Kevin White

Hello, my name is Jessica and I’m a mustard freak.

It’s kind of like bacon. It makes everything better.

We make a ton of chicken in this house. I’ve rambled at length about how these days, we so prefer boneless, skinless thighs over chicken breasts, how I barely ate chicken for a year while pregnant and then got back in the game and how Eddie makes chicken every Sunday like clockwork. We love to roast a whole chicken, we broil chicken for quick meals, we smoke it, grill it and I am FOREVER in search of the nonboring chicken recipes.

If you make a lot of chicken, you probably also suffer from scary chicken boredom syndrome.

In fact, I think it’s one of my goals to never have boring chicken, ever. I’m very much living on the edge. I know.

Plus! My mustard collection is still out of control, in case you were wondering.

(just teetered off the edge.)

That always means good things.

Truth: the only boring chicken that I love is semi-plain whole roast chicken – like all I need is salt, pepper, olive oil and maybe butter. But maybe not. About three ingredients and I’m good to go because it’s so tender and flavorful.

But… what if we added some dijon flavor to that?! I think my taste buds would run a marathon to get a bite.

My adoration for skillet dishes runs deep. My mom makes nearly everything in a cast iron skillet that is about 100 years old. Every chicken dish, pork chops, tacos – you name it, it’s in the skillet. And anything that is baked, actually STARTS in the skillet.

That’s my kind of cooking because you throw it in the skillet and finish it in the oven if needed and boom, you’re done. You can clean up while it’s cooking. Or eat a handful of cereal from the box like the hungry savage that you may be. Or have a glass of wine. Pick your poison.

SO.

This is one of those all-purpose chicken dishes that we use for everything. It’s fabulous right out of the skillet, drenched in the mustard sauce and served next to roasted potatoes and asparagus or quinoa and green beans. But it’s even better in things like salads, lunch time wraps, a quick flatbread pizza or even sliced on a sandwich. I like to say that it elevates everything it comes it contact with. There is tons of flavor. It’s simple! You might even have most of all of the ingredients right at your fingertips.

Elevate your life, please and thank you.

Honey Dijon Skillet Chicken

Yield: serves 4

Total Time: 35 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts or thighs (or both!)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 cup dry sherry
• 1/2 cup low-sodium chicken stock
• 1/4 cup dijon mustard
• 2 tablespoons whole grain mustard
• 3 tablespoons honey
• fresh chopped herbs for topping

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Pat the chicken completely dry with paper towels.

In a bowl, whisk together the salt, pepper, paprika and garlic powder. Sprinkle it liberally all over both sides of the chicken pieces.

Heat a large over-safe skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and cook on both sides until deeply golden, about 5 minutes per side. Don't be afraid to increase the heat - you want COLOR on the chicken! One finished browning both sides, add the sherry to deglaze the pan. The pan should be hot enough that the sherry begins to bubble. Cook for 1 to 2 minutes. Reduce the heat to low - most of the sherry should be cooked off at this point.

In a bowl, stir together the stock, mustards and honey. Pour the mixture over the chicken and turn the chicken a few times to coat. Cover the skillet and place it in the oven for 15 minutes, just until the chicken cooks through.

Remove the skillet and before serving, sprinkle the chicken with the herbs. Serve immediately! We love this over salads, in wraps and served over rice and veggies.

Leeeettle slice of perfection.

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May Swenson

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In the golden light of morning, cranes take flight in Israel’s Hula Valley nature reserve. Millions of migrating birds, including cranes, stop in the valley as they make their way between Europe and Africa.

This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now >>

Hovertext: That said, if anyone wants to invent a food pellet machine for humans, I'll buy it.

This portrait of a pair of purple glossy starlings (Lamprotornis purpureus) at the Kansas City Zoo in Missouri was taken for the Photo Ark project by photographer Joel Sartore. Photo Ark is a multiyear National Geographic project with a simple goal—to create portraits of the world’s captive species before they disappear, and to inspire people everywhere to care. The photo collection currently comprises images of more than 5,000 species, but Sartore aims to document the 12,000 captive species worldwide.

Learn more about National Geographic Photo Ark.

While a little dog frolics past, horses nuzzle in a snowy pasture in Bucovina, Romania. Photographer Mihaela Jurca, who submitted the photo to Your Shot, writes, “The horses and dog belong to a local family, very kind and hospitable people … This pair [of horses] got away from the group, with the dog jumping around, so my eyes just followed their playful [and] tender moment, and the winter scenery inspired the shot.”

This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now >>

Your Shot member Sara Delić submitted this image of “heaven on Earth,” a view of the serene Morskie Oko, taken from a stone path running alongside it. Morskie Oko is a Polish lake located high in the Tatra Mountains.

This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now >>

These chairs are empty because you are at work. (Ken Teegardn/Flickr)

The American work ethic can basically be boiled down to one well-worn phrase: "Work hard, play hard." But new research from a pair of Stanford University economists suggests we are failing, miserably, at the latter half of that maxim.

Take a look at the chart below. It's a plot of hours worked per capita versus GDP, and one country really stands out.

As countries get wealthier, their annual hours worked per capita tend to decrease, at least in the sample examined here by economists Charles Jones and Peter Klenow. They measure GDP in fractions of U.S. GDP, because they're most interested in how other countries stack up to the United States in terms of economic well-being. For instance, Russia's GDP per capita is less than half of that in the United States, so it lands halfway down the chart's X axis.

The relationship between GDP and working hours harkens back to economist John Maynard Keynes' famous prediction that his grandchildren would be working 15-hour work weeks -- thanks, in part, to increased productivity from new machines and technology.

Since you're probably reading this story at your office or on your commute, you're well aware that things didn't exactly work out this way. We didn't trade our productivity gains for more time, we traded them instead for more stuff.

But the extent of that trade-off -- time versus stuff -- hasn't been the same in all countries, as the chart above illustrates. "Average annual hours worked per capita in the U.S. are 877 versus only 535 in France: the average person in France works less than two-thirds as much as the average person in the U.S.," Jones and Klenow write. You see similar numbers in Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom.

For a long time we've used our stuff to justify our workaholism. "Sure, the French may have day care and five-week vacations and 35-hour work weeks," we've argued. "But we've got flat-screen TVs, $5 footlongs and big cars." Or, in strictly economic terms: "France's per capita GDP is only 67 percent of ours. Who's living the good life now?"

But in their new research, forthcoming in the American Economic Review, Jones and Klenow attempt to devise a "a summary statistic for the economic well-being" that goes beyond GDP. Economists have proposed alternative measures incorporating everything from "greenness" to "gross national happiness."

The Stanford economists make the latest contribution to the genre with their measure that "combines data on consumption, leisure, inequality, and mortality." They find that when you throw these other qualities into the mix, the economic well-being gap between the United States and other wealthy countries shrinks -- but it doesn't disappear completely.

"Living standards in Western Europe are much closer to those in the United States than it would appear from GDP per capita," Jones and Klenow conclude. "Longer lives with more leisure time and more equal consumption in Western Europe largely offset their lower average consumption vis a vis the United States."

So, even when you factor in our ridiculously long work weeks, the things we miss out on when we work long hours, and the myriad ways that overwork is killing us, the United States is still No. 1! Which is irksome, I'm sure, to the millions of French workers who spend literally the entire month of August at the beach.

Are you searching for dope gifts to give to your family members, but failing miserably? Enter Pringles-scented candles, which will surely please everyone from your little cuz to grams. Pringles in the UK is currently developing three scented candles—including pigs in a blanket, cheesy cheese,…

The post Pringles-Scented Candles are What Stockings are Made to be Stuffed With appeared first on First We Feast.

© Warren Richardson – Hope for a New Life. Migrants crossing the border from Serbia into Hungary. World Press Photo of the Year 2015.

The winners of the 2016 World Press Photo contest have just been announced, and the selected images accurately reflect a year of tumult and beauty from across the globe. The winning image titled Hope for a New Life by Australian photographer Warren Richardson depicts a harrowing moment on the Hungarian-Serbian border as a man passes a baby through barbed wire in August of last year. The self-taught photographer camped with a group of 200 people attempting to cross a border for nearly a week while capturing images of their predicament. He shares:

I camped with the refugees for five days on the border. A group of about 200 people arrived, and they moved under the trees along the fence line. They sent women and children, then fathers and elderly men first. I must have been with this crew for about five hours and we played cat and mouse with the police the whole night. I was exhausted by the time I took the picture. It was around three o’clock in the morning and you can’t use a flash while the police are trying to find these people, because I would just give them away. So I had to use the moonlight alone.

Seen here is a selection of our favorite photographs, but you can see an entire gallery of the 59th World Press Photo Contest winners here. The finalists were selected from 82,951 photos made by 5,775 photographers from 128 different countries. All photos courtesy photographers and/or their respective representatives, provided here with permission from the World Press Photo Contest.

© Anuar Patjane Floriuk, Whale Whisperers

© Christian Bobst, The Gris-gris Wrestlers of Senegal

© Christian Ziegler. Chameleon Under Pressure. Furcifer ambrensis, female foraging for insects with extendable tongue.

© Daniel Ochoa de Olza, La Maya Tradition. A ‘Maya’ girl sits in an altar during the traditional celebration of ‘Las Mayas’ on the streets of the small village of Colmenar Viejo, near Madrid, Spain Saturday, May 2, 2015. The festivity of ‘Las Mayas’ comes from pagan rites and dates from at least the medieval age, appearing in ancient documents. It takes place every year in the beginning of May and celebrates the arrival of the spring. A girl between 7 and 11years is chosen as ‘Maya’ and should sit still, serious, and quiet for a couple of hours in an altar on the street decorated with flowers and plants, afterwards they walk to the church with their family where they attend a ceremony. Not more than four, or five girls are chosen as a Maya each year.

© Francesco Zizola, In the Same Boat. An overcrowded rubber dinghy sailed from the Libyan coast is approached by the M.S.F. (Médecins Sans Frontières – Doctors Without Borders) search and rescue ship Bourbon Argos in the Mediterranean Sea, in international waters. The migrants on board the dinghy in distress have issued an emergency call and are waiting to be rescued. On the horizon, an offshore oil platform just off the Libyan coast. 26 August 2015.

© John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune. Lamon Reccord, left, scolds a police sergeant during a police violence protest and march at State and Randolph streets Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2015, in Chicago.

© Jonas Lindkvist, Neptun Synchro. Malmö FF- PSG på Malmö stadion

© Kevin Frayer, Bliss Dharma Assembly on October 30, 2015 in UNSPECIFIED, China.

© Kevin Frayer on December 10, 2015 in UNSPECIFIED, China.

© Matic Zorman, Waiting to Register. PRESEVO, SERBIA – OCTOBER 7, 2015: A child refugee is covered with raincoat while she waits in line to get registered in Presevo refugee registration camp. Most of the refugees who crossed Serbia try to continue their route towards Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia and other countries of the European Union.

© Mauricio Lima – Amazon’s Munduruku Tribe 1. Tapajós River, Itaituba, Pará State, Brazil, on February 10, 2015.
Indigenous children jump into the water as they play around the Tapajós river, in the Munduruku tribal area called Sawré Muybu.

© Rohan Kelly, Storm Front on Bondi Beach. Sunbather oblivious to the ominous shelf cloud approaching – on Bondi beach. A massive “cloud tsunami” looms over Sydney in a spectacular weather event seen only a few times a year. The enormous shelf cloud rolled in from the sea, turning the sky almost black and bringing violent thunderstorms in its wake.

© Sergio Velasco. Colima Volcano in Mexico shows a powerful night explosion with lightning, ballystics and some incandescent rockfalls. Photo taken on dec. 13 at 22:24 hours, 12.5 km away from the crater near a lagoon named Carrizalillos on Comala municipality in the state of Colima.

© Tim Laman, Tough Times for Orangutans

Central Park was originally intended to be a place of rest and relaxation, a naturalistic preserve away from the teeming crowds of the mid-19th century city.

So how did a posh, glitzy nightclub end up on the park’s East Drive at 72nd Street in the high society 1920s?

It has to do with James J. Walker, the nightlife loving, charmingly corrupt mayor of New York from 1925 to 1932.

The nightclub was called the Casino (above and left), and even before it became a club, it had an interesting history.

In 1864, it started out as a modest stone cottage designed by Calvert Vaux to be the “Ladies Refreshment Saloon,” where respectable women visiting the park unaccompanied by a man could grab a bite to eat.

By the late 19th century, it evolved into a regular restaurant. Rather than a gambling house, the Casino (“little house” in Italian) was “where well-to-do diners could get a steak for seventy-five cents” while sipping wine on a terrace (below), according to Andrew F. Smith’s Savoring Gotham.

Enter Mayor Walker. The Casino would now be run by Walker’s friends, who turned the expanded cottage into a Jazz Age nightspot.

“Under its new regime, the Casino catered to the rich and famous,” reported the Complete Illustrated Map and Guidebook to Central Park.

“Met at the door by liveried footmen, guests dined on elegant French cuisine, and—despite Prohibition—happily paid inflated prices for mixers to go with the bootleg liquor they brought with them.”

“Dancing, in a spectacular black-glass ballroom to the tunes of Leo Reisman’s society orchestra, went on until 3 a.m. Mayor Walker and his mistress, the Broadway showgirl Betty Compton (left), were often the last to leave.”

The Casino continued entertaining the city’s elite club crowd even after the Depression hit.

It was a huge success, grossing more than $3 million in five years of operation . . . with the city getting $42K in rent.

But by the early 1930s, it was seen as a symbol of excess. Mayoral candidate Fiorello La Guardia denounced it as a “whoopee joint.”

In 1935, Robert Moses, the city’s legendary Parks Commissioner, tore it down (above, right before demolition) and replaced it with Rumsey Playfield—a concert venue that entertains New Yorkers in an entirely different way today.

[Photos: centralpark.org; MCNY]

Are these men decked out in dress coats and bowler hats ordinary commuters—or  are they officials marking the opening of a subway entrance in the “new” Grand Central Terminal?

It’s hard to tell. But here they are captured in a moment in 1913, the year the new terminal opened and just nine years after the subway made its debut as well.