Love this view of Houston.

A post shared by monicayoo (@monicayoo) on Jul 16, 2017 at 6:25pm PDT

I need to take the drone out more often!

I like to experiment in the kitchen and so naturally, I’ve done my fair share of attempting to make the perfect steak. Sadly to fail every time. I found it to be disappointing and it just never quite hit the spot. After testing out different pans, oils, temperatures, and all that I finally decided to leave steak to the steakhouses around town. That is, until I discovered sous vide.

Sous v-what?? It sounds intimidating, but it’s not at all. Pronounced like “sue veed,” it’s a method of cooking where you place food in a plastic bag and submerge it in a water bath. There is a device (immersion circulator) that sets and controls the water at a specific temperature to cook your food evenly all the way through, inside and out, without overcooking it.

Let’s take steak, as an example. If you cook it at 129 degrees, you’ll have a perfect medium rare in about an hour, assuming the steak is about 1 inch thick. Yes, it takes a bit longer than if you were to grill it or some other traditional method, but you eliminate the risk of overcooking it. Key word – eliminate. Once your steaks are done, take them out of the bag and give them a quick sear on both sides. This is to caramelize the exterior and give it a nice crust, not to cook it more. The result? PERFECTION.

Another great benefit of sous vide is that you don’t even have to time it precisely.  Once your food is ready, you don’t have to immediately take it out of the water bath. You have some buffer time to leave it in there, depending on what you’re cooking. With steak, its about an hour or two and you don’t want to go longer than that because when it’s in the water bath for longer than that, the proteins will start to break down and the texture will get weird. So, if you’re making some sides like mashed potatoes and asparagus, and the timer goes off that the steak is ready, it’s cool. Finish up on what you’re doing and get to your steaks when you can. There’s no need to immediately drop what you’re doing to pull your steak out of the water. I love this about sous vide cooking because you don’t have to hover over your food and time everything precisely. It’s the most relaxed way of cooking that yields the best and consistent results!

My two favorite things I’ve made so far? Steak and eggs. =D

Tonight’s dinner. Sous vide New York strip steak and mushrooms. Medium rare all the way through…mmmm!! #steak #sousvidesteak #cookwithjoule #mediumrare #dinner

A post shared by monicayoo (@monicayoo) on Apr 25, 2017 at 6:03pm PDT

At it again…this time with eggs! They came out velvety smooth. #eggsellent #cookwithjoule #eggs #sousvideegg

A post shared by monicayoo (@monicayoo) on Jan 18, 2017 at 4:27pm PST

If you’re hiking somewhere breathtaking, wanting to take a cool group shot, or wanting to take a neat aerial video, I can totally see this coming in handy.

The video below covers how the culinary world merged with computers to create wildly creative dishes that haven’t been made before. If anyone needs a taste tester for something like this, let me know. =)

The Ted talk below is a great overview of IoT and how it’s impacting various industries.

“In everything that is to excite a lively convulsive laugh there must be something absurd… Laughter is an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing.”

– Immanuel Kant

I don’t want to be sold to when I walk into a store. The job is to be a brilliant brand ambassador. Don’t sell! No! Because that’s a turn-off. Build an amazing brand experience, and then it will just naturally happen.

– Angela Ahrendts

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

-Winston Churchill

Last week, a company called Goldie Blox launched a video on Youtube which has hit a sensational 8.1 million hits thus far. It features the song “Girls” by the Beastie Boys, but with a female empowerment twist.  The video takes you on a journey of the ingenious princess machine made of pink and other pastel colored pieces. It’s quite the contraption.

This video is fun, cute, and very effective. It’s a win all the way around.

Here are the lyrics:

Girls to build the spaceship,
Girls to code the new app,
Girls to grow up knowing
they can engineer that.Girls.
That’s all we really need is Girls.
To bring us up to speed it’s Girls.
Our opportunity is Girls.
Don’t underestimate Girls.

Update:
On November 26, 2013, Goldie Blox pulled the video off Youtube with the Beastie Boys song due to a copyright infringement legal dispute. They’ve replaced the video with a new version featuring a generic song and no song lyrics. It’s just not the same.