Link search: the effect of inflation on investments

A day or two ago, I found a link to a short article claiming that if you allow for inflation, neither the stock market nor real estate are especially good investments over the long term.

A CPA I know would like to take a more careful look at it, but I can't find the damned thing.

Unfortunately, my detailed memories are either visual or abstract, and google isn't much good for either. The graph lines were red and blue (there's a different article which included green), there wasn't a mention of a tweaking to affect the numbers, the page was minimal black text on white with blue links, and the feel was close to prophet crying in the wilderness but not necessarily crackpot.

If google could do anything useful with a description like that, it probably would have solved natural language. Either that, or it would do a better job of tracking where I've been than I can.

Meanwhile, here's a different article on the subject.

Pesto with corn

It seemed to me that it would be reasonable to add corn to a classic pesto, and the thought of corn led naturally to butter.

Two small bunches of fresh basil (maybe half a cup chopped)
Kernels from two ears of corn
Small head of garlic
Some butter
About as much olive oil
Pound of spinach fusilli (a largish spiral pasta)
Handfuls (probably a half a pound or so) of ground Asiago cheese (I like it better than parmesan because it has a stronger flavor-- I admit I haven't explored really good parmesans)

Pesto usually includes pine nuts or walnuts, but they don't do much for me, so I don't bother.

Chop the garlic and basil, then mush them up with the olive oil and the butter. dcseain was revolted at the idea of putting butter into a pesto. I found that the butter added a nice texture to the pasta and didn't make much difference otherwise. However, if you really dislike the idea of butter in a pesto, I think the dish will be fine without it.

Bring the water to a boil, add some salt, put in the pasta. Do not trust the time given on the package. Mine said twelve minutes, but the fusilli was on the edge of overdone at ten minutes.

I'd planned to drop the corn into the pot when the pasta was almost done, but I read something which claimed corn should be steamed not boiled, so I put it in one of those flattish bowls with a little water, and gave it a minute in the microwave.

Then I drained the pasta, and mixed the chopped herbs, cheese, and corn into it. Well, actually, it was only about half the cheese, and I added more cheese when I reheated it for subsequent meals.

The corn went well with it, but the notable win was the very dark green chopped basil, medium olive green pasta, and yellow corn were amazingly pretty together.

While I didn't include them this time, I've found that chicken and mushrooms also go well in pesto.

What do you cook?

It's occurred to me that practically everything I cook is basically a stir fry. There's just plain stir fry, soup (stir fry simmered in broth), spaghetti sauce (stir fry simmered in tomato sauce), and stir fry mixed into scrambled eggs.

The recent pesto is an exception.

Anyway, while stir fry has a lot of room for variation and I actually like chopping things, it does begin to seem repetitious.

So, what are you guys cooking, especially if it isn't stir fry?