Liking Lately: Recipe Edition

In my house, we go through peaks and valleys when it comes to meal planning and meal prep. I've mentioned this before. My husband and I will get on a tear for a while, diligently planning and executing shopping trips, menus, food prep, etc. Then we get a busy week or two, or have some travel or holidays thrown in, and it all falls by the wayside and we eat a lot of scrambled eggs and things we find in our freezer. Lately I've been on top of things, thanks in part to inspiration from a Facebook group for food ideas, which my friend A'Dell recently came up with.

I've tried a few new recipes lately, and wanted to share.

1. But first! This quinoa salad in its many iterations (I make it with or without feta, craisins, and roasted garbanzos; I make it with whatever vegetables and toasted nuts I have on hand; I make it with or without avocado, chicken, salmon, or other meat/fat to make it a heartier meal) continues to be a hit at my regular rowing club potluck dinners, and is a frequently requested recipe. (Instagram photo below is one of my many versions.)

2. Speaking of potlucks and quinoa, I think I'm going to try this Crunchy Cashew Thai Quinoa Salad with Ginger Peanut Dressing recipe for my next potluck. It includes so many of my favorite foods and flavors.

Photo from tastykitchen.com

3. I also recently made this kale and Brussels sprouts salad for a potluck, and it was also a hit. And it was super fast because I made use of Trader Joe's shredded, raw Brussels sprouts, and a bag of their Tuscan kale, which is already chopped (I just removed any big stems and chopped the leaves more finely). This would be delicious alongside grilled chicken prepped in my favorite marinade, and in fact I am putting that on my menu for next week right now.

Note: I used parmesan and toasted almond slivers because that's what I had. Easy-peasy.

Photo from epicurious.com

4.  And finally, I miss writing at Food Lush. I am always delightfully surprised when I see someone post a link to or try a recipe from the site, despite it having closed down three years ago. This recipe for Cashew Chicken Lettuce Wraps is one I'd tried before, but I remember not loving it, and we never made it again. It turns out it's just so much better (to me! and Zach!) over rice. My husband was raving about it, and claims it was the best meal he's had in a while.

Here's the recipe, with my modifications. Original is in the link.

Photo from tastykitchen.com

Cashew Chicken, for Lettuce Wraps or Over Rice

Note: if enjoying the recipe over rice, you will need to quadruple the sauce, as listed below.

• 1 Tablespoon rice vinegar
• 3/4 Tablespoon brown sugar
• Few dashes red pepper flakes
• ¼ teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 2-⅓ Tablespoons soy sauce or coconut aminos, divided
• 3 Tablespoons canola oil (or oil of choice)
• Approx. 1 and 1/4 lb. boneless, skinless chicken thighs, trimmed and diced
• 1 medium or large yellow (or white) onion, diced
• 1 Bunch of green onions, white and light green parts sliced; dark green parts discarded
• 3-4 celery stalks, diced
• 1 can sliced water chestnuts, drained and rinsed (chop them if you please)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup roasted, salted, chopped cashews (I did half almonds, half cashew, because that's what I had. An extra handful of nuts certainly won't hurt!)
• 8 leaves Of butterhead, bib or other large leaf lettuce (romaine even works), washed and dried, if doing lettuce wraps.

For the sauce, mix together rice vinegar, brown sugar, ground red pepper, ground ginger, sesame oil, and 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, making sure to dissolve brown sugar. Set aside. (Quadruple these measurements if serving over rice instead of in lettuce leaves.)

Heat oil in pan over medium to medium-high heat. Add diced chicken and brown (about 4 to 5 minutes). Remove chicken from oil, reduce heat to medium. Add onions and garlic to pan with remaining soy sauce (1/3 tbsp. = 1 tsp.) to pan; cook until translucent. A few minutes into cooking the onion and garlic, add the celery and water chestnuts. When onions and garlic are clear and tender, add stir fry sauce, browned chicken and green onions. Saute mixture for a few minutes and add cashews shortly before removing from heat.

Spoon chicken mixture into individual lettuce leaves, wrap and devour! Or serve over rice alongside steamed broccoli if desired. Add your favorite hot sauce, more cashews or soy sauce if you're feeling kicky.

Marketing Monday: A Fools' Postmortem

Who said Marketing Monday only had to take place on Mondays? Okay, okay. But I love this topic and wanted to be sure to armchair quarterback this: one of my favorite marketing days of the year.

I love jokes. I think I have a pretty good sense of humor. But I have never been a big fan of pranks. I think it's the tendency for pranks to swing mean-spirited or cruel that I really have an issue with. Making people laugh? Aces! Causing people discomfort or stress? Boooooo. BOOOOOOO.

At any rate, on a personal level, I usually dread April first, what with its abundance of poorly executed social media pranks and "jokes" (I'm looking at you, fake pregnancy announcements), the majority of which seem to be unfunny at best, cruel at worst. April Fools' Day: Full of fools! Who knew?! (It's possible I'm just a curmudgeon.)

That said, I find April first absolutely fascinating from a marketing perspective. I love seeing what emails are awaiting me that day, what starts picking up traction on social media, and what brilliant (or not so brilliant; more on that in a bit) things Google tries. It's a day where companies can be fun and funny and show off their wit, but wherein they need to walk a fine line to be successful as well.

Here are a few April Fools' tricks that I think were well-executed, and one or two that I think missed the mark.

This video from Quilted Northern was so obviously a joke, and it was actually funny, well-produced, and on-brand. Potential for going viral (it kept coming up in my Facebook feed), no one gets hurt, brand-centric, all in good fun? A+

Start remembering your bathroom experiences again with our new handcrafted toilet paper. Inspired by the makers of yesterday and today.

Conversely, I opened up my email on April 1 to see this from Sprinkles Cupcakes, with subject line "Goodbye Red Velvet, Hello Black Velvet!":

First of all, "cupcation" is cute and clever. But as for the meat of it: I know that Red Velvet is one of this nationwide cupcake chain's best sellers. I found it highly suspect that they'd do away with it, especially in an email announcement on April first. With that in mind, I clicked through to their site to confirm that it was in fact a joke, but there was no such confirmation: there was only information about Black Velvet.

I took a look at their Twitter feed, thinking that confirmation might be there. And it was: not in the form of an announcement, but rather in replies to distraught customer inquiries asking if it was a joke. Most of the tweets I looked at were in response to this tweet. Your eyes do not deceive you: that incomplete image is actually what was uploaded to Twitter, and there it remained.

We've discontinued #RedVelvet and replaced it with your new favorite - #BlackVelvet! pic.twitter.com/cDozEUuhDO

— Sprinkles Cupcakes (@sprinkles) April 1, 2016

The complete version could be found on Facebook:

Farewell, Red Velvet... hello, Black Velvet! Red Velvet is old news.. we've sent this flavor on a well-deserved cupcation and replaced it with our new Black Velvet. Scroll down to meet your new favorite!

Posted by Sprinkles Cupcakes on Friday, 1 April 2016

They replied to comments there acknowledging that it was a joke:

I don't know about you, but I cringed particularly hard for the bride concerned about the cupcakes she'd ordered for her wedding. Not causing your customers extra stress is, or should be, a primary concern. Fortunately she seemed to take it in stride, but this is exactly why, if you're going to attempt to pull off an April Fools' prank on your customers, you'd better be darn sure of the execution. This could have just as easily gone the other way.

But back to Twitter:

@sprinkles NOOOOO!!!!! Red velvet is the very best and the only one I buy!!!!

— Kendall Jones (@KendallJonesMD) April 1, 2016

.@sprinkles TAKING AWAY YOUR RED VELVET CUPCAKE FROM ME IS NO JOKING MATTER! 😡😱😲😂

— Christina (@christinawrites) April 1, 2016

@sprinkles - Nooo pls say it ain't so. Red velvet is my favorite. In fact the only one I eat. I just recently found you guys don't do this!

— Adalgisa SD (@AdaSD) April 1, 2016

Sprinkles responded to about half their replies to this tweet, then seemed to lose steam. Their replies were similar to this:

@AdaSD Happy April Fool's :) Red Velvet is here to stay!

— Sprinkles Cupcakes (@sprinkles) April 1, 2016

The next day this email was waiting for me in my inbox with subject line "Are You a Fool for Cupcakes?":

They also tweeted this:

April Fools! JK abt Red Velvet - but don't be foolish and let April pass you by without trying our new Black Velvet! pic.twitter.com/b05vftZuN7

— Sprinkles Cupcakes (@sprinkles) April 2, 2016

From what I could see, responses were generally good-natured. Still, I think this could have been handled better. It would have been perfectly appropriate to have this announcement on the landing page for when people clicked through. The idea behind the special edition Black Velvet cupcake is a fun one, and this April Fools' prank could have been pulled off in a more savvy, customer-focused fashion. To me it missed the mark. People were left really wondering if their favorite product was leaving, and the only way they were able to find out was by tweeting at the company or combing through their replies on social media. Not the best strategy, in my experience. I'd love to hear your thoughts: Am I being too hard on Sprinkles?

(I'd also like to have a word with their copywriter about several things, but particularly about Fools vs. Fool's/Fools', and a lack of consistency. And okay, yeah, about making their own name possessive correctly.)

And finally, the master of fooling: Google. There is even a Wikipedia article outlining past Google April Fools' Day pranks.

This year, two caught my eye. One, because it was ill-conceived and predictably went pear-shaped (adding a "mic drop" to people's emails, and what happened when they didn't realize it, then blocking any replies to that email so the sender would never see the conversation again) and got pulled early, and the other because it was cute, funny, and started out as plausible but by the end was clearly a joke.

Enjoy!

What marketing pranks caught your eye this year? Is there one you've always wanted to see?

Friday Find: Small Niceties

I don't generally cluck my tongue over the advent of technology, and its role in our society. Technology has done a lot for me, for all of us, and it's here to stay whether we like it or not. That said, I do also acknowledge and lament some analog things that are becoming lost and/or a lost art, some of which are outlined in this article, which I thoroughly enjoyed. 

A partial list of the points that I particularly enjoyed, with commentary:

- Handwritten notes. This is something I'm always striving to be better at. I was raised to write thank you notes, and while I still do it as an adult, I am always sloooooow to get to the handwritten ones. I am fortunate to have a few friends who regularly send snail mail, and it never, ever fails to brighten my day when I spot something with familiar handwriting in my mail box.

- Parlor games. I do find that generally people are almost always amenable to games, it's just that we don't think to play them as often as we once might have. It always makes me think of the scene in Fred's living room in a Christmas Carol where Ebeneezer finds out how people really feel about him via a parlo(u)r game - my, how times have changed. Now Ebeneezer would probably be reading texts over Fred's shoulder. Also fine, but the parlo(u)r game makes for a more charming scene.

- Children with old school manners. I was a very shy kid. My parents accepted this and understood it, but insisted that I still needed to step forward, say hello and nice to meet you, and shake hands. Then I could go back to hiding behind my mom's legs. As I got older, I was always baffled by adults who wouldn't shake my hand. I often offered my hand first, and remember the looks of surprise on so many adult faces. A strong handshake is important to me and I have a soft spot for kids who will shake my hand (I don't begrudge kids who don't have strong handshakes, to be clear). I have a soft spot for my friends' kids who, even as teenagers, still call me Miss Caitlin, and say yes, ma'am, no, ma'am, no matter how much I insist it isn't necessary.

- Being a gracious guest and a gracious host. In our home the number one rule of hosting is to never make your guests uncomfortable. The number one rule of being a guest is never show up empty-handed, and always offer to help.

- Related: I first fell for my husband in part because he showed up as a friend-of-a-friend at a last-minute BBQ at my house bearing a cheese plate, a smile, and offers to pitch in. I'm just saying, you never know what can happen if you show up armed with brie. (Aren't you glad I resisted the urge to make a pun about how it's a gouda move?) (Sorry.)