When I entertain, my guests won't stand for me making every dish ahead of time. Friends love to gather in the kitchen and watch me pull something together. This easy dish is a great compromise: The components can be prepped ahead of time, plus the final cooking time is minimal. It's not wildly expensive either: Lobster prices have dropped over the past few summers, and this year should be no exception. SEE RECIPE »
The Lola Burger.Since the New York Knicks aren’t doing so well these days, I’ve decided that I’m (at least temporarily) a Cleveland Cavaliers fan—especially when I can stop at the B-Spot near the Cavs team store at the Quicken Arena for ridiculously good burgers from Michael Symon (an F&W Best New Chef 1998). Symon specializes in “meat on meat” burgers—like patties topped with fried bologna—and next Monday, I’ll have another place to try them when he opens B-Spot Burgers in Woodmere, Ohio. Maybe I can convince Cavs forward LeBron James to come with me; although he’s a fan of the rib eye at Symon’s signature restaurant, Lola, he hasn’t been to B-Spot yet. “When we’re open, he’s pretty busy,” says Symon.
Until I get to Cleveland, my best shot at a Symon burger is to make one from his cool new Live to Cook book. The Lola Burger is indeed meat-on-meat (bacon) with a fried egg, cheddar and dill pickle slices, all served on a big, fat English muffin.
Prepare a fillets recipe differently. Season the hake fillets with salt and lemon juice and cover with a delicious cornbread, onion, parsley, garlic and coriander mixture. Drizzle with olive oil and bake until golden brown. Bon appetit!!!
Place the cornbread cut into pieces, coriander, parsley, the onion cut into pieces and the peeled garlic in a food processor and pulse until well chopped.
Place the fillets without the marinade on a baking dish and cover with the cornbread mixture. Drizzle with olive oil and bake until golden brown, about 35 minutes.
1. Pour the water, sugar and corn syrup into a heavy-bottomed saucepan and bring to a boil. Continue to boil until the mixture reaches 290 degrees on a candy thermometer. This will take 20 minutes or so. Stir in the cinnamon and food coloring, and pour the hot mixture into a large bowl set over a large pot of simmering water. This will help it stay hot and make it easier to work with as you dip apples.
2. Pierce the bottom of each apple with a Popsicle stick, then dip into the syrup and roll until fully coated. Repeat with the remaining apples. Rest on a parchment-lined baking sheet until they harden.
Welcome to FSR!I barely got here before you, but I hope you’ll enjoy reading this issue as much as I’ve enjoyed the whirlwind weeks since I joined this talented FSR team.My adventure with FSR began with an initial meeting in mid-September, on my birthday actually, which I read as a fortuitous omen.
The productive base of the company is in one of the most fertile and agricultural gifted places of Greek lands, Kalamata Messinia. In addition, our modern standardization facilities are near Piraeus port, covering successfully the needs not only in Greek market but also rapid exports.
It produces and standardize different varieties of honey and gourmet products such as thyme(thimari), pine, heather, oak, floral honey with almonds.
In 2014 our company promoted in Greek market a unique gourmet product, Greek Thyme Honey with Greek Blueberries, worldwide.
The brand already becomes not only well known but also innovative about the varieties which are in the market and also about new unique products that company aims to promote short term. Providing to tourists the opportunity to taste ‘Nectar of Gods’.
«Honey is healthy, tasty and sweetens our daily lives giving us energy. Produced from the nectar of plants it can only be aromatic and beneficial for us! Integrate honey in your daily diet and feel too mellifluous… like their products!
“I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life. My way of dealing with frustration is to shut down and to think and speak logically.”
For quite a while, chip giant Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) has been talking up a next-generation non-volatile memory technology known as 3DXPoint. The technology is billed as an entirely new class of memory -- faster and more durable than traditional NAND flash memory while much cheaper than DRAM.
At Intel's 2015 investor meeting, the company claimed that the total addressable market, or TAM, for 3DXPoint memory modules (that is, 3DXPoint being used as a substitute for DRAM rather than as a substitute for NAND flash as part of a storage drive) could be worth approximately $34 billion by 2020.
Intel had previously said that these 3DXPoint memory modules would be supported on a "future Intel Xeon processor." Based on the leaks around Intel's upcoming Purley server platform, it was expected that the future processor that Intel was talking about was Skylake-EP, a product that's slated to launch in the first half of 2017.
However, on Intel's most recent earnings call, CEO Brian Krzanich indicated that this wouldn't be the case.
Whenever Intel releases a server platform, it usually supports that same basic platform for two processor generations. It usually takes anywhere from a year to a year and a half for Intel to come out with new processor generations, so in practice one can expect an Intel server platform to remain current for about three years before being replaced.
With that in mind, it's worth looking at what Krzanich had to say about Purley and 3DXPoint memory module support (transcript from Seeking Alpha):
On the Purley platform we're actually starting to sample those products already to some of the leading-edge customers. And they're seeing not only just an overall TCO performance advantage that we typically see with each one of these but this also continues our integration of things like the omni-path fabric, it has more integration of the silicon photonics so it's still the adjacency functions that are quite strong, and they will get more and better as we go through each one of these. There will be a second generation of Purley that includes 3DXPoint.
According to this, the "future Xeon processor" that will support 3DXPoint memory modules will not be the upcoming Skylake-EP, but instead its successor, known as Cannonlake-EP.
If Intel's upcoming 3DXPoint memory modules require Cannonlake-EP to work, then investors should realistically expect that Intel won't be selling those modules until either late 2018 or in the first half of 2019. I'd be pleasantly surprised if it were the former, as I'm expecting the latter.
This suggests that any revenue contribution from these memory modules on Intel's part probably won't be seen until that time.
At the end of the day, Intel's data-center group brings in most of its revenue from the sale of processors and related chipset components, which Intel refers to as "platform" products. Last quarter, just over 8% of its data-center revenue came from non-platform products.
The best way to think of technologies like 3DXPoint memory modules, silicon photonics, and these other non-platform products that Intel talks about is as "nice to have" technologies. Obviously, investors should welcome every last bit of profitable revenue growth with open arms, but the core of the business has been and will continue to be sales of platform components.
If the platforms continue to do well, Intel's overall data-center business should do well -- robust non-platform sales in this case would serve as a cherry on top. If platform sales disappoint, then it's unlikely that any growth from the non-platform components, like 3DXPoint memory modules, will generate enough revenue to ultimately matter.
Wall Street had a major celebration on Friday, as the S&P 500 finished at an all-time high for the first time in roughly seven months. Investors generally pointed to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's comments that suggested that a gradual pace of future interest rate increases was the most likely scenario for the U.S. credit markets. The prospects for predictable monetary policy moves was a positive for the market overall, but there were still some companies that dealt with specific bad news that hurt their individual stock prices. Foot Locker (NYSE:FL), Hibbett Sports (NASDAQ:HIBB), and Grupo Supervielle (NYSE:SUPV) were among the worst performers on the day. Here's why they did so poorly.
Shares of Foot Locker finished lower by 9% after the sports footwear retailer reported its second-quarter financial results. The company said that comparable-store sales rose by only 0.5%, with store openings and foreign exchange impacts helping to produce a 5% rise in overall revenue. Investors generally downplayed the fact that net income soared more than 70% from the year-ago quarter, instead seemingly focusing on their fears that Foot Locker might end up getting squeezed out as major manufacturers of athletic apparel and footwear start to emphasize their own direct-to-consumer e-commerce channels. Foot Locker executives remain optimistic, but this holiday season should provide a good data point to see what impact manufacturers' moves could have on the retailer.
Hibbett Sports stock plunged 30% in the wake of the company's poor second-quarter financial performance. The sporting goods retailer disappointed investors by posting a modest loss for the quarter, despite comparable sales rising by 4.1% and overall revenue picking up 12% from year-ago levels on e-commerce strength. CEO Jeff Rosenthal blamed Hibbett's licensed offerings, equipment, and accessories businesses for its poor showing, but said that encouraging results in branded apparel and footwear could provide upward momentum for the sporting goods retailer. Yet with the company projecting that full-year comparable-store sales could ended up falling as much as 1% from last year, it's hard for Hibbett shareholders to be completely confident about the future.
Finally, shares of Grupo Supervielle lost a third of their value. The financial services company, which primarily serves the Argentina market, suffered an 11% drop in its comprehensive income figure compared to the year-ago quarter, with net income plunging by nearly half over the same period. Extreme volatility in local interest rates in Argentina weighed on Supervielle's profitability in both its banking business and its consumer finance portfolio, and trading losses resulting from the devaluation of the Argentine peso also hurt the company's bottom line. With financial problems in Argentina showing no signs of letting up, investors can expect continued pressure for Grupo Supervielle for the foreseeable future.
In just a few years, Detroit icon Ford (NYSE: F) has gone from being a broken has-been on bankruptcy's doorstep to one of the world's most focused and admired companies. Many elements have contributed to Ford's turnaround, but one of the most important is also one of the simplest: recasting Ford's far-flung holdings as one single company.
In a recent presentation, a senior Ford executive gave some details on the state of the company's "One Ford" turnaround efforts. Several points were of interest to investors.
Jim Farley, Ford's chief marketing officer -- or, officially, "group vice president of global marketing sales and service" -- reviewed the key components of Ford's plan in a presentation to analysts this week. Some highlights:
Profitability on lower volumes. Ford has reduced structural costs by more than $10 billion and will have reduced its production capacity by 40% by the end of next year. Ford now has fewer factories, but each is producing more vehicles -- a development that has allowed it to be profitable at near-record-low sales levels.
That sea change is likely to make for impressive margins as sales rates continue to recover. And that hasn't escaped Wall Street's notice. A Barclays analyst upgraded Ford on Thursday, citing "the fundamental increase in Ford's earnings power even in a slower growth environment."
Migration to global platforms. In industry-speak, a platform is a set of common dimensions that apply to vehicles and manufacturing. Cars built on the same platform may be quite different from one another, but they typically share parts under the skin, cost less to develop, and can be built on the same assembly line. One of Ford's goals has been to reduce the number of platforms in use globally, to save on engineering and development costs -- and to make the best use of each engineering group's strengths, allowing Ford to sell its best products throughout the world.
For instance: Ford's Fusion is a popular midsize sedan available in the United States, Canada, and much of Latin America. It shares a platform with the Mazda6 -- Ford controlled Mazda for several years -- and with similar Lincoln and Mercury models. Ford's Mondeo, meanwhile, is a popular midsize sedan available in Europe, Australia, and several other parts of the world. It's roughly the same size as the Fusion, and it even looks somewhat similar, but it's a completely different car, developed in conjunction with another former Ford property, Volvo.
In other words, Ford spent millions developing two separate midsize-sedan platforms, just as it developed two separate Fiestas (one for Europe, one for Latin America), two separate versions of the Focus (one for North America, one for Europe), and so on in the past.
CEO Alan Mulally's goal, put simply, is to knock that off once and for all. The much-acclaimed new-to-the-U.S. Fiesta is not really an all-new car; it's a variation of the Fiesta that Ford started building in Germany in 2008 -- the same car, and the same "guts," with minor styling and trim changes to suit local needs. Likewise, the upcoming all-new Focus is the same as the new Focus that will launch in Europe next year; even the upcoming Focus Electric, developed in conjunction with Magna International (NYSE: MGA), will be a "global" model sold in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Ford has tried this strategy before with the original Mondeo, which was also sold in the United States as the Ford Contour. But it's never done so with this level of sophistication, and never with this kind of total corporate commitment. And the approach is already producing impressive results.
The greening of Ford. Farley's presentation noted that Ford's fleet-average fuel economy has improved by 19.2% since 2004, a rate that outpaces all of its key North American competitors. On one hand, that's not saying much. Honda's (NYSE: HMC) fuel economy was already quite good in 2004, when Old Ford was still pigging out on SUV sales. But on the other hand, fuel efficiency is a huge deal for Ford right now. Farley said that Ford intends to make its "EcoBoost" technology -- a series of advanced, fuel-efficient turbocharged engines -- available in every product.
Green technology is big business -- just ask Toyota (NYSE: TM), where Farley worked before joining Ford in 2007 -- and Ford is already showing signs that it will be a leader as the focus on automotive fuel efficiency continues to sharpen in the coming years.
Ford's management is a long way from declaring victory. However, all signs indicate that the company's immense debt load is well under control, and it's been clear for a while that the turnaround is already producing impressive results. Ford's products are putting in a strong showing. Market share and "residual values," the value of a recent used car, are both solidly on the upswing, as Farley noted, and Ford is more profitable than it has been in years, despite the weak sales environment.
But perhaps the most sincere compliment for "One Ford" has come from across town. New General Motors CEO Dan Akerson outlined his own plans in a press conference on Thursday, and they're (unsurprisingly) Ford-like: to implement a clear, unified global strategy that allows GM to contain costs, be nimble, and to go on the offensive against competitors.
Interested in reading more about Ford? Add it to My Watchlist, which will find all of our Foolish Ford analysis. Or follow the links to read more of the Fool's global automotive coverage:
Fool contributor John Rosevear owns shares of Ford, which is a Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation. You can try Stock Advisor or any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days, with no obligation. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
One of the most critical financial decisions that you'll make during your lifetime is when to start taking Social Security benefits. Workers become eligible to take retirement benefits at age 62, and more people choose to take their Social Security then than at any other age. However, even though taking Social Security at your earliest opportunity is a popular choice, there are several situations in which you should consider waiting to take your benefits until a later age. Below, we'll look at three reasons why delaying your Social Security benefits can be your best choice.
If you decide to take Social Security before you retire and you haven't yet reached your full retirement age -- currently 66 for those who turn 62 this year -- then there's a limit to how much you can earn before Social Security will take away some of your benefits. If you are under full retirement age all year, then the maximum you can earn is $15,720. Above that, you'll lose $1 of annual benefits for every $2 you earn over the limit.
A special rule applies to those who reach full retirement age during 2016. For them, the limit is $41,800, and it only applies to your earnings before you hit full retirement age. So even if your total earnings for the year are above the limit, you don't have to forfeit benefits if your earnings prior to turning 66 are less than $41,800. Also, the forfeiture amount is smaller, as you'll lose $1 in annual benefits for every $3 earned above the limit.
If you hit age 62 mid-year, then another special rule applies. Earnings from before your 62nd birthday don't count unless you earn more than $1,310 in any month after you turn 62.
If you're going to forfeit your benefits, then there's little reason to take them in the first place. Instead, delaying your benefits avoids the hassle of dealing with whether your earnings will be too high.
Another reason to delay Social Security is if your taxable income is high enough to trigger income tax on your benefits. This can happen regardless of whether you're still working.
Whether Social Security benefits are taxable depends on what you receive from various income sources. To start, take your income from compensation, investments, pension income, taxable IRA distributions, and other taxable sources, and add in tax-exempt interest. Then, add one-half of your Social Security benefits. If you're single and the number is above $25,000, then up to half of your Social Security benefits can be subject to tax. If it's above $34,000, then the maximum income taxed rises to 85%. The corresponding numbers for joint filers are $32,000 and $44,000, respectively.
Sometimes, if you expect your income to fall in future years, delaying Social Security will prevent it from ever getting taxed. That's good news for those who are counting on using every penny of their benefits.
Many people who start receiving Social Security benefits at age 62 don't have much choice because their finances are stretched to the limit. If you're fortunate enough not to need the money right now, then delaying can give you larger payments down the road when you'll appreciate them more.
By taking Social Security at age 62, your monthly check will be 25% smaller than it would be if you waited until full retirement age of 66. By contrast, if you wait beyond full retirement age, you get 8% per year. That can add up to a 76% swing by waiting, as you can find in the chart below.
The trade-off is that because you take payments later, you'll get a smaller number of payments over your lifetime. Whether they eventually catch up because of their larger size depends on how things work out. But if you don't really need the money in your early and mid-60s, then delaying ensures that you'll get more money at a time when you'll value it more.
Millions of Americans take Social Security at age 62, figuring that whenever they can start getting money is a good thing. However, in situations like these, delaying your Social Security benefits can be the better choice.