Tuesday Megalinks: Besuboru Edition

Ladies and gentlemen, dust off your caps, yank that jersey out of winter storage, and turn up John Fogerty’s “Centerfield” – it’s baseball season. (Um, it’s also Cupcake Week on Martha Stewart Living, but we’ll try to repress that thought for the time being.) Thanks to Johan Santana and the prospect of a new ballpark for next year, it’s a good time to be a Met fan. In fact, I’ve almost successfully blocked memories out of last September. (Almost.) Anyway...

Building Nutrition: Eggs can be Healthy
Ahhh, the incredible, edible, something-else-that-ends-in-“dible” egg. Even though prices are rocketing up, those ivory ovals of glee still make for an economic meal. (For now, anyway.) Pick up a dozen today. Thanks to CFO for the link.

Casual Kitchen: The Dinner Party – 10 Tips to Make Cooking for Company Fun and Easy
Extensively stellar post on the art of the frugal, relaxing home-based shindig. My favorite rule: “never cook a dish for the first time for company.” Remember, always experiment on your family first; they’re the control group for the massive science project that is your life.

Chowhound: Tipping – Decent Food, Terrible Service
Given the reverse situation, I would mos def tip the waitress handsomely. But how do you let the chef know everything was aces when your server makes you ever-so-slightly homicidal? Is leaving a lousy tip enough, or does everyone lose? Decisions, decisions...

Consumerist: Surviving on 99-Cent-Store Food for a Week in NYC
This one’s been all over the news lately: intrepid reporter Henry Alford made seven days of dinners entirely from the items found in 22 local $0.99 stores. The verdict: it’s possible to do it, and to do it well.

Cookthink: 10 Ways to Use Up Leftover Fresh Herbs
Woot! This problem plagues my kitchen day in and day out, much like unwashed dishes and that weird black dust that emanates from our century-old radiator. These tips are solid, darlings. Thanks to Slashfood for the link.

Culinate: Cholesterol and Food
Neat little primer on the good, the bad, and the ugly of cholesterol, including how food can/will affect your numbers. And there's more on eggs (!): “eggs are not only an excellent source of protein containing important nutrients, they’re also very low in saturated fats.” To paraphrase something I read this week, but can't remember where, "Eggs: the best things to ever come out of a chicken's butt."

New York Times: Putting Your Kitchen on a Diet
In the olden days, clutter meant you had stuff, and you liked it, and you wanted to keep it. Now, it’s apparently indicative of a deep-seated psychological problem that can malevolently barrel into all aspects of your life, including weight and mental health. Free your kitchen and your mind will follow.

Serious Eats: Help Me with My Weekday Dinners
This constantly growing thread is packed with neato ideas for quick and comparatively simple Monday-Friday meals. Soup and Mexican food seem to dominate, but there are some neat suggestions for cross-cultural fare.

The Simple Dollar: Cosmetic Surgery as Investment
I’ve never seen this topic covered before on any pf blog, and it’s super interesting. Denise here just dropped 80 pounds and wants to boot her sagging skin via surgery. Problem is, it’s $17,000. What will she do? (I vote go for it, as long as her body’s stopped changing and she’s maintained the weight loss for awhile.)

The Simple Dollar: An Ode to the Inexpensive Bean
With apologies to Keats:
THOU still unravish'd can of beany-ness,
Thou foster-child of Goya and the time,
Brooklyn grocery guy, who canst thus stock up
A legume-y meal more fiber-y than our rhyme:

(Photos courtesy of nj.com and Flickr members Grumbler %-, and Reincarnated Poet.)