Risotto. I make one with panceta and mushrooms that can’t be easier to make. And the principle is to just stir for 20’ or so.

Ingredients (serves for 2)

• Risotto type rice (Arborio, Carnerolli or similar) 150 gr
• Chicken broth (homemade, if store bought then liquid, never in cubes) 1 lt
• Onion 1 medium
• Panceta 200 gr
• Mushrooms (fresh) 200 gr
• Olive oil
• White wine
• Parmesan cheese (grated or in very small chunks) 50gr
• Butter 20 gr

Prep

1. In a pot, put the broth to heat. It’s not required for it to boil just to be hot.
2. Chop the onion in very small cubes, as small as the rice grain if possible (so when you are eating it, you don’t feel it)
3. Chop the panceta in cubes (no bigger than your thumb)
4. In a big pot, at mid heat, put the panceta to brown and defat
5. Once the panceta is brown and you have a good fat source at the bottom, remove and reserve the panceta
6. Put the onion in the pot and use the same fat from the panceta to sauté it. If you need more, you can use olive oil.
7. Once the onion is almost translucent, put the rice and pearl the rice. From now on, you should always be mixing the rice with a big wooden spoon or similar. Never stop stirring. This will make the rice to let all the starch go, which will make your risotto creamy.
8. Once the rice is pearled, pour some wine to deglase and keep stirring.
9. Once the wine has evaporated and you hear the crackling, pour some broth until the rice is submerged, keep stirring.
10. Once your broth is evaporated and you start hearing the crackling again, put the panceta, the mushrooms and pour some more broth. Keep stirring.
11. When you see that you are low on broth and hear that the rice is crackling, check on the rice for the cooking point. It should be al dente, meaning that you should be able to bite it and feel some resistance, but it should be very edible. If you still feel it too hard, pour more broth and keep stirring.
12. When your rice is done, take the pot away from the fire, and put the parmesan cheese with the butter. Stir and mix until it’s uniform and creamy.
13. Serve hot in small bowls or similar plates
14. Decorate with olive oil, fresh grinded pepper and parsley.

Let’s agree to disagree. It’s true that these companies are vulnerable and lovely honeypots for hackers. And because they know that, they’ll try to harden as much as possible. Besides, not everyone is willing to create passwords out of algorithms seeded with mnemonics. Most of the people will reuse the same password over and over in different places. And that’s the worst situation, because most of those sites are hundreds of times more hackable than commercial password managers.

Are there better options than commercial password managers? Yes, of course. How many are willing to use them? Maybe less than 30% of the population. And that’s bad, because it makes the internet less safe for everyone.

And by the way, the method you use is one of the earliest ways to create passwords and is hackable by brute force in seconds. If I have two or more passwords, or two or more seeds, the algorithm is done unless you have some random generator in it.

Why?

In general, password managers are a must-have in today’s world. The question is not if you should have one, but which one and why.

As a Software Engineer very conscious about security and privacy, but also with a high practicality sense, I’d say you should opt for whatever you feel more comfortable.

If you don’t want to manage anything, then 1password, BitWarden, LastPass or any of those might be right for you. If you are more of the kind to tinker with everything, then you can have your own OwnCloud/NextCloud and use KeePassXC.

I particularly used the later setup, but NextCloud was too much to handle for me, and settled with KeePassXC + Dropbox.

You do you, but use a password manager.

I used to do it that way, but the Nextcloud instance was very fragile and cumbersome to maintain. In the end I switched to Dropbox. Must admit it’s not my proudest move, but there’s a point where I can work so much in something.