life: family planning

tasting notes

I’m not pregnant, but someday I will be. Tom and I have been talking lately about how soon that “someday” should be. He had a biological clock moment a few weeks ago, perhaps due to a round digit birthday approaching in a month (the big “3-0″). Out of nowhere, he suggested that maybe 2 years, a number we had been throwing around, was too far away. Yikes!!

After I got over my shock, part of me agreed with him and part of me didn’t. Really, what are we waiting for? We are never going to feel financially ready. We are never going to be 100% willing to give up our current personal freedoms. I’m never going to get excited about a year without regular wine consumption. And we can’t control what time all of our friends are going to be ready either. Someone is just going to have to go first.

So… I’ve started my bucket list for having a child aka things I feel I need to do, or at least try to, before deciding to let nature take its course. Some of these might seem strange, but I think having experiences as a measure instead of time or money is wiser. At some point I will decide that going on another trip is not as important as having a child to me in my life, and then the list will go out the window. But as of right now, here is what I’m thinking…

TRAVEL
1. I want to go on another vacation out of the country (Ontario doesn’t count)

2. I want to go on a vacation with friends (Arcadia doesn’t count)

3. I want to go camping outside of Michigan

List items #1-3 could be combined in any shape or form. Perhaps a road trip with Nick & Carrie to Quebec, with a night camping near the Finger Lakes in New York. I just know that we are going to have a different kind of vacation when we have a child, and I want to embrace that. Sure, we could go alone and find a family member to babysit, but I think I’m actually going to be excited to show my child new experiences. I just want to make sure I get one more adult vacation in before then.

CAREER
4. I want to speak at a conference

5. I want to write a blog that gets more than 1000 page views

List item #4 is going to put me way outside my comfort zone, but it is a personal accomplishment I just feel like I need to do before my career becomes a lesser priority. I’m putting my career on a pretty high importance level in my life currently, and I don’t think it will be that way in 2 years, I don’t think I will want it to be.

COOKING
6. I want to cook a multi-course wine paired menu

7. I want to have used every spice in my cabinet at least once

In coming up with list item #7, I actually thought I would have more spices to list, but it turns out there are only a handful: cardamon, nora pepper, pink salt, ras-el hanout, tumeric, za’atar blend, paella blend. I probably have used each of these with an array of other spices before, but I really want to make something that features each of these spices. Looks like I’ll be trying paella again… hopefully it will go better this time around.

ENTERTAINMENT
8. I want to spend an entire day in pajamas watching movies

9. I want to make one more Strickland brothers production

Five years ago, neither one of these would seem like odd requests, but they have been increasingly more and more rare. With Lon & Roxy in LA and weekends dedicated to actual household tasks, these are certainly events that don’t come often and should be treasured. I’m sure that my husband will be more than happy to comply with list item #8, especially if it includes wine and cheese.

HEALTH
10. I want to bike for an entire day

I’m not a marathon runner or a tri-athlete. I wouldn’t even say that I would want to go on one of those across the state biking trips. I am just not that serious of a biker. But, I would like to try and push myself more than I am. Even if it was a leisurely trip that included picnics and stops at wineries along the way, I’d just like to say that I spent an entire day biking around.

So that’s it. Doesn’t seem like a lot, but it will probably be 2010 before they all get accomplished. Now if I can just convince a few of my friends and family members (looking in the general direction of Roxy) to get started with their lists

fact: Lisa from Top Chef is Little Pete from the Adventures of Pete and Pete

tasting notes

Top Chef is over and thank GOD Stephanie Izard won. First, her last name is the same as my favorite comedian. Second, her food always sounded delicious. And third, Lisa is a gross-to-look-at, arrogant, nauseating person and there would have been outrage in the fan community if she had won the competition.

I’m really writing this blog for two reasons. One, I needed to put out to the interwebs just how much I think Lisa is the twin of Little Pete from Pete and Pete. And also, I wanted to talk about the fun I am having with my eating challenge for the month of June. I am not go grocery shopping until we make a significant dent in the food we have been ignoring in our cupboards for the past year or so. The reward has been not only piece of mind and a cleaner cupboard, but some very delicious new recipes to add to the books.

Monday:
Spinach, walnut, and apple salad with goat cheese dressing
Wasabi cashew encrusted swordfish over carrots and edamame with a tasty soy glaze

Tuesday:
Black bean and sausage soup with goat cheese sour cream

Wednesday:
Spinach, walnut, and apple salad with goat cheese dressing
Wild boar and steak ragu

Thursday:
Chicken tikka masala (or something similar in nature, equally delicious)

Discoveries:

• Goat cheese is one of the best ingredients to try and “use up”. It’s delicious and goes on anything from salads to soups to snacks.
• If you throw together enough sauce and spices, sometimes it will magically turn into tasty Indian cuisine.
• Packing for a dinner picnic is a great way to save money and stay healthy on an evening out.
• If I encrust enough fish and meats in cashews, I might eventually make a dent in Tom’s wasabi snack collection.
• Ragu is my new Cincinnati Chili for 2008, or as Tom likes to call it “chow” (aka you can eat in large quantities and often).

suggested pairings

• ‘Top Chef’ Contestant Lisa Fernandes Hates Your Poor Blogger Ass

life: my first new car buying experience

tasting notes

My husband and I are getting a new vehicle!! After many months of very casual discussion, a broken air conditioner and a particularly steamy month of May propelled us into a serious vehicle hunt. And as quickly as that hunt seemed to begin, we ended up choosing and ordering an… All-New 2009 Dodge Journey… feature packed, value added, technology driven!!! Woohoo, right?

You’ll have to excuse me, but this has been a very strange process for me that has not come without a fair amount of bias, both positive and negative. There is hefty pride and hefty skepticism, which was very difficult for me to overcome in an effort to make this decision as objective as possible.

The Journey began with consumer empathy…
You see, the Journey (which it wasn’t titled originally) was the first vehicle that I was dedicated to working on for my job. I participated in focus groups and did my first one-on-one ethnographic interviews with couples in their homes. While I did not know this before starting my job at Organic, I love doing empathetic, conversational consumer research. And the fact that I was doing it with young couples, recently married, recent first time home owners, pre-children, busy lives… well, I can’t say that it didn’t set my brain on a pathway to start thinking about how a crossover vehicle could really help out my lifestyle.

My husband was set on replacing his car with another car. But, as soon as I dropped this idea of possibilities, space, flexibility, and you know they aren’t as bad with fuel economy as they used to be, he was hooked as well. He started having dreams of the GMC Acadia and SUVs with built in DVD players. After all, this will be our first family vehicle.

Next was a lesson in engineering
Next, I spent some time interviewing the engineers who actually worked on the Journey vehicle. If you spend a great amount of time, like I do, stuck in never ending meetings about positioning lines and banner ads and marketing budgets, it can start to make you a cynic to the entire automotive process. The flashy enthusiasm of marketing speak becomes numbing and bland. But, when you sit down and interview the people who are actually excited because they created something with their own brains and with their own hands, you can’t help but get excited too. These are smart people, and they are really trying to make good decisions that actually relate to making better product and making products based on what people need. I am sure it is like this inside every automaker’s walls, inside every product manufacturer’s walls really. And sometimes that is easy to forget, unless you are talking to these people directly, which is why we do it.

So when my husband and I decided on a whim to stop by a Dodge dealer on the way home to check out the Journey, I knew far more that the car salesmen about the features and the reasons behind them. Actually, so did my husband, since he has been working on the Journey car commercials lately. Really, the dealer didn’t know much about anything and told us he’d get the keys for a test drive and then never returned. Hmmm… you’d think a car salesmen would be interested in making such a seemingly easy sale, even though we weren’t really ready to buy. While I had preconceived positive notions about Journey, I also had preconceived negative notions about dealers.

Overcoming preconceived notions
There comes in the trouble… preconceived ideas, biases. I felt a pit in my stomach that I was succumbing to enthusiasm based on the professional kool-aid that I have been drinking. And that only lead me to unearth a bunch of negative biases I also had built up in my system. Once the seed of doubt was planted that “this is too good to be true”, I began to feed the doubt with all the other not so positive information I am exposed to on a daily basis.

A big part of my job is also keeping tabs on the “voice of the consumer”. Whether it is through social networks, blogs, surveys, articles, etc., I often monitor the consumer perceptions that Chrysler needs to overcome in order to inform the work I do for Organic. After you hear the mantra of “poor interior quality” over and over again, it’s not only hard to disagree with it, but it is hard not to dwell on it. So I knew that to make a rationale and informed decision, we were going to need to keep our options open, start from the drawing board of true possibilities, and choose our favorites based on a multitude of factors.

Nissan Rogue
This was by far our most horrible dealership experience. We got a nice enough older Korean man, who wasn’t pushy per-say, but he also did not know ANYTHING about the vehicle. In fact, he proceeded to tell us misinformation, like that the Rogue had a DVD player option. We somehow got roped into sitting down for half an hour as he bounced back and forth between his boss and us, before telling us he couldn’t give us a quote, we would need to bring him a quote and he would match it. What??

But let’s get to the car. I’m not going to go into much detail, only gut reactions. We were not too happy about the exterior of the Rogue. It looks like a bug, the front end just sits too high and it feels a little cartoon-y. We honestly don’t care enough about cars to ever make that a deciding factor, although there are many who would. The interior, however, WOWed us. This was quality. The armrests were soft, the dash was stitched. Things felt nice, comfy, and substantial. American interior quality in the same price range is just not the same, and I was finally being given a good benchmark to base that assessment on.

Pontiac Torrent / Chevy Equinox (Saturn Vue)
We were hoping to compare more cars against the Rogue and the Journey, but the Torrent and Equinox were essentially the SAME exact car and thus we truly only looked at three models. In that mix as well is the Saturn Vue, which is slightly different than the Torrent and Equinox, but suffered many of the same drawbacks in our eyes. The dealership experience was at least quite pleasant, and we never got that ever feared pushy salesman.

The cars, however, were nothing terribly inspiring. They look quite good from the outside. We liked the look of the Equinox and certainly the Vue. But, cheap interior design was not a unique Chrysler problem, something that many forums and blogs I have read would have me believe. Maybe it was just the price point of these vehicles, but the interiors were of poor quality. I actually broke a piece of the seat handle in the Torrent in our test drive by just merely trying to tilt my seat back.

Back to the Dodge Journey
Our first real dealership experience, getting a test drive and a price quote, was far more enjoyable that our absent-minded salesmen at the previous dealership. We visited the Journey again to put everything back in perspective. It had magically made it on the list of cross-overs of a reasonable size in a reasonable price range, and the more we learned about the Journey the more that its value became a convincing factor. I was coming to expect things in other vehicles that seemed logical, they made sense, but they just weren’t there: fold flat seats, in floor storage, dvd system option. They were in the Journey, but not its competitors

The finishing line
And then it happened. Tom was ready to buy, just like that. He had done enough research. Because honestly, this was his new car we were buying. And so he was the master of the spreadsheet and the dealer relationship, and he was convinced. But my brain had a freak out… I tried to think of every reason why buying a Journey might be a bad idea. And ultimately, it came back to a gut reaction. Tom liked the Journey. I liked the Journey. What else matters?

All of my doubting and all of my playing devil’s advocate came back to why other people would not buy the Journey, not why we wouldn’t. That is the way my brain has been trained to think. I have been trained to think for the consumer to the point where sometimes I have a hard time thinking as myself in a consumer situation. So I said… fuck it, buy it. And we did.

It will arrive in 4 weeks, packed full of great features, ordered just the way we wanted it. And when it does, I’m sure I will have a whole other fun blog to write. Phew!!

life: weekends without computers can be great!!

tasting notes

I aimed to write at least one blog this weekend, but it never happened. However, a bunch of other stuff did. One item of which I will be flushing out into a full blog in the immediate future. Guess which one…

• LOST ended is 4th season
• Saw Kids In The Hall live, front row center at the Royal Oak Music Theater
• Had great wine at Lily’s Seafood and terrible martinis at Soho
• Caught a movie in production in downtown Royal Oak
• Fabulous breakfast at Cafe Muse
• Bought a new car
• Attended a grilled cheese party
• Bike ride and picnic at Kengsington
• Made muffins on the grill
• Watched some movies
• Read a book
• Went for a run
• Planned for a vacation
• Got caught in the rain
• Napped in the sun

That is what I’d call a great weekend!! And oddly, my time spent on computer was probably less than an hour.

article: America’s Food Waste

tasting notes

Americans waste 27% of the food available to them for consumption.
That is a pound of food every day for every America.

Those are some astonishing numbers. Numbers that hit you in the gut. Still, the New York Times article goes on to state that a lot of those statistics come from grocery stores throwing away defect or expired food, food programs throwing away uncooked or unused food, and various other efforts that serve larger amounts of people. This is not purely a statistics based on individual table scraps.

Still… As someone who is very passionate about food, it has inspired me to look around my own kitchen. Leftovers and table scraps are not just a method of recycle but a interesting ingredient. Like one of my favorite Top Chef challenges over the years, that featured the creative use of leftovers, I’ve challenged myself to try and create the next week (or two) of dishes using items in the kitchen that would have otherwise expired or gone unnoticed yet again for another month or two.

Tonight’s meal:
Grilled Mahi-Mahi covered in some pink sea salt I received from my mother. The sauce was built from some leftover homemade salsa from the weekend, which I then converted into a more Indian flavored sauce with the help of some spices, canned ginger, and a jar of roasted red pepper sauce that has been long floating in my fridge. The green grapes were looking pretty sad, so I fried them up and chopped them into the rice to make a little more exotic tasting dish. I still have some left-over Indian sauce and some grilled steak from fajitas, so we’ll see what that produces tomorrow. Honestly it is both relieving and inspiring to cook via recycling of materials.

suggested pairings

• An article about people called ‘Freegans’, who go dumpster diving for food ingredients
• The Slow Food movement, and how to get started

life experience: Camp Organic

“Life is moving at 500 mph, but I feel like I’ve been put on pause.” - Stacy

I can identify a lot with Stacy’s feelings. It has been more than month since I’ve put up a new blog post, but that isn’t from a lack of things going on in my life. What it has been missing is a lack of things that inspire me, things I’m passionate about, and certainly a lack of time to write about them. Intense workload, social schedule, and a few weekends of marathon gardening have left me sunburnt, tired, and passionately paused. Still, life is good… I’m young… the opportunities are exciting… and spending many hours last week analyzing the troubles in Stacy’s life, I have returned home humbled and inspired to appreciate the freedom I have.

So, who is Stacy?
Stacy is 39, a working mother of 2, living in Elmhurst, Illinois. Stacy is drowning in the hectic schedule of everyday life. She has a really hard time admitting she gets angry, and instead distracts herself with retail therapy and convinces herself she is invincible, after all she’s a super-mom. But lately, she’s been wondering why it has to be this way, where is her help, and why she has to always be the one “put on pause”.

Oh… and Stacy isn’t real. Her story is the result of an intense Las Vegas training exercise Organic puts its employees through called CAMP ORGANIC. It’s probably the best 72 hours without sleep that I have spent in my life. Painful, exhilarating, draining, challenging and everything I love about Organic with none of the limitations (no clients!).

The Story of Camp Organic
It’s much like a reality TV show challenge. In fact, when explaining it to my friends, I started using terms like “QuickFire Challenge” and “Elimination Challenge”. Organic sends 40 employees out to Vegas a couple times a year and gives them 36 hours to develop a product. Like every good reality show, there are limitations and surprises along the way. The ingredients are a demographic, a sin, and a product. The product is the only thing that is the same between the 7 competing teams. And at the end of the time limit, you must demonstrate an inspired presentation (in a semi-delirious state) to a room full of your peers.

The idea is to practice what Organic preaches, empathy inspired web experiences. It’s to encourage as many employees to drink and rejoice in the Organic brand kool-aid, and come back inspired to do better work. But rather than try to explain the idea in detail, you could just watch the documentary:

Our Assignment
Our Demographic: Female, 35-45, Married, Kids, 100K+ HHI
Our Sin: Anger
Our Product: Well… that’s where it gets interesting

The “twist” this time is that there is no product that we need to create. In the past it has been anything from energy drinks to timepieces to financial programs. However, this Camp Organic, we needed to create a BRAND MOVEMENT. Confused yet? Think Dove’s Campaign For Real Beauty. Think GE’s Ecomagination. The idea is to take a brand and make it more than a brand… make it not just something people purchase, but something that people rally behind, gather around, spread, live, breathe.

Tough enough? Now add in a tight deadline and a city of people who are not terribly interested in talking to you.

My Not-So Typical 72 Hours in Vegas
(Not the full story, just the good bits aka what I would have Twittered given time)

WED MAY 14th
9:00 AM
My team looks tired, maybe we’re just conserving energy? Allard is an EM from NY, previously Netherlands. Andrew is a copywriter from Toronto. Govid is IT from San Fran. We’re like the united nations of Camp O.

11:00 AM
Quickfire Challenge to create a decked out basement for family of four, but ceilings only 5 feet high. We forget the constraints, don’t leave time to develop a presentation. Ouch we are rusty, maybe we are just saving our good ideas for the real challenge?

3:00 PM
Trip to the Boneyard under 95 degree sun. Diversion or inspiration? Whatever the intent, the heat is killer and we are all ancy to get our sins.

5:00 PM
The twist this season is “Brand Movement”. Sounds reasonably complicated. Brand movements require common values, community support, growth mechanisms, authenticity, and a solid launch plan. Just think for a second how easy that truly is to build for your current clients. Piece of cake!!

5:15 PM
Whatever it is, don’t let it be anger. Don’t let it be anger! Team 7 = ANGER.

6:00 PM
Talking about planning a plan. My strategist weakness is revealed. Until I have a diagram or timeline on paper, my heart is not going to start beating at a normal rate.

7:00 PM
Phew!! We have a plan, and some timeline goals… but wait, here comes counselor Sam. He says we are already ONE HOUR BEHIND all the other groups. Way to get us scrambling early. Time to diverge.

7:30 PM
At the airport, who’s brilliant idea was it to interview people at the Airport (Organic). They are interested in coming or going, not talking.

8:00 PM
First interview a smashing success, probably best of the whole lot. Woman going on a girls’ vacation for the first time in 13 years. Today her babysitter cancelled and her father scheduled a surgery, she barely made it to the airport and one of her friends didn’t. She is probably sitting on the beach in Santa Barbara right now having Margaritas. I wanted to give her a hug.

8:30 PM
Dual interview with interior designers. One young mother gives us the golden quote that she does 80% while her husband only does 20%. Way to hit it home with percentages. Airport is fertile ground for mom’s alone, without social influence.

10:00 PM
On Sam’s suggestion, on the hunt for mom’s in packs. Waitress suggests some clubs. Use the power of Twitter to get some more recommendations.

11:00 PM
Found a pack at the lounge in Caesar’s Palace on their yearly vacation to Vegas. They are happy and ready to talk. They don’t get angry, they can’t get angry. They need to teach their kids not to dwell in angry. Instead they escape. One lady goes to the gym everyday although she works 65 hours a week. Retail therapy. I don’t know that I believe that these moms don’t get angry, but they sure seem convinced with cocktails in hand.

11:45 PM
Regroup with rest of team, converge near jumping bugs outside Bellagio. They had a completely different experience. We are still energized to find some more mom groups while there is still time.

1:00 AM
Party is dead at Pollyster’s at Stratosphere. No mom’s in sight and quite a ways off course. It hurts to feel like you’ve wasted so much time, and the mom packs are thinning out by the minute.

1:30 AM
Have an anti-persona interview at the Wynn that proves more useful than you’d think. 2 young women just graduated college admitted to having the least responsibility now than they have ever had in their life. Nobody expects anything of them, except what they expect from themselves. They are in-between places with such specific hopes and dreams and expectations for the future. They sure don’t have a problem talking to strangers and are also getting hit on more and more by the minute.

3:00 AM
Unload onto the wall. Look for patterns… motherhood is a pressure-cooker, anger is present when things go out of balance. Anger is resolved through denial or escape. Either the anger is buried or the mind is distracted. We build questions tomorrow to delve deeper. We need to get these mom’s to admit they get angry. When was the last time you cried or yelled? Who was it at, strangers, loved ones? What gets under your skin?

3:30 AM
We are getting a little moody. Time for bed.

4:00 AM
Can’t sleep. Mind races with tomorrow’s events.

THURS MAY 15th
8:30 AM
Can barely eat hotel breakfast. Ready to get moving. Not a moment to spare. Today’s plan is to find moms actually with their kids, observe and probe deeper. Sam freaks me out again saying we need artifacts. I forgot completely about artifacts. Diverge.

9:30 AM
Apparently Casino day care doesn’t get hopping until the evening hours. Scratch that plan.

10:00 AM
Hunting for mom’s in Macy’s. Rejection, rejection, rejection. “I can’t talk, I have kids”. We get physically mom-blocked by a stroller. Moms are either non-existent or not interested. Tick, tick, tick.

10:00 AM (meanwhile for Andrew and Govid)
Children’s museum does not take too kindly to our social experiment and kicks my teammates to the curb.

10:30 AM
Getting my skin analyzed while I interview a young mom who works at the mall. Sam suggests “you have to give a little to get a little”. No real insights here, only that her escape is into a journal. Will not admit she gets angry.

11:30 AM
Adventuredome at Circus Circus. Finally caught a mom sitting down. She is so distracted by watching her son, she cannot answer the simplest questions. “So, what do you like to do to stay calm? what do you like to do in your alone time?” She fidgets and is physically uncomfortable, as if saying “are we done yet? are we done yet?” with every inch of her body.

12:00 PM
Observe Mommy-radar in full force with the stroller brigade. It’s like driving a car, check mirrors, check speed. Only it goes left, right, baby, straight-ahead, baby. Sam says we should hard stop at 1:00 PM. He says we have much more than we think we do. With no good interviews at all today, I hope he’s right!!

12:15 PM
Even taxi time is valuable time. Allard tries an IM interview and I e-mail Julie, a colleague and friend of mine. Trying all angles.

12:30 PM
More nervous moms at GameWorks and M&M store. Body is always positioned with an escape route in mind. They read books, sometimes they yell at the dog… there has to be more than this. One tidbit from shy mom, says she is always in control of her emotions, angry people show a lack of control. Her body language says “am I answering this right? is this what you want?”.

2:00 PM
Converge over room service. Unload more stickies onto the wall of various colors. We don’t even know where to begin. There is so much left to do.

3:30 PM
Starting to put stickies we really like on one wall away from other stickies. Is this progress?

4:00 PM
Our main feeling now is that our insight has to revolve around loss of self. Denial and escape are both methods to satisfy anger, but they both don’t help this “loss of self”. Starting to feel a movement in here somewhere.

4:30 PM
Still hunting for the gift. Think we have it narrowed down to a couple solid thoughts. “I’m on pause”, “I can’t talk I have kids”, or “It’s not about me, but it can be”.

6:00 PM
Time is flying, but it feels like not much is happening. We have tested out our three gifts with some 100 mph brainstorms. Feels like we are swirling and just putting up more stickies on the wall. What does it mean to be paused? Is this helping? No… let’s pick and go. We decide on “It’s not about me, but it can be”. Phew, time for a break!!

6:30 PM
Sam says our “gift” is not a gift but a tagline, but we can worry about that later. We should have fun and think about our presentation. Sigh.

7:00 PM
All we know about our presentation is that we want drama and as few slides as possible. I guess that’s a consensus.

7:30 PM
Ooops… can’t forget to flush out that persona in full. I distract us for about half an hour to do that.

8:00 PM
Swirling, swirling, swirling. Andrew wants to get into product, Allard wants to talk about launch, Govid probably wants to go home, and I keep saying “wait, wait, wait”. My strategist brain is killing our momentum right now, so I decide to diverge myself out of the picture.

8:30 PM
Somehow our diverge turned into a nice sushi dinner for two of us (not me), and food court food for the rest of us.

9:30 PM
Too happy, sushi-filled teammates come back to the room with a notebook full of good ideas. The Great Mommy Strike of 2008. Detailed integrations with lots and lots of products. OMG!!! Yeah!! I can do wonders with clutter, but I freak out at a blank slate. This is where I feel comfortable. I’m starting to think for the first time all competition that we are on the right track (yeah, I’m a pessimist).

10:00 PM
The room is filling and filling with really useful stickies. We are flushing out ideas rather than creating new ones. We are pulling weeds rather that rototilling a new garden.

10:30 PM
The room is filled with counselors. I present the persona to some happy faces. We decide to not even delve into our master plan. Yeah… we are filling that confident. To our joy, the counselors don’t question it too much, but offer some good advice. CREATE DRAMA. Teresa says she loves our persona already, we just need to bring her alive.

11:00 PM
After I go to the bathroom for the 10th time today to wipe the tears out of my eyes… not due to stress, but due to the dry Vegas air and stale smoke, the team decides that my red-eyed female voice is probably the best voice to embody Stacy. We have now moved on to creating the presentation.

12:00 AM
I put up the all important “Path To Bed” stickies on the wall. Structure to presentation, build slides, assign roles, rehearse, improve (that’s a good one!), then BED. We all agree to the plan.

1:00 AM
Allard brings out our inner actors. My Acting 101 classes come rushing back. He challenges me to embody lettuce. Are we geniuses or madmen at this point? Definitely both.

1:30 AM
Take our acting challenge out into the hallway. Keep getting interrupted by elevators full of hookers. Only in Vegas.

2:00 AM
Time to diverge. I work on scouring Flickr for those lovely full-slide images. Keep it simple. 6 slides, one picture, one caption. That is all.

2:45 AM
Did Allard fall asleep? Where is he?

3:30 AM
He emerges just in time to do a few rehearsals before bed. We are getting better and better each time, but we are dangerously close to that 20 minute mark.

4:30 AM
Nitpicking breaks out over each other’s sections as we try and make sure we are under 20 minutes. I call bedtime. We need to keep the spirits high. Each person responsible for rocking their own territory. I’m certainly excited to rock mine.

5:00 AM
Too excited to sleep. Dammit brain.

FRI MAY 16th
8:00 AM
One more rehearsal before breakfast. We meet our timing mark, but we are low on energy this morning. We’re just conserving right? I get nervous again.

9:00 AM
Energy slows to a crawl. Call Sam over for a pep boost and sufficiently freak him out. No, really… we are solid on our presentation, we are just a bit tired. We’ll come around (I hope!).

10:30 AM
Two presentations in. One with an Elvis impersonator!! Found the excitement again. I’m ready to present now. No luck, the honor goes to Greed and Gluttony.

11:30 AM
Two more presentations… one that took us out into the hall for a diversion, one with a great punchline “why does she feel so worthless?”. Impressive. One more presentation to squeeze in before lunch, I hope it isn’t Anger. Oh… so of course it is. I need to keep my mouth shut.

11:40 AM
Team begins pacing around the room. Pacing and pacing and pacing. Alright… I feel the energy, it is show time!!!

12:15 PM
Phew!! Feeling good. Channeled my inner-mom. The whole team was even better than last night. Govid saves the end, doesn’t go over. We use every last second of our 20 minutes. Now we can relax.

2:00 PM
Presentations done. End on some great skits (someone found time for humor) and interesting artifacts (letters, blogs). Spend the judge’s deliberation taking all the stickies down from my room. So much less rewarding coming down than going up.

3:00 PM
Yes, yes… best Camp O ever. They say that every time. Don’t make us wait any longer!!

3:30 PM
They drag out more time by analyzing each of our presentations individually. Probably the most rewarding part of the experience, sure sure, but still on to the winners.

3:45 PM
Drum-roll please. The top team is… ANGER!!! Wooooooooo.

4:00 PM and beyond
A blur of experiences recounted, sharing, congratulating, and winding down from one of the most intense experiences of my Organic life.

Am I glad I did it?
Hell yeah!! Not for the faint of heart or people who can’t easily swallow the kool-aid. But, definitely an amazing and empowering experience I couldn’t have had anywhere else.

Would I ever do it again if I could?
Camp Organic is much like a wedding. When it finally comes together, you feel pride and excitement. But for all of the blood, sweat, and tears, it will probably take you a couple of years out before you feel up for the challenge again.

food: colonial goose, a New Zealand dish
wine: 2004 Amisfield Pinot Noir
movie: Black Sheep

tasting notes

After months of delay, I am finally back to cooking my husband the themed dinners that I had promised him as part of his birthday present last summer. If I am lucky, I will conclude the 6th dinner before his birthday this year, but I’ll have to step up the pace to make that happen.

THIS MONTH: New Zealand

The main dish I made was Colonial Goose, which is not goose at all, but lamb. Early pioneers to New Zealand had a steady supply of sheep, but poultry was something of a luxury, even up until recently. To make them feel less homesick, they would stuff and roast a leg of lamb (bone removed) in a fashion similar to the way you would cook a goose. The lamb I made was roasted for several hours and stuffed with dried apricots, honey, and breadcrumbs. Delicious, and the earthiness of the food went perfect with the New Zealand Pinot Noir…

2004 Amisfield Pinot Noir
Smells like a dusty cellar, moldy, and a bit like chemicals. Faint aroma of cherries and unripe strawberries, tastes and smells very bright and clean. Almost carbonated, fresh sizzling cherry. Sooo good. mild oak. Very Pinot, both delicate and powerful. ($27)

While many know New Zealand only for their superb Sauvignon Blanc, they actually have some high altitude, cooler climate regions that are perfect terroir for Pinot Noir. The Central Otago wine region, where the Amisfield winery is located, is the most southern wine region in the entire world. The vineyards, residing at 400 meters above sea level, cling precariously to steep slopes and river gorges. It seems like Pinot is always better the more painful the growing conditions.

Finally, we had a chocolate mousse with kiwi sauce while watching our horror flick for the evening, Black Sheep. The choice was between that or The Piano, and I think we made the right choice. While kinda forgettable, the movie felt very reminiscent of early Peter Jackson horror films. It was heavy in the gore, completely over-the-top, good mindless fun. The special effects were even done by the Weta Workshop, how much more New Zealand can you get? If only we had finished off the night by snacking on some Marmite sandwiches and watching Flight of the Conchords.

suggested pairings

• Recipe for Colonial Goose with Apricot Stuffing

wine: 2003 Couly-Dutheil Chinon La Baronnie Madeleine

tasting notes

I’m gonna make this a short, but sweet WBW. This month’s theme is Cabernet Franc from France. Gary Vaynerchuk (that is with a K, not a CK) of WineLibraryTV is hosting. His energetic entry is posted here. I had the pleasure of meeting Gary Vaynerchuk at Future of Web Apps in Miami this winter, and was inspired enough by his presentation to post an article on ThreeMinds about the “hi-res user experience” he is creating over at WineLibraryTV. So, I was glad to see him taking the time to join the Wine Blog Wednesday community.

Without further ado…

2003 Couly-Dutheil Chinon La Baronnie Madeleine
I broke the bottle trying to open this one… my rabbit didn’t like that lipped rim. Lots of sediment, dark purple color. Aroma of plump raisins and plum, but also lots of dust, grass, and green peppers. A burning dry mid-palate and finish that spread over your whole tongue. Veggies up front and light dried fruits on the long finish. Dirt for sure. It gets more complex as you taste it, and I start doubting what I’m sensing. Do I smell Cheez-its, taste vanilla? I don’t know, this wine is doing weird things. A slow drinker. $17

suggested pairings

• Wine Blog Wednesday official site
• Gary Vaynerchuk’s WineLibraryTV
• Gary Vaynerchuk & the Hi-Res User Experience

drink: Pisco, a Chilean brandy
bar: Leopold Bros. of Ann Arbor

tasting notes

I have been meaning to post a quick blog on the awesomeness that is PISCO. Pisco is a brandy distilled from white muscat grapes. It is so popular in Chile and Peru, that both nations bicker over which can claim it as the national drink. But, here in America, it is relatively unknown outside of the San Francisco foodie community. I had to majorly struggle to convince my local liquor store that the drink even existed. “It’s not in my liquor books,” he kept saying.

When you can find it… it is delicious. I was turned on to it by my friend and previous co-worker, Andrea, who brought it back from her trip to Chile. When cooking my husband a Chilean themed dinner, I decided to opt for a cocktail course instead of a dessert course. Thus the Strickland household tradition of Pisco Sours and Anna’s Almond Cinnamon This was born.

The only place in all of Michigan where the existence of Pisco is acknowledge the way it deserves to be is at Leopold Bros. of Ann Arbor. In addition to being a brewery, they distill their own gin, vodka, liqueurs, and pisco!! Their menu includes an array of tasty pisco drinks, including piscola, pisco sunrise, and, my favorite, the raspberry pisco margarita. Leopold’s is a wonder in and of itself. Just off of the main street strip, the bar is one of the only hang out havens that doesn’t get uncomfortably overrun in the evenings. They offer large tables for groups, board games, the best jukebox in town, couches, free wi-fi, and a snackable menu (which now includes artisan sandwiches and pizza). It’s cozy, it’s friendly, it’s perfect… only it’s going away forever. The neighborhood rent is driving them to Denver.

The most unfortunate thing is that Ann Arbor-ites know what they are loosing, but can do nothing about it. It’s the fault of the market. All we Leopold lovers can do is hope that the new Denver crowd can appreciate the gem that they are getting. And in the meantime, I’m going to have to start stocking up on Pisco immediately.

suggested pairings

• Food & Wine’s Recipe for the very popular Pisco Sour and more Pisco cocktails
• Even Ann Arbor is Overrated can admit how much Leopold’s will be missed

food: coq au vin with juniper, meatloaf with star anise

tasting notes

One of the reasons I love Top Chef so much is that aspect of “a twist”. So common the challenge is to do something like traditional family favorites, comfort food, but with “a twist”. Maybe it needs to be modernized, maybe it has to incorporate the chef’s signature style, maybe it needs to be low calorie, but there is always an interesting element that makes it something beyond the literal interpretation of the dish.

There is something special in that combination of tradition and mystery. Gordon Ramsay knows it. His whole philosophy has always been about doing away with pretentious dishes, fancy for fancy sake, and finding the heart of traditional cuisine. His recommendations on Kitchen Nightmares always boils down to returning to simpler food, but not simple as in boring, there always has to be something that makes it unique.

So I had fun this week creating various comfort foods with “a twist” based on some particularly delicious looking recipes from Food & Wine magazine. Coincidentally, I visited Town Tavern in Royal Oak this week, which is supposedly known for their comfort food, specifically a lobster mac and cheese. In the end, I was a lot more pleased with my own creations than the Town Tavern mac and cheese. Maybe I just had some really good successes, or maybe I just don’t think a dish can be called mac and cheese unless you can actually taste some major cheese. Whether it be cheddar or swiss or gruyere or parmesan, that doesn’t matter, but I just don’t buy little tubes in a cream sauce as “mac and cheese”.

Coq Au Vin with Juniper
Coq au vin is good French comfort food. Tom and I experienced a lot of rustic cuisine on our trip to France, delicious meats with full flavored sauces. I became especially interested in doing an updated version when I found an article in Food & Wine that listed 4 different takes on the traditional meal, each uniquely delicious. One was made with a Sauvignon Blanc and capers, another with Chardonnay and artichokes, and yet another Cotes du Rhone and carrots. The one I chose was the most unique… a sauce made from figs, juniper berries, cipollini onions, and Riesling.

Juniper berries are a strange substance in and of themselves, something I’ve be interested in playing with. It is the ingredient that gives the distinguising pine flavor to gin, and to see it being used in a coq au vin dish was certainly that “twist” I was looking for. The chicken came out perfectly cooked and juicy, and the sauce ingredients combine to create a rich, flavorful and sweet gravy that really felt like home-cooking. The juniper was not pungent, but was just enough to give you this holiday-esque feeling. Roast chicken, sweet figs, and pine trees… definitely a dish I’ll be trying again in the Christmas season.

Smoky Meatloaf with Star Anise
Second attempt at some comfort food was the very American meatloaf and ketchup. My mom had gotten me some star anise pods for Christmas, and here I found a recipe that not only used them in the meatloaf itself but in the accompanying prune ketchup. Alone the meatloaf turned out good, not great… I’m always afraid to pump up the spices beyond the recipe and there wasn’t really any way for me to taste it before cooking. Going to France did not make me comfortable with raw ground beef consumption. Anyway, the meatloaf was good and I appreciated the strong smoky flavor that came from using bacon and some smoked salt I had picked up in Paris. But even better than the meatloaf alone was the way it tasted with the prune ketchup, a fantastic blend of sticky sweetness and tangy with that lovely liquorice bite.

Two great recipes I shall be making again. To anyone listening out there, feel free to post some of your favorite comfort foods with a twist. I’d love to get some more ideas.

suggested pairings

• Food & Wine’s Updated Coq Au Vin
• Food & Wine’s Smoky Meat Loaf with Prune Ketchup