Noshtopia Phoenix

Cool Snack Idea: Date Walnut Coconut Ice Cream Milkshake

 

Last week, @jwillensky and I stopped by Joe's Farm Grill during a quick trip to Agritopia. Jason pointed out to me that Joe's Grill has Date Milkshakes on the menu. I LOVE dates and was drooling at the idea of having a date milkshake. However, I can't have your standard milkshake because of the cow milk allergy.

So, not to be deprived, and thinking what an awesome, "I tried something new" snack idea to help cool down as it is now getting Africa hot here in Phoenix, I made my own date milkshake from:

 

• So Delicious Coconut-milk based Vanilla Bean ice cream
• Medjool dates
• Walnuts
• Rice milk

First, in my mini 3-cup food processor, I blended the dates, walnuts, and a little rice milk together in order to get the dates to really grind down. When the dates were as pulverized as I could get them, I added in 1/2 cup of the vanilla bean ice cream and about 1/2 cup of rice milk, and blended until I got myself a nice smooth milkshake.

I added the walnuts to add some MUFAs and protein to my shake...might as well add some healthiness while we are enjoying a sweet shake. And by the way, the shake is also vegan.

OMG! Whole Foods Marketing You So Crack Me Up

 

My former corporate marketing self came out the other day when I saw this sign in the deli counter @WholeFoodsChrAZ. I love companies who are willing to use humor and modern day slang in their ads as it is rare.

So seeing OMG! in a store sign was really refreshing because other than texting and social media sites, where do you see OMG! It was also a nice play on letters with GMO. Those of you who work in marketing both on the corporate and agency side know what I'm talking about, so I thought you too would appreciate what I did.

When Starbucks did this April Fool's gag with the announcement of their Plenta and Micra sizes, the pictures they used made me laugh hysterically and made me feel closer to them. What made it more funny was the fact that Starbucks tends to be on the serious side so when they poked fun at themselves it was priceless.  

One of my favorite quotes:

"Laughter is the shortest distance between two people."

~Victor Borge

It's Incredible How The Incredible Lights Up FnB Dishes

On Friday night, @diyamarketing organized a fabulous #leekapalloza gathering at FnB in Old Town Scottsdale. The restaurant also tweets by the way @FnBAZ. This post is not going to be a full review of the place like I normally do. I just wanted to share some incredibly Incredible shots I took.

But first, the fun name leekapalloza was inspired by FnB's famous braised leeks with in-house pulled mozzarella, mustard bread crumbs, and fried egg. The dish looks amazing and even Sarah who sat at our table who dislikes most of the items on the dish, loved it. I couldn't partake because the dish for me is basically allergy on a plate. So, I just inhaled the smell of its deliciousness.

Inside FnB, the lighting is very dim which is great if you are there on date night with a hot dish. We were there at 10pm so the dark for food picture taking is utterly disastrous. In fact, on my iPhone this is the best shot I could get.

 

Yeah, it's basically a black blob. Yucky. However, not all was lost due to something incredible. @jwillensky was sitting at our table and Mr. early adopter had in his hot little hands the new Incredible HTC Droid phone.

One of the things you can do with the Incredible is turn the screen into a bright light, so Jay turned the light on and shined the light from his phone on the dishes so I could get some half way decent photos. Yup, working with what ya got! I wish we got a shot of me taking a shot with Jay holding the light.

Here are some black eyed peas with chard, rice and bacon...and yes, I did not write down the full name of the dish.

Here is the grilled broccoli with crispy onion. The dish normally comes with a meyer lemon aioli but I took it out because of the dairy. I loved the crispy onions!

And here's a chicken sandwich with mozzarella, tomato sauce and a pile of something green and leafy. Obviously, again, I forgot to write down the name of the dish so we go with the generic ingredients which of course don't do justice to the dish which was passed around and shared by all.

So, going from black blob to slightly hazy in the photos is pretty good in my book. I definitely will be going back to FnB, and next time closer to opening when there is more outdoor light so I can take better pics with the iPhone. But for now, I share with you the incredible help of the Incredible.

Turning Yucky Mobile Phone Food Pictures Into Beautiful Things With Picnik

 

Here's some of the bread that you get at St. Francis. So yummy that place.

I'm into month two of my six month iPhone food picture taking experiment, where I ditched my fancy Nikon DSLR for the iPhone to take all my food pictures. I love the convenience of the iPhone, but it's still only a 3 mega-pixel camera with no flash capability. I'm also not the type to take a picture and then straight upload. Oh no! The creative in me needs to do some prettying up of the photo before it hits any of my blogs, tweets or Facebook.

So, you know how you find a new software or application and just get so super excited about it that you just gotta tell everyone...or in my case blog about it. Well, let me share with you Picnik, an online photo-editing application that is a miracle maker in my book.

And no, they are not paying me or giving me anything for this review. I found Picnik on my own because I wanted something cheap and could do things like Photoshop because I can't afford Photoshop which I had on my laptop before I got the viruses and had to strip everything. Of course, I left my original Photoshop install CDs back in California.

I tried the free version of Picnik and dug it so much, I got the paid version because I wanted access to all the effects and I wanted to see NO ads. Yes, you have to pay to not see ads and I'm good with that because well Picnik is cheap, uh I mean, affordable. Let me tell you, for the price of a Starbucks coffee drink per month, this is one of the best deals you are going to find on the web. I can totally see why Google just acquired them.

In fact, I'll stop talking for a moment and just show you a simple Before/After example of some wine. (Note: Click on any of the photos to see a larger version.)

 
 

The original shot was taken on my iPhone 3GS in a private room at a menu tasting event at Fleming's Steakhouse & Wine Bar. In the After picture, all I did was some cropping, added a vignette effect, and then used a cool effect called "focal soften" which gives you that hot clear spot where the wine glasses are and then soft fading out. The After photo feels warmer like you're at a nice steakhouse which Fleming's is.

Picnk also has a "frame" effect called "Before & After" which created the comparison shot you see here. They are thinking about bloggers {wink}.

Here's another example with steak and green beans that just blew me away. 

 

Big difference, huh? I feel like Picnik saved this "Before" mobile phone picture from photo yuckiness. The steak alone looks so much tastier. Looking at the "After" picture would you guess that it was taken with a cell phone? Photo experts might but not the average blog reader.

And again, it was very simple. In effects, I just boosted up the exposure, saturation, and contrast. I added some warmth in the "temperature" setting. Then I used the same "focal soften" effect. Voila! That's it.

Now check out this pistachio hot mess. (Again, click on the image to see a larger version. You'll really be able to appreciate the difference in the two photos when you see it large.)

 
 

Well? Oh yeah, rescue! Again, I boosted the exposure, saturation, and contrast. Made the photo more "warm" versus cool in the "temperature" effect. I went into "curves" to take away some of the blue, then added the "Matte" effect which adds that white glow on the edges of the photo, and to make the center pop even more, added the "focal soften" effect.

As you can see, I'm a huge fan of the "focal soften" effect. I really like how that effect just warms up the food and makes it feel inviting. The effect also adds some dramatic flair by making the viewer's eye go to the best part of the whole image.

There are a whole other bunch of effects on Picnik which can get pretty wild or goofy like stuff you see in scrapbooks...no offense. You can add holiday border themes like Easter or St. Patrick's. You can add "stickers." You can create collages, photo shows, and order prints. You can connect and get access to all your photos on major sites like Facebook, Flickr, and Photobucket.

But best, this app is easy, fun, and simple. I like all the presets to make instant changes, but also there is the flexibility to do some advanced stuff for those who are more fancy schmancy photo enthusiasts. Again, Picnik is no Photoshop, but it can do some pretty darn cool things much easier for us who like simple and are avid mobile device users.

Picture: The Rays at Sola Coffee

Had a great time hanging out with @loribryan at Sola Coffee this morning. She leaves but I stay to blog. I notice the sun rays streaming over my cup of rice milk latte. It feels like a divine presence is here :)

Blog posted here.

A Peek Inside Mom's Lumpia

 

For those not acquainted with Filipino food, lumpia is our version of an egg roll...which fortunately for me has no egg in it so I can eat it. My mom's version is one of the best you'll ever try, and I'm not saying that just because she's my mom.

Everyone who has ever eaten her lumpia has loved it and cannot just eat one. Whenever I have hosted dinner parties, everyone always asks if I'll have any of mom's lumpia. Often, mom will give me a bunch of frozen ones to keep on hand to use as such occasions.

When my folks came to visit last week, mom actually packed some of her freshly made lumpia in her suitcase. Oh how she loves me and knows me so well! Luckily, the lumpias were frozen and the flight from the SF Bay Area is short.

Lumpia comes in two basic manners: either fresh or fried. For the fried version, there are multiple ways to make lumpia. One common is Shanghai style which is basically just ground meat like pork rolled up in a lumpia wrapper. And the other common style is a meat, veggie, seafood combination rolled up in the lumpia wrapper. My mom makes the second kind, and here's a peek in the delicious middle.

 

As for her recipe, I will post it one day, but I've tried to make it and it just cannot come close to how she makes it. Why? Mom (like all mom's do, I believe) has one ingredient that you can't get anywhere, and this is that special mom dust. You know what I'm talking about. It's that magical pinch of something that only the mom or dad has that makes the dish so much better than everyone else using the exact same ingredients.

For now, we'll just enjoy eating the lumpia for as long as we can!

Something Sweet While The Laptop Is In The Hospital

Turns out my laptop caught a whole bunch of nasty viruses so it's at the computer hospital getting a complete do-over. I did this post on my iPhone. Before I took the laptop in, I noshed on some chocolate Pocky. Gotta love this Japanese sweet treat, so please enjoy until I can get to regular laptop blogging :)

Cool: Liberty Market Recipe Graffiti

 

My two cents, Liberty Market has taken bathroom reading to a creative level. Inside their unisex bathrooms, there is recipe graffiti on the walls. I thought that was pretty cool.

The toasted pecans sounded tasty.