A friend sent me the above video this morning. It comes from a company called Blossom who have dozens of other videos on YouTube and elsewhere too I think. It is very smart. It is quick, chirpy and shows you some amazing lateral thinking cooking tips - like how to open a bottle with a spoon and how to neatly slice a cake - the two shown above. Some are better than others I guess, and they probably are mostly aimed at the young and trendy who eat tacos and breakfast wraps. It's obviously a young person doing this because they have tattoos on their arms. But then you may well be much younger and trendier than I.
I'm sure that this particular video is not the only one out there. In fact I just tried feeding into Google 'cooking tips and tricks videos' and up came pages and pages of them. So just view the above as an example.
You probably all get emails with all sorts of attachments, and I confess that I mostly ignore these - well the ones that have obviously done the rounds anyway. But this came from a very trusted friend who is an excellent cook and so I had a look.
I was simultaneously, impressed, delighted, informed and dismayed at how very out of touch with the digital world I am. After all I still use email which I believe to the young is somewhat passé. Except for work and aging parents. I don't belong to Facebook - I spend far too much time on the computer as it is and if I belonged to Facebook this would only be exacerbated. But anyway I understand Facebook is also passé. In fact I don't indulge in any social media at all and I only use my somewhat old iPhone to make urgent phone calls - like "Where are you David?", and to take photos because I'm too lazy to take my camera instead. I rather hate my iPhone in fact. It's always running out of battery and my fingers are much too big to do that rapid typing with my thumbs. I can never hit the right key and besides there is always that hateful predictive text (there's a bit of that with Wix too I have to say), that stuffs up what I want to say anyway.
I do have an iPad but that too, is something that I am increasingly thinking I should rid myself of. I mostly use it to play sudoku which is a pointless thing to do. So a very expensive way to play sudoku. I used to think it was good brain exercise but I have since learnt that over time it loses its usefulness in that regard because it's not a new thing you are learning. I also used to take it on holiday to write journals and keep in touch, but now I have my lovely MacBook so I don't need the iPad. And I really don't like reading books online. But I do love my computer(s) and I am quite good at using them. Until the printer won't work and then I have to call for help.
But back to that video. It apparently has 17 tips - they call them hacks these days - another reason for feeling old. And they are all good. But it's difficult to retain them in your memory and unless you are planning on doing one of the things illustrated there, it's not that useful really. I mean you would have to remember next time you wanted to make meatballs, for example, that there is a quicker way. And how you find a hack to help you with what you are currently cooking I do not know. I mean there may not actually be one anyway.
Well I actually tested out the meatball thing and there is the Recipe Tin Eats lady with a hack - soak your breadcrumbs in onion juice not milk. There are a few others out there, although none quite as nifty as that Blossom video hack. They tend to be more advice - like use fatty meat - than a hack. You'll have to watch the Blossom video to see what their hack is.
And the ultimate problem with quick tips for oldies? In one ear and/or eye and out the other! I can barely remember what I did this morning these days, let alone how to cook ramen noodles in a kettle.
Comments