Tag Archives: Food

January 3, 2014 · 11:17 am

The Ploughman Cometh

The first Foodie Friday of the new year and we had a lot of snow here in the northeast with which to welcome it. The folks have been out plowing streets and driveways all night and that put the word “ploughman” into my head. I know – different kind of plough (or “plow” as we spell it here in America). But it also brought a ploughman’s lunch to mind.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it’s a meal one can order in a British pub consisting of bread, cheese, and beer (you knew I’d get to food eventually).  I had always thought that this was some sort of traditional lunch that field workers had eaten for centuries.  When those workers migrated from the fields to the cities, I assumed that they took their lunch with them and pubs served the food that people traditionally ate midday.  As it turns out, that was what I was meant to believe by the British Cheese Bureau which created the lunch and marketed it following the second world war as a way to increase cheese sales.  Pretty clever – create a feeling of nostalgia for a supposedly traditional meal in a time when the world was just betting back to “normal” following a decade of horror.  Which of course is the business point today.

History is constantly being rewritten to suit the purposes of the author.  On a very minor scale, we do it every time we tweak our resumes.  On a major scale, different people are given credit or blame for things that go very well or very badly.  The past is changed to suit to present.  Whether it’s work or play, one always needs to understand not just the author’s point of view but also their agenda.  While the ploughman’s lunch didn’t taste any worse once I found out it was a marketing ploy, I kind of felt like Dorothy when the curtain fell and The Wizard was revealed.

That’s a reminder as we start the new year – question everything (even me!).  Look for facts from disinterested, multiple sources.  That’s getting harder to do as journalism migrates from reporting to advocacy outside of business and it’s always been a challenge inside.  Are you up to the task?

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December 27, 2013 · 11:01 am

Most Read Posts Of The Year – Foodie Edition

It’s Foodie Friday and since we’re reviewing the most read posts of the year I’m combining the two.  I’m also cheating a little.  The most read food-related post this year wasn’t written for our Friday Foodie Fun.  It was the post about finding a thumb tack in clam chowder.  This post, originally titled Recipes And Business, was actually written just before the Giants played in the Super Bowl in 2012 and was, in fact, the most-read foodie post this year.  Nice to know it has legs and it did way better than the Giants this year!  Enjoy.

Many of you will be cooking something for Sunday’s big game and so this Foodie Friday we’ll think a little bit about what recipes to follow.  Actually, it’s more about how one follows any recipe, and what that has in common with business.

An example recipe, printed from the Wikibooks ...

Image via Wikipedia

As I think you might know, my feeling about cooking is that it’s more like jazz while baking is more Baroque music– far more structured and precise.  Given that, the way I see recipes might differ from how you see them and how that perspective carries into business.  Let’s see.

A recipe is a guide, not an edict.  I look at them as outlines of the dish, but it’s up to me as the cook to insert the flavors I want to present.  For example, if I’m making chili for Sunday’s game, I know that most of the folks who will be at the party enjoy fairly hot food so I might change the spice mix accordingly.  Cooking veal cutlets for 20 can be expensive but turkey cutlets in the same recipe can be just as tasty.  With a vegan and a vegetarian as members of the household here, I often modify recipes to accommodate their eating styles too.  I have a sense of the destination and the recipe is the map, but there are often many routes to get to where I’m trying to go.

Business is the same.  There are some basic road maps – take in more than you spend, treat customers and employees well – but every business is different.  Sticking to the recipe isn’t always possible, and sometimes the road we wish to take is closed, but with a good understanding of fundamental techniques and enough knowledge of the building blocks (ingredients), one can cope with changing market conditions and take advantage of opportunities (I was going to make snapper but look at the fresh grouper on sale!) that might arise.

So as you’re whipping up that pot of gumbo, maybe try thickening it with okra instead of your usual file powder.  If you’re not having much luck using SEM for online commerce, maybe social media can be more efficient.  It’s jazz – learn to improvise – oh, and Go Big Blue!

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December 20, 2013 · 9:55 am

Kitchens Without Garbage

It’s the last Foodie Friday before Christmas and this week  I want to talk about garbage.

Garbage

(Photo credit: Editor B)

It’s on my mind because last night I watched an interesting episode of Chopped, the Food Network’s show where cooks have to use a basket of ingredients that don’t seem to go with one another to make great dishes in 30 minutes.  The baskets last night all consisted of “garbage” – food that most home cooks often toss out.  Herb stems, bread ends, fish heads and other generally discarded items made up the ingredient lists.  The cooks did well and as food professionals they demonstrated the principle that nothing should be wasted by  a professional.  Or as The Dead would say, “one man gathers what another man spills.”

Jacques Pepin has said this for years on his TV shows – use everything, throw nothing out.  He even takes leftovers and turns them into new dishes.   Which of course is an excellent thought for all business professionals, especially as most businesses move into content creation (surely you’ve heard that everyone is a publisher, haven’t you!?).

Some of my clients fail to observe the immutable law that there is no garbage can on the internet.  While something shot for a TV commercial may not be usable in that 30-second format, the web has no such time constraints.  The speech given at a small conference to an interested audience of a hundred people can become a blog post and then summarized for inclusion in an email newsletter (talk about making something new out of the leftovers!). The audience of a hundred can now be thousands with very little extra effort.

Everything we create in our business lives has some value.  Perhaps that value isn’t to us in the moment but tossing anything of value out when there are so many ways to slice and dice it into something quite tasty is more than a waste.  License it out, recut it, format it for another channel.  The trash bin is the last place anything ought to go.  Agreed?

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