Andy's Idea Factory

Early this week while planning the holiday meal for Thanksgiving, I went into the local health food store to pick up a bag of bread mix for myself, and found a little gem called Pamela's. Knowledgeable staff turned me on to it I must admit; I was bee-lining it for the best of the recent test but couldn't find the right aisle. What the clerk told me was that this one has recipes for pizza and pie crusts and bagels, too! So I decided to buy two bags to try this new brand to make myself some bread, and then test out Pamela's on mom's pumpkin pie recipe for the holiday - the hardest test of all! First, as a sandwich bread, Pamela's passes the parameters - it's firm enough to cut in slices that don't fall apart for a sandwich, panini, or egg-in-the-middle; and most important, it tastes like regular white-flour bread. It was also a better bread than the other three, the taste and texture were most real and the crust is also generally firmer and better tasting...

Most of my peers have this subject nailed down.... but occasionally I run across someone who I think has it all figured out, all this social media hoopla, and yet they are missing one key element about the system (yes it is a system!) that would make their life online so much simpler. So today's Idea Factory is about all the social media tools I use on a daily or weekly basis. This list will likely change in 6 months, so it will likely require a followup. I know 6 months ago I wasn't using half these tools yet... technology is already light-years ahead of us! I also knew this would be a good post today when I counted my sites up and realized I regularly post to, gasp, over 30 different profiles. No wonder I need automation technology to keep myself from going crazy, AND to be able to do some work in a day! Daily I post to: (# of profiles) Facebook (3), Twitter (3), LinkedIn (1), Flickr (1) Weekly I post to: Blogger (4), You Tube (1), Ning (6), The Wheel Life (1), Aweber (1),...

For those of you who know me well, I don't usually like to make anything that comes out of a box, tube, or packet... but I've been gluten free only since June and am experimenting with recipes so often, that I've found it nice to try the bread mixes from a box. I've tried three so far, and am happy to report my findings... so far all of these are available at Whole Foods and in multi-packs on Amazon. YUM! 1) Gluten Free Pantry's favorite sandwich bread was just that- so far the best slicing and firm- texture (ie. best hold for a sandwhich). The flavor was the staple white-bread flavor- something I ironically haven't had in my house in years. We switched to nutty wheat breads ages ago for the health factor, and I'm actually quite glad to go back to white bread for PB&J's. Yum. My first notice on this one was that the top sunk about 1/4". Perhaps high altitude, perhaps I just need to try again- either way, it still worked great for sammies, egg...

This direct from Twitter's help desk, some of these mobile commands are new to me... tip of the week from the Idea Factory- you've heard it before- "Sometimes it just pays to read the instructions!" Did you know: you can perform certain actions, like following or marking a friend's update as a favorite, by using the designated Twitter commands? Use the commands listed below from your phone, the web update box, or your favorite third party application. Turning Twitter off and on: device notifications ON: turns ALL phone notifications on. OFF, STOP, QUIT, End, Cancel, Arret or Unsubscribe : turns ALL phone notifications off. ON username : turns on notifications for a specific person on your phone. For example, ON alissa. OFF username : turns off notifications for a specific person on your phone. For example, OFF blaine. FOLLOW username: this command allows you to start following a specific user, as well as receive SMS notifications. Example:...

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 ...