kitchenmage

Food Revolution Day: Make Your Own (Lower) Sugar Chocolate Milk

2012-05-19T07:01:44-07:00

See that innocent looking glass of chocolate milk? It's public school enemy #1, at least according to Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. Seriously, they declared an entire week to fight against flavored milk in schools and it often seemed to be the defining issue in the school lunch debate.

This seems, to me, like an odd focus. Flavored milk doesn't even make my top ten list of problems when it comes to school lunches. Bad policies, processed commodity food, budgets and staff stretched to the breaking point, a lack of creative thinking at the highest levels, and kitchens without actual cooking equipment...those strike me as the real enemies.

Flavored milk, not so much.

Still, Oliver's enthuiasm about feeding kids better lunches is laudable, even if his approach sometimes seems to be more showman than scientist and I am sometimes left questioning WTF this or that stunt or statistic was about. I have both questioned and snarked while watching the spectacle, wishing all the while that we'd see more serious work from Oliver...less reality show and more reality.

Today makes me happy.

Food Revolution Day, Oliver's latest endeavor, is a day of food-focused activity designed to get people talking, teaching, cooking, and eating good, healthful food. It's about home cooking, getting in the kitchen with your family (If you need a cookbook, might I suggest mine) When I heard about that mission—and nary a word about banishing flavored milk—I couldn't help but jump in with both feet and a bit of a 'tude...

DIY (Lower) Sugar Chocolate Milk Syrup Recipe

1/3 cup cocoa
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons water (or milk)

Mix cocoa and sugar together in small microwave-safe container. Stir in the water and heat in the microwave for 10 seconds on low (power level 2-3) and stir. Repeat once or twice, and add a drop or two of water if the mixture is more paste than syrup.

This is not an exact science, the type of cocoa and sugar you use may change the amount of water you need. Store in tightly closed container in refrigerator (Made with water, this should keep a long time. If you make it with milk, use it before the milk goes bad.)

Note: I tested this with cocoa and sugar I bought in huge bags at Costco and it was pretty darned good. If you have really good cocoa like Scharffen Berger, Valrhona, or fair-trade, organic cocoa harvested by pixies who live in an off-the-grid holistic commune from your health food co-op, please feel free to use that instead.

My rough estimate is that a tablespoon of the mixture adds about a teaspoon of sugar to a glass of milk, about a third of the three cited as typical. You may be able to (gradually) reduce the amount of sugar, depending on your child's preferences. Just don't think that you must remove all of the sugar, this is supposed to be a treat, after all.

Check out all of the Food Revolution Day activity: cooking classes, dinner parties, and the usual flurry of web posts. You can also follow along on twitter @foodrev or facebook Food Revolution Community.

Thanks to @MelissaHaskin for the photo!

Reflections and Shades Upon an Anniversary...

2012-05-07T05:05:06-07:00

Seven years ago, kitchenMage was born into a rather small and snuggly online food'verse. Quirky sites like Belly-Timber (now sadly in eternal hiatus) could tell the tale of the Mighty Cheese Warriors (cached) to a crowd that was sufficiently inside to get the joke and Food Blog S'cool meant we didn't need no stinkin' conventions.

In 2005, agents and publishers had not yet begun to demand that their writers start a weblog. This is fortunate for me since I might have ended up writing about nothing but esoteric technical topics, government compliance, training and other things that, as one reader said, "makes your brain hurt." I still do that work but I have also written a cookbook and having food as an additional focus has been sanity-saving.

Anniversaries are time for reflection and renewal and this one is true to form. kitchenMage is undergoing a serious makeover behind the scenes; one that has been near-eternal, largely because a few months ago I decided that I needed to rework the structure and content as opposed to simply the look and feel.

For a variety of reasons, the last few years has left me reading a lot more than writing and it's been interesting. The food'verse has been utterly transformed since way back in 2005 and not always for the better. While there are a lot of really great web sites, they are increasingly hard to find amongst the self-promotional noise and assemblages of food-like substances.

Just today a twitter conversation led me to discover that "pie inside cake" gets 13.5k hits on The Google. Fortunately, fewer than 500 are images. On the other hand, most involve frozen pies and cakes from a box. The more ridiculous the combination, the more likely it is to garner attention and page views. I have found myself sighing a lot as I read.

Before moving on, I'd like to share a few things I have learned about online food writing:

"Adapted" has an extremely flexible definition. So does "disclosure."
Contrary to twitter, every cookie recipe is not, if fact, awesome.
Claiming authenticity is often inversely related to being authentic.
One person's community is another person's cult.
Some people confuse fact-checkers, most of whom seem unemployed, with trolls.
Shame has died...of shame.
Twee rhymes with me. I do not think this is a coincidence.

All snark aside, as I was writing this, Van Jones came on the tv that is murmuring in the background to convey the best advice he was ever given. When he went to Yale Law School, his father said,

"There's two kinds of smart people. There's smart people who take very simple things and make them sound very complicated so they can enrich themselves and there are people who take very complicated things and make them sound simple to empower other people. I want you to be that kind of smart kid when you come back home."

This resonates deeply with me. When I have had to describe my core skill to people in a sentence it tends towards, "I excel at researching complex subjects and explaining them to to a wide range of audiences...sometimes with Powerpoint slides and tests."

Some of the future of kitchenMage is already burbling in a cauldron in my mage's tower. I can guarantee two things: there will be simple explanations of complex topics and no Powerpoint (you're welcome).

With any luck, there will also be lively and useful discussions. If you ever visited A Year in Bread, you probably remember the comment threads there with fondness--they were epic, with people testing recipes, reporting results and learning from each other. It's something that seems missing lately and I'm determined to bring it back.

On a personal note: Kevin Weeks, of Seriously Good and one of band of three from A Year in Bread died recently. While he would deny it, Kevin was one of the best people I have met. A fellow refugee from writing on technical topics, smart, funny and wise, his bright "Hey, girl" made me smile every time I heard it.

Kevin knew he was dying and had no illusions about his own mortality. He wrote of his impending death in a series he shared with friends. I'm sure he would forgive me for sharing this bit with you:

So let me confound Dylan Thomas and go gently and gracefully into that good night. Let me slip out the back door, unnoticed. The party's over and there's no need to make a production of it.

Hey. Dead is dead. Get over it.

That is pure Kevin, always bowing gracefully to the inevitable. Here, in my own private memorial, candles are lit, dough is rising, glass is raised. Hope it's not too much of a production, dude. Damn but I miss you…

Noisy Jelly: Magical Musical Game

2012-04-07T17:38:16-07:00

This thing looks like pure fun!

A couple of technomages in Europe have conjured up Noisy Jelly, this odd-looking device consisting of a box with electronic bits and gelled cones of agar-agar/salt solution. They describe it like this:

With this noisy chemistry lab, the gamer will create his own jelly with water and a few grams of agar agar powder. After added different color, the mix is then pour in the molds. 10 min later, the jelly shape can then be placed on the game board, and by touching the shape, the gamer will activate different sounds.

Technically, the game board is a capacitive sensor, and the variations of the shape and their salt concentration, the distance and the strength of the finger contact are detected and transform into an audio signal.

This object aims to demonstrate that electronic can have a new aesthetic, and be envisaged as a malleable material, which has to be manipulated and experimented.

Note : This project is a fully working prototype made with Arduino and Max/Msp, there are absolut no sound editing in the video...

Noisy Jelly press kit (from which I also extracted the photo)

I can see many of you nodding along with blank looks on your faces (me too at first) but here it is in action.

NOISY JELLY from Raphaël Pluvinage on Vimeo.

Is that the coolest thing you have seen lately?

From what I can see this is not likely to hit the store shelves any time soon but it is a fascinating and fun convergence of food and tech.

Creators:

Raphaël Pluvinage
Marianne Cauvard

More information:

Noisy Jelly press kit
Noisy Jelly flickr set

By the way, this bit of wonder came my way via the Very Short List newsletter which delivers a blessedly brief bit of "cultural gems from a different curator every day." I only signed up recently and find it more interesting than not, which is saying something these days.

Cupcake Epiphany!

2012-04-01T16:46:03-07:00

Photo courtesy Whitney in Chicago via Wiki.

As anyone who hangs out here knows, I have long had an antipathy for cupcakes. To my mind, cupcakes have represented what is most problematic with the world: Overpriced, tasteless, twee, empty calories mindlessly consumed instead of more usefull options. Not to mention that the sprouting of cupcake stores on every corner has not helped the US obesity crisis...well, except to help it grow.

Recent data sorting on my computer has turned up the draft of my The Manifesto
of a Cupcake Abolitionist. Last thing I did before shutting down my computer last night was move a copy of the Manifesto to my "Writing NOW" folder so I could find it.

Somewhere in the deep dark of the night, I awoke.

Spontaneously.

Lacking apparent reason for my wakedulness, and unable to return to the warm bliss of sleep, I wrapped up in a robe and dragged my sleep-rumpled self to the kitchen for tea and maybe third dinner or pre-first breakfast or whatever it is when you eat at 4am.

...and there it was.

Illuminated by a shard of moonlight that sliced through the dark and led my eye like a lighthouse guides a ship. A rainbow of sprinkles strewn on the perfect swirl of pink frosting atop the perfect little cake sized just for me.

A child's Platonic ideal of a cupcake reified.

For me.

As I gazed upon the treat, my eyes tracing an icing swirl until it disappeared in shadow before moving to the next frosted furrow, a feeling came over me. Starting at the hand that reached, unknowing, for the cupcake and sweeping over my body like an electrical shock, the feeling was...

Inenarrable.

As the frisson receded and I came to myself, alone in the kitchen with cupcake crumbs, I had an epiphany.

Cupcakes can save the world.

The One True Cake.

A cupcake is a tiny bit of Joy, small enough for the littlest child to carry with them.And who among us wouldn't be happier with a bit of Joy in our hand?

Cupcakes come in an unimaginable number of hues and cultural derivations and, with the exception of Cupcake Wars, there is seldom conflict between sects. In fact, you usually find cupcakes hanging out in interflavor groups, something which holds a lesson for the rest of us.

I want to go on, spilling more of the beauty of cupcakes onto the keyboard from my fingers, but I believe you have to find cupcakes in your own way. All I can do is show you the light and hope that you will realize that cupcakes represent all that is good and true about the world and perhaps even a path to our salvation as a species.

Besides, if Dorie can acheive World Peace with a Cookie, imagine what we could do with cupcakes.

I would write more but I find myself with a burning desire to move into the kitchen and bake.

I have an idea for Can't We All Just Get Along Cupcakes that I must go try.

Now it's your turn. Please inspire me.

What are you baking today?

Which burning social problem will it solve?

Gideon's Kitchen ~ Key & Peele

2012-03-28T02:42:30-07:00

This captures the emotional manipulation of cooking shows just about perfectly.

from Key & Peele

Photo Geotagging: Stop Giving Out Your Home Address on Twitter

2012-03-21T06:27:15-07:00

Welcome BlogHer readers!

How exciting to be on the front page of one of the top 100 US web sites. Congratulations on the recognition of your growth, BlogHer! I remember when you were a tiny fledgling thing...my how you've grown.

If you are new to kitchenMage, thanks for clicking by. Perhaps you would be interested in a sampling of my most popular recipes: Simple, flaky biscuit recipe (1k+ Pinterest Pins and often #1 on Google!), Small Batch Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Rolls, No-cook ice cream recipe (yes, with eggs. I also rant occasionally: Dear PETA, women are animals too... and I am sort of chuffed that I got into Wikipedia for a bit of humor Cooks Source Statement: Slightly Corrected.

Um, see that ad on the top of the sidebars? I wrote a cookbook Picture Yourself Cooking With Your Kids—step-by-step photos of recipes using real food, a Cook's Primer that includes lots of food for thought, and loads of tips on getting your kids into the kitchen with you. (Enough self-promotion, on with the post...)

Updated 3.22.2012 Sometime in the last twenty-four hours, between when this was posted and this morning, the Instagram maps I discuss have disappeared. Instagram is oddly quiet, too. I have inquiries out and will update you when I know something but in the meantime I am feeling all internet powerful and stuff...

photo courtesy Darren Wittko

“Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.” Walt Disney

Walt died in 1966, years before the guys who invented Twitter were born, yet one look at a twitter stream will show you that Walt's words are still true today.

Twitter handles a staggering 22.5 million photos a day, according to twitter founder Ev Stone, about 25% of the 90 million total daily tweets. Media Bistro cites over 58 million photos were shared on Twitter in December 2011.

I know that those two statistics don't exactly add up but to be honest, statistics about twitter vary widely enough to make me doubt the specifics of all of them. My guess is that if I bothered to dig, Ev's numbers would reflect retweets while the second number counts photos, not tweets. In any case, the numbers are huge and that's somewhat beside the point.

Which is: What exactly are you sharing with the world when you tweet a photo?

My twitterstream is full of photos with food, kids, gardens and cats, many of them shot in someone's home on their cell-phone and uploaded with a click or two. This is but one of many reasons why I love technology. theKid can take a picture while she's ice skating and I can see it before she has her skates off. What's not to love?

Looking at one of those picture on Instagr.am recently, I noticed that there was a map on the page. This was a static map, so you only see a marker in a general location: Seattle, little north of Chicago, or in this case, somewhere in Florida.

There are also live Google maps on some photos. These maps allow zooming in to a much more exact location. The choice to use that style of map and tell the world exactly where you are seems questionable in most circumstances, public spaces like Disney World being the possible exception. Most people, wisely, choose to use the static map when shooting in locations less public than that.

The maps that show up on photo services like flickr and Instgr.am use Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates to know where to center the map. These coordinates, which are determined using satellite and/or cell phone towers, are stored in the EXIF data of photographs that are taken with smartphones (and some newer cameras) to identify where the photo was taken. How well this "geotagging" works differs based on a number of technical details such as where you are, who your cell phone service is with, the weather, whether your device is talking to a sattleite or cell towers, and the mood of the universe. As a result the GPS coordinates attached to a given photo may be off by 50-100 meters/yards or they may be dead on. (photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

The static map seems innocuous, though, providing a general idea of where you are without exposing too much personal data. This has made it popular with people who want to balance the public persona they use for work or blogging with a little bit of privacy...something which is becoming increasingly difficult.

From how location works in Instagram, which describes their static map:

When you view the webpage for a photo taken with location on, a map will display where the photo was taken, like this: http://instagr.am/p/DVJ79/ (On the 22nd, the map on the linked page also disappeared. In fact, this is damned near the only evidence I can find that those maps ever existed since Google doesn't cache Instagr.am images. It's all very Twilight Zone. If my friends start "forgetting" that they saw the actual maps I am leaving town!)

Staring at the static map, something bothered me. I am a geek and I know they had to generate the map somehow. Meaning they had to have the same GPS coordinates that the dynamic map uses at some point in the process of building the web page.

Turning the likely map generation process over in my head, I right-clicked on the Instagr.am page and selected View Page Source from the context menu. Without looking at the screen, I did a quick search and when I looked up I was staring at GPS coordinates. Interesting.

I plugged those numbers into Google maps to see exactly what it would show me. A home address. No wait, not A home address. THE home address. The correct home address of the person who took the picture.

I know, right? But wait, there's more...

While I was poking around for this article—a process that made me feel all skeevy and in need of a shower—I found one food blogger who shoots a lot of food at home. One photo of was sort of dark, clearly taken inside the house. The next photo, taken of the same dish a few minutes later, was filled with this glorious late afternoon light, obviously not taken in the same place. Comparing the GPS data on the two photos, I determined that the first photo was taken inside the house, towards the north side which has a bunch of tall trees around it—hence the dreadful light. Second photo was taken in the front yard on a little red table which was dead center of the photograph.

Finding a photo that demonstrated this without actually being horribly invasive myself was not easy. I ended up with a photo of the Walt and Mickey statue and which has the static map.

View 28.418600, -81.581200 in a larger map

This map shows the location of the photographer who took the photo (center bottom—28.4186,-81.5812) according to the map on their flickr page. It also shows the GPS coordinates underlying the static map displayed on the Instagr.am page (up and to the right a bit—28.419,-81.581). The two spots are perhaps 150 feet apart. In the suburbs, that may mean it points to your neighbor's house; out here in the country where "lots" are big, it's pretty much dead on.

I should note that this is how it works on Instagr.am, not necessarily everywhere. But without digging into a dozen sites for how they deal with this now and tracking how they change it in the future, you have to consider the general question of broadcasting your location.

Right about now, I bet you have one question: How the hell do I turn that off?

How to turn off photo geotagging

The exact steps you need to take to turn off location services vary by device (phone, camera, etc.) and web site (twitter, instagr.am, ad so on). In general, you need to look at the following things:

Phone—GPS/Location services are used for navigation and a number of smart phone functions so you may not want to turn them off entirely. If you seldom need directions, though, it will shortcut some of these steps and as a bonus, save on your battery use.
Applications—Most phones will let you turn off location services for individual application so check the settings for your twitter and photo applications. If you are posting from a computer, check each of the applications you use to post photos and tweets.
Twitter—These settings control both tweets and photos uploaded directly to twitter. About the tweet location feature includes how to purge all location data.
Instagram—Here is an overview of how location works on instagram and instruction for how to turn location on or off. Unfortunately the only way to remove the location from an existing image is to delete the photo.
flickr—How flickr uses geotagging is explained in The Map. To edit the location information or other settings on a photo, double-click it in Organizr then click the Location tab to access privacy settings and location information. You can also set up a "geofence" around areas (like your house) that excludes them from displaying geotagging information. (thanks to Elaine Nelson for the last tip.)

I could not find information on changing geotagging settings for Twitpic, Yfrog or Lockr. If you use one of these services and find out how, please let me know so I can add it.

Vegetables: A song (chomp chomp)

2012-03-16T06:48:22-07:00

Just the other day I was thinking, there are not enough songs about food, especially healthy food. The next evening, over a cup of tea, the Keepers of one of my favorite Happy Places said "You have to hear our latest song!"

Ask and you shall receive...

Vegetables (Beach Boys) presented here by Sunrise and Jessica Fletcher. Perhaps the only song with vegetables being eaten as percussive instrument—Paul McCartney sat in on celery on the original...how cool is that?

Apologies in advance for the earworm but it is worth it.