NEWS FLASH! THIS JUST IN! Who needs another myth about how to cut up onions when you can find modern solutions? The photo below says it all.

Eve's Onion Cutting Strategy

Eve is just going to love it when she finds out that I announced this on Facebook. Don’t you think?

This is hilarious. After learning how to do daytrading a few years ago (meaning, getting taken to school for about $4,000 in ‘tuition’), the only remnant I had was a couple of almost worthless stocks. One was Quepasa.com (QPSA). Remember when it came out, backed by local celebrities (including Jerry Colangelo), and quickly shot up to $25 per share? If you do, then you might also remember when it nosedived like nothing this side of an eagle after his prey.

Imagine my laugh, then, when Eve suggested that I look at my Ameritrade account, just for fun. Well, to no surprise, my 3,500 shares of Etravelserve.com Inc (TSER), is still valued at $0.0001, for a total value of 35 cents. They were delisted a long time ago. However, good old QPSA, of which I bought 65 shares at 25 cents a share, closed trading yesterday at $5.39. Wow, that is a jump from a $16.25 purchase to a $350.35 value.

Louis Rukeyser may have been right about there being three animals in the stock market: bulls, bears, and pigs led to slaughter. After spending most of my time in that third category, I’m happy to finally have some personal good news from Wall Street. Now I am going to see where else I can get a 2156-fold increase in investment. Isn’t that more than 200,000 percent?

This afternoon I decided to invent another new recipe. I have always enjoyed cooking. Vegan cooking now makes it more fun than ever. Here is what I call my Eggplant Creole recipe. Here is my cookbook entry, with pictures. Have fun with it!

Keeping It Simple

All I did was to peel and cut up one eggplant and put it into a frying pan with some coconut oil. This is the best cooking oil there is, in case you didn’t know. Olive oil is so twentieth century.

Then I took some leftover green beans, cut them up, and added them to the eggplant.

I chose an Organic Three Pepper Pasta Sauce for the base.

I stirred in some sea salt and my new favorite spice mix, Cajun Spices. (Thus, making it ‘creole’ – fabulous flavors and not too spicy.) Then I stir-fried the eggplant and green beans until they looked a little toasted.

This is when I decided that they needed some red color, so I cut up and threw in a couple of fresh tomatoes. Now they looked fine to my Artistic Iron Chef eye!

Finally, I added the sauce, then covered and let simmer for about 30 minutes. Here is the result … yummy!

Serve On A Bed Of What?

This took a little more vegan-brain creativity. I happened to have some quinoa grain and buckwheat in the cupboard. So I decided to nuke them up together … must be the first time this combination has appeared in human history! … for use where you might normally have pasta. (I’m down on pasta, which is another story.)

Both of these so-called grains are actually seeds. Calling them grains is one of those silly things the USDA does. They are seeds! They aren’t even in the same family as wheat, rye, barley, and rice, all of which produce true grains. Nope. Not even close.

One heads up if you use quinoa and buckwheat is to add about twice as much water as the directions call for. Buckwheat is like a sponge and will soak it up pretty fast, which might keep the slower-cooking quinoa from getting done. Here is what it looks like … brown!

And Now For The Drumroll Please…

The new dish here is accompanied by a few slices of avocado, just to round out the meal. Actually, I served it with salad, too.

This really nice thing about this recipe is that it is really simple. The final dish is delicious, too.

How valuable is your time?

This little exercise will give you an idea for when you set a goal to make a million dollars per year. Imagination is important here, so let’s play with this.

Oh, before I get started, my definition of a millionaire for this exercise is anyone who makes a million dollars per year. It is not really a practical definition. That is not going to stop me here!

First, calculate how many hours that you work in a year. If you want to use a reasonable number, use this typical information for the United States:

A normal work week for most jobs is 8 hours a day for 5 days. There are 52 weeks in a year, and most folks get a two week vacation. So, 8 X 5 X 50 = 2000 hours worked in a year.

Many companies also give 10 holidays, which brings it down to 8 x 5 x 48 = 1920.

Many companies also give 5 days of sick/personal time per year, which brings it down to 8 x 5 x 47 = 1880.

My buddy, Larry, who is self-employed and charges by the hour for his services, says that this number is pretty realistic. So you have 1880 hours to earn an hourly wage each year.

Converting Work Time Into $1,000,000

Repeat the phrase above in a Dr. Evil voice, with your pinkie pointing to the corner of your mouth.

Now for the conversion: $1,000,000 in 1880 hours means $531.14 per hour. Check my math.

That’s all it takes!

The take-home lesson is that, if you are not doing something ever workday to bring in at least $531.14 per hour, then you will fall short of making a million dollars per year.

Wasn’t that fun? Of course, one variation on the above calculation is that you can work one hour for a million dollars, then take the other 1879 hours off. This may seem like outrageous thinking. However, this is clearly the direction that makes the most sense. People at the top of the heap do not work hourly. Revisit Robert Kiyodaki’s Cash Flow Quadrant to see what I mean. Or just play his Cash Flow 101 and see what it takes to get out of the Rat Race.

Okay, that’s it for now. I just wanted to share a little bit of fun with you on a beautiful Sunday morning in Tempe, AZ.