Discolor Online

Kate's substitute bus driver failed to pick her up for the second day in a row and I had to drive her to school this morning. We were significantly late because I had a conference call scheduled for exactly when she should have been arriving at school to be on time.

Pramas and I drove together so we could talk over the conference call. We stopped at the Columbia City Bakery for americanos and baked goods. We also made a stop at the bank before heading to Queen Anne.

I stopped at Arvey for shipping supplies, where the older gentleman who works there was keyed up about something and kept muttering "Oh no, don't do this to me, no no no," and calling me "precious" and "sweetheart" and thanking me profusely for waiting. He's a nice old guy and I love going in there and letting him check me out so it was no trouble at all to wait patiently while he sorted out his morning crisis. I hope his day went better.

The afternoon was filled with mail orders and invoicing. I put together over 40 invoices today, and a couple of bins of mail.

Tonight was, in theory, game night. Only Evan could join us but I cooked anyway. We had an improvised white bean and chicken soup in homemade fennel broth that I whipped up in the pressure cooker. Adding chicken to the fennel broth adds a bit too much chicken flavor (and takes away from the subtle-but-luscious fennel flavor of the unadulterated broth) but everyone seemed to like it okay anyway.

We even busted out with Thurn und Taxis and got a whole game in. I'd never played before but I won the night's game so I guess I picked it up successfully. A couple glasses of wine, a little chocolate, some fresh strawberries, and a new board game on a warm spring night! Pretty successful if you ask me.

Tomorrow we have doctor appointments to attend, plus I'm intending to get up for 6:30am yoga. I also have to drive Kate up to drop her off for the weekend with her dad. We have a busy weekend planned. Here's hoping I feel up to everything.

Labels: cooking, games, life

Doctors appointment at the crack of dawn tomorrow but today was all about the fennel broth.

Met with the nutritionist today. It's energizing to be told I'm doing the right things. She seems to find me amusing, she laughs a lot. "Oh Nicole!" she gasps, and writes things down. She asks about my recent cooking forays and I try to give her an idea of the sorts of things I've been successful with. I tell her about Super Natural Cooking, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, and A New Way to Cook. I tell her about soba noodles, tofu and vegetables... about homemade fennel broth, curry noodles, braised cabbage and smoked ham. "I've written a cookbook but nothing like this," she says, jotting, jotting. We laugh and joke for half the appointment. This talk invigorates me. I'm doing the right things, approved by a professional. She is looking forward to my restaurant recommendations from Vegas after GTS.

This afternoon Christine needed a ride home after an appointment at the PolyClinic. I caught a distinct vibe that she might also need some fennel broth so I whipped some up and brought it with me, then ran off to get Pramas and groceries and returned with provisions enough to make Coriander-Crusted Scallops in Fennel Broth. I improvised a bit with the recipe (the original calls for saffron noodles but I substituted a bed of sauteed spinach and roasted root vegetables) and bought but forgot to add the creme fraiche and chopped herbs but it was delicious anyway and we ate like royalty.

The recipe, as it appears in A New Way to Cook:

Coriander-Crusted Scallops in Fennel Broth

4 ounces saffron noodles (or tagliatelle or linguine)
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 cups fennel broth
1/3 cup coriander seeds
1 1/4 lb. sea scallops, rinsed and patted dry
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp sugar
1 Tbsp + 1 tsp creme fraiche
1/4 cup coarsely chopped mixed fresh herbs

If using noodles, boil in salted water until al dente, drain and run under cool water. Toss lightly with 1/2 tsp. oil to keep them from sticking together (this is where I wilted some spinach and roasted cubed parsnips, fresh fennel, carrots, sweet potatoes and a couple of mushrooms for good measure).

In a small saucepan bring the fennel broth to a boil and reduce to about a cup and a half to concentrate the flavor. Cover and keep warm over low heat.

In a small skillet, toast the coriander seeds over low heat until fragrant. Grind into a medium-fine powder with a grinder, blender, or mortar and pestle.

Sprinkle the scallops lightly on all sides with mixture of salt, cayenne, and sugar. Thoroughly coat the scallops in the coriander. Shake off excess.

Heat a large, nonstick skillet over medium heat until hot. Add 2 tsp of the oil to coat pan and heat for 30 seconds. Add scallops in a single layer without crowding in the pan (cook in two batches if necessary). Cook for about 2 minutes per side.

Stir the creme fraiche into the broth.

At this point I layered the veggies into shallow bowls, arranged the scallops on top, and topped the whole thing with the hot broth. I should have garnished with herbs, but I forgot both the herbs and the creme. It was just dandy anyway.

Labels: cooking, food, health, recipes

I'm desperately behind on updating my recipe pages because I'm also desperately behind on a bunch of stuff that is way more important. Still, I'm continuing to try new things. Earlier this week I made seared sea scallops with a side of the tabbouleh we made at Ray's and some broiled fennel with Parmesan and lime which was simple and really, really good. Last night it was shrimp and papaya salad over spinach (from Pacific Flavors) and tonight it was leftover salad plus a curry udon pot (from Super Natural Cooking). The udon pot was really quick to make and pretty delicious, though Kate objected because it contained flavor. She prefers her udon in an artificial chicken flavored salty broth. Will be eating that for lunch this week. Yum!

One of these days I'll get the recipes (and my various modifications) posted. Right now I'm struggling with some new medications that are knocking me for a loop, cutting into my already tight schedule. I absolutely had to take a nap this afternoon because I was so devastatingly tired, a side effect from the new medication that I started yesterday. On the good side, I got some much-needed sleep. On the bad side, I awoke feeling groggy and I lost two hours in the middle of the day where I'd hoped to be productive.

Kate's class play is over at least. Now it's just the distraction of getting her class trip to New York sorted out. The teacher swears he'll get me their itinerary tomorrow. As we leave in less than 30 days, I'm increasingly anxious about not having the details in place. I finally just had to make my own plane reservations because I couldn't stand not having that part sorted out less than 5 weeks from the travel day. Luckily I got a really good rate for us so it won't be any more expensive than flying with the group (and probably less).

Fingers crossed that I can make some progress on things this week without too many distractions, crises, doctor appointments or general wackiness.

Labels: cooking, food, life, sleep

Followed this recipe from Super Natural Cooking. Midway through prepping the ingredients, we got a call that we could pick up a package we've been waiting for at DHL but only for another 20 minutes. As the sole driver in the house, I took off to get the package and Pramas finished the dinner prep. I arrived home to a spicy, tangy blend of soba noodles, cucumber, tofu, green onion, cilantro and sesame seeds in a lemon-ginger-honey-rice vinegar-sesame oil dressing. Kind of a cold salad. Our family likes soft tofu better than fried so we skipped that step altogether. This is a great jumping off point for all sorts of permutations on the provided recipe. I would have enjoyed twice as much cucumber and could see adding other veggies or elements to the dressing easily.

Good food after a long day of running around and being "on" and stressed. I can't do anything tomorrow until I go to the nearest gas station and fill up, though, because I accidentally ran the poor PIF severely under the empty line tonight. Really glad I didn't run out of gas on the road or out in the dark and remote industrial park where the DHL office was!

Labels: cooking, food

Coming clean about my vast collection of too neglected cookbooks, I have to admit that poor Mark Bittman has been among the most neglected. For years I've had his cookbooks on my shelf. How to Cook Everything, The Minimalist Cooks Dinner, The Minimalist Cooks at Home. I received How to Cook Everything Vegetarian off my wish list this Christmas. Over the years I've browsed each book idly but cooked precious little. I've marked a single recipe (Fish Simmered in Spicy Soy Sauce) as "very good" but I can't tell you how many years ago it was that I tried it.

This is shameful behavior on my part because Bittman deserves better.

It was a little over a year ago that I started to reawaken to Bittman. I can trace the moment exactly: it was when every foodie blog and cooking site went absolutely nutso after his No Knead Bread in the New York Times. What really won me over to Bittman was when I started getting New York Times video content through TiVoCast. The Minimalist segments were right up my alley and Bittman's goofy, good-humored personality won me over immediately. It was the first time I'd seen or heard him instead of just reading him and that was the key.

He's recently started a blog at the New York Times website, Bitten which has quickly become one of my favorites. today's tip on parboiling brown rice in advance so you can use it in quick recipes later as you would white rice is a nifty trick. Though I don't shy from just taking the time brown rice needs not everyone has that luxury and so they miss out on whole grain specialty rices, which is a shame.

Once I've plowed through the list of recipes I want to try out of Super Natural Cooking and A New Way to Cook, Bittman's recipes are next on the list for trial. I may even screw up the courage to try the No Knead Bread (though my anti-bread aura is nearly as strong and infamous as my anti-technology aura).

Labels: cooking, food, recipes

This one is a real winner! I'm ashamed of myself that I've never done more than look through some of the pretty photographs in this book before now. Maybe if I'd read this glowing review in The Atlantic Monthly ...which it turns out I completely agree with, seven years late.

Yesterday I made a simple fennel stock from scratch from the recipe in this book. Glorious! It was hard not to just sit down and eat the broth as it was. I had something else in mind for the stock, though, and for dinner we moved on to the recipe for Beans and Wild Mushrooms in Fennel Broth. I used the pressure cooker to cook up some dried Great Northern beans from scratch instead of using canned, so I followed the recipe for Basic Cooked Beans from the book, and then combined my beans and broth with the remaining ingredients for the soup. I used oyster mushrooms because they were plentiful at the store but this soup would be incredible with something more like a morel instead. Chris, upon trying the soup, proclaimed that had he been served this soup in a fancy restaurant he would not have been disappointed.

Fennel and fish go well together so I used last night to hit my goal of having fish once a week and whipped up a recipe of Sesame Crusted Swordfish with Cilantro and Coconut Chutney, once again from A New Way to Cook. Simple, easy, and very yummy.

Another excellent bonus of this book is the author includes nutritional information for each recipe in an index, so I could quickly calculate the calories, protein, carbohydrates, fat and fiber of these dishes. I've been spoiled by having Cooking Light as my go-to source for recipes all these years and have been finding that I really want to have the nutritional breakdowns for the things I'm cooking at home. That information is not included in most cookbooks, so extra bonus points to Sally Schneider for figuring out and including the information in hers.

I expect I'll properly update my recipe pages over the weekend for my own reference. I am kicking myself because I made some excellent baked beans with kale at some point this winter (prepped the dish ahead and put it in the freezer for later use) and I've now forgotten where among my vast collection of cookbooks, magazines, and online resources I got the original recipe! Updating my recipe pages is one way for me to keep track and I've been terribly lax about it these last several months. No more!

Labels: cooking, food, recipes

Met with a nutritionist today. Wow, was that RIGHT up my alley. It was great to have my gut instincts validated by a professional who gave thumbs up to my recent food choices and was able to laugh at my enthusiasm when I blurted out things like "I already have that in the fridge!" or "I have a great recipe for that!" in response to her suggestions. Her selections of rubber foods to demonstrate portion sizes for everything from peanut butter to pork chops were a hoot. Hooray for nutrition therapy, that's what I say.

Am continuing to move my diet back to including many more vegetables. Now, I'm a former vegetarian and I have a broad palate and no fear of veggies or soy but I've also got a weakness for meat and cheese. I am, after all, a Midwestern girl at heart and the daughter of a hunter to boot. Trying to be a vegetarian in my dad's house meant a lot of iceberg lettuce. Blech.

Three more recent recipes, simple but different enough, both from the Kathleen Daelemans book that I've referred to before.

Oven-Roasted Carrots and Parsnips

1 pound peeled carrots, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 pound peeled parsnips, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Put vegetable chunks in a ziptop bag with the oil and shake to coat evenly. Pour vegetables onto a baking sheet in a single layer, salt and pepper to taste. Roast uncovered 25-35 minutes, stirring once halfway through, until vegetables are cooked through. My parsnips were softer than my carrots, so I would recommend judging doneness from the tenderness of the carrots first.


Fennel, Carrot, and Cranberry Salad

1/2 cup red wine vinegar
2 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 head fennel, cored and grated or finely julienned
2 carrots, peeled and grated or finely julienned
1/4 cup dried cranberries, cherries, or raisins
salt and pepper

In a small bowl, whisk together vinegar, honey and olive oil. Combine fennel, carrots, and cranberries in a medium bowl and toss with half the dressing. Refrigerate for at least four hours. Before serving, drain off any water given off by the fennel and re-dress with the remaining dressing. Season to taste, serve immediately. This salad was absolutely delicious and went great with a broiled herb-crusted tilapia fillet.
EDIT: That should be 1/4 cup dried cranberries, NOT 14 cups dried cranberries. Yikes!


Apple and Raw Beet Salad

1 tsp. grated ginger root
1 pound beets
1 large Granny Smith apple
3 Tbsp. sherry vinegar (I actually used 2 Tbsp raspberry vinegar and 1 Tbsp cider vinegar)
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/8 tsp. cracked black pepper
1 to 2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

Grate fresh ginger directly into a medium bowl (definitely use a microplane grater for this if you have one! It also works to press the ginger through a heavy duty garlic press if you have that instead). Grate beets and apple with a large-sized grater (I used my food processor for this but you could use a box grater just as easily). Toss until ginger is evenly distributed. Add vinegar, salt, pepper, and olive oil to the bowl and toss to coat evenly. Adjust seasonings if desired. Serve immediately or chilled.

Labels: cooking, diet, food, nutrition, recipes

Monday I had a minor procedure done at Virginia Mason and when dinner time rolled around, I did not feel up to being on my feet and cooking anything. I was also definitely not in the mood to drive (or ride the bus!) anywhere in the cold and damp. Luckily for me, my sweetie is a capable cook and stepped up to the plate.

It's undoubtedly a factor of my childhood poverty that drives me to keep my house ridiculously stocked with food. That tendency has served me well (like the summer when I was pregnant and my grad student husband didn't have a job... we lived on little but my stores got us a long way through what could have been an even more unpleasant situation) and came to my rescue again this week. Chris was able to pull from a selection of foods that I'd prepared in advance and chose some lean pork chops that had been frozen in a ginger-soy marinade. We had the spinach-pear salad with them and called it a good meal.

Tonight I was in the same frame of mind but for a different reason. After a week that involved a lot of stress and a lot of running around, today was Bed Day. I made a thermos of hot tea and took it to bed with me, where I watched my ancient VHS tape of Groundhog Day (from back in the days when you didn't have to watch commercials before the movie you just bought), read my Cooks Illustrated 2007 Annual, lounged, napped, and never got out of my jammies.

Pulling together a dinner from leftovers and what we had in the fridge, I sliced a couple of remaining pork chops and sauteed the strips, heated some leftover Black Japonica rice that I'd served this week with some sweet and sour tofu, dug out some whole wheat tortillas, shredded romaine, a little extra sharp cheddar and a jar of salsa to make a hearty and delicious meal. I wanted to make my favorite tomato, avocado, and preserved lemon salad but when I went to cut into the avocado it was gross so I improvised a tomato-hearts of palm salad with balsamic and lime instead. I was inordinately pleased with the dinner.

Lest I give the impression that everything is a success, I made an egg and vegetable dish for breakfast that took so long to prepare it turned into lunch. First I had to slice and grill (or roast) several slices of zucchini and eggplant. I had bottled roasted red peppers so I didn't do those from scratch, though they undoubtedly would have tasted far better. When the veggies were roasted, they were layered in a baking dish with a chopped mix of herbs between each layer (I used fresh parsley, oregano, and thyme) and four hollows made and then four eggs cracked into each hollow. The whole thing was topped with a little tomato sauce and grated Parmesan and baked. I was feeling pretty good about it (the directions for the recipe I was following said bake for 7-10 minutes until the yolks set) but my yolks absolutely would not set! I baked for 10 minutes. Nothing. Five minutes more, still not even close. I tried giving the whole thing a zap in the microwave and the yolks finally set. Once the dish was done, it was fine and all but pretty much not worth the work. As I said to Chris, it's no Eggs Beatrice (though to be fair, it doesn't have the better part of a stick of butter in it, either).

Labels: cooking, food, recipes

Visiting with a friend recently, he asked me what I'd been cooking. I realized that I my usual convention season cooking hiatus had extended itself through the holidays and was clinging on. I haven't been nearly my usual cooking self.

I'm turning that around and have been trying a bunch of new recipes. Here are a couple of easy, tasty salad recipes that we've given the thumbs up to:


Napa Cabbage Salad with Spicy Peanut Sauce
from Cooking Thin by Kathleen Daelemans

1 Tbsp sesame oil
3 Tbsp rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup light soy sauce
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp freshly grated ginger
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
8 cups thinly sliced napa cabbage
1 cup loosely packed, roughly chopped cilantro leaves (or, if you're Marc, sub in parsley)
3 scallions, thinly sliced
1 medium carrot, grated
1 cup toasted peanuts (I used low salt dry roasted) roughly chopped

Whisk together sesame oil, vinegar, soy sauce, and sugar until sugar dissolves. Add ginger and red pepper flakes. Set aside.

In a large bowl, toss together cabbaqge, cilantro, scallions, and carrot. Toss in peanuts. Toss all with dressing until evenly distributed.



Spinach & Pear Salad with Dijon Mustard Vinaigrette
from Seattle and King County Public Health

2 tablespoons water
1-1/2 tablespoons orange juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon honey
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 pears, cored and sliced lengthwise
8 cups torn fresh spinach
1/4 cup red onion, thinly sliced

In a small bowl, whisk together the water, vinegar, olive oil, honey, Dijon mustard, and black pepper. In large bowl, add the pear slices and 2 tablespoons of the vinaigrette and toss to coat. Add remaining dressing, spinach and onion and toss to coat

Labels: cooking, food, recipes

I'm feeling very loved this holiday as my friends and family have been very attentive, we've had plenty of time to spend together, we've talked on the phone or gotten cards from many many people. It's been lovely.

I was also completely spoiled with gifts this year as well. In addition to the already-blogged presents Chris replaced my very old (like "bought it cheap when I was barely out of my teens" level old) and thoroughly trashed bakeware with a glorious new heavy-duty set, some thoroughly awesome books, and a new pressure cooker.

My mom had a super heavy-duty pressure cooker when I was a kid but pressure cookers fell out of favor and weren't even really available when I was setting up my kitchen. In the last few years they've come back in style and there's a whole range of pressure cookers out there now, both stovetop and electric. R&C have one they've spoken highly of and I believe J&J have one as well. Chris got me a stovetop model, very similar to the version from my childhood. As I've never had the hardware, I also don't have too many pressure cooker recipes but R&C loaned me their pressure cooker recipe book.

I busted out the cooker for dinner tonight and put together a quick dinner of Spanish rice. It involved nothing more than chopping and cooking some onions and celery, then browning some Italian sausage, throwing the rest of the ingredients in and bringing it up to pressure. After about two minutes, when it was happily hissing away on the stove, the rest of the cooking time took a mere 6 minutes. Maybe 20 minutes from when I started chopping to when I started dishing up the finished meal. Additionally, Kate thought it was great and had two bowlfuls!

I definitely have to play around with it some more. I'm not sure if it's big enough to make portions for game night but it would certainly be perfect for whipping up some meaty main course for the guys if it is.

Labels: CHristmas, cooking, food

Spent all day working on holiday treats. Most of the recipes are out of books or magazines but I'll put them up on my recipe pages as warranted.

One that IS online is Kitchen Wench's Walnut, Honey & Espresso Caramels, photos of which she posted on Friday and I haven't been able to think about anything else since. They are every bit as good as the photos promise (and I even got them to come out alright despite discovering mid-boil that my candy thermometer was broken and useless). Highly recommended!

I also came away with:
Sweet-and-Spicy Pecans
Orange-spice Mixed Nuts (I used equal parts pecans, walnuts, whole almonds and hazelnuts)
Chocolate dipped pretzel rods
Lemon-Rosemary Cookies
Midnight Brownies (so called because they have pieces of Milky Way Midnight bars baked in)
Molasses refrigerator cookies

I didn't get around to the sharp cheddar and black pepper crackers I wanted to bake because I decided that I wanted roasted chicken for dinner. I butterflied it Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen style and roasted it to crisp, golden perfection over chunks of parsnip, carrot, potato, butternut squash and onion. I meant to treat myself to a glass of wine but I didn't get around to it and it's too late to enjoy one now.

Here's hoping for a good night's sleep like I had on Friday night. I feel like I could use it.

Labels: cooking, food

So Blue Ribbon Cooking School was fun. Robin was so thrilled she suggested we should do it every year! We had two instructors for the cooking portions, who I promptly dubbed "Chef Boot Camp" and Chef Laid Back." I ended up in Chef Boot Camp's group at the beginning of the evening but thankfully we started mixing and mingling as the evening wore on. Largely I photo documented the other guests, though I did participate in some of the hands on cooking as well. Unfortunately when I cook I feel most at ease in my own kitchen with my own equipment and without other people underfoot. If I'd started out in Chef Laid Back's camp, I probably would have been fine and participated more but Chef Boot Camp was more "my style" of chef, in that she wanted to have control and wanted to do things just so and consequently we clashed a bit. When the two "teams" were making gnocchi, Ray was kneading his dough and said, "I think I need more flour," but wasn't allowed to actually have more flour until Chef Boot Camp personally inspected a few minutes later, when she herself said "You need more flour," (as if Ray hadn't said that two minutes ago) and personally got the flour for him. Conversely, people on the other team were allowed to handle their own measuring cups and were getting their own flour, virtually unsupervised! OMG, anarchy!

We didn't actually get to cook everything on the menu, which I'd been wondering about when I saw the huge list of courses. The corn muffins and the salmon crepes were already prepared when we arrived. This was a little disappointing because we birthday ladies chose the crepes in specific because we wanted to get the professional guidance on preparing them, but also totally understandable. It was a huge menu and obviously we couldn't start from scratch on everything. Still, it wasn't clear that we wouldn't be preparing some of the courses when we picked and if I'd had my way I would have made the crepes and let the frickin' salads be pre-made! I've made a bazillion salads in my day.

There was one part of the evening where I feared that we were going to devolve into a bad place, as Chef Boot Camp was talking very critically about the choice of dessert. That creme brule-stuffed pears were "too much" and the Creme Anglaise "overrated." As the dessert was the only area of the menu that I really exerted myself (Christine pre-screened the rest of the menu, keeping every known special need in mind, and Robin and I signed off on it... willingly because Christine made excellent suggestions but still...) I was not thrilled to hear the chef thought so poorly of my choice. At that point I decided to go photograph the glassware for a while and felt better with a little distance. Heh.

Another contrast between our chefs was when we had mostly finished dinner (some of us were finishing coffee or wine, everyone talking and relaxing after a couple of hours in the kitchen) Chef Boot Camp came out to dismiss us! "You can wrap it up now," or some similarly expressed sentiment! I got up to use the bathroom and ran into Chef Laid Back on the way, so I apologized that we were lingering so long. He waved me off... no problem, he said. He really didn't care, where Chef Boot Camp was seriously stressed about time (at another point in the meal she came out and flat out told us to start eating... I was photographing my plate as I am wont to do and didn't appreciate being hit with the Achtung Baby.)

Anyway, don't read my whining as disappointment with the evening! Overwhelmingly I had a great time. It wasn't completely perfect and unmarred but none of my petty grievances even came close to being significant complaints. It was fabulous to get together with friends. I hadn't seen some of the attendees in many months and it was great to get together and share the experience. I loved having the chance to cook with so many of my friends all at once (and not have to clean up afterward!) and the meal came out spectacularly. They gave us a menu, complete with recipes, for us to take home. I will try to get it transcribed and posted on my recipe pages because everything we had (even the "too much" Creme Brule Stuffed Pears with Creme Anglaise and Port Wine Sauce our chef so disparaged) turned out phenomenally and ALL of us are excited to try making homemade gnocchi again soon.

Labels: birthday, cooking, food

Man, I'm STILL exhausted. We had a great time, cooked up a storm then many of us closed out Seattle's Best Karaoke at 4:00am. I'm sure it must have been after 4:30 by the time we got home and maybe closer to 5:00am by the time we wound down and actually got to sleep. Then, after too little sleep, Chris and I both had busy days of running all over town. Kate and I spent ventured downtown to pick up one of Flexcar's SUVs, stopped at a coffee house for a snack, spent several hours braving the madness that is IKEA on the weekends, plus did a trip to Target and now have several of the things we need to begin her promised room makeover. No rest for the wicked tomorrow, either, as I have to spend the day moving furniture around and preparing for some deliveries.

I'll write up more details about the cooking event tomorrow or Monday when I'm not quite as sleep deprived and generally muddled but for now there are photos to get the idea across.

Labels: birthday, cooking, food

Today I took part in a focus group. I signed an NDA so I can't talk about what I saw in any specifics, but I can say that I got to see the story boards and concepts for four different ad campaigns. I'd kind of hoped it would be political in nature but there were no previews into Presidential ad campaigns for me today.

Still, I have to say I enjoyed myself more than I thought I would. Initially I was a little nervous about the way things were set up because I was put in a room with another twelve people and expected to talk about my feelings and perceptions of things in front of everyone. I'd imagined that we'd be viewing videos or something and writing things down, somewhat confidentially and privately. My previous experiences with group things like this (like a particularly dreadful playtest experience, where a vocal group bullied and drowned out the less argumentative types until the only people giving feedback were people who passionately believed X or who had been convinced that even though they initially thought X was okay they must have been wrong because those loud angry guys really hated X) was such a bad time, I was really uncertain about how a group dynamic would work. I'm not completely sure I wasn't wrong to be suspicious of the group dynamic. Tthere were three dissenters from the popular opinion on most of the questions, and I have to question how many of the people who ended up with the majority did so because they were caving to peer pressure.

Anyway, I entered the session being unable or unwilling to commit to an opinion on the subject at hand. It was something I really knew nothing about and I was unwilling to just "guess" at what I *might* think, uninformed as I was. Let's pretend the subject was "the sun." They would ask what my "relationship" to the sun was, and I might say "I know it exists." Then they guy would say, "But what if your friend from San Francisco called up and asked you 'What's up with the sun?' What would you say?" and my answer was "Give me a minute, I'll Google that and get back to you." The first series of ads really spoke to me and I gave a very positive response to them because they practically addressed me personally: "Hey, do you know what's up with the sun? No? Only aware that the sun exists? Come to www.LearnTheSun.org and find out some things about the sun that are important for you to know!"

I tried to give good, complete, constructive feedback. It helped that I had a pretty clear and strong one way or the other. In a couple of cases I was the only person to laugh at an ad that was supposed to be funny, or the only person to "get" what an ad was trying to say. In a couple of cases I really enjoyed ads that other people found "negative" or "gross". Many people got off on tangents with their comments, like "Well, I know this is a message about the sun but I think they should really talk about the formation of the universe and the composition of Earth before touching on the sun." or "Well, sure there's a web address but I think there should be a phone number and a place to call for brochures and interpretive dance. I think it's really helpful to provide interpretive dance when we're talking about the sun." Gah. After the session one of the other participants commented that she thought I gave really good comments which made me feel good about my answers.

I returned home to find that Kate had put dinner in the oven as I had asked her to do, but that the rice cooker has died (and taken three cups of my basmati rice with it). Boo. Rice was one of those things I hated to cook until I got a rice cooker. Now I have to replace mine... and figure out what to do with the three cups of uncooked-but-soaked rice that remains in the old, broken one.

Labels: cooking, focus group, opinion