what is it, with food marketing strategies, that use the food itself, by pretending that it is alive and to get it to talk in ads. I find nothing objectionable in Leprechauns or tigers trying to sell cereal, there noted salespeople. Even a goat, telling us about the merits of a chicken sandwich, may seem a little odd, but it still works, there are some that do not, lets go through them.

The problem lies with foods that jump out of fridges in to batter, the chocolate sweets that jump in to your mouth. This is the kind of stuff I am talking about Partially Clips strip. Anyone who has read, restaurant at the end of the universe, will be familiar with the dish, who has to do a sales pitch,and recommends itself as very tender,and who can forget Charlton Heston proudly proclaiming the contents of Soylent Green?

In the world of food advertising there are a few real gems, that stand out, check out this funny advertisement from Hostess, the pie and pastry folk.

Even aside from the “I am tasty so you should eat versions of me” factor, let’s look at the naming scheme: Happy Ho ho? Twinkie the Kid? It is no wonder that they are no longer on TV. Ahh the innocence of past times.

They are still at it though, nowadays.What about those Frosted Mini-Wheats , that are currently on TV, famous for being providers of nutritious foods and energy and minerals to our children.

The greatest proponent of the talking vegetable, is the M&M'S company. They have always used talking advertisers, and given that M&M's are so tasty, it often works. I just feel that you don't want to eat something that has a name, it is like eating pork, after babe. Sales in America collapsed. I had a pork chop during the film, and it didn't bother me one bit.

Some times it is full on and a bit raunchy.

While other times, you go wtf.

food adverisements, food marketing, marketing food, masterfoods advertising, m&M'S

Brian J. Geiger / CC BY 3.0

Do you remember when the first rangers came in, and they had temperature gauges in the door, that were a great revolution, then their was home food scanners, kitchen computers and so forth. They were all in answer to the need of being able to understand and follow the temperature of your food while it is cooking, and to make sure that the heat is permeating throughout. It was the difference between a large risk of food poisoning, of food going bad, of being cooked or overcooked.

I have looked at the topic of temperature and monitoring it before, but I never found the right sensors to use. I have been playing around with food sensors, and the computer interfaces.

I have been lucky enough to read a post by the Turkey tracker, who has come with a great way for tracking these temperatures. It has live casting temperature updates fora turkey, the Smoker and the outside environment. It is a very advanced blog as well, with videos, and lots of gadgets. The people that are listed behind this project are- Robin Parker, Michael Weinberg, and Chris Chen. A tip of the cap to you good sirs.

The blog goes in to the description of the high end thermometers that they have used, the temperature controls, and interfaces, and the fascinating separate probes. They have flickr pictures and all that as well.

They are looking at making the code open source, and making different variations of it. So I will wait till then.

via Make.

home temperatures, cooking thermometers, making a kitchen computer, thermometer food sensors

Brian J. Geiger / CC BY 3.0

I am a great believer in creating and making things that are not part of the usual items, not like the carrots. There can be now doubt that the industrial packaged and treated food that we buy are a pale imitation of freshly grown food. So when I came across this plan on how to make your own root beer.

There is a great difference between the industrialized root beer, and home made beer, so I was eager to give it a go myself, it is on the to do list this summer, during my vacations (presuming that I am not on a long term vacation because my employer is gone, who knows). There is a wonderful blog on brewing and preparing root beer at RS Brewing’s blog, the Champagne of Blogs has a detailed step-by-step of how to make your own root beer. Woo!

The wonderful thing about their approach, is that they do not use a pre-made syrup, but rather use water, flavour it and carbonate it, as it would traditionally be done. Although having said that it does use yeast, so it isn't fully old school ways of making the beer. There are some great comments by people that have experimented around, and you will see some good ideas on adding yeast to your beer.

Once you can do this, it is very easy to make any other fruit drinks or pops that you want to.

via Make.

home made root beer, is wonderful and taste like traditional root beer should. Root beer recipes that are root beer homemade kits

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Brian J. Geiger / CC BY 3.0

I have mentioned this to all my friends, on how to make faster toast, I suppose that a lot of people are thinking, well Toast is fairly fast as is, it is not like it's cooking a turkey for thanksgiving. Well do you know what, if you are doing toast and scrambled eggs, it can be a head wreck, if you are gettintg your scrambled eggs, and the toast is getting left till the last moment, because you want to keep an eye it.
So what it it, a new type of bread, a fantastic toast maker

The secret to a lightning-fast toast is to use brioche. That’s right, brioche. As you do not have to butter it, Brioche has lots of butter in it already, so it goes on very easy, there are so many different varieties, some with herbs, that you can add lots of toppings with one spread of a knife. No buttery mess, and then looking at the butter,and it is all bread crumbs..

toasters, toast, toast machines, machines toaster, toasting bread, toast for breakfast

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Brian J. Geiger / CC BY 3.0

After eating out at a French restaurtant in Boston, recently, I was intrigued by some of the flavours and herbs used. Soo i set out to make and replicate the taste of tarragon and sauce that I had enjoyed so much. It is not that this is an unusual combinmation, or that it is a challenge. It is just that I was using some Good Eats baked macaroni and cheese and I wanted to make it a bit sexier, anything thing to make Mac and cheese that bit more unusual. The tarragon adds a subltle sweet under tone to the dish, it turns a regular Mac and cheese in to an exotic dish.

Ingredients:

* ½ lb. elbow macaroni
* 4 tablespoons butter
* 4 tablespoons flour
* 1 tablespoon powdered mustard
* 1 tablespoon garlic powder
* 3 cups milk
* ½ cup yellow onion, diced
* ½ teaspoon Tarragon, Fresh or Dried
* 1 large egg
* 6 ounces extra sharp cheddar, shredded
* 10 ounces colby, shredded
* 1 teaspoon kosher salt
* Fresh black pepper

Topping:

* 3 tablespoons butter
* 1 cup panko bread crumbs

Directions:
Oven to 350°F.*

Cook your pasta, and take it out before you normally would, leave a little bite in it, as it is going to be cooking some more after coming off the boil.

Mix the melted butter and the crumbs in together, and set them aside.

Take the 3 tablespoons of butter and melt in a large sauce pan.Place the onions in on top, and sweat them. Add the flour, in and mix it in, keeping mixing it still the the flour starts to brown. Pour in the milk, herbs, spices, and salt. Keep just under boiling temperature for about ten minutes. Stirring occasionally.

Crack open the egg, and place in to a small bowl, scoop out several spoons of the Bechamel so as to temper the egg. Once that has been mixed throughouly and then add in to the sauce. Stir in 2/3 of the cheeseFold the Maccaroni in to the sauce and make sure that all of the pasta are covered, pour in to a baking tray, place the rest of the cheese on top, and then take the buttered bread crumbs, and place on
Cover with the rest of the cheese and cover that with the buttery bread crumbs/

PLace in to the oven for approximately 30 minutes, until the bread crumbs are golden brown and looking delicious. Enjoy, it is a real treat. Macaroni and cheese, the simplest of dishes, but what a great one.

(Serves 6)

Tips:

Select a quality cheddar cheese.While any cheese can be used, the cheddar needs to be strong, so that its flavour remaind, and imparts its flavours in to the dish. So you can use ther shredding disk of the blender, otherwise a hand grater will do as well.

You don't really have to preheat the oven, modern over are so reliable in reaching and maintainging their temperature quickly and hold it there, unlike ovens years ago, that were maybe fire fed via a range, and you allowed the temperature to settle. So you can go straight for it.

Macaroni and cheese, cheese Macaroni, kraft food, kraft macaroni and cheese, making macaroni, cooking with tarragon

Brian J. Geiger / CC BY 3.0

For a whole host of reasons and that I had recently prepared chilli powder, I had lots of caraway seed left over, that I was wondering what to do with them. I love trying out new desserts and thinking outside the box, when it comes to cooking, so I decided to make a caraway Cocoa chilli. That is going to get the taste buds talking. While preparing the Mole, there was a lot of experimenting and trying to balance out the proportions, which was a bit difficult. It is hard to take out chilli powder out of a bowl, after you have mixed everything.


The blender was looking like a concrete mixer, packed to the top, and churning away through, dried chillis and caraway, its dear little engine, revving up like mad.

I went and got the beer, have a selection of Belgian beers that I got in New York. My God, the Belgians know how to make beer, their is hundred upon hundreds of different beers in the little country, that could each be an entry for the greatest beer in the world.

I could certainly taste the caraway, in the chilli, and felt that it added a sharp taste to the Chocolate Chilli mix, and that they added a wonderful contrast to the chocolate.

Ingredients:
Chilli Powder
4.7 oz. Cumin Seeds, whole, toasted
3.2 oz. Caraway Seeds, whole, toasted
2.5 oz. New Mexico Chile, seeded and cut lengthwise into 1-inch wide strips
2.5 oz. Guajillo Chile, seeded and cut lengthwise into 1-inch wide strips
7 oz. Pajillo Chile, seeded and cut lengthwise into 1-inch wide strips
1.0 oz. Chipotle Grande Chile, seeded and cut lengthwise into 1-inch wide strips
.5 oz. Garlic Powder
.5 oz. Cumin Powder
2.4 oz. Cocoa Powder, Unsweetened
Chilli
750 ml Beer
30 oz. Tomato Sauce
2 oz. Cocoa Powder, Unsweetened
½ cup Chilli Powder
½ cup Masa
2 lb. Lamb, 1″ Cubes
1 lb. Beef Chuck, 1″ Cubes
¼ cup Vegetable oil
4 medium shallots, sliced
Salt, To taste
Topping it all off with Crème Fraiche

Directions:

For the chili powder: Toast the Chili and the seeds in a pan, that they are lightly toasted (dry pan), and let them cool. Take the chillies and process them through the blender, in portions, till they are all done. Add the other powders to the freshly ground chilli powder and mix them together.

For the chilli: Take the meat and put it in with half of the vegetable oil, so that all pieces are coated in the oil. Sprinkle the salt on. Place the pieces in a very hot Dutch oven, so as to brown each side, and to sear the juices in.
Either in a separate pan or letting the Dutch oven cool a bit, sofrito the shallots.
Pour the beer into the Dutch oven, turn up to high, and deglaze the pan. Add the other ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer, cover, and cook for 1-1.5 hours.
Season with salt.
Top with the crème fraiche.
This recipe will make a lot of chilli, so if you aren’t going to store it, it maybe an idea to get our some old jars, and put your chilli in to storage.
The beer I used was Blue Label Chimay Trappist Beer, it has been voted the best beer in the world in 2006. But, whatever beer that you have will do.
This is not a proper mole. I know this because I really don’t know how to make a mole, but I know it’s a sauce with chocolate, and so I called it a mole. I believe a proper mole has more fat in it.

Chocolate sauce, sauces, dessert, making chocolate desserts, chocolate treats

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Brian J. Geiger / CC BY 3.0

· This post is being posted under creative commons license and is based on info from the food geek. These are my party cookies, they are a stable feature of any gathering that I have, they taste great, are quick and easy to make, and they are unusual enough that they stick in people’s minds. The recipe is really simple, and is a good one for you to do with kids, if you want to teach your children how to cook. I have changed one or two things from the original recipe, as there were something’s that were just really hard to get, which goes against the simple pleasure of a cookie. Where would one ever get Pink Himalayan salt crystals, so I used Fleur de Sel instead.

The cookies are based on a recipe for Vanilla Wafers in the “Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Baking”. You can use sugar crystals for the topping as well, if you are not a fan of salt, ort have to cut back on salt due to high blood pressure. The idea of salt in the cookies is that it reinforces the sweet vanilla of the cookies, this is a really unique taste sensation, and makes these cookies a real treat.

So this recipe is for 60 cookies approximately, which should be enough cookies for 2 people,J. Think I am joking, once you start eating these they are like a box of Pringles, you’ll clear the cookie jar in one sitting. I f you have some self discipline, and then you can also freeze some of the cookie dough for later use. The dough last fairly well, and you should not find too much difference between them and fresh baked cookies.

250g butter
1/4 tsp salt (Salted butter can replace the need for this)
125g sugar
2 large egg yolks
1 tbsp vanilla extract
315g plain flour
Add the butter, sale and sugar, and meat in to a thick, well mixed paste.
Blend at a low speed, the eggs and Vanilla
Add flour and mix until a dough forms.

Put the dough that you need aside, and place the rest in to a log shape, and in to a freezer bag, and freeze straight away.
Roll the dough in to a log shape, the size will equal your cookie width, and cut about ¼ inch thick, sprinkle some sugar on top, and bake at approx 180 degrees for 15 minutes. Leave them to cool on a tray for 5 minutes after you take them out of the oven.

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. REF: The food geek