Edible/Usable

A Digression: The redesign of thesixtyone.com and Listening to Your Users

2010-01-27T21:22:34-05:00

This post isn't about food. It's about my favorite music site and what happens when a business doesn't get feedback from their users before they do a massive redesign. Last year a did a brief stint at AOL. I worked mainly on their music site, AOL music. While I was working there, I looked at a lot of other sites in the online music playing, collecting, and discovering spheres. A lot of my focus was figuring out the best way to do two things: create playlists of songs, and how to have a good seamless playback experience. Both are somehow...

Thanksgiving Success Including Apple Sour Cherry Pie

2009-11-29T18:48:47-05:00

Just a short post about some of the great food I had this Thanksgiving. We went to a friend's for dinner where they made their famous turkey on the BBQ which is a fast and delicious way to make a turkey that I'd never seen done before. There were also some delicious parsnips roasted with Parmesan, fantastic roasted potatoes and carrots with ginger. I made brussel sprouts roasted with pancetta, one of the few ways I like brussel sprouts, and I spent literally 2 hours peeling pear onions for balsamic roasted pearl onions from The Cutting Edge of Ordinary blog...

Beet Pie

2009-11-15T19:22:42-05:00

I am actually working on blog posts about UX and usability (really, I've got two in the works...) but this is an emergency recipe posting! A few weeks ago, we went to visit some friends in Pennsylvania. They live in the northern part, past the Poconos - a really nice part of the state that I'd never been to before. They have a beautiful hill-top apple orchard that they are in the process of reviving. It's all organic, so I picked some apples and planned to go home and make an apple pie (which I did last weekend). I forget...

Sweet Tomato Chutney

2009-10-12T14:19:32-04:00

I'm having a blog identity crisis. I've been ignoring my other half. I'm not married, so no, I don't mean my husband. I mean the other half of what this blog is supposed to be about. I've been having a nice summer creating lots of salads, canning stuff when I can (and freezing it when I can't can) and doing a bit of baking here and there. But I haven't been writing at all about usability and user experience. Definitely part of is has been that I've been taking advantage of all of the social media, promotion and blog marketing...

Homemade Granola

2009-09-24T11:48:50-04:00

As promised, at long last, the granola recipe. Granola is one of those things that can seem really difficult and intimidating, but really, it's very simple to make, and is almost limitless in the way you can customize it. I've been making this granola off and on for the past 3 years or so, experimenting with different levels of liquid, sweets and oats, and I feel like I've finally found a good base recipe to which I (or you) can add your own personal favorites. I've actually been seeing a lot of 'homemade' granola for sale around Brooklyn lately (Early...

What to Eat When Your'e Camping: Shopping, Preparation and Storage Tips

2009-09-23T11:55:58-04:00

Part of my menu preparation for our camping trip required some deep thinking about what foods were "camping friendly" and convenient to have on a 8 day trip. This meant food that didn't require more than the three days of the refrigeration we would get from our collapsible cooler, food that was relatively lightweight and compact, had minimal but sturdy packaging, and food that could be prepared before-hand so it was fairly easy to prepare in camp. And it also had to taste good. On our fourth day camping, we decided to take a longer day trip from the Middle...

Camping Menu - What to Cook When You're Camping

2009-09-14T20:21:07-04:00

I've been back from my camping trip for over a week now, but because I've been busy at work and a few social obligations, I haven't been able to blog about it until now. As I was writing this post, I realized that I actually had a lot to say, so I think I'm going to break this up into several posts that I'll put up in the next few days. This first post will be specifically about the best food we ate on our camping trip. The second post will be a sort of follow-up to the "Tools for...

Carrot Blueberry Salad

2009-08-26T09:22:00-04:00

After a rainy, chilly June and July, August has been hot and steamy (and rainy again). It's really seemed like a short summer for me. I live near from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and this weekend seemed to be the weekend that all of the new students were being dropped off by their parents and were attending orientation. That means that summer is nearly over. For me, starting college was such a great time in life - starting a whole new chapter in a totally new place. And even though I haven't been in school for longer than I will...

Fennel Salad

2009-08-24T12:00:00-04:00

It seems like all summer I've been on a feta/mint combo salad bender: I'd walk through the farmers market or rifle through my fridge and everything that I bought or pulled out seemed like it would be a perfect fit with mint that I have growing in a big pot in my window, and my new favorite feta cheese. But yesterday at last, I got a craving for a great summer salad that has neither feta or mint - Fennel Salad. I adapted this recipe from something that a good friend of mine used to make at her regular summer...

Tomato Peach Salad

2009-08-18T11:45:54-04:00

This week's Summer Fest is all about tomatoes. I thought long and hard about what tomato recipe I could share - I have so many favorite ways of eating tomatoes, but very few actually written down or codified. One of my favorite events of each summer is the first tomato sandwich: some sort of nice white bread toasted, mayonaise, heirloom tomato, salt, pepper. Super simple and super delicous. Or, there is my favorite sweet tomato chutney - but that is actually long, hot and complicated, so I'll save that one for later. It's finally been hot here in NYC -...

Corn Pie - Local Food from a Country Fair

2009-08-17T10:00:00-04:00

I love country fairs. They are one of the few things left from the 'olden days' when a huge percentage of the American population lived in rural areas and fairs were the way that people came together from far-flung places to show their talents, do business, learn the latest agricultural techniques, and socialize. I used to show my horse in my local county fair, and for me it was all about winning ribbons and meeting boys. This weekend, I went out to Kutztown, Pennsylvania to the Kutztown Fair. I've been going out to this part of Pennsylvania for a few...

Going Camping? Tools for Your Camp Kitchen

2009-08-12T17:03:02-04:00

We're going camping in a few weeks, on what has become the annual canoe/kayak trip to Saranac Lake Islands in the Adirondaks. The Saranac Lake islands have really nice, rustic campsites that require a boat to access. You can take a motor boat, but we're taking a canoe, as usual. This year we're staying on the middle lake which has much less traffic than the lower lake, and I'm really looking forward to it. After reading Jhumpa Lahiri's piece about vacation home kitchens in the NYT earlier this week, I started thinking about all of the organizing I'm going to...

Summer Salad: Haricot Verts

2009-08-11T10:30:00-04:00

Another Summer Fest Post! This week is beans and greens. I never made it through the 101 Simple Summer Salads article in the NY Times a few weeks ago. And by "made it through" I don't mean making them all. I mean reading them all. I didn't even get past the first page. There were so many great salad ideas on the first page that I got a little overwhelmed and didn't go any further. But that doesn't mean I haven't been making salads for dinner this summer. I've been inspired by two recent discoveries in the farmers markets. First,...