Intro to Sous Vide

About a year ago, I saw an article about an interesting Kickstarter project for a sous vide circulator by Sansaire.  At that point, I had never heard of sous vide and it's possible I had not heard of Kickstarter, either.  The only thing I understood is that cooking sous vide would allow me to cook a steak that was perfectly medium rare from end to end.  This was the sales image that made me want to explore sous vide circulators:

So, sure, this isn't exactly a fair comparison, since we can all agree the steak on the right wasn't cooked by a particularly masterful chef, but the point remains that it's hard for me to get a totally even texture and temperature in my steaks.  They're often more well-done on the outside or on the ends.  The more reviews I read about how easy sous vide circulators were to use and how amazing meat tastes when cooked sous vide, the more I wanted to give this thing a shot.

(Plus, if you know me at all by now, you know I'm a sucker for interesting kitchen gadgets.  My pressure cooker is still the MVP of my kitchen, years later.)

The other week, I decided to take the plunge.  I had decided on the Anova sous vide circulator (it seems like the choice is either Anova or Sansaire) and was about to use my Amazon.com points to buy this one, when I did a bit more googling and realized that Anova has a new sous vide circulator model with bluetooth connectivity, and it's about $25 less than Amazon if you purchase directly from Anova's page.  I found a coupon for another $25 off at Anova so that sealed the deal.

(I liked the idea of getting a circulator instead of a fixed sous vide oven, since a circulator allows you to turn any basin into a sous vide oven.  So if you have thirty pounds of beef to cook, stick it in a huge rubbermaid bin, stick the sous vide circulator in there, and you're all set.  When will I ever cook that much beef?  Probably never.  But I COULD.)

My initial experience with the Anova was mixed.  I was excited to try the bluetooth connectivity features, which allow you to control the temperature of the water from your phone, make your circulator follow recipes from Anova's app, and alerts you when the water is ready:

But, what I learned the hard way while trying to cook a corned beef brisket for ten hours:  if you walk away from your Anova such that the bluetooth is disconnected, the device TURNS OFF.  And STOPS COOKING your food.  (As in, you arrive home after being gone five hours only to realize that your corned beef has been NOT cooking for all that time and you're having people over for dinner in two hours.  Luckily, I dumped it in the pressure cooker with some sauteed onions and water for an hour and a half and it came out GREAT.  Best corned beef I've ever had, in fact.  Not sure if the pressure cooker or the sous vide is to thank for that one.)

So, basically, the bluetooth feature is useless as far as I can tell.

(No pictures of the corned beef because it was immediately devoured.)

Last night, I gave the sous vide a try with steak.  I had a big win at work and decided to treat myself to a fancy ribeye (my favorite cut of steak).  I had a community meeting to attend around dinnertime, so I rubbed the steak with salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, thyme, and a little butter. 

 Then I sealed it in a ziploc bag, dropped it in a 130 degree water bath, and went on my way.

 

It's only supposed to cook for an hour at that temperature, but I didn't get back to my house for almost three hours.  I'd read that keeping a steak in the water bath for longer than an hour wouldn't hurt it, since it would not exceed the 130 degree temperature of the water...so I figured I'd test that feature?

Once I got home, I seared the steak for a few seconds on each side:

And you guys, it came out perfectly:

I mean, LOOK AT THIS:

So, overall, I'm pretty pleased with the sous vide so far.  The bluetooth technology is just for show, but the implement itself seems to do a GREAT job with meat.  I'm going to try fish and eggs in the next week or so...I'll let you know how that goes.

Have any of you tried cooking sous vide before?  What did you think?

 





Friday Fleeting Moment of Fun-day

Ever wonder what happens when you try to tell Siri, "Set an alarm for 2am" with a mouthful of toothpaste?

 

^ that. :-)

 

I'm en route to Bonnaroo this morning, but it's looking like I'm going to miss my connecting flight! I may end up taking a last-minute road trip from Charlotte to Manchester... (Ugh, air travel, how I hate you so.)

 

Have a good weekend, all!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Gadget I Can No Longer Live Without: PowerGen Mobile Battery Pack

Quick post today, but I feel like people need to know about this:

 

PowerGen Mobile Battery Pack (affiliate link)

My iPhone has reached that point where it no longer holds a charge for a full day.  I'm lucky if I get a half-day.  I took it into the Apple store to try to get a replacement, but apparently the problem is my usage because there is nothing wrong with the performance of the battery according to whatever voodoo test they conduct at the Apple store.

In any case, this gadget is about $30 on Amazon and I get two full charges of my iPhone on this thing before it itself needs to be charged.  It will also charge my iPad and comes with adaptors for other things.

Highly recommend.

[I know this sounds like an ad, but I have basically five minutes to write a post and I have been loving on this thing so hard since January that it seemed about damn time I told you all about it.  After all, this is some stuff this Jewish Girl likes.]

Google Reader Alternatives: Zite

Google Reader is being phased out on July 1, 2013.  This is the first in a series of guest posts about alternatives to Google Reader.  (Read my own post about Feedly here.)  The author of today's entry is an IRL friend of mine (from HIGH SCHOOL, no less!) named Michelle. 

If you would like to submit a post extolling the virtues of your Google reader alternative, drop me an email.

*~*~*~*

Zite, a more up-and-coming RSS reader (think Google Reader meets Flipboard), abandoned the Google Reader backend completely, rebuilding it from scratch in just six hours.  That’s dedication. Being a person who reacts to visual elements, I like the way blogs are laid out on my reader. Deciding what to read just got easier. Of course, this may end with more text-oriented bloggers seeing less traffic; but I have a strong feeling they’ll be able to adapt.  

This Google Reader alternative that intrigues me, as it claims to get “smarter” in the same way Pandora does, based on the content that you browse. You know what that means: If you’re not careful, you could end up with a section of your app filled with cat memes.

Since I work in online marketing, mine has labeled me as ridiculously geeky, and shows me things like this:

You see those little labels below each article blurb? Those are tags, and I can decide to like them (and see similar items in the future), or ignore them. I love that. What a great way to keep discovering new blogs. Show me everything about Instagram, chocolate, and how-to-almost-light-yourself-on-fire-by-attempting-Pinterest-projects please!

I know technology changes, but I’m looking to make a commitment. Switching over all of my preferences from one platform to another every time something new comes out just doesn’t feel practical. Zite is, so far, catering very well to my interest in both new content, and my old favorites. The perfect blend of trendy, and vintage. I’m sure you fashionistas understand me perfectly.

*~*~*

Michelle is a longtime blogger and owner of an internet marketing company in Miami, FL. For more about the author, visit Michelle’s technology blog or personal blog. 

Three Things (including a Lendperk review)

1.  I would like to run a post about some Google reader alternatives.  I already told you guys a bit about Feedly, which I am using exclusively right now.  Would anyone be interested in contributing a bit of content to a compilation post about alternatives to run alongside other peoples' contributions?  Your piece can be as simple or complicated as you like; I'm just looking to cover as much ground as possible!  Email me if you're interested.

2.  I am wearing my jumpsuit today.  Heck yeah.

3.  Recently, Lendperk contacted me and asked me to write a review of their dress-rental service.  I was not paid for the review, but I did receive a free dress rental.  (And you can, too!)

Lendperk is a subscription service that calls itself the "Netflix of dresses."  Essentially, the way it works is you sign up for a monthly membership in which you pay either $20 for one dress rental a month, $34 for two a month, or $49 for unlimited monthly rentals.  If you don't use your monthly rentals, they can roll over.  Then when you're ready, you browse Lendperk's selection, pick a dress and a size, and it will be shipped to you.  You use it for your month and then send it back.  Like Rent the Runway (RtR) (referral link), you don't have to worry about dry cleaning.

Lendperk features dresses from mostly-accessible brands/retailers like J.Crew, Modcloth, Anthro, and ASOS.  Lendperk is still getting its feet off the ground, so the selection of dresses and sizes is somewhat limited right now.  (That said, I noticed several new dresses have been added in the last month, so it's nice that the collection is growing.)  The J.Crew dress I'd wanted to rent was unavailable, so I went with this one from Warehouse/ASOS:

The dress arrived in a soft mailer and included a return shipping envelope.  It took a couple of days to arrive.  I didn't find the dress wrinkly, but the soft mailer delivery could create some wrinkle problems with other fabrics:

Unfortunately, I can't show you what the dress looked like on me because the dress didn't fit!  I consulted the size chart before ordering (which helpfully includes brand-specific measurements) but the fit of this dress was way off for me.  Unlike RtR, which sends you dresses in several sizes just in case you have a fit issue, I had no alternative size of this dress and ended up just dejectedly sending it back.

Pros of Lendperk:  Variety of dresses, no need to worry about dry cleaning, WAY cheaper than RtR, many dresses include a page of helpful photos of live people wearing the dress (see, e.g., here).

Cons of Lendperk:  At least some dresses are sale purchases or past-season (see, e.g., this Anthro dress, which went on sale quite a while ago), limited selection, you are out of luck if you receive the wrong size dress, featured brands/dresses generally retail/go on sale for cheap enough that I could probably buy the ones I like for close to $50.

In sum:  I love the idea of Lendperk, and I hope it gets some kind of angel funding so that it can dramatically expand the size and current-ness of its selection.  It seems like its creator, Star Li, is a bit of an entrepreneur who has started businesses in the past, and it looks like she is developing this one to grow (and possibly be sold) as well.

As it stands now, I would probably not pay for this service unless there was a particular dress I really wanted for a random occasion and I knew I wouldn't wear the dress again after that occasion.  So, for example, let's say I was going to a garden party.  It might be worth it to get the $20 plan, rent this dress, and then cancel the plan afterwards:

Since you can cancel plans at any time, it looks like you can just pay for a plan when you feel like renting a dress and then have no further obligation to pay as long as you timely cancel.  I'd probably only do this with brands I already knew my size in, since you are a bit SOL if you end up with the wrong size.

That said, I'm generally pretty unenthusiastic about dress rental services.  I'd rather put my money towards the purchase of my own dresses that are versatile enough to wear in various contexts in my life over long periods of time instead of spending money renting a dress I don't get to keep or that I know I only want to wear once anyway.  Also, I don't particularly like seeing dresses I'd passed over in the Anthro sale section available for rent.  I would prefer to see new designs that are still full-price in stores.

(Even though I'm a member of RtR, I have yet to rent a single dress from them because HTF do you justify spending $65 --- at the low end --- on a dress that you have to give back??  That's what I spend on dresses I KEEP!  And I'm not brand-conscious enough to care if I'm wearing Harve Leger to an event or whatnot.  I suppose if I needed to go to a gala where a long dress was required perhaps I'd consider it, but even then I still think I'd rather sale shop.)

Anyway, if you'd like to try Lendperk for yourself, you can sign up for a 9 day free trial, which is good for one free dress rental.  I probably won't be using this service in the future since I'd rather develop my own closet, but I do think it's a great idea that could go far with the right investors.  

Good Riddance, Google Reader

YEP, I SAID IT.  I'm glad Google Reader is being discontinued.

(Source)

Sure, I used Google reader daily to keep up with my various RSS feeds, but I didn't particularly LIKE it.  I didn't participate in any of the online community aspects of Google Reader (I don't have a Google+ account), and I found myself constantly cursing at my reader for consistently dropping certain feeds and then posting ten of them at once weeks later.

Even more, there are several blogs I tried unsubscribing from --- multiple times --- but Google kept signing me back up for them!  (Incidentally, I am very, very sorry if my blog has been that annoying irrepressible blog in your Google reader.  I now know from sad personal experience how much irrational hatred a face on the internet can prompt.)

So, what is your new RSS client of choice, friends?

I got a few email notifications from Bloglovin' this morning informing me that a few of you guys have started following me over there.  I have a bloglovin' account but I don't really like it!  The layout annoys me -- is there a way to see full posts, or can you only see snippets? -- and I am not aware of any iPhone/iPad apps that allow you to keep up with your Bloglovin' subscriptions.  Are there any that I just don't know about?

I just started using Feedly, and although I'm only a day into the user experience, I like it a lot so far.  I like the technological elements of my life the way I like my societies:  integrated and cooperative.  Feedly integrates with Google Chrome with an add-on, has apps for iOS/Android/Kindle (the iphone app has five stars with four thousand reviews --- nothing to sneeze at), and ALLOWS YOU TO SEND BLOG POSTS TO EVERNOTE!  (If you're not using Evernote then hoo boy, that's going to have to be another post.)  The Evernote clipping feature needs a bit of work (formatting is off when you click and it's unclear whether you can clip selections or if you must clip the whole page) but I love that the option there.  [Edit, April 8, 2013:  The importing of the ENTIRE blog page --- including headers, sidebars, and comments --- has officially gotten old.  Fix this now, please.  Thanks.]

Plus, you can import your subscriptions from (and sync them with) Google reader, categorize your blogs into topics...

...view whole blog posts in your main view...

...and customize the layout of your home screen.

Anyway, I'm enjoying the program so far.  We'll have to see if any of my aggravating deleted blogs make their way back onto my reader again.  (But if they do, I'll probably just blame Google.) [Edit, April 9, 2013:  The Feedly app, since it has adopted Google's RSS formula or whatever, has also adopted the same annoying blog dropping-undeleting glitches.  For more google reader alternatives, click here.]

I'd love to hear your progress on scoping out replacement RSS readers!  Let me know what you're finding out there in the open (free) market.

The Lameness* of Instagram Meets the Lameness** of Nikelback

What better way to skewer an overplayed social media convention* than with an overplayed top-40 hits machine**?

If you, like me, fail to see the point of documenting your life on Instagram*, then I think you'll really enjoy this video**.


*  Edited to add:  apologies to those who love Instagram.
** . . . and to those who love Nikelback.

And edited AGAIN to add this video that my sister sent me, the first 30 seconds of which further clarify my misgivings toward Instagram:



I welcome your thoughts.  Are you an instagrammer?

This Sale Haul is not a Coincidence

This morning I dropped my alarm clock on the floor while trying to hit snooze.  It shattered and broke.

Hours later, I visit fab.com (my newest sale-a-day obsession).  What do they have on sale?  Clocky.

(Image)

Yeah, this'll do.




Click here to buy (and to give me a referral credit while you're at it). 

Note that, while Tocky, the wheel-less model, has cooler features (you can set your own MP3s or voice recordings as a wakeup) Tocky also has far worse reviews on Amazon owing to shortcomings in the design. (Tocky reviews) (Clocky reviews)

(FYI: most of the negative reviews for Clocky on Amazon resulted from people getting knock-off Clockys; these reviewers suggest buying from the official website instead of Amazon. As a result of the knockoff risk, it seems like Fab, which appears to be getting their stock directly from the manufacturer, may be a better choice than Amazon in this situation, even with the shipping charge on Fab.)

Friday Funday: Jewish Girl Stars in Her Own Memes

This afternoon, Facebook informed me that several of my friends had read an entertaining article on Yahoo called, "'Ridiculously Photogenic Guy' Image Goes Viral."

According to "Know Your Meme," this guy just happened to be running a 10k over the weekend, and a spectator was struck by how collected he looked amidst the crowd of runners and took a candid photo.

He was dubbed "Ridiculously Photogenic Guy," and all of a sudden the meme took off:

Now, I love myself a good meme. Not only are they funny, but I find them intellectually interesting as well. What causes an image or an idea to take off and resonate with all of us to a deep degree? What do these memes say about our society?

(See here for a good analysis of this one.)

So all of this got me thinking: if I inadvertently became a meme, what is it mostly likely to be?

Not Surviving The Apocolypse Girl

Format: This meme would be structured around the many things needed for apocalyptic survival that would not fit in a small purse.

Example:

Clueless American Traveler

Format: a play on totally obtuse Americans out of their element.

Example:

Precariously Close to the Grand Canyon Girl

Format: Top line references danger or emotion that could result from a fall into the Grand Canyon. Second line indicates that first line was about something unrelated to dangerous proximity to certain death.

Example:

Truly Concerned News Follower

Format: news follower expresses a valid political opinion, which is then totally disregarded because she looks absurd.

Example:

Are you a fan of Internet memes? If so, link to your favorite one in the comments! The Bill O'Reilly meme (mentioned earlier) and the Bear Grillis memes never fail to make me LOL.

Have a wonderful holiday weekend for those celebrating Passover and Easter!

Sunday Runday: Zombies, Run! Review

Now that we've completed our initial fitness challenge races it's time to settle into a regular running schedule. Whenever I come off of a race, I find that I have a nice momentum that enables me to maintain a fitness regimen, even if I'd been struggling with my training beforehand.

In a fit of post-8k running love, I purchased an iPhone app called "Zombies, Run!" that promised to keep my legs moving by placing me in the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse and forcing me to run from flesh-eating hordes of undead walkers.

You know, the yoosh.

Since we don't get a new episode of AMC's The Walking Dead this week, it seemed like a fitting time to finally post my initial thoughts about this game.

Background: The story is set in England after a zombie outbreak has occurred. Survivors have formed "townships" to pool resources and increase their odds of outlasting the "zoms." One of the jobs in each township is that of "runners," who are sent out on periodic missions to gather supplies and intelligence. You are cast as "Runner 5", one of the runners in Abel Township.

How it works: The game is essentially a quasi-interactive audio book, with each mission being a new chapter in the book. There seems to be something suspicious happening with your presence at Abel township and there may be a conspiracy involving the zombie apocalypse. On each run, you get another piece of the narrative as you complete each new mission.

There are several breaks in the narrative in which you simply need to run to or from something; during these breaks, one of your own songs plays (you select the playlist).

Periodically, the game will interject over your music that you have found supplies or that there's a zombie 10 meters behind you.

The game uses your GPS to gauge your speed and distance. As you run, you collect miscellaneous supplies which you then bring back to the township. These will help you upgrade your base facilities.

The missions last approximately 30 minutes, after which you are free to run with your music playing in the background (the game tells you that you are listening to the Abel Township radio station, and you receive periodic interjections and narrative from the station DJs). The game comes with 30 missions, equalling 40 runs of gameplay. The developer seems to release new missions with their game updates.

 

Zombie Chases: The aspect of this game that most appealed to me was the being motivated to run faster by hearing the wet growling sounds of hungry zombies gaining on me from behind. (The game developer calls this "interval training - with zombies." You can chose to enjoy this experience by enabling the Zombie Chase option in the game.

With a setup like this, you'd expect the zombie chases to be simultaneously scary and awesome, right?

Well, it's still unclear to me exactly what this option does. Every once in a while, you'll be told that there are zombies behind you and that you really need to run. However, there have been times when my pace did not increase despite the presence of zombies, and yet I was still informed that the zombies had fallen back. Perhaps if I'd come to a complete stop, the game would have yelled at me to get my ass in gear? Or perhaps "zombie chase" just means that you sometimes hear interjections about zombies while you run.

What I wanted was the ever-present and frightening sound of zombies IN MY EAR if I slowed down, but I didn't get this. Instead, one of the characters told me at the start that if I "keep above a slow shamble" I should be able to outrun the zombies.

Well gee, thanks for the motivation...

 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Pros: Ambitious idea, excellent production value, entertaining story that keeps you curious about where it's going.

Cons: GPS use drains battery life; zombies are not hard to outrun, limited number of missions means this would not last long for frequent runners; playlists are played in order and songs cannot be shuffled; expensive at $8.

Suggestions for improvement: Add a mechanism to gauge whether the player actually increases their speed during a zombie chase, and use a few standard interjections if speed does not increase; enable song shuffling; reduce the price.

Overall: For $8, I can't say I highly recommend this app unless you are SUPER into zombies or really want to try something new and different. I'd pay $5 for this, but given its limited interaction with your actual speed it doesn't seem to be worth much more than that.

Link: If you're still curious, you can check it out in the Apple App Store at this link. The reviews are largely very positive, so if you want to be enabled to make the purchase, I'm sure you'll find the motivation there!

 

Do you have any fitness apps on your smartphone? I'd love recommendations!

The newest member of the family...

Hey there, folks!  I'm in New York for the next few days taking care of some of my bar admission requirements.  I love spending time in the city; it's wonderful to catch up with my friends, visit my old haunts, and check out new restaurants or attractions.  It's even better when my expenses are covered and I don't have to take the Chinatown bus.   
Regardless, here's what I would have engraved if not for the return policy: 

Ah, Rounders.

Thanks to my friend Tony for that quote, even if I didn't use it.

 

I'd really been kicking myself all week because I failed to advance order my iPad the week before its release and then it swiftly sold out with new orders delayed by up to three weeks.  I'd been debating what to engrave on the back of my iPad to commemorate the fact that I won the money for the device at a poker game.  I ended up foregoing the engraving because I learned that the engraving would make the iPad nonrefundable, and while I was fairly certain I wanted to keep it, I still hate final sale items.  Final sale on a $900 device?  No thank you.

 

Fortunately, despite the fact that I expected early morning sell-outs and long lines of overnight campers, I was able to find an iPad in an Apple store on Friday with the specs I wanted (64gb, 4g Verizon). I opted for white and I'm totally loving the device.  I think this thing will end up replacing my laptop for almost all purposes except working remotely through Citrix and playing online poker.  I can watch movies, surf the web, word process, read magazines, manage my calendar, etc. I'm traveling with it now and so far it has met all of my needs. 

Flipboard. How I love thee, and thy ability to allow me to read beautiful versions of magazines to which I don't subscribe. 
I've only been using the New iPad for two days so it and I are most definitely in the honeymoon period.  I'm sure that I'll start seeing its flaws as I become more familiar with it.  For now, I'm incredibly annoyed at the number of my iPhone games that I need to repurchase so that they are optimized for iPad use.  It's frustrating to spend money on the exact content I already purchased because it's now "HD".   However, this is largely balanced by the increased functionality I get from the device.  It hits a sweet spot between my iPhone and my laptop---a sweet spot I didn't even know existed.  It comes at a steep price, but for those who can do with less storage space and with wifi only, the price of the base model is about $500, half the price of the most jacked-up model.  The main features I wanted, the absence of which prevented me from getting an iPad 2, were an improved camera and a retina display.  The new iPad has both and that was pretty much the only thing I needed to hear!
That was all they needed to hear, too. 

Did any of you buy an iPad this weekend?  Do you plan to?  Do you think the craze is ridiculous?  One girl, who was four from the front of the line at an NYC store, received an offer of $1000+ for her spot in line!

It seems to be the general case with new Apple product releases that some kind of crazy flaw becomes known within the first weeks of the product's release. I haven't experienced any crazy problems yet, but I'm not ruling out the possibility!  At least there's a 14-day return policy. 

I feel as though time has completely slipped away from me this week.  I was placed on a very busy case last Friday, and I've spent the week dedicated to keeping all of my balls in the air.  

Given this crazy week, could the new iPad release have come at a better time?