The Cool Cook

Moving along....

Another day another podcast, this time on eggs. It's on my Cyberears site which is where they all will be in future.

I've also finished revamping the pages at  All About Cooking and I've put a completely new page in front of How to Cook Cabbage. This is in need of a new header graphic, but I'll have that up in the next couple of days. The unusual thing about this page is that it is itself entirely a graphic, rather than a page of text, which is what you'd expect. I made it thanks to some new toys I bought recently. I can only do this for a few pages or I'll lose the interest of the search engines, but I like the effect. See what you think.

Primarily for PodcastAlley

The main purpose of this entry is to publish my podcast feed on PodcastAlley. You can ignore it or click on the link for further information.

My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-1c3a858fcc4d210dbe1df95e44153665}

A change in style......

The problem with recipes is that different nations use different methods of measuring ingredients. Australia uses metric mainly, but also cups and sometimes Imperial measures. However the cups are a different size to those used in the US, where they have their own system of pounds and ounces. The UK uses Imperial measures almost exclusively and so on.

Conversion tables help, of course, but are a bit cumbersome. Up to now I've made a kind of compromise by using cups wherever possible and occasionally giving alternatives to my native metric system wherever it has been critical for the successful outcome of a particular dish. But I've finally bowed to pressure and in recognition of the fact that I have a growing number of US citizens using my recipes (they now outnumber the Aussies by quite a way) I'm going to publish both Aussie and US measurements for every recipe.

You can see how by visiting this page http://www.all-about-cooking.com/steak/steak_diane.html

I don't know if I'll manage to change all the other recipes (there are around 1,000 of them) but I do promise that all future ones will be in the new format.

Finally decided on a series...

I keep talking about podcasts and what I'm going to do, but I also keep changing my mind. Well, you'll be pleased to know that I've settled on a formula. The podcasts will be about cooking (now there's a surprise) and will look at the basics from buying kitchen equipment to the various forms of cooking. The first two are in place right here and that's where they will be published from now on. If you register, you get notified every time I publish a new one - and that's all that happens. I do NOT send out gratuitous advertising emails.

I'm going to put the animated recipes on the front page of All About Cooking as they become available, with a link to the main collection that you can also see here

Ever used a cartouche?

It's not a trick question. Professional chefs use circles of grease-proof paper to keep sauces from forming a skin, or to prevent simmering liquids from evaporating. They are therefore very useful when poaching food.

Below is a short video on how to make one.

Basic Podcast Trial

I've put up a trial podcast (audio message) that I've taken at random from a cooking series I prepared for one of my websites. It's at this address http://www.cyberears.com/index.php/Show/audio/5311

If you click on that link you get taken to my trial site and you can click on the little arrow next to the title 'How to Roast Meat' to hear the recording. Make sure you have sound turned up and speakers turned on.

If you like the idea (not necessarily the podcast) you can click on the  'be a fan' button which then gives me an idea of how popular these recordings are likely to be. You won't get contacted by me as a result of doing this, as I hope you appreciate by now, but you do then get notified every time I publish a new podcast.

There's a new video on its way soon as well, but more about that later.

Back on track

Right, sorted! Pretty much everything is now back on track and in the next week to ten days the following is going to happen: new podcasts on various aspects of cooking, new videos on both the websites and various bookmarking sites, a completely new website at The Cool Cook (or at least a new design) and, if there's any time left, a revamp of the nutrition related sites.

This has been a steep but enjoyable learning curve. I'm looking forward to getting back to what I'm best at - cooking!

Shouldn't be long now

Well, I've got as far as buying a new computer with massive memory and RAM, and all the softwware is being installed as I write. The swapover should take place in two days time, when this blog will either by up and fully running or else MIA until I get the bugs sorted out.

There's lots of new stuff in the pipeline once this nightmare's over, so stay tuned.

Hell is a Windows Update!

Silly me, I should have known better than to try an upgrade from Win2000 to XP - I've just spent the worst week of my life this year trying to find lost files (some are gone forever), making others work and generally fooling around with stuff that no human was ever intended to get involved with.

Eventually I've had to bite the bullet and reload 2000, thereby losing a whole new raft of files, that had become attached to XP, in the process. Which is a long winded explanation of why there hasn't been a post for a while.

Stuff is still appearing on the website though. There is a new movie and a new video on YouTube. More are on the way. I also added another recipe, but for the life of me I can't now remember what it was.

A New Movie Added

I never know whether to call these 'movies' or 'videos', since they are made in both formats. So they are movies on my website but videos when posted to YouTube. Just to confuse the issue further, I put the latest one on my All About Cooking website in video mode, and the collected versions on my Cool Cook website in movie mode.

Anyway, the point is that I have changed the style from using a webcam to building through animation. It has been an interesting (and ongoing) learning curve. I like the outcome and I can see lots of possibilities for the future. Visit this page and see what you think.