
Do You Need All That Water to Boil Pasta? - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/dining/25curi.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
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patrickg-zill
Interesting but the "savings" are minimal if you account for someone's time. A
billion pounds of pasta taking an extra 6 minutes to prepare is 600 million
hours, right? For a savings of $20 million a year?

~~~
aneesh
I'm always suspicious of analyses like that. Most people's earnings aren't
that granular. If I make $X/hour, I don't automatically get $X/10 if you save
me 6 minutes in the kitchen. Even if I do bill by the hour, it's practically
impossible to bill for 6 minutes. Now consider that fact that many (most?)
people don't even get paid by the hour, but by the week/month.

For me, the marginal income from an extra 6 minutes of time is zero.

~~~
showerst
No, the marginal income (in dollars) is the smallest amount of dollars that
you'd take to work for someone else for those 6 minutes.

Said differently, if I'd offer you six bucks at dinner time to give up cooking
and work for me and you'd say no, then your time must be worth at least six
dollars, or $1/min, otherwise you'd have done it.

Since it's a nice, clean, hypothetical we get to ignore things like the
silliness of working for only 6 minutes, or the time it takes to leave your
kitchen.

How you actually get paid is irrelevant, the question is 'How much would you
have to pay me right now to stop doing this and work.' That's the value of
your time, because in an open economy, you could go work instead (subject to
the caveats above). =)

Usually the question is asked in terms of what work you'd get paid most doing
(which is often work you enjoy). Even If I get paid $10MM/yr in one lump sum
from a trust fund, the value of my time per minute is still however much money
I'd take in lieu of my time, or, in economic parlance, the 'second best
alternative'.

Just because you can't practically bill for a fraction of your time doesn't
make it value-less. That's a common fallacy, and (imho) a wasteful way to look
at life.

In this case, I'd argue that in light of what you said above that I would have
to pay you a LOT to get you to quit cooking and go do work, so the value of
that chunk of time is actually quite high.

~~~
aneesh
Good points. Theoretically, you're right, but I don't think it works that way
practically. I'm not saying that my time is valueless. I'm just saying that
while _I_ value it, there is no efficient way for anyone to compensate me for
6 minutes of my free time. There are too many fixed costs associated with
employing someone for that person to get paid the true marginal value of their
time.

 _"No, the marginal income (in dollars) is the smallest amount of dollars that
you'd take to work for someone else for those 6 minutes."_

Theoretically, yes. But try to find someone who will employ you for just 6
minutes. There's not that much liquidity in the job market (yet?).

~~~
showerst
Hehe fair enough =).

I just wanted to make that point because I believe many people (although
perhaps not many hacker news types) are likely to waste their time because
(from a cold, unfeeling economics nerd perspective) we tend to undervalue it.

Blowing 4 hours on the tube on for a CSI marathon becomes a lot less likely
when you think of it as spending two-hundred bucks to be slightly entertained.

It's an unhealthy way to make every decision, but still a bit underused in my
opinion.

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electromagnetic
I didn't know cooking pasta was this complicated. Directions:

1) Fill pan with hot water (your water heater already expended a ton of energy
heating the water, why waste that? Or if you have an energy efficient water
heater that only heats water when you turn the tap on, well that's still tons
more efficient than a gas or electric stove top).

2) Put pan on the stove and add copious amounts of water.

3) Insert pasta and wait ~10 minutes, or to your personal texture preference.

4) Drain pasta and place on plate.

5) Eat pasta; a good pasta is usually tasty just on its own.

~~~
Retric
I think hot water leaches more stuff from your pipes, but it's probably not a
big deal. The value in using less water is it takes money and time to heat
extra water.

PS: There are lots of ways you can make it cheaper or faster such as covering
the pot while you wait for the water to boil. In the end it's not a big deal,
but if it's saving you time and money why not?

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mindslight
Yes, _I_ do.

If _you_ don't know why you use the amount of water you do, try it with less
until you see a difference. (This advice goes for pretty much everything)

~~~
ja2ke
The article is about the author and two chefs trying a series of different
configurations of water volume and heat to try and find out what is
traditional and what is the actual breaking point for making it not taste as
good or be too much work.

~~~
mindslight
The submitted link points to a one sentence blurb, and I figured it was just a
lead-in to an environmental fluff piece. I suppose if it contains hard data,
I'll go through the "nytimes hassle". (thanks)

~~~
jrp
I never get these registration hassles people mention. Does the NYT not ask
for registration coming from, say, the UK?

~~~
electromagnetic
I used to get them often and frequent and I used to live in the UK. I'm
currently in Canada and in the past couple of months I've noticed the NYT is
no longer a humongous pain in the ass and I haven't been asked once to
register.

Perhaps they have stopped requesting sign-ups from international users.

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rokhayakebe
Everything should be done with moderation.

~~~
jodrellblank
Sounds like a cached thought; from your presence at HN, I assume you support:

Working extremely hard to compress a lifetime's earnings into a few years,
e.g. from a startup.

Obsessing over a small number of hobbies, e.g. coding, to get unusually good
at them.

The idea that people can improve themselves and their lot, and that results
are linked with effort.

Everything in moderation - unless you want to be particularly good at it,
perhaps.

[Edit: Damn, I've done it again. Voting you down because I disagree with you,
even though raised a point I wanted to reply seriously to. Sorry].

~~~
rokhayakebe
Even if you wanted to be particularly good, you should still do it with
moderation. Whenever someone becomes successful we hear the same story across
all industries: "started with nothing, worked 100 hours a week, etc...". Sadly
enough 1 in hundreds is an exception and not a rule. What you do not hear
about is how bad it is for the ones who did not moderate their input
(physical, emotional, financial). Subsequently years later market crashes,
housing bubbles, increase in divorces etc...make the news. What is the source
of these problems? Lack of moderation.

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tricky
Does anyone else keep the pot covered? I find that I can bring the water to
boil faster. Once it is boiling I drop the heat to low and still maintain the
heat. There's a bit of an art to keeping it from boiling over, but I'm "sure"
I use "way less" energy.

~~~
chadgeidel
I boil the water with the pot covered, and then cook the pasta with the pot
partially covered - maintaining just enough heat to keep the water boiling. It
does take more effort, but it uses less energy (water evaporating from the
surface cools the remaining water, putting a lid on the water minimizes this
evaporation). I'm not sure about "way less" energy, but it usually shaves a
few minutes off the cook time.

I wonder how fast you could cook pasta in a pressure-cooker?

