Retro-Food.com

Last Sunday I made Strawberry Pretzel Jell-o. Now, I don’t suppose I have made it in the last dozen years, maybe longer.

I had a co-worker when I worked at UF who made great Strawberry Pretzel Jello. She’d make it for potlucks at the holidays. Huge favorite. Hers was…prettier. I’d get my fix and we would be good. Now if you are thinking strawberry and pretzel and jello don’t go together–think how much you like the salty sweet combo in Chocolate covered bacon/chips/pretzels. Then think fruity instead. Really. Excellent.

What is not excellent is my technique. I rushed through it answering the siren song of nap. So, mine had some not picture worthy issues. When you make it:

1. Bake the crust for a good 10 minutes

2. Slice the strawberries roughly evenly
3. Make the cream cheese layer and chill in the crumb pie shell before adding the Jello.

4. When the Jello is partially set–arrange the strawberries

Those are my special tips…BUT I have to say it worked FINE with jut throwing together. It was messy looking but good.

My family enjoyed it as well. Well, youngest didn’t have any because she wasn’t feeling well enough to really eat. The girls also found it highly suspect because of it being a Jello mold in our house and because it was unattractive.

Have you seen some delicious or not-so-delicious recipe on Facebook recently? Of course you have.

It is like the new version of “has anyone in your feed shared George Takei, a lolcat, or some other meme?.”

Recipe. Picture. Not anything super “secret” really–usually the sort of things you might run into at a potluck or made by the great home cook down the block. Everyone and their mother (especially mothers that are Facebook people and not much on wandering the whole internet) has shared these or so it seems.

I have seen them. I even have thought “hey, that looks good.” I also have thought “Huh. That looks familiar.” Then today, a friend of mine shared something that looked way too familiar. Not just the picture, there was a turn of phrase that struck me. I did a quick search and yes, that exact phrase came up. (and really, that is what you own as a food blogger–unique instructions and your pictures.  Read on and click the link for a better explanation. )

I had actually been wondering a bit about the recipe sharing once it started hitting my news feed in force. “Why?” “Isn’t that what Pinterest is for?” “Is this some new thing?”, “What am I missing as a food blogger here?” I didn’t pursue it though.

There are some great minds in the food space. I knew someone would write about it and scream it around the Internet if I should worry. Of course they would. Maybe they did? I missed it though. (I did, obviously, apparently the Boston Marathon and North Korea caught my attention) If you missed the screaming too…I want to point you here:

“What Every Facebook User Needs to Know” IamBaker is on top of the issue a good week before me. (and she’s a Food Blogger of the capital letter sort. Really, read her blog, gaze at her pictures, don’t steal her work though.) Go read it. It boils down to copyright. It’s important.

Read this one too on BlogHer:
Food Bloggers Fight Storm of Facebook Pages That Are Stealing Their Content. (by the talented Rawmazing)
I don’t really like to slug copyright around a lot. I know better than most that the same recipe is in hundreds of cookbooks, that my mother’s recipe and secret ingredients very well could be yours as well. I respect it but I also know that some food bloggers can get tense over the same 1-2-3-4 cake ingredients in the same order. I even am cool with “cream butter and sugar” not being unique. I get it. (really I do.)

I know that NONE of the people who have shared these recipes on Facebook after it has been shared hundreds of times even thought about this or understood something important about the differences between the ways these things are shared. I don’t want to give the page owners that much credit, but I like to think the best of at least some of them too. (the rest, oh dear, don’t let me scare you with why they want you to like their page and how they make money from that)

i am baker starts with “Have you ever shared content?”

What i am baker is saying  is …if you share a picture, a recipe, a funny ecard, caption, kid pic of some kid–that is CONTENT.  That belongs to someone else. There is an investment in that content and someone owns it. Really.

Read IamBaker’s post and if you are asking “but what about?” then yes, ask me if you need a Twitter/Facebook/Pinterest/someecard/oatmeal/xkcd/message board/food blog specific post from someone who knows. I have a lot of talented friends, read some good blog posts, and attended conference sessions addressing that specific issue. If you know of a great post about these issues, share those too.

I respect recipe developers. I respect people who spend a lot of time and energy on developing, photographing, cooking, mixing, baking, and listening to feedback on those recipes. Food Bloggers, writers, developers: they spend real time and energy on everything from idea to plate to picture to hitting publish. It is why I have yet to become what in my mind is a “real” food blogger.

I write about food, but I’ve not buckled down to do it the way so many people do well. It isn’t where I am right now. Oh…don’t let me wander off to maybe the third topic I was going to blog before I became enraged about Facebook. (again, focus, not there. Maybe I will discuss that later this week. Maybe I will skip it in favor of the Jell-o I made yesterday. )  People WORK hard on recipes, cooking, writing. That is the important thing here. Remember the last time you made a new dish for dinner that no one liked? Imagine working to make that recipe come out, PHOTOGRAPHING it (you see that is harder than it looks even if you are a pretty cook and a skill set all its own. Try it.), trying it out on friends/family/yourself, trying again, writing about it, publishing it in some form. Then doing it all “for fun” or for a living. Food bloggers do this all of the time. It’s beautiful.

Learn why those Facebook recipes aren’t just illegal, but just wrong. Really wrong.

Really, I just try to ask myself “What would Elise Bauer do?” If you are a food blogger or interested in these issues beyond “Oh! I didn’t know that. I won’t share those anymore” you should check out some of her writing about copyright, recipes, and food blogging.

I am so behind at work and house stuff, I thought “Oh I will blog that later. Maybe.” I then decided moments ago that I am so behind that this quick post won’t put me any significant amount MORE behind schedule.

Part of running behind (though not as much as I’d (or you’d) like to think) is chatting — not here– but elsewhere about this an that.

One thing that came up is food fears. I have some. I know LOGICALLY that they make no sense. I also know that they make a little bit a sense and the rest is irrational.

So…out with it: I fear rhubarb. Don’t tell me. I know. Only poisonous if you eat…or if it is raw or if it is x amount. You’ve been eating it all your life that way.

I also have the same sort of irrational fears about:
1. bean sprouts
2. raw pistachios and cashews
3. green potatoes
4. I always worry about mangoes because some people who are allergic to poison ivy also react to mangoes

I however have eaten (and not died) :

1. raw ground beef and raw bacon (sorry Angelina, I know that probably troubles you just in general) My mother probably lost quite a bit of ground beef from this when I was a kid. I am vaguely troubled by ground beef because of e coli – especially when there is an outbreak. Then I don’t want to touch it.

2. Raw Oysters. In the 70s, from the Chesapeake.

3. Various peculiar things like olive loaf, aspics, and scrapple (not inherently “dangerous” but not generally err popular)

4. Sauces, dressings, desserts, and batters with raw eggs, “raw” milk (before it was “raw milk” as a thing) and undercooked pork– all of these of debatable food safety. See above rhubarb issues

5. Home canned tomatoes and other vegetables that didn’t have acid added for food safety or canned in a way that people call safe. Oddly I had more of a fear of my mother’s crabapple jelly because of the wax saying petroleum on the box.

6. Tomato leaves.

The thing most of these has in common is that “danger” foods that I don’t eat were foods not commonly available in my home when I was growing up, except the potato thing. My father had issues with green potatoes too though, so maybe that seemed like a valid thing?

He also would rant about all peppers being poison particularly cooked. I thought this was indigestion. I later read that all peppers have a small amount of poison and cooking does concentrate it. I still go with indigestion not food sensitivity.

Ok, out with it. Any food fears? Rational? Irrational?