The Coveted Chef.
A few years back my family launched an annual competition for the coveted chef trophy shown here. We all make a dish to bring to the home of the parental units, and they are served blind with festive names given to each (usually after the 8 reindeer ). The food is served up, we eat and eat some more, and then we vote on our top 3 favorites of the dishes served.
If you know anything at all about me, you probably know that I love artichokes, and am working through the process of putting together an artichoke cookbook with a collection of my personal recipes. You also know that I share this love with roughly 5,000 others on Facebook.
A week before the gathering, I realized I had not given any thought to what I would prepare for this event. My family is highly competitive – although I’ll tell you I think last year my brother won unfairly. Who doesn’t love chocolate fondue, especially when you count the votes of the children present? Kids and chocolate – that’s like buying their votes! Melt chocolate, cut fruit – hardly seems fair. I think he was heckled so much last year for winning, that this year he did bring his A-Game and made a clam chowder that was out of this world.
Artichoke Bread Pudding
Anyway – this year I was stuck. And just a week go I was invited to join Pinterest, which at first I could not see the point of. I started pinning a few things I liked, and as I began to follow a few people I was starting to see some really interesting images that captured my attention and got me thinking. I did a search on Pinterest for Artichokes, and not only did I find some unique products and beautiful photos, but some recipes too! The first one I tried was Artichoke Bread Pudding. Shown here is the result (my actual finished dish). Mine actually looks as good as the image shown on the recipe itself! It was like artichoke stuffing on steroids. The only problem was that it didn’t make enough to go around for this family gathering, so I had to go back and find a different recipe.
Back on Pinterest, I looked for artichoke dishes, and found a handful that looked really good. I was torn between a lemon artichoke soup, an artichoke hummus, and artichoke cakes with a cajun rémoulade. I repinned all of these selections so I could find them in an instant when I needed them, and sought out my husband to make the final selection. He settled on the artichoke cakes with cajun rémoulade.
With no time left to spare, I did not have time to do a dry run of this recipe. It was the day of the event, and had to be perfect. We worked as a team. I made the artichoke cakes, my husband made the rémoulade. We did kick it up a notch to make both components a bit spicier than intended, but oh my gosh was it major yummy. So we finished it up, packed up the components of our dish, loaded the kids in the car and off we went.
Now I should tell you that two of the entries this year were entirely store bought – one was cheesecake and the other a cheese spread – both which were delicious, but should not have been eligible for any votes. Seriously!
Well it did not matter, our dish took home the coveted trophy with 24 points. Second place received 12 points, which was my brothers clam chowder – a worthy opponent. But I have to thank Pinterest for providing me a simple way to find recipes and information that I am passionate about and easily share it with others!
I definitely see some business cases for a tool such as this to create content and related links in a visually appealing and easy to organize way. Things get repinned and make they way viral, and hopefully drive some web traffic. Where small business use sites like Flickr or just their web site for a visual portfolio of their products or services, Pinterest could add a whole new flavor to that, and potentially reach a whole new audience.
I am a lover of infographics also, and often I find one I love, and then can’t find it when I need it. Now I can pin them to one board and go back and reference them at a moments notice. Pretty slick.
The “Pin it” button is installed on my browser toolbar, making it easy and fun to add things to my “boards” (or categories to which I share things on Pinterest. I’m working on a more practical business use for myself, but in the meantime am having fun exploring the ways others are using it.
I am sure Pinterest will evolve in the coming months or year. I plan to be there to see it unfold. This year, I hope to complete my artichoke cookbook, and if you like, you can follow along with me on Pinterest as I work through it with images and comments about things I’m tasting and trying.
