I had to write about the adventure the Fiance and I undertook by attempting duck for dinner for the third time a couple weeks ago.  The first two times I made duck, I overcooked it to the point of well, death.  It was entirely inedible.  I couldn’t believe how difficult it was to get this meal right - after all, I roast chicken on a regular basis!  As a result of the wasted meals, I’ve been afraid to go to all the effort to pay for, prep and serve duck. What’s the point if it’s something I just can’t do? With the support of my lovely partner though, we tried it once again.  This time served with an orange, honey and kumquat sauce.  It was unbelievable!!! I wanted to post about the amazing duck experience as a lesson to a) not give up on an entire food source out of fear and b) to remember that practice clearly makes perfect.  Doesn’t that duck look scrumptious?

Now, I still think duck is really fatty and quite heavy, so it won’t be a regular protein in this household.  It is a special treat, and one that made us both step back and say - whoa, maybe we can cook.  It also was a good lesson about cooking together as a team.  We carefully prepped the whole duck, worked slowly on the sauce and discussed our approach to the sides.  Another tip, we saved all (and there was a lot) of the leftover duck fat, and made duck fat french fries to accompany the leftover peach chutney duck sandwiches on rye. The leftovers were almost more amazing then the original meal.  Duck was affordable, local, and a fun way to revisit something I vowed never to make again.

Just a little post to say duck isn’t a mystery after all…  it just takes a little effort, and the right attitude.

Who knew?

Uncategorized Add new tag, Foodie, Sunday night cooking

In my process for planning a wedding geek-style, I thought I’d provide a quick update on some of the ways I’d really like to bring a little geek to my upcoming wedding.

Twitter feed?

First of all, would a Twitter feed be too much?  I suppose the first question is really related to whether or not Twitter will still be “The tool” in a year.  Yes, it will still be around, and I think the tech community will continue to embrace it for some time - will it be something that some of our guests will get a kick out of or just a source of confusion?  Maybe it’s too complicated of an idea, but the idea of an #A&SWed hashtag is just too cute to pass up.

So we’ve got to have a projector or TV screen with a Twitter stream of common terms that interest us, a slideshow is a given, and the wedding hastag is a possibility, what about a live stream of the ceremony?

I’m still working out the logistics of web cam / proper sound / some type of internet connection at our ceremony site, but I think providing a live stream of the ceremony would be just awesome for out of town friends and family that couldn’t make it to the live event.  Don’t you?

Back up plan: If a live stream of the event won’t work - a YouTube video on our wed site homepage is a must!
Guest generated content

I am looking for ways to embrace the online collaborative world, bring it into our wedding and invite guest generated content.  We know our friends and family will be taking pictures, some with their phones, filming short clips, and likely changing their Facebook status updates to wish us well. I think it would be a great idea to collect all of that online buzz for our wedding and showcase it via the wed site, or maybe even ask our MC to pull some live quotes to read at the dinner.

Coffee theme - totally geeky?

The coffee theme is three-fold:

1. Brown is a key colour element of the wedding. What better prop than espresso beans?
2. The fiance and I are coffee fanatics, so it’s only appropriate…
3. Yes, coffee addictions are a geek stereotype, but we really do live for a constant stream of coffee and I think it plays well into “this is a tech wedding” theme… don’t you?

So that’s the current roundup of wedding planning the geek way - what are your thoughts on our strategy?

Any suggestions for other geeky wedding elements?

Uncategorized Twitter, Wedding

In my latest food trend project, I have been making an effort to cook one amazing meal on the weekend, but include strategic ingredients to facilitate yummy leftovers throughout the week and reduce the amount of cooking I need to do. Now, don’t get me wrong - I LOVE to cook, but my new busy lifestyle makes it a little difficult to make fantastic meals every night of the week.

So, I’ve been approaching weekend cooking in a large-batch-transition-cooking style.  So this doesn’t just mean cook enough food that you’re eating the same thing for 5 days, as that route inevitably gets tiring, boring, and leads to takeout*.  I’ve found success with thinking through the week, buying some extra groceries, but doing the bulk of the quality, preparatory cooking on the weekend.  I have found success making large roasted chicken meals.  Keep in mind that I intentionally bought a bigger chicken that the two of us need for one or two meals (I have also in the past bought two chickens and took the time to roast them together, knowing I’d do something creative with roasted chicken); same goes with the amount of veggies bought / cooked. My transition week looked like this:

• Sunday: Roasted chicken with cranberry red wine glaze, roasted sweet potatoes, arugula salad with pancetta (alternate: with sides of asparagus and Quinoa)
• Monday - Chicken soup with homemade broth (Nonna’s recipe - must include LOTS of parm-reggiano!).  If you make the broth the night before, the soup is as simple as boiling water and adding small noodles and cheese to the broth!
• Tuesday - Cranberry Chicken Salad sandwiches (topped with arugula) and served with leftover sweet potato puree or cous cous.  Basically, I chop up small pieces of leftover chicken, mix with sour cream, Dijon, cumin powder and cranberries.  Serve with whatever bread on hand, or on top of a salad.
• Wednesday - Basil chicken and asparagus penne in a cremini mushroom cream sauce.  You don’t need a ton of leftover chicken, just enough to mix with veggies and add to a cream sauce.  This 30-minute meal will taste like you cooked it for hours (and technically, you did!)
• Thursday: Leftover basil chicken penne (make enough the day before).

What are your large-batch meals?  Is large batch cooking really a trend or is it common practise and something the busy professional in me just figured out?

*note: There are some meals so well made that you’re completely willing to eat the same thing for 5 days straight.  These meals look like contenders for that category - I plan to try them out and report back soon:

Lasagna by Kevin

5 Second Rule’s Ragu

Foodie at Fifteen’s Beer braised Short Ribs

Foodie Foodie, Sunday night cooking

This is my favourite web 2.0 question of late:  How do you feel about twitter privacy settings? More importantly, would you recommend that new users protect their status updates? I ask the question to everyone I can, whenever possible.  It’s a question I’ve struggled with for months now. As a privacy advocate, I believe strongly that each user needs to be an active participant with his or her personal information, especially online.  When it comes to tools like facebook and flickr, I advise particular caution, suggesting that users think carefully about which pictures and comments you post, and which images you allowed to be tagged.  Privacy is certainly important on facebook: I think it is important that everyone turn facebook privacy settings on to ensure that the endless amount of personal information available is at least contained to your “friends” and not the ENTIRE 110 million active facebook users.  The same is true for personal websites, blogs, photo accounts and posting on forums.

But twitter is different, isn’t it?

First of all, if you want to participate in open discussions or be included in a hashtag feed, you have to turn OFF protected updates. This means that if you want to protect your data you won’t be seen at all in the ever popular feeds (the equivalent of an online group or message board).  Not being included in feeds is particularly challenging when attending social media-related seminars, as I did last week.  The moderator of the seminar panel announced that he would read questions from the session’s hashtag feed.  Well, of course I want to participate and ask questions, but if I was going to, I had to quickly unprotect my updates.  You might also lose the opportunity to grow your list of followers-  if you’re tweets are protected, odds are many users won’t follow you, or will think really carefully before following you back. Also, the large majority of twitter users have privacy settings turned off, suggesting if you’re going to be part of the community, then you shouldn’t be locked down.  These three points make it extremely difficult to promote twitter privacy settings.

So now I’m at a bit of a loss with my own twitter “success”. I’ve had many users tell me they didn’t follow me back because they couldn’t be sure I was a real person, and that I didn’t give them the chance to see if my tweets are worth following.  These arguments are completely valid in a world of mass spamming.  However, if you want a respected colleague to follow you back  (essential if you want to Direct Message them), then you’re likely to do all you can to facilitate a follow-back, which means being “wide open”.

I had a conversation with one of the session’s panel members last week, and his argument was essentially that it’s important to pay attention to how you use the tool, instead of simply relying on the software’s privacy settings.  He also suggested that someone concerned about privacy could create mulitple accounts, a a personal (and private) profile for friends and family, and an open profile for the rest of us.  It is certainly true that relying on the tool to keep your information secure is a mistake.

After all, facebook, even if you have privacy settings turned on, if you have 5000 friends, your information is NOT really secure, is it?  There is also the argument that twitter is the same as a blog - what’s the point of participating if you don’t want people to read? I agree with these points, which is why I sometimes unprotect my twitter updates, but I inherently want to keep my information protected!  Maybe I just carry a high level of paranoia with my social media usage?

My case for privacy settings on:

One reason why “think before you post” is problematic is that it’s hard not to slip up.   Being an active social media user on multiple platforms, I see many mini-conversations happen all the time.  It’s so easy to ask your online community for restaurant recommendations, mention your local traffic or weather status, or complain about your neighbour or local coffee shop.  I personally feel much better knowing that if I have my updates protected, that I at least have some control over who is reading this information.  I’m not worried about the people I know, or even the vast majority of twitter users from seeing my information, but it’s the unknown web surfer (the non-tweeter who simply googled my name or surfed the twitter public feed) and found my profile just by clicking a link.  When I start allowing this fear to creep in, I start to question the level of risk and the real dangers that could become from twitter posts. I can manage these fears by establishing a personal rule not to publish my specific whereabouts or too much about my home location, but what does this all mean for advocating twitter privacy settings?

For me, it means the social community environment is shifting, so having an online privacy message can’t be as simple as “turn on all privacy options”.  Instead, you have to carefully think about each tool and how you use it and what information you’re willing to publically release.  I’m still a little concerned about twitter and its open environment, so I think I will continue to use my protected updates option at times.  After all, I want lots of people to read my blog posts and comment on my ideas, but not everyone needs to know what I made for dinner last night, right?  It may be that I eventually become another “non-protected” twitter user, but I will also become a much different type of poster then, and possibly less frequent.

I’m very curious what others think about twitter privacy settings.  If the environment is meant to be open and collaborative, is it worth it to offer a twitter privacy option at all?

Twitter, Web 2.0 Online Privacy, Question, Twitter, Web 2.0

It’s really a random question, but has been on my mind lately; are geeks (i.e the technically inclined) also foodies (i.e lovers of all things food)?

I ask because I’ve noticed some similarities in the two groups recently. Now, I usually shy away from generalizations because I don’t believe in labeling entire groups of people (although one could argue I’m committing the crime by using the labels geek and foodie at all), but I’ll begin this post by saying of course not all geeks are foodies, and not all foodies are technically-minded. However, watching twitter posts, reading blogs and talking with peers and coworkers in the tech industry, I do notice certain affection for food and for the discussion of food - a common foodie characteristic. This affection is not just based on the simple act of eating, but the more about pleasure of consuming interesting, flavourful cuisine. It seems like there is a lot of discussion about really good food and really great cooking happening online, not by cooks and restaurant critics, but by application developers, content producers and software engineers. There are also different social gatherings related to technology that are surrounded by top cuisine. I will use the recent success of Cupcake Camp TO as my primary example; an event that was promoted and discussed online, where many participants were not only cupcake bakers and eaters, but also members of Toronto’s digital community. Is there a link? Many “tweeters” dedicate their 140-character updates to descriptions of yummy dinner menus and pictures of beautiful (and mouth-watering) food they are about to consume. I love it! Maybe it’s just that food is a common element amongst all of us, so it’s a natural topic of conversation, but I believe it goes further than that. The same people that demand quality, local ingredients, creative recipes and amazing culinary experiences also seem to share similarities in social media, web 2.0 and other internet trends. So is it the case that not only are geeks often lovers of technology, but that we’re also dedicated lovers of great food?

Maybe I just see the connection between technology and food because I am passionate about both culinary arts and digital media, but I do think there are some similarities.

I often view cooking as both an art and a science. Cooking can be a very personal, beautiful act and it can also be the product of superb execution of different chemicals and materials. Culinary arts require creativity, as well as on-the-spot thinking and acute problem solving. Wouldn’t you say the same about web production?

I love discovering new restaurants and local eateries from my online community. I also really enjoy reading reviews and discussing food on boards such as Chowhound and restaurantica. In an age of user generated content and a trend towards local food suppliers and farmers, I think the two complement each other quite nicely, don’t you?

Are you a geek, a foodie or someone who doesn’t associate with either group? What do you think?

Foodie, Web 2.0