for a few reasons: (a) some entrepreneurs are worried that they will look bad if they miss their objectives and (b) startups have to be flexible at times and priorities may need to change
My response to concern (a) take the time to pick your investors wisely. The best ones will help you and your company be successful. The worst investors suffer absentee landlord syndrome which is a nightmare.
In response to 2nd concern: have an open communication style and culture amongst your board members. Don’t wait until the board meeting to propose a big change in the plan or priorities. Early stage investors and board members understand that things will change. That’s part of the deal so don’t sweat it.
3. Operating Budget
For early stage/pre revenue companies, i suggest that you operate the business assuming you are going to miss your 2010 revenue forecast entirely or significantly. You can always spend more if revenue (or user engagement) grows nicely. But cutting is painful at best.
4. Fund raising
If you need to raise additional capital in 2010, assume you will need 4-5 months to raise money. Clearly there are exceptions but for most companies that is the general rule. Get some feedback from your existing investors what they want to see to support the next round.
Reblogging as much for myself as to share w/ others.
Pretty adaptable for any media people.
I really regret signing up for Mint.com.
I get “Exceeded Budget” emails from Mint every week. I never set my weekly budgets for groceries, restaurants, etc. so they’re all defaulted somewhat ridiculously low: $20/week for groceries, $30/week for restaurants/bars. (That is low, right? It’s not just me? I’m not some perverted glutton pig?) My life is a budget shambles right now anyway, an intertwined money/food paradox created by the show: all my groceries are cash purchases from the Greenmarket because they’re all ‘prop’ for the show, and between the show and moving, anything I eat that’s not made for Working Class Foodies is take-out or delivery because I don’t have time to cook if it’s not being filmed or tested for an episode.
Anyway, Mint.com makes me feel like a fatty with poor money management, is all I wanted to say.
One of my guilty pleasures during this time of year is Bath and Body Works Twisted Peppermint Three in One Body Wash, Bubble Bath, and Shampoo. After nearly using up my bottle from three years ago (since I only allow myself to use it from Oct-Dec to keep it festive), I bought a new bottle today. Surprisingly enough, it’s actually cheaper than it was last time…$10 instead of $12.
Good stuff all around.
FYI…you can get 16 oz of Dr. Bronner’s Organic Hemp Peppermint soap for $6.49 year-round at Fairway. It smells great (and it’s tingly!) and it’s organic, fair trade, and cruelty-free…all things that Bath&Body Works are not. Just sayin’!
Adrienne is a cheap hipster and I love it.
Working class foodie style, yo.
diablocodyisnotevenherrealname:
case in point below.
As a gal who has only ever made brownies from a box, I was very interested to learn that, YES, making them from scratch is indeed the cheaper way to go.
Duncan Hines:
Mix: $2.29
Two eggs: $0.33
1/2 cup oil: $0.50
TOTAL: $3.12The recipe without the box has many more ingredients, which caused me to assume that it would be more costly in the end, but I was proven wrong. Here are the numbers (thanks to Christian’s Excel calculations):
Recipe from scratch:
Flour: $0.17
Baking Powder: $0.04
Salt: less than $0.01
Cocoa Powder: $0.45
Sugar: $0.57
Eggs: $0.50
Oil: $0.56
TOTAL: $2.29“The biggest savings was probably not having to leave the house.” -CR
This is also true, since we generally have all of these things in the house, but don’t necessarily have brownie mix. I’d also like to think that this has less of an environmental impact, since we’d eventually be using these ingredients anyway, and we don’t have the additional box/bag of the brownie mix to recycle/trash after each batch.
