How to Shop for Groceries (the right way)

Note: This is a re-post from my old blog.  I thought it was still worth sharing.  In the coming weeks, expect to see a lot more re-posts as I work on some digital house-cleaning :)

Grocery Shopping: A Surprisingly Daunting Task

Most people have gone shopping for groceries at one point or another.  It's not that difficult, in theory: you go to the store, you buy some stuff, you come home.  But it's not actually that easy in practice, and shoppers quickly realize that, without the proper strategies, they end up spending way too much money on food they won't eat.  Sound familiar?

Here's the thing.  If you don't know how to cook, grocery shopping can seem like navigating a country whose language you don't speak.  Even if you have a list, you might spend way too much money on groceries or end up with the wrong food.  Luckily, you don't have to despair!  Here's how you save money, buy healthy food and cook cheap, easy meals even if you kind of suck at cooking.

Planning Meals 

If you're not big on experimenting in the kitchen, you'll want the guidance of a meal plan.  Otherwise, how do you know what to buy for groceries?  There's plenty of ways to put together a meal plan.  You could ask the people who live with you, "Hey, what do you want to eat this week?" You can download a pre-made meal plan from one of many sites.  You can put something together from your selection of known recipes.  My mom had three months' worth of meal plans that she cycled through - write them up once, then just buy the same things every month.

If you're really budget-conscious, your best bet is to plan your menu around what you have in the kitchen + what's on sale.  This is what I do, and it enables me to eat surprisingly gourmet food on a tight budget.  Here's my process:

• Take stock of everything you have in the house.  Go through your cabinets, freezer and fridge and make note of every single item you have.  (this is a great opportunity to throw anything out that's gone bad and wipe down your fridge and cabinets, btw) 
• Look at the list and brainstorm several meals that you could make using only the ingredients you have in the house.  Write all of those down.  
• Next, look through the sales adverts for your local grocery stores.  Write down all of the sales for ingredients that you could use in conjunction with the foods in your house in order to cook meals.  
• Figure out what meals you can cook with the foods in your house + the foods that are on sale, and make a list of them.  That's your meal plan.  
• Determine what items you need to buy, both on sale and not on sale, to make everything on your list.  That's your grocery list.  
• Add up the prices of every item from the sales flyer, then add $10 - $20 (depending on what additional items you need to buy).  That's your budget. 

Now you know what you can eat for the week, you know what you need to buy to make those meals, and you know how much money it's going to cost to buy it.  There should be no surprises at the grocery store if you do this.  If you want some help getting inspired, you can use the Supercook link on the right side of my blog to plug in ingredients and get ideas for food.

Once you get to the grocery store, pretend you're on a game show called "Find a better price."  Look at the item on your list, then see if you can get the same or comparable items for an even better price.  You'd be surprised at how often the advertised products aren't even the cheapest version in the store.  If you clip coupons, you can also cross-reference your grocery list with your coupons to get more savings.  (I don't do this, for reasons I've discussed in the past).

 Tips For Success

When you're planning meals, writing a grocery list and going shopping, there are a few things you can do to improve your odds of success:

• Learn about your staples.  Staples are items that you need to always keep in your kitchen because they serve as the base for so many other foods.  Every household will have different staple items depending on what type of foods they eat frequently.  In my house, staples are pasta, canned tomatoes, rice and frozen vegetables.  Every time I run out of those items, I know I need to buy more because they make up the core of so many things I cook.  
• Plan meals around your protein.  Proteins, especially meat and dairy, are going to be the most expensive items on your list.  Plan your menu accordingly.  If meat's on sale, pick whatever is the best deal and buy that one item.  Find ways to stretch that one item into several meals.  For example: If whole chickens are on sale, you might want to buy one and roast it one night, then shred the leftovers for tacos another night, then cook the bones for stock and make soup a third night.  
• Don't buy more fresh foods than you can deal with.  If you don't eat them in time, fruits and vegetables will go bad very fast.  Plan to eat the most delicate of them early in the week.  If you find an excellent deal on them and buy in bulk, make a plan to preserve them.  It's super easy to make small batches of jam or refrigerator pickles, and pretty much anything can be frozen if you do it right.  
• Learn what substitutions you can make.  If you get to the store and they're all out of zuchinni, it pays to know that you can cook crookneck squash or Mexican gray squash in pretty much exactly the same way.  Try to get as wide of an idea of what foods taste good together and what can be substituted in the dishes you like to cook, and be flexible with your list.  

So, there you go.  A few tips from me on grocery shopping.  Is this the only way you can buy groceries and save money?  Of course not.  But it's my method, and it works pretty well.

If you have any questions, I'll happily answer them!  

Cooking Lesson: Anatomy of a Recipe

I blogged recently about the importance of seasonings and a few of the more common flavor combinations.  Mastering seasoning will get any would-be cook well on the way to making tasty meals, but it can only do so much.  So, today will offer a "meatier" (pun intended) lesson on cooking: The Anatomy of a Recipe.

Now, none of these rules are set in stone, and you can play around with them once you get comfortable.  But when you're looking through your cabinets, trying to think of things to eat, it can be extremely helpful to know, "What can I combine in order to make food happen?"  It's what makes the difference between "food" and "a meal."

Components of a Meal

Each meal should consist of:

• A protein source 
• A starch 
• One or two vegetables
• Some seasonings 
• Maybe a little bit of fat to tie it all together

That's not too hard, right? 

The ratios aren't set in stone, but I find them to be helpful.  They help you, for example, avoid eating "starch with a side of starch" (a pitfall I am particularly prone to) and make the whole "balanced meal" thing pretty easy.

So, when you're looking at your cabinets, how do you decide what elements are what?  Here's a handy guide!

Categories of Food in Your Kitchen 

 Proteins 

• Meat, including red meat, fish and poultry
• Legumes like beans and lentils
• Soy products like edamame and tofu
• Nuts and nut butters 
• Eggs 

You can sometimes combine two protein sources.  This is often a good idea if you have one strongly-flavored protein (bacon, ham, sausage) and one lightly-flavored protein (tofu, lentils).  If you couple a flavorful-but-pricy protein with a cheap-but-filling protein, you can make a huge meal with very little cost. 

 Starch

• Rice
• Pasta
• Bread, including tortillas
• Potatoes in all of their myriad forms
• Polenta
• Oats and oatmeal
• Quinoa and any other exotic whole grains you want to experiment with

Starches often provide the bulk of a meal.  They exist to serve as vehicles for sauces and seasonings, and they play well with  proteins.  If you're eating legumes, you'll need a starch in order to provide necessary amino acids to create a complete protein.  Also, they're delicious. 

Vegetables

• Greens like spinach, collards, turnips etc. 
• Summer and winter squashes
• Brassicas like cabbage, broccoli and brussels sprouts 
• Root vegetables like carrots, turnips and sweet potatoes
• Basically anything else you find in the produce section

If you need help eating more vegetables in your diet, try substituting your starches with veggies.  For example, serve sauces over a heaping plate of vegetables rather than pasta or rice.  You can also substitute the primary protein in a meal for a vegetable.  For example, making a spaghetti sauce with mushrooms or squash instead of meat.  Bear in mind, though, that vegetables tend to have few calories, so you might not feel full or satisfied if you load up on veggies alone. 

Fats

• Oil, especially olive oil
• Butter 
• Lard and other animal fats
• Cooking sprays
• Mayonnaise and other spreads

You need fats for certain kitchen applications.  They prevent foods from sticking when you cook them by providing lubrication between the food and the pan.  They encourage browning and carmelization.  They add some extra flavor to your food.   They make a water-resistant barrier to protect starches from breaking down and getting soggy.  They conduct heat for frying and hold foods together for baking.  If you want to stay on the healthy side, I recommend butter (in moderation) and decent olive oil. 

Putting it All Together

So, let's take what we've learned and apply it to the simplest food item imaginable:  A sandwich! 

Sandwiches are great.  They're easy to make, easy to eat, and you can feed yourself with them even if you're not so great at cooking. 

The necessary components of a sandwich: 

• Some kind of bread to hold it together: A pita pocket, a tortilla, slices of any kind of bread imaginable
• Some kind of protein to put inside the bread: Lunch meat, hummus, slabs of roast animal, grilled tofu
• Some vegetables:  Lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickles, mushrooms, whatever
• A fat to spread on the bread and keep it from getting soggy: Butter, mayonnaise, cream cheese, yogurt

So here's your homework for today.  Go through your fridge and cabinets and pull out some likely ingredients.  Classify each one as a protein, starch, vegetable or fat.  Put them in discrete piles.  Then assemble a sandwich (or multiple sandwiches!) from what you find.  Note the results. 

Not every sandwich combination will taste good, since some flavors don't play well with each other (a topic we'll discuss in the next lesson!) but this will generally help you experiment and keep from starving.  

Cooking Lesson Number One: Seasonings Are Your Friend

So, I have a friend.  Bless her heart, she's a wizard with animals, a rock star at packing and tells a hilarious story.  But the poor thing has never properly learned to cook.  Fortunately, she has a husband who can pick up the slack, but they work opposing shifts, and I can't very well let her starve while she's alone.  Besides, she's desperate to save some money around the house, and food is the best place to do it -- but only if you know what you're doing. 

I half-jokingly told her I'd take her under my wing and teach her to cook.  I figured I could include my culinarily-clueless boyfriend in the lessons and kill two birds with one stone.  But as I started thinking about it, I started to realize that maybe other people could use some help.  Plenty of my friends can't cook, after all, and the friends who can often express interest in doing it more inexpensively.  So I decided, maybe I should blog a few of my lessons, to make them easier to share. 

Lesson the First: Seasoning is Your Friend

When it comes to 'seasoning,' the very first thing you need to think of is salt.  You need to put salt on everything.  You also probably need to use more than you would imagine.  Contrary to what you might think, salt (when used properly) doesn't make food taste salty.  It just makes the food taste more....delicious.  It amps up the dial for every flavor that crosses your tastebuds.  It's a complex chemical reaction that takes place in your mouth and exists, evolutionarily, to ensure you eat enough sodium (which is necessary for multiple bodily functions). 

That said, you've probably heard about how sodium isn't so good for you.  It's true that, in high quantities, it can cause hypertension and plenty of other problems.  Here's a secret: The sodium that's hurting you isn't what you're putting on the food you're cooking.  It's the hidden sodium in processed foods.  If you cut those out and focus on cooking food from whole ingredients, you don't need to worry about salt. 

One other thing: Most of the frenchy-froggy chefs advise you to use kosher salt.  This is because it has a bigger surface area and dissolves better.  It's also easier to measure, and tends to have a cleaner taste.  But it is a little pricier, and I won't hold it against you if you use regular table salt.  I've been known to do that plenty of times myself. 

Herbs and Spices by Cuisine

Once you've mastered the salt thing, it's time to tackle herbs & spices.  You can get a long way with an empty pantry but a full spice rack.  Below are some of the more common cuisines along with the herbs and spices they use, as well as some of the other common ingredients that go into these recipes.  If you're starting with a bare spice rack, you can pick the cuisine you cook the most of and focus on buying just those spices.  You can also skim through to see which spices show up again and again, and buy those first. 

A few notes: 

• Herbs are the green leaves and stems of plants, and many of them can be grown at home.  Spices are usually seeds, berries or bark, and they're mostly grown in exotic or far-away places.  
• Herbs can be used fresh or dried.  If you're using dried herbs, add them to the dish early on so they can infuse the dish with flavor while it's cooking.  If you're using fresh herbs, add them toward the end so they don't get slimy and wilted.  
• Herbs and spices both lose potency over time.  Try not to store them too close to the oven -- the heat will cause them to lose flavor quickly.  Replace them frequently.  
• Save money on herbs by buying them in bulk.  You can usually buy plastic bags of herbs and spices on the Mexican aisle of a supermarket for a fraction of the price of the name-brand containers.  
• Start small with any new seasonings you try.  You can always add more later, but you can't really take it back if you put in too much.  Start with a quarter-teaspoon of any new spice or herb and work up from there as necessary.  
• In addition to their yummy flavor, herbs and spices have various health benefits associated with them as well! They've been a key part of, er, herbal medicine since the dawn of time.  

Mexican Cuisine:
Examples: Chili, fajitas, enchiladas
Herbs & Spices:  Garlic, cilantro, oregano, cumin, chili powder, paprika, black pepper (these last four I refer to as "chili spices" in recipes I write for myself). 
Other Common Ingredients: Peppers, tomatoes, beans, rice

Asian Cuisine: 
Examples: Stir-fries, fried rice
Herbs & Spices: Garlic, ginger, black pepper, soy sauce, five-spice powder, Siracha
Other Common Ingredients: Vegetables, tofu, rice, noodles

Italian Cuisine: 
Examples: Pasta dishes
Herbs & Spices: Garlic, oregano, parsley, thyme
Other Common Ingredients: Pasta, tomatoes, polenta

French (and gourmet American) Cuisine: 
Examples:  Roast chicken, meatloaf
Herbs & Spices: Rosemary, thyme, marjoram, sage
Other Common Ingredients: Onion, carrot and celery (aka mire poix, or the start of any good soup), wine

Mediterannean Cuisine: 
Examples: Roast lamb, gyro meat
Herbs & Spices: Basil, parsley, marjoram, oregano
Other Common Ingredients: Olives, chickpeas, feta cheese

There are lots of other combinations to learn -- like those in Indian, Middle Eastern or North African cuisine -- but they are perhaps not as useful to the beginning cook.  Pay attention to seasonings in recipes you find and you'll start to realize which ingredients are responsible for what flavors. 

The valuable thing about this brief list is that it helps you determine what a dish will taste like (if reading from a recipe) or what type of flavor profile to give something (if experimenting in the kitchen).  For example, if you start with tomato sauce and add oregano, parsley and thyme, the results will probably be a pasta sauce.  If you took that same tomato sauce and added cumin and paprika, you'd be well on your way to making chili.  By knowing -- even vaguely -- what you're starting with, you know more or less where you'll end up. 

Critical Thinking Thursdays: Correlation, Causation and the Silliness That Ensues

Note: I was going to post this last Thursday, but it didn't really happen.  I ended up spending much more time away from home than I'd anticipated, and by the time I got back I was entirely too braindead to construct this post.  Besides, I'm glad I waited, because I woke up this morning to find this delightful graphic in my Facebook feed from my favorite page, I Fucking Love Science.

Now I have something to talk about today!

You can probably spot the problem with this statement, even if you're not familiar with logical fallacies.  There's an issue here with correlation (things that happen at the same time) and causation (one thing happens because of the other thing).

This problem crops up in a lot of places.  The human brain is trained to find patterns -- it's a survival instinct that helps to keep us alive -- but sometimes we find patterns that aren't actually there, or draw the wrong conclusions from patterns that do exist.

In this case, the causation is reverse:  Birthdays don't make you live longer.  Living longer, by definition, enables you to have more birthdays.

There are several other ways that correlation and causation can get screwed up:

• Reduction Fallacy:  The assumption that a single event was caused by a single factor, when in reality multiple factors are all partially responsible.  Unfortunately, life is rarely simple, so this happens a lot.  After a school shooting, for example, you'll get people saying, "This happened because of guns!" or "This happened because of mental health issues!" or "This happened because of violence in the media!" In reality, all of those factors may be at play -- and many more could also be responsible.  It's very rare that complex problems are ever caused by a single root issue.  
• Bi-Directional Causation: When A causes B, but B also causes A.  So, for example, imagine a bank account that gains interest.  The more money in the bank, the more interest it earns.  The more interest it earns, the more money in the bank.  If left alone, this causes a sort of "chicken or egg" feedback loop.  
• Spurious Relationship:  A and B are both caused by a third factor, C.  One of my favorite examples, courtesy of The Flying Spaghetti Monster:  A shortage of pirates causes global warming!  After all, as the pirate population decreases, global warming increases!  Of course, this is probably due to one or more outside factors, such as global industrialization, that cause both things to occur.  Of course, not all examples of this are so silly.  
• Affirming the Consequent:  The format for this is, "If P, then Q.  Q, therefore P."  In other words, if one thing were to happen, Q would be the consequence; since Q has happened, P must have caused it.  This is related to the reduction fallacy above in that it assumes that Q can only be caused by a single factor, therefore P must have happened.  Here's a (cynical) example:  "If Mary screws her boss, she'll get a raise.  She just got a raise, so she must be sleeping with her boss." 
• Denying the Antecedent:  This is the inverse of the above.  This one says, "If P, then Q.  Not P, therefore not Q."  So for example, "If I were rich, I'd be happy.  Since I'm not rich, I'm not happy."  This sort of neglects that you could be made happy by anything else.  

There are other iterations, but they're all pretty similar.  The trick to figuring out the correlation/causation issue is to do a bit of investigating.  Things that seem obvious at first may not be so simple in reality, and making assumptions about them can lead you to try and solve problems in all the wrong ways.  After all, you can't really solve a problem if you don't know the real cause of it.  

Always ask yourself, "Could this have been caused by anything else?  Is there some other element that could be behind all of this?  Is it possible that the causation is actually inverted?"  

Critical Thinking Thursday: Movie Magic and the Power of Editing

Today, I want to talk a little bit about "movie magic," and especially about how the power of editing can make things appear different than how they really are.  This is a trick that's used for everything from movies to televised magicians and even the nightly news, and recognizing it in advance can help you keep a clear head any time you see something outlandish on a screen -- be it Criss Angel, Fox News or a YouTube video.  

What You Have to See to Believe

Humans are visual creatures.  Although we have four other senses that provide us with valuable information, our eyes are the thing we rely on the most. Take just a moment to appreciate how amazing the human eye really is.  This complex little organ takes in light, which then travels to your brain, which sorts through the light, converts it into images and assigns meaning to those images.  The simple act of reading these words on the screen is an impressive feat of nature's engineering.  We've evolved these eyeballs -- and the brains that go with them -- for milennia.  Cameras, on the other hand, have only been around for a few centuries, and motion-capture cameras have been around for just a few generations.  There are people alive today who were born in a time when there were no videos -- and now everybody can take a video with a device that fits into their pocket.  It's awe-inspiring.  

Now that we've got that out of the way, here's the thing about human brains.  Our brains are pretty much conditioned to believe that they can trust the information delivered by our eyes.  If we see something, our default state is belief.  Questioning that belief requires effort -- critical thought, in other words.  So if you're fooled by the things you see, it doesn't mean you're stupid.  It just means that your brain is having a hard time keeping up with these rapid changes in technology. 

Ways That Cameras Can Lie

There are a lot of ways that a camera can lie to you, and a lot of different applications for those lies.  Here are a few examples:  

• Shooting multiple takes.  For example, a television psychic approaches a man on the street and says, "Excuse me, is your wife named Mary?" and the astonished man says, "Why, yes, she is!"  What the audience doesn't know is that the psychic approached a dozen other people and asked that same question; this gentleman is the only one who said yes.  Since all of the unsuccessful attempts were cut, the psychic looks more successful than he really is. 
• Editing footage together.  A person on a reality TV show wins a storage unit.  You see the auctioneer cut off the lock, signifying that the unit hasn't been tampered with.  The winner walks inside, opens a box, and finds a priceless antique.  What you don't see?  Between the shot of the lock being broken and the winner walking inside, the camera is shut off and the camera crew places the valuable item inside to be "discovered."  When it's edited together, it appears that the item was there all along.  This was one of the very first "magic" tricks ever done with a camera.  The concept of an item appearing out of thin air was, at the time, inconceivable, and it fooled a lot of people.  Things don't just spontaneously appear in real life.  But they can and do in film, where a shot could have taken hours or even weeks to put together.  
• Cutting and cropping.  Like the picture above, you can take anything and make it look like something else by zeroing in on one small part of it.  The ability to focus and crop a photograph is one of the things that makes photography an artform, an expression of the person behind the camera, rather than just 'real life.'  But never forget that everything you see could have been manually put together or cut in a way that creates a reporting bias.  
• Post-production editing.  In the old days, people needed to do this sort of thing in a dark room.  Today, we have Photoshop.  However you do it, the premise is the same: you change a photograph or video after it's been shot to look different.  For example, you can airbrush a model to make her appear thinner.  You can combine human features with animals to create were-people.  Or you can use your iPhone to insert ghosts into cell phone pictures.  
• Claiming that natural events are supernatural.  This one doesn't even require editing -- just viewers who don't understand cameras.  Have you ever seen those photographs that supposedly have "spirit orbs" or other such things?  What the photographer isn't telling you is that those floating balls of light are actually just dust particles that are reflecting light into the camera lens.  

There are tons more tricks -- from using a green screen to computer-animated special effects -- and of course out-and-out faking (for example: the "stranger on the street" is actually a paid actor).  Here's what's important for you:  Don't trust anything you see on TV without thinking critically about it!  

Ask yourself whether some or all of these techniques could have been used on the footage you've seen.  Ask yourself whether the things you see seem plausible or if they seem to go against what you know about the rest of the world.  Determine whether there is any external way to validate a claim being made in a video you're watching.  For example: Are there other videos from other people that show the same thing?  Can you talk to a real witness who saw it happen?  Is there a paper trail or other history that backs up what you're seeing?  Is there any reason why the footage should have been faked?  

Not everything you see on TV is a lie, but learning how to spot a forgery is a good task to keep in your arsenal of critical thinking skills. 

An Elegant Solution to Restaurant Portion Sizes

So, eating out is a bit of a landmine.  We're coming up on the 5th step of our "Real Food" eating challenge, and it's going to be the hardest yet -- no fast food, no deep-fried foods, eat out only on weekends.  Eating out is a big problem for us.  There's a few reasons we do it so often.   One of the most common reasons we end up going out is "dinner failure" in the house.  Either I cook something that turns out to be inedible (a sadly frequent side effect of kitchen experimentation) or the kitchen is such a mess that I have no dishes in which to cook or serve food (a frequent side effect of dating a guy with ADHD who forgets chores), so we end up making an emergency run to Taco Bell.

Other times, we just get bored or restless in the house.  When you work from home, you get really sick of looking at the inside of that home, and it can be hard to think up new things to do with yourself that don't involve eating.  Ironically, I've started shopping -- and enjoying shopping! -- more since becoming a conscious non-consumer.  Sometimes we'll get bored at the house and head out to wander through the aisles at the Good Will or a pawn shop.  Still, those outings rarely seem to occur without food showing up somewhere, and it's a big problem.

Anyway, we're going to work on curbing this habit.  For one, it wrecks the bank.  For another, it's much more difficult to keep an eye on your health when eating out.  Even if you're not interested in losing weight, you should get in the habit of checking nutrition information at restaurants, because it's always way worse than you'd expect.  You would be shocked to discover just how many calories are in certain foods.  You think you're doing yourself a favor by ordering a salad, but that salad may have more calories than a hamburger.

Part of the problem is that restaurants and fast food joints like to load up their entrees with huge quantities of sodium, sugar and fat to cover up for the fact that their food is actually tasteless.  If you don't have high-quality ingredients, just smother them in fat!  That'll make 'em taste good!  The other problem is portion distortion: The amount of food you're served is usually way more than you need to be eating.

The easiest way to cut your calories when eating out is to just not eat as much food.  But then, this causes its own set of problems.  Sure, you can get half of your entree boxed up before it even comes out to you -- but are you going to eat it?  Is it going to fester in your refrigerator for weeks?  And yeah, you can share everything with your significant other, but eventually you're going to get sick of always eating the same thing.  And just throwing away perfectly good food is certainly not an attractive option.  So, what do you do?

David came up with this smart solution.  This is the simplest, most elegant solution to this problem.  Are you ready?

Step one:  Order your food.
Step two:  Box up half of it.
Step three:  Give your box of fresh leftovers to the first homeless person you see on your drive home.

No, you're not going to be solving world hunger any time soon by doing this.  But, it makes you feel good knowing that somebody's going to have dinner tonight.  You're not contributing to quite so much food waste.  And, hey, maybe knowing that your food is going to someone else -- and may be the only thing they eat all day -- will give you just enough motivation to choose a healthier entree.

(Note:  Feeding the homeless is actually illegal in some cities, so, y'know, do this at your own risk.  But I can safely say, if there's one thing I'll never regret being arrested for, it'd be feeding a homeless guy.  Just saying.)

Critical Thinking Thursday: Statistics Mean Nothing

Today's Critical Thinking Thursday post is a bit late as I was busy learning an important lesson:  Always check the oven before pre-heating it.  I had left something in it previously and completely forgotten about it.  I didn't notice this until turning on the oven to pre-heat for a pizza....and copious amounts of smoke began billowing from the oven.  Oops.  We retreated to Buffalo Wild Wings until the smoke cleared -- hence the late post.

Anyway, today I want to talk about this graphic:

I saw this kicking around on Facebook and it's a beautiful example of the way you can twist statistics around to say basically anything you want.  So, let's go step-by-step and see how you can critically examine this, shall we?

• First off, let's check that the figures are even accurate.  Since the graphic doesn't site a source for any of these numbers, we'll have to check them manually.  When searching, you'll want to find a website that doesn't have its own agenda (for obvious reasons), so we'll want something with some objective credibility.  
• Let's take a look at that 195,000 figure first.  First off, the data is 10 years old.  Second, the actual causes of death are "failure to rescue, bed sores, postoperative sepsis, and postoperative pulmonary embolism".  So now we have that figure explained a bit more clearly.  
• Now, the assault rifle figure.  It took some digging to find the primary source on this one, but it looks like it's from the FBI. (Interestingly, based on the FBI data, the figure quoted for knives is actually very low -- the figure quoted here is 1,694 for stabbing deaths).  
• The 12,000 drunk driver fatalities appears to be from this site here, which offers an average (not the exact figure).  

OK.  Now that we've found the source of each figure, let's look at a few interesting things about how the data is compiled and represented, shall we?

• By specifically choosing assault rifles, the graphic down plays the severity of gun violence in general.  According to the CDC, firearms account for 31,347 deaths.  Of these, according to the FBI, 12,664 were homicides.  The others could range from accidents (children handling guns, hunting accidents) to suicides.  
• This means that gun homicide (in general) is actually more dangerous than drunk driving.  Someone with a different political stance could make a different graphic using exactly the same sources and come to that conclusion -- more gun murders happen annually than drunk driving deaths.  
• Incidentally, according to the CDC, the total number of vehicle fatalities (not just drunk drivers) is 34,485, which is still higher than the total number of firearm fatalities.  Therefore, someone could, again, take the same data and make a new graphic showing that cars are more dangerous than guns (but the margin is much narrower).  

The point of all this isn't to take a side one way or the other about gun control.  The point is to show that this graphic -- which seems very straightforward -- presents its figures in a way that supports the point it wants to make.  This is the dangerous thing about statistics:  On their own, they don't actually mean anything.  The numbers have to be interpreted.  As you can see, different people can take the exact same data and extrapolate completely different interpretations from it.  

So the next time you're faced with a graphic or statistic, I invite you to take a few extra minutes to think critically about it before sharing.  Ask yourself:  Where are they getting these numbers?  Are they accurate?  Is the source reputable?  If you look at the data yourself, do you get a different interpretation?  How many other ways can those numbers be interpreted?