It's been awhile!

Still cooking, photographing, uploading on flickr.  More to work with when I finally get the blog organized.  I've opened a Tumblr account, and it will fit into the overall picture somewhere, I suppose.  The news:  I've got a series of "Vegan Lent" meals going, not particularly organized, just learning as I go.  TVP turns out to have its uses though I must say it doesn't agree with me too well.  Beans don't.  I'm a hunter-gatherer.

Learning by Doing

Interacting more now with the other foodies.  Learning what builds connections.  What brings flickr folk to a blog (nothing)...

Update:  here it is the 12th of November.  How to sort out this system is becoming more clear.  But I'm not much closer to actually doing it! 

Stats creeping upward

I have a much better understanding of priorities now than I had 6 months ago.  It comes from experience... I notice what I do with respect to the work of others, and am learning to expect the same behavior from the people I want to reach.

This blog will never fly until I clear it of ads.  It's an interesting experiment, but probably should not be attempted until the blog itself is mature.  I need to concentrate on building an inviting and easily navigable publication. 

Home-grown food

We have edibles!  Cabbage leaves, lettuce, herbs... there is a group, "Container farming."  I've decided to put my cabbage pics on Baker's Dozen and then to add them to that group.

Re-reading and pleased!

I just looked at the flickr profile for the first time in months, dreading what I would find... and whaddya know, I think it's right!  So it stays.

So much, but so much

There already is so much content here, lots of it pretty good, for me to work with, but so much to do to convert it all to a form that will bring and hold attention.  Creating is much easier (for me) than marketing!  And stressful, not rewarding.  So I want to avoid it.

Update:  The real problem is knowing that I haven't yet understood where I am going with it.  I approach that blessed state but all too slowly!  Until then, I don't really want followers.

Experiment

Having learned some new (to me) tricks for inserting otherwise hidden photos into comments, I am going to try a new approach to putting recipes on flickr.  Stay tuned!

Update:  4 done, Umpteen to go.  Still not clear how it's going to evolve and to mesh with the blog, here.  Each recipe with photos on flickr is reduced to one Pic, with all others in a line as the first comment, and none available if clicked on.  Then that one photo I am adding to groups.

I really need better photographs.  I suppose that was always the plan: first build content, then go back, re-cook some of the recipes and try for better pictures.  The one showing the completed dish, in particular, needs to be fabulous!

Favorites

Becoming "connected" on flickr is a challenge for me.  So far, what seems to work is to find large topic-related groups ("I Ate This") and then to go through the pool slowly, favoriting the best ones, and dipping into the photostream of the likeliest.  If I see a large percentage of pics that interest me I make that person a contact. (They often reciprocate.)  Then I check the home page every day or so to see what all the contacts have posted - which generates new favorites.  Photos with a lot of hits generally belong to active groups, so looking at their group lists directs me to new groups to join.

Meanwhile our own 1000 pics have collected hits all on their own in the several months they've been there.  I need to look at those for clues to what works best.

Where has the time gone??

Cooking isn't the number one summertime activity, I suppose.

  **** Announcing ****

Phase 2 of the Baker's Dozen Project.  Last year was Do It And Document It year.  Now it's time to organize, to consolidate, to complete, to re-do where needed, and to edit.  Ideally we'll finish the year with no more than we have already, but much, much better.  Target date to begin is first day after Daylight Savings Time.

Also, it is high time to complete the Baker's Dozen Challenge and then to move on to a new challenge.

Another Not-So-Fun Thing

For more than 2 weeks, an entire set of my flickr photographs - the ones illustrating "Marinated chicken thighs on a George Foreman Grill" have been racking up hits, the same number for each photograph, with no hits either to the set itself or to the recipe on this blog.  I cannot discover who is using them or on what site those photographs are in rotation.  Some search term in google graphics that brings all of them up?  Someone, somewhere, using my pics to illustrate their blog?  A store selling George Foreman Grills which has taken my pics and many others to show in a looping display?  I decided to stop feeling ripped off and to view it instead as a free marketing opportunity, so I edited all the photos in "picnik" so now they all have the URL for this blog clearly visible.  Nothing changed.  The looping goes on.

The Not-So-Fun Stuff

These last few weeks have seen me less in the kitchen and more at the computer, organizing sets of photos on flickr.com and then tying them in with recipes on this and on two other blogs.  Last night and today I uploaded photographs of most kitchen activities since at least a week ago!  All of that remains to be blogged.

After spending many hours building an amazon.com "a-store" in which you can see and read about some of the less usual food items and also some of the more-useful cooking tools we've talked about, I - we all - had the sudden news that amazon has shut down everyone who legally resides in Illinois. (It's a face-off over collecting sales taxes, and is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.) That's a frustration, but my good friend Alice has come to the rescue.  She copied over my amazon items to her store "Shopper's Buzz" to which we can link... her web activities include some activist and information sites about "Colony Collapse Disorder" which is affecting honeybees worldwide.  Her store includes all sorts of bee things, some of which look extremely delicious!  You can click through to to the amazon store from here:  The Shopper's Buzz. There's a large link under the bee picture.  Our virtual corner in the bee store already includes "hard to find foods" and "kitchen collection" and will probably contain a few books, eventually.  You can get to the main amazon.com page just by clicking on the amazon logo.  Alice promises that if we actually send enough business to amazon to get a check from them, she'll be sure we have a big party! :-)  That works for me.

Pickle Trick

Buy ordinary inexpensive Polish dills, and when you get them home,
 add several cloves of garlic and some red pepper to the jar. In a few 
days you will have much better pickles!

Egg Trick

My egg slicer has disappeared. I'm back to dicing eggs in the palm 
of my hand. It's a good way to dice an egg though! I learned it from the late Bertha Adams Poynor of Leeds, Alabama.

Just hold 
the peeled egg in the palm of your hand and slice it first this way,  
then that way, and finally the other way.

Borrrr-ing!

So if anybody is actually following this blog as a blog, you may be wondering, why so many recipes?  Why so few jokes, puns, and riddles?  Well, I started documenting my kitchen adventures about 2 months ago, putting the results up on flickr, which was already familiar to me.  This blogging activity has been a learning curve... and now I'm struggling to get all the flickr sets into the blog.  Also, I don't know so many jokes, puns, and riddles.  Don't get out enough, I suppose.

Did you see this one, earlier?  Classic Chicken Soup Jokes

*What did the mayonnaise say to the icebox?

Flickring

Tonight I took some time to go through some food groups on flickr, commenting occasionally, and following links to recipe blogs. It was worthwhile for seeing how people generally do it. A bit daunting! I have a long way to go. But on the positive side, I do see that there is a niche for what I am doing, particularly on the "Little Soups" blog. Meanwhile, I have seen blogs that look very professional, ditto the photography, ditto the writing, ditto the cooking. This is going to be a stretch.

Prioritizing

I think "Little Soups" will be ready for a general unveiling before "Baker's Dozen". The purpose is more restricted, so I am closer to getting there. I gave it a "look" yesterday - would like to replace the stock background graphic with something of my own, but otherwise it seems mostly fine. Today I went by Pier One for some more little bowls and placemats.

Surprise Sauce

Being too sleepy to care any more, I poured the browned carne picada into a 2-quart crockpot, added a large can of crushed tomatoes and some stray veggie things which happened to be nearby and went to sleep.  Later I woke up to the most wonderful aroma!  What had gone into the pot were one carrot and two large slices of lemon, and now lemon scent is all over the house.  I've added 1 tsp salt and 1 Tb demerara sugar, and am watching it - turn it off before it gets hot enough to kill the good flavors, make a pot of pasta, add some cilantro and call it food.  Rice might be a better match than spaghetti though.  I need to think about that.

Not Chicken

We are moving on from chicken for now... lots of stock frozen in cubes to experiment with little soups, but mostly we are looking forward to beef or beans or just anything so long as it isn't chicken.

Someone I know tweeted a link to a fellow demonstrating student food.  I think later I'll do a segment on surviving at school on a budget.  A challenge, since dorm rules often prohibit cooking appliances.  Anyway, here's what the students eat in Surrey.  And there are more cooking videos in the set, along with other student productions.

Little Soups project and the 13 ingredients

The Little Soups project is not constrained to use only the 13 ingredients, but I predict that 95 percent of what I do use will come from that list.

I will try to show gluten-free alternatives in each case, but wheat is not off the table, at least for pasta and for croutons, and for good bread.

And one of our Little Soups categories will feature seafood.

This is all very ambitious.

Flickr Pics

Each time I repeat a recipe it gets better, and meanwhile I'm taking more pictures.  So far, I've just shown them all, documenting the variations.  Soon I'll want to consolidate, offering a fail-safe recipe and illustrating with the best photographs from any of several repeats in the kitchen.  That's what will migrate over to the blog, eventually: well tested, well documented recipes for simple and delicious meals made from our limited list of ingredients.