Dinner tonight consisted of bow tie basil pesto pasta. The recipe included pine nuts, garlic, fresh basil leaves, parsley, extra-virgin olive oil, salt, Parmesan cheese, and farfalle.
The basil, pine nuts, and salt were loaded into the food processor.
The food processor was used to blend and mix the ingredients to be added to the olive oil to form the pesto sauce ...
Fresh parmesan cheese was shredded to garnish the bow tie pesto dish once it was done ...
The bow tie pesto with Parmesan cheese plated and ready to eat.
It was very good; we both enjoyed it a lot. I imagine it would even be good cold in a packed lunch, but that is just a hunch.
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Reader Comments
(4)
Comments are presented chronologically, with replies indented beneath
the comments to which they respond.
F
FratMan
June 12, 2011
Looks good! haha.
Joshua, I was wondering if there is any chance that you could do a blog post on your first or favorite or any illustrative non-large cap stock that you bought--because I'd love to hear your methodology on how to evaluate stocks below the name brand level. I've been reading Kilpatrick's 'Of Permanent Value' about lately, and I quickly realized that Buffett didn't build up his investment record during his 20s and 30s by buying elephant-sized companies, and like you said, J&J and KO may be the best companies in the entire world, but they won't let you retire at 30.
So I've been trying to expand my circle of competency, and I was hoping you could give me some advice about how to start approaching the small and mid-cap world. Although I suspect you employ the same logic and methodologies, I still suspect it's different. Personally, my area of concern is that a tend to get hung up on a company's 'economic moat.' My bread-and-butter skill thus far in life has been identifying large-cap companies with strong moats (i.e. KO, JNJ, CLX, XOM, etc.) and buying them when their P/E dipped to the high single digits/low double digits. That's worked out well for me so far, but right now, I'm a trajectory to work until I'm 50 and then be able to retire and live a high middle-class life off the dividends. That's great--but I was born too intelligent and in a country with too many damn opportunities to be content with that, so I want to do go all-in and do what I can to learn about companies with market caps in the hundreds of millions and low billion range.
Usually, smaller companies have to take on debt to get started, and they almost never have a strong moat that I can identify, so I don't know how to proceed from here. I feel like I've hit a wall--I'll find a promising small cap, and then I dig deeper and see that it has billions of debt on $75 million in earnings, and I'll turn away disgusted, saying to myself, "Why don't I just buy Microsoft? It's got $40 billion in cash ($50 billion in cash-$10 billion in debt) and is trading at an absurdly low 9 and some change multiple", and then when I look at small-caps, I have no idea which ones will deliver superior returns.
I've been trying to find decent literature on the subject matter since this is something I want to master and have done cold by investing all my free time in studying it during the next couple years, but I have no idea what books would be a good place to begin to try and learn this. Joshua, I have the utmost respect for your thought process, and if you could do a series of posts on how to invest in smaller companies/companies that don't have Coca-Cola like moats, that would more than make my day.
J
Joshua Kennon
July 5, 2011
Replying to FratMan
I have responses to a lot of your questions over the past three weeks and I'm trying to go through them sequentially. Today, I found two companies just like the ones you describe, but I'm still getting caught up from that New York trip. I had no idea how much work showed up on my desk, mostly of my own doing (I could just mass-publish the dozens of articles I have for About.com but I want to optimize and cross-link them first, plus I have a 177 draft essays in the back end of the blog that are in progress).
I'll try to respond tomorrow. Then work my way through even more.
F
FratMan
July 5, 2011
Replying to Joshua Kennon
Thanks so much Joshua. I go to a small liberal arts school that students attend specifically for the close teacher to student interactions, and I've learned more from you (and you've gone way more out of your way to help than any of them) than I have from any of them. Thank you for all the time and thoughtfulness.
A
Aunt Donna
June 12, 2011
I agree with FratMan this looks good! In fact, I'd say delicious. As you know I am a very picky eater but I'd love to try this. 😉
FratMan
June 12, 2011
Looks good! haha.
Joshua, I was wondering if there is any chance that you could do a blog post on your first or favorite or any illustrative non-large cap stock that you bought--because I'd love to hear your methodology on how to evaluate stocks below the name brand level. I've been reading Kilpatrick's 'Of Permanent Value' about lately, and I quickly realized that Buffett didn't build up his investment record during his 20s and 30s by buying elephant-sized companies, and like you said, J&J and KO may be the best companies in the entire world, but they won't let you retire at 30.
So I've been trying to expand my circle of competency, and I was hoping you could give me some advice about how to start approaching the small and mid-cap world. Although I suspect you employ the same logic and methodologies, I still suspect it's different. Personally, my area of concern is that a tend to get hung up on a company's 'economic moat.' My bread-and-butter skill thus far in life has been identifying large-cap companies with strong moats (i.e. KO, JNJ, CLX, XOM, etc.) and buying them when their P/E dipped to the high single digits/low double digits. That's worked out well for me so far, but right now, I'm a trajectory to work until I'm 50 and then be able to retire and live a high middle-class life off the dividends. That's great--but I was born too intelligent and in a country with too many damn opportunities to be content with that, so I want to do go all-in and do what I can to learn about companies with market caps in the hundreds of millions and low billion range.
Usually, smaller companies have to take on debt to get started, and they almost never have a strong moat that I can identify, so I don't know how to proceed from here. I feel like I've hit a wall--I'll find a promising small cap, and then I dig deeper and see that it has billions of debt on $75 million in earnings, and I'll turn away disgusted, saying to myself, "Why don't I just buy Microsoft? It's got $40 billion in cash ($50 billion in cash-$10 billion in debt) and is trading at an absurdly low 9 and some change multiple", and then when I look at small-caps, I have no idea which ones will deliver superior returns.
I've been trying to find decent literature on the subject matter since this is something I want to master and have done cold by investing all my free time in studying it during the next couple years, but I have no idea what books would be a good place to begin to try and learn this. Joshua, I have the utmost respect for your thought process, and if you could do a series of posts on how to invest in smaller companies/companies that don't have Coca-Cola like moats, that would more than make my day.
Joshua Kennon
July 5, 2011
Replying to FratMan
I have responses to a lot of your questions over the past three weeks and I'm trying to go through them sequentially. Today, I found two companies just like the ones you describe, but I'm still getting caught up from that New York trip. I had no idea how much work showed up on my desk, mostly of my own doing (I could just mass-publish the dozens of articles I have for About.com but I want to optimize and cross-link them first, plus I have a 177 draft essays in the back end of the blog that are in progress).
I'll try to respond tomorrow. Then work my way through even more.
FratMan
July 5, 2011
Replying to Joshua Kennon
Thanks so much Joshua. I go to a small liberal arts school that students attend specifically for the close teacher to student interactions, and I've learned more from you (and you've gone way more out of your way to help than any of them) than I have from any of them. Thank you for all the time and thoughtfulness.
Aunt Donna
June 12, 2011
I agree with FratMan this looks good! In fact, I'd say delicious. As you know I am a very picky eater but I'd love to try this. 😉
I love you guys!!