Andy's Idea Factory

This weekend in Nashville I gave my mother a 101 lesson on her point-and-shoot, and decided much of this information could be useful to others... as I've said in my other two P&S101 posts (1) (2) , most people don't have time to read their entire camera manual, especially when the device works just fine with Power, Autoflash, and the Automatic setting. But the auto setting isn't going to let you learn, in fact sometimes it will just frustrate you into thinking your camera isn't as good as your friend's camera because her pictures come out way better. Perhaps, or perhaps you just aren't using your camera to its fullest capacity. Here are the points we went over this weekend together, and what mom learned... 1)The basic settings: Use the dial and alternate settings (under "menu" or "function") as your primary tools: a) the face is for portraits (usually focusing on just the image in front of you, blurring out the background) b...

I'm a proud Italian, so one of the things I've missed the most since going gluten free is pasta. I know there is "rice pasta" out there, but I've yet to try it; my regular store doesn't carry it, and I just haven't gone out of my way yet to find it. I will; but I also own my own pasta maker so I plan to try that, and in the meantime I have always loved making- and eating!- gnocchi the best. Having a potato base and not many other ingredients, gnocchi is a pretty easy recipe to alter for gluten-free. So today I ventured into the kitchen to try out a recipe I found on the Celiac home site (from Paula Santos), but as usual, I've decided to alter it, and am happy with the results. This recipe also doesn't call for milk, with margarine instead. My bible Italiana - the Silver Spoon - has eight gnocchi recipes in it, and the Gnocchi Alla Bava is without milk, also using butter. So I gave this recipe the ok- the rest call for a LOT of milk, and I...

Ashamedly, I haven't written a post in over a month. Now, I write three other blogs as well as for Examiner on a regular (or sometimes no-so regular) basis, but that doesn't mean my Ideas have diminished, so where have I been? Especially when I have recently learned that I am, indeed addicted to the internet , sad but true. Read that article, and tell me if you are too... but this point dawned on me when we were just recently in NYC for a few days and our (gasp!) phones went out. Both of them. With no way to Tweet my awesome experiences, I felt detached from the world, my friends, and my online family. Yet I've only been a member of Twitter for about a year- so what did we do before these online social networks? My only answer is, Who cares? I was actually turned on to the above Addicted article through reading an article on America-the No Vacation Nation , where I realized a sad but very real point, that we are working our country to death. I already think we watch too ...