Hit the road

I read on Gizmodo about this road trip planner which shows you the weather for your planned route.  Nice.

Pretty Food and Electronic Geekery

You know, don’t you, what it’s like to want to eat pretty colors?  This Fennel, Beet and Citrus Salad from BrooklynSupper.net is literally the prettiest food I’ve ever seen.  No geekery there!  Just pretty food — Elizabeth Stark is a gifted photographer as well as a gifted cook.

Pretty food has color to it.  And color is a sign of nutrients.  When a plant is grown in mineral-rich soil, it absorbs those nutrients, and is hardy and far less susceptible to insects and fungus so it doesn’t need pesticides.  And it’s got the energy to bust out some serious color.

So, we know we want pretty food.  And keeping pretty food ready at hand takes some planning and some work what with managing ripeness for things like avocados and mangos, and wanting to eat the kale while it’s still filled with qi.

Now for the geekery.  I was in the midst of this planning when it occurred to me that perhaps by now someone has come along with a program that does what I’ve been wanting for years:  recipe database with grocery lists and menu planning.  I googled and voila:  Paprika iPad app for $3.  And it’s the bomb.  Really, I would go so far as to say it’s iTunes for your recipes.

It runs clean, lean and beautifully.  It does what you want it to do without too much thinking or work.  You can click a button to add a recipe from Epicurious or Whole Foods or whatnot, replete with luscious photo and recipe source.  Here’s what it looks like:

 

Pretty Salad Image Source: brooklynsupper.net via Elizabeth on Pinterest

Techno-geekery: fun apps

Flipboard.  This is my all-time favorite app on the iPad.  [UPDATE:  after Paprika] It takes all the overwhelm of different sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. and transmutes them somehow to beauty, calm and joy.  More photos, less words.  It’s available for the iPhone now, and although the smaller screen viewing won’t be quite as glorious as the iPad viewing, it’s still a must-have.

Web Albums.  This app for photos is available for both iPad and iPhoto and it syncs with your Google photos/Picasa albums.  I’ve switched to Picasa from iPhoto because I find it much easier to store and share photos.  This app is really beautiful.  It means I always have hundreds of photos with me!

Podcast.  Okay, this isn’t technically an app, but it’s such a sweet feature available for free within iTunes and your iPhone/Pod/Pad that I want to make sure you know about it.  Podcasts are audio recordings made by those – famous and non-famous alike – that have things to share.  For example, the New Yorker does a monthly short story reading to which you can subscribe and listen to on your gadget.  Other podcasts I love are The Moth, (featuring “people telling true, engaging, funny, touching and eye-opening stories from their lives” — just lovely),  This American Life, and Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac.

Continue reading Techno-geekery: fun apps

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