Good Day Google+ - Food for Thought

Hey everyone, I'm Jeff Dennis and we are here today for Good Day Google+. And of course you're joining us at our new time, we're starting at 2 o'clock from now instead of 1 because I was having issues getting back here by 1 sometimes and I thought it would just make life easier. And also with other shows that are going on, that way I could go on them and they could come on my show. We could have guests, from different shows coming on. So the new time is more than likely gonna stay, and I hope it's okay with everyone and you enjoy the show today. I have some great guests lined up. There's a, a short panel today. We just have 3 because I thought we'd have a lot to talk about. And, uh, I'm just gonna run through my panel real quick and say hi to everyone, and then we will get started. So Jeanette, thank you so much for coming in today. It's so nice to see ya.

Thanks so much for having me.

Oh, great. You're up in, is it Connecticut or Massachusetts?

Yeah, I'm in Connecticut.

That's right. So is it a nice day there today?

Today's actually not bad. Can't complain after such a long winter though, so we've been having some great weather.

I know you guys really got slammed this year, and while I was enjoying my first winter in Florida and virtual paradise, Just so you know, today it's 92, tomorrow's supposed to be 97, so I'm getting paybacks now. So the summer is here. So good to see you. So let's move on, and we have Kathleen. And how you doing today? Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me, Dennis. I appreciate it.

Is this your first live HOA?

Yes, it's my first one.

So as your boss would say, we're broke your cherry on HOAs today.

I love that saying. Yep, that you have.

So we're happy to have you here today with us, and I know we're gonna have some fun talking later on. And then of course we have Wayne Mix from Looking for Good Cookin', my buddy from down in my birth state of Louisiana.

How you doing, Chef?

I'm doing good. I'm glad you could be there. I love that spiffy shirt you have on there for Memorial Day. Looks pretty good.

Yeah, thank you.

I'm liking that. Yeah, I don't wear too much black down here anymore though. I guess maybe summer after I'm used to— getting used to the heat, I'll go back to darker colors. But I've been trying to stay a little light and cool in Florida so far. But today we have a wonderful show for you. I just got off a show with Mia Voss. If any of you were on our episode of the Food and Booze Show, and Mia and I were coming from the Denver— from the Tea House in Denver. Of course, she got to eat everything, and I was stuck with little crackers. Terrible. That was my lunch today since I've been in kind of a rush. Today, we're not going to have any food, but we're going to probably talk about some food because I have a food blogger on, Jeanette Shen. I also have a host of a new cooking show, Wayne, and Kathleen is busy in the food industries lots of times, too. Everybody's got food in common, so today's show was food for thought. That doesn't necessarily mean we're going to just talk about food, but it'll give us some basis to start on. I'm going to open it right up to Wayne, because Wayne, you have a new show on, Looking for Good Cookin', and you were just telling Kathleen that you're 6 weeks old. She was asking about your other social medias.

Right. Yeah, I'm still, I guess, wet behind the ears. And, um, we'll be creating a Twitter page and a Facebook and all those things to come as well.

Well, that's good. So, uh, what made you come up with this show?

Talking to you a little bit. It's a big influence, actually. My background, of course, is I'm a neonatal nurse, um, and what I initially wanted to do was be able to broadcast nursing seminars. And I was also— once you get into Google+ and you get into the Hangouts, you start seeing how every business can use them. And one of the issues that I was having when talking with several prospective clients is that there really doesn't exist a portfolio, especially for me since I'm new. I'm just talking about the possibilities. And then I ran into a friend of mine named Chef Nino at a local store, and they do cooking shows all the time, and I asked if I can film them and basically produce their show. And they loved the idea, and they forwarded it to marketing, and we've been waiting and waiting and waiting. And, you know, like, we'll write it up, we'll submit it again. I'm like, no, I love to cook, I gotta cook every day anyway, the wife loves it, so I'm just gonna film my own show and let's roll with it. So that's kind of how it all started.

Well, you know, I saw your first show and parts of your second. You did two so far, heard that. See the first place.

I can't—

I'm sorry, I can't remember. Being old, I use that as an excuse all the time, but my mind is partially gone a little too. But I love the format, and you're having fun. And I did want to ask you about Blue Plate mayonnaise too, because I saw you talking about that, and I saw that in Publix, and I was almost tempted to buy that instead of my Hellmann's. So how does it compare?

Well, I mean, I'm a Southerner and of course I'm gonna promote my Southern products, but we really do use Blue Plate a lot and there's a lot of history behind Blue Plate. And, you know, I want to show that you can do more than just put it on your, you know, your sandwich to make something to eat. The quesadillas actually come out very good with them.

So, what is Blue Plate?

Blue Plate is a Southern company that basically helped to bring mayonnaise to the forefront, especially down in the South.

Really?

I've never heard of it.

Me neither. I will check it out when I'm there next week.

And part of what I'm trying to do, Chef, like I was mentioning earlier, is I'm not a chef, but I'm a cook, right? I always cook. And one of the things I want to do is show that cooking is about being creative and using what you have, and it doesn't have to be exactly to the point. I liken that more to baking. You know, you kind of got to keep an even cup of flour, that sort of thing. But with cooking, I can throw whatever I want in the pan. Of course, down here everything starts with a roux.

That's right. Rouxs are very important, and your holy trinity is a little bit different than ours too, than a normal French one. You guys start with peppers, onions, and celery instead of carrots, onions, and celery. Is that right?

Right.

I think that's called a mirepoix, or if I can think of—

A mirepoix.

Mirepoix. So yeah, it's a little different, but, and it all boils down back to our history in Louisiana, what we had available for us. In fact, the next show that I'm doing, it's probably going to be like a rouxology show, you know, the study of kind of where roux came from, and actually make a difference between a blonde roux and a dark roux, and explain how some start with butter and some start with oil. They even have oilless rouxs that you can make. I have not attempted to do so. That'd probably be a fun experiment to do live. I like butter. Butter's my friend.

Butter's a lot of people's friends. It's just a matter of eating it in moderation and knowing where to enjoy it. There's nothing wrong with a good butter. One thing about Roux, since you're talking about that, that's the name of the restaurant I'm going to be going to Tuesday. Isabel Lacy has invited us over to join her at the opening of a restaurant. It's called Roo, and it's in Tampa. And it's— Woo!

Where you going, Dad?

It's Tuesday night. It's one of the Datz family restaurants that they have. They have Datz, which is their mainstay, and then they opened up Dough last year, and now they have Roo, and they also have a catering company called Dazzle. So I'm loving it. You know, it's only a little over an hour from me, so I'm actually going to do a Hangout Live there with Mia Tuesday night for the food and booze. It's a Creole-themed restaurant. Should be fun.

I wanted to ask Wayne, is there a particular butter that you prefer when you're doing a roux?

No, I mean, I use unsalted butter if that's what you're asking, but we also use a lot of organic Butter, because my wife is on something that's known as the Paleo diet. We're even considering doing some things with that because she's always trying and experimenting, not because she wants to, it's more or less because she has to, but she's actually starting to enjoy it. In fact, she grabbed some zucchinis from the garden this morning and she's going to make some zucchini bread later. Yesterday she made some zucchini slice pizzas. Which were good, fresh, but I don't think they're gonna be so good today.

What, uh, can you just, like, if you could summarize what, uh, the diet that you just mentioned?

Oh, the Paleo diet?

Mm-hmm.

I can't remember exactly who the author is, um, but it falls back to the Paleolithic period, meaning if you cannot, you know, pick it, or if you can't kill it, you're not supposed to eat it. And basically no processed foods, no modified grains, A lot of it, you know, of course it's no gluten, gluten-free type things. It basically comes down to clean eating and making sure that everything you have, again, you know, the sugars that you eat should be natural sugars because as we know, sugar is not abundant in nature. In fact, what is abundant is bitterness. So, and the way this all started was she was having some challenges with her GI. Gastrointestinal, sorry, the nurse is coming out.

I got it.

And so, and that was part of the thing. And it's amazing how not only did she start to feel physically better, she looks better physically and emotionally. And of course, she started, she started walking on the treadmill 30 minutes, 3 days a week because she doesn't like to sweat. Well, that was 6 months ago, and now she's going at least 4 times a week and she's on the treadmill for 30 minutes and pretty close to running. So, and again, she likes it and she feels better. And that's been an epiphany for several of our friends too. Once they switched what they were eating and started learning about what they were eating, that's where this whole food revolution is coming from. And I love that, you know, that Chef Dennis promotes a lot of that, especially when they were on the show with Mia. And more and more people on Google+ are starting to talk about these things, too.

Why I ask these questions, my daughter has Crohn's disease. She initially was diagnosed with celiac, and we had eaten the celiac way. Then after she was diagnosed with celiac, it was Crohn's actually. She was really eating not the correct way for a very long time. She had a lot of damage. We have learned a lot about gluten-free. I'm amazed if you want to compare 10 years ago to now, the availability and the product lines that are out there for people that either choose to do gluten-free, grain-free, or just want to do that for that way. With that being said, my little sister just got diagnosed with celiac. Wow. She just wrote to me. Me how wonderful she feels since she has been eating strictly gluten-free, really paying attention to her diet. The brain fog has lifted. A lot of problems, even female problems, have gone away. She just feels like a whole new person. There is so much to be said about making correct choices. For what we eat, and really paying attention to what goes in our bodies. We've been battling food allergies, near-fatal food allergies with all my children all of these years. Things like getting on Pinterest, and there's so many people out there putting out wonderful recipes out there. There's so many resources online. I'm just so pleased that anytime I go into a store like a Whole foods. There's so much out there now. I was beating my head on the wall trying to find— I was driving 25, 30 miles just to buy vegetables organic for my kids when they were little. We've made such an about-turn here, and I feel like we're going in the right direction.

I do think it's interesting that there are so many people now with food allergies. I don't remember that at all when we were growing up.

I don't either. I don't either. But you know what, Jeanette? I think they were unrecognized also. When I think back, when I was a child, my mother used to make us eggs every day. I would tell her, "I have a bellyache, Mom. I don't want to eat it." In those days, you ate what was put in front of you, and that was it. I do have an egg allergy. I really recognized it when I started eating more French food. It was just really highlighted when you start making the process of elimination. I think that there's been a lot of allergies that were occurring, but people didn't recognize it. I do think that there's a lot more allergies now because of all the processed foods and the way kids are eating. They don't have a balanced— a lot of times, balanced meals.

It's interesting. Has anybody read The Wheat Belly, the book called The Wheat Belly? It talks about how the wheat, the actual grain, has changed the way that they've they bred it is totally different now. Our bodies may not be adept at digesting it, the proteins and such, as maybe our ancestors were. They've done these things so that they can make it more easily— like you could spray it and put pesticide on it a lot more efficiently. A lot of these have been done to mass-produce. I just thought that was interesting because all the foods change. The way it it, you know, gets absorbed in our body is also different. So we don't have— we may not have the makeup to be able to actually digest it.

And also, our bodies change every 7 years, from what I understand, and I've seen that actually with my own body, that something that I couldn't eat or bothered me maybe can now. Also, with food allergies, when my youngest was small, he was able to eat certain kind of lentils and other kinds he couldn't, and certain kind of vegetables. So I would do an investigation. Where were these vegetables coming from? Where were they produced? So according to different places in the world where things are grown and produced, there's different pesticides that are used. So I can have 5 different apples lined up on the table, and he could have reactions to maybe 3. And then when you do the research where they came from, and then the pesticides that were used. So people will say, "Oh, I'm allergic to apples." It's not necessarily that you're allergic to apples, you're allergic to what they're being sprayed with, and you know, systemically too. So there's a lot to be said.

And again, we try to promote our local farmers markets, and it's not just because we're trying to promote them, we're trying to promote the health and the taste and the flavor that's coming from these things. So it's that added value that you actually get instant reward because you can taste like, oh, that's what a carrot tastes like? Wow, that's awesome. So I've had several people at work, you know, they've taken home my string beans when I have an overproduction, that sort of thing, and they'll tell me the same thing. You know, my child never likes string beans. They always feed them from a can. They said they love yours. What are you doing different? I'm growing them in my backyard. That's what I'm doing different. And you know, it doesn't take a lot of soil to do it. In fact, Wayne Meter puts out a lot of information on how to grow soilless and just different types of things. He has a big show coming up too with self-sustainability and his little World for Change that he's trying to promote. Chef, you ought to get him on the show soon too.

Wayne's been on. Wayne's been on, and actually he's trying to find me— there's an aquaponics or a plant guy he works with that has a tree kind of a system. I said, "You got to get me one of those for herbs that grows all different kinds of herbs on it, that and grape tomatoes." I says, "I'd love to have them on my porch. That would be wonderful." Yeah, Wayne's been on. Jeanette, we were talking a lot about food, and you do a healthy eating blog, don't you?

That cures it.

I do.

Yeah.

My blog's actually Jeanette's Healthy Living. My blog is all about healthy foods. Actually, one of my kids,— it's probably been about 3 years ago, he started getting a lot of really bad stomachaches and a lot of symptoms. We went through a lot of testing also and found out that he had a bunch of food allergies and intolerances at the time. That's why I'm curious to hear everyone else's story too. We went through probably 6 months where I was trying all different doctors and nobody could figure out what was going on. They just kept medicating him. I finally got so fed up I took him off of all the medication, and I basically put him on an elimination diet, which is just removing everything that showed up on his testing. For a while, he was allergic to like 20-some foods. I mean, it was like crazy. Not just dairy and eggs and wheat products, but also things like soya and tomatoes. There were all sorts of things. It was tough, but I remember after that 6-month period, he did get better, so we started to be able to reintroduce almost everything. He's doing great now.

Uh-huh.

He's doing great now. A lot of times your gut gets compromised because he was on 2 rounds of antibiotics. What happens is it kills all the good bacteria in your stomach, and then it gets taken over by all the bad bacteria, so you have to repopulate it. It takes time to do that. He was on supplements, but I took him off of all the the actual medication that the doctor was giving him. It just takes time. It takes time for your gut to heal, but that proved to me that, wow, you can do it. You can actually heal your body through— by eating clean, healthy foods and leaving out all the sugars. He couldn't have sugar or anything either. It was a long process, but it was so worth it.

My friend Amy Valpone, Yeah.

Now he's back to eating everything?

He's back to pretty much everything. I don't worry so much anymore. I do keep him predominantly gluten-free still. I try to rotate a lot of it. It's like making sure I rotate what he eats also, just keeping lots of different variety of fruits and vegetables and other things in his diet. I always tell him— I stick by the 85/15% rule. I tell him, I said, "You want to have a little treat here and there, that's fine, but you better make that up." You have a treat, but 85% of that's got to be good. You got to eat twice or three times as many vegetables or fruits to make up for all that today. He's good about it because he remembers how hard it was and how horrible he felt.

How old is he?

He's 11 now. He's 11, but he's very aware now when he's not feeling well. I'm telling you, he got so healthy, he didn't get sick at all. For 2 years, and then this spring he got a little sick, and I was like, "All right, you know what? You got to buckle down and watch what you're eating." They know. My kids have learned how important it is to eat healthy, and when they don't, they know that they're going to get sick more easily.

My 29-year-old daughter, I was just out with her. She has a cooler in her car, and she has her organic fruits. She has her cheese sticks, organic. She has food she cooked. She's on the road running errands today, and she refuses to eat anything but her own food and food that she— it's totally fresh because she knows what's going to happen to her.

Yeah. Oh yeah, we— I used to pack an entire suitcase full of food everywhere we went because I never knew what I could find.

Yeah, I know, it's— that's the way it is.

There's an idea for you, Chef, an organic fast food restaurant. Maybe that's kind of not a good name, but it's a concept, right? Because there's several people that I know have that same challenge. They always have an ice chest with them, which is good because I like beer. But other than that, you know, it is a real thing that people, they're tired of seeing numerous fast food chains. So that's one of the reasons we often try and look for chefs to help us out with that.

Well, it's so concerning when you're traveling, as well. My daughter went to Ireland, and she was very concerned this past fall what she was going to be able to eat because she does not eat a lot of beef at all, like rarely, because it doesn't sit well with her. She ended up eating beef and chocolate while she was over there. She said the beef was farm to table. Didn't bother her whatsoever. The stew with the fresh vegetables. Of course, Cadbury chocolate she had too. But she said that saved her over there. She had her suitcase with her staples. But that's the thing, is that when you have this kind of challenge, you have to be so prepared. I do like the way the world is changing, that these availability is more international as well. I noticed that when I was in Europe, that there are a lot of things out there. I feel like they have a little bit more than we do. In some cases.

I also think that sometimes in other cultures, the food is naturally— like, for example, in Asian cooking, there's really rarely any dairy, not that many eggs, really, in the food. Gluten, they do have their breads and their pastas, but they also have rice noodles.

Different kind of rice. Mixed, yeah, the different cultures. My son is dating an Asian girl, and she eats with us. My husband's Italian, so she was introduced to Italian food. And she said, wow, she said Italians eat a lot of cheese and this and that. We do not have any dairy in our diet, really. She introduced us to all different kinds of rice that I was unaware of. That we mix into the rice cooker, and we mix with beans and stuff. Each culture— I feel like there's so many more cultures that are much more healthier than we.

Americans really do not present a very good picture of eating, that's for sure. Processed, quick foods, always on the run. I know every time we go to Europe— we haven't been in a while, but I mean, just the whole mood of a meal changes. You sit down, and it can take 2 hours. You don't eat that much more food.

It's just lovely, though, isn't it? It's so relaxing.

Everything seems to taste better. It's just because maybe you are taking your time.

I think that's a big part of it is taking the time to actually enjoy the food. I think sometimes everyone here is running around, and you're eating while you're standing, or you're not paying attention while you're eating. You're not even paying attention. You don't taste anything.

Well, that's why I like Isabelle's whole thing about the family, the Sunday supper, the family meal. The family meal has gone away. Not in my household, but I've seen it. The majority of people that, you know, people work, who gets in late, the sports. It was very hard to control when all my children were doing sports, but we did make it 4 out of 5 nights. A week that we would sit down and have dinner. And that's a time where you come together. It's not just about food. And that's, you know, I think to me that's the most important time in the family, to sit down and break bread together.

Absolutely. We were actually living in a hotel for almost 3 weeks. We just moved back last Monday, and we were separated because, you know, I have, um, you know, I've got 4 boys and two of them are seniors this year, so they're pretty big. So they all, you know, they had their finals going on, they had their own rooms, so I hardly saw them. And so mealtime was a big problem because, you know, usually when we're in our house, we have our, you know, central living, you know, kitchen and family room area, dining area. It's just one big room. Everyone sees everybody else. Not having a central area to meet and actually eat together was a big problem in the beginning because we weren't communicating properly and we didn't have that interaction. And after a couple days we figured it out, but we just eat in my hotel room. Everyone come in, we get our stuff and hang out and just try to catch up. But eating a meal, family meal together, it is so important just in connecting and making sure everyone knows what's going on, how your day was, and just getting on the same page.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Anyway, well, you know, we were talking earlier to Kathleen, you and I, and you had mentioned something you wanted to bring up today, and it was about etiquette.

Oh, social media etiquette. Dennis Littley and I were having a discussion the other day about how we've seen the tide change, even down to emails, the way emails are structured, that people— and I'm not going to say that I haven't been guilty of it. Sometimes that when I was growing up, the way you wrote a letter, you know, you had a salutation, a body, and you signed off. I see a lot of people just jumping in there, not even saying hello, stating their business. And I think I would like to see people getting back to being more respectful and courteous. That's just one example. And we were also discussing when people are involved with different social media things, like say for instance a tweet chat, and how people— and I mean, this goes on in all different situations, but proper greetings when somebody comes in. It's almost impossible for a host to greet everyone who comes in, but if you miss someone, a follow-up tweet or a little direct message would be nice. Thanks for showing up, or whatever. We're starting to see that I know that, um, I don't know, do you guys, have you guys ever participated in tweet chats, hangouts besides here? What do you feel about the way etiquette is in those areas?

Well, I think part of it is because tweets are so quick, you know, when you're on Twitter, I think everybody just wants to get their message out. At least for me, It was constantly trying to figure out how am I going to shorten up what I want to say and pitch it. But I mean, I always introduce myself and exit my, you know, the room. But I do agree with you, especially when the feed starts to go so fast, it's hard for the host to sit there and greet everybody. And that's part of social media, is the connecting part. It's not, you know, connecting's a two-way street. It's not just a one-way street.

Exactly.

And I've been using Hangouts On Air, and in fact, you know, I used to attempt to contact people through email. That's changing to where if I do send an email, I ask them if they're on Google+ and we can do a video chat. Just because if you do not know the person and you're reading an email, you can get a total different tone from it than you can if you've already met this person, if that makes sense.

I know, I know. Well, Dennis and I, we met each other down in Orlando. We had just briefly spoken, and I had a trip down there, and I said, hey, I'm at this such-and-such hotel. And we— it was like we knew each other forever. We sat there for 4 hours and just— I don't know where the time went, Dennis.

But we could have kept going.

I know. And so I agree with that more personal thing, but What we were really talking about in essence was that yes, things are so fast in social media, but connecting with people, even if you can't connect with people during a Hangout or doing a tweet, a follow-up just to let the person know that, hey, thanks for coming to my tweet, thanks for coming to my Hangout, it was great that you were there, you know, didn't get to you during the conversation. But so the more important I just feel like it's more important now than ever to really stress engagement and proper engagement. You might not get people back if you don't respect their presence. Right.

It's okay.

I haven't done a lot of Twitter chats and I find them really, like Wayne was saying, they are so fast and furious. I find like everyone is just trying to get their word in. I don't find it's very conducive to having a conversation, unlike the Hangouts where you actually, I think you can spend more time, you can see people face to face. I think it's very different.

Yes, it's very different. I mean, if you follow the host of a tweet chat, usually there's a designated host, you can see the questions coming in, and if you want to follow the questions and answer them and then mingle, yeah. I find that the Google Hangouts are much more personal and more I don't know, so silly.

Well, Kathleen, I know I was saying, you know, I've been procrastinating on the Twitter, and part of that is I feel like I don't know if that's really where I need to be, because if you're not constantly addressing people, you know, it kind of— it's a mute point. The whole point is to be able to have interaction, and I want to provide quality and value with anything that I'm doing, and I don't feel like Twitter has enough words for me to be able to put everything out there. So I'm looking more at the Instagram and things you can do visually. But, you know—

We're really moving towards visual big time. I think it's dominating now. Everything's more visual. And I mean, I like the fact that Twitter integrated the pictures aspect and stuff like that, but Pinterest is great. You can't have this on Pinterest. People are starting— are you guys on Pinterest? I know that you are, Jeanette. You're on Pinterest. You're Dennis Littley. Do you guys use it often?

I don't use it for interacting with people so much. I think, you know, I use it more because it's, you know, the top driver of traffic to my site. But other than that, I mean, I don't find that people really comment a whole lot.

They're starting to. That's the point I was going to bring up. People are starting to see that they can have a little bit of that, which will move them to a different site to be able to you know, strike it up and bring it over to something like this.

Now Kathleen, I know you don't know me too well, but I'm pretty, I think, humorous guy, and I just have to ask, where was it you met Chef Dennis again?

I met him online actually, and then we—

Then y'all met at a hotel?

Oh! You gotta watch it!

Just wanting to clarify.

We had— we didn't even have coffee, we just like—

Look, look, look, y'all! It's not sounding good.

I'm just making it worse, huh?

Let's just say we put the social back in the social media.

Yeah, I said, Dennis, you need to go home. I need to go find out what my husband's doing for dinner. You need to go find your wife. We just talked way too much.

I said, I'll be about 45 minutes to an hour, and 4 and a half hours later I come in the door.

That was funny. Thanks for clarifying that for me there.

While we're doing that, we got a couple people I want to shout out. Larry Fournier is in the house and he's a great guest. Larry, Elena Bellometti is in the house, always nice to see her. Scott Socroff is in and he's talking about social media etiquette. I'm beginning to think of email as the 21st century letter.. And I'm now usually trying to up my game. This includes almost always trying to include a graphic. Graphics are becoming part of everything. Who else? Coach is in the house. Where'd he go? I lost him. But anyway, Coach said thanks, Zyte. And Mia Voss, my sister Mia is in the house.

Hey Mia!

Shout out a few people and thanks for coming today. Yeah, but I know social media is just really getting intense and I think etiquette, sometimes a lot of people do forget it. And one of the best things about Google+ is that you can have more of a real-time conversation even with just the chat boxes on the side. I don't know, with Twitter you can get it but sometimes it gets lost in the stream. And then by the time you answer it, it's just, it's really difficult. And if you have more to say, you can't say it. I don't know. Do you guys use any other social medias? Is there anything else you use that you find helpful?

Well, we were discussing, Dennis Littley, LinkedIn. Do either one of you use LinkedIn? And if you do, how do you use it?

I've used LinkedIn, but more, I would say, for business. Not so much, you know, I guess social media in terms of driving anything to my site. So I've been able to use it to help myself meet other people that I might want to chat with. For example, last, I think it was last year, I was trying to debate whether I was going to go back and take some classes or, you know, maybe go to culinary school or something, and there was a woman that I really thought of as a mentor I reached out to her on LinkedIn and she was really nice, so we set up a phone call and that's how I met her. The thing is everyone is on a different social media platform, so some people I have to send a direct message on Twitter to get a hold of them or I have to Facebook them to find them because I could leave a message on Google+ but they may never be on. It's always trying to find where that person is at and I found LinkedIn sometimes for professional work purposes is easier to find people. Or get a hold of them and, you know, talk to them about something a little bit more, you know, more serious, a little bit more business-related.

That's the whole purpose behind LinkedIn, is more business-to-business, from what I'm understanding. Again, I'm new in social media. I've only been around for less than a year. I'm learning this whole thing. I'm drinking from a fire hose is what I've been told I've been doing. But I'm learning a lot, but Really, I think the reason why I'm catching on so quick is because it's based on human interaction and being able to communicate. And one added value that I like about the videos and the Hangouts on Air is I get to see you. And to me, that helps. I guess maybe it's my assessment skills. You know, it's easy to read somebody, and I can understand if maybe I'm going off topic and they don't see me. I can ring them back into what I'm trying to do.. What do you think, Chef?

You know, I have used these for about 3 years now, and they just keep getting— becoming a bigger part of everything I do interaction-wise. And it's because you can jump on, even if it's just a quick 5 minutes or 10 minutes, and you can get a much easier answer. People will send me emails asking me to explain something. I'm going, oh my God, that's going to take me 25 minutes to write. I said, "Do you have a minute? Let's just jump on a Hangout and get it." Communication becomes so much easier when you can do it like that. I don't know. I think we're going to see more changes with different social media. This is a new world and other companies are going to grab on to something that's similar to this and add it in so there's more visual. Especially with smartphones, like this morning I was in between doctor's visits and Mia pinged me to talk to somebody and we were going to have an old-fashioned phone call and she says, "Alright, let's just do it video, the guy will come on." So I'm holding my phone up while they're talking to me, you know, I'm in a Starbucks talking to them from my phone. So I think we're going to change the way and that may change like kids nowadays seem like they don't want to talk to you.

They want to text you.

They want to text you. They don't really want to get a live person on the phone. They call you, they think it's because they're going to get your answering machine.

They don't even use the phone though, they don't know how to use the phone. Like my kids, when I tell them to call their friend, they're like, well, I can't, I don't know their phone number. I'm like, well, look it up in the phone book. I mean, they think they can only text somebody or use their cell phone.

It's a whole different culture.

Yeah, and they use— my youngest one, I mean, you know, What a big gap that is even between him and my other kids in terms of the social media. They use Instagram and Snapchat and all these other things now.

How do you feel about Snapchat, Gina?

I don't like it. I personally don't like it. In fact, I was at a talk fairly recently and the kids think, "Oh, I'm just putting something on, it's gone in a couple of seconds," but that material, whatever it is, is still out there and actually the company—

They realize it, yeah. They just came out and said—

The company owns all that, they own all that content so they could, if they wanted to, they could dig up all that stuff and do something with it. So it's pretty scary I think.

Nothing ever goes away. So nothing ever goes away on social media. I mean you may erase it but it never really goes away. There's always a way to find it if you want to find it.

Yeah.

Good. Ask something, anybody want?

I was just going to ask if either one of you uses, or any of you guys use Instagram a lot.

I've, since last summer, I go through phases of using it. If I'm traveling and if I have a client, I'll integrate Instagram into what I'm doing for the client and some personal. I do like it, I like it a lot. My son is having a great, he's having great success with Instagram. He's into photography and he's joining up on those Instagram meetups. He was just in the city downtown on Sunday and he said he walked away and he had gained like 60 followers, but he said the most talented photographers were there and he learned so much because they were so open to wanting to share their techniques and what they do. And he said it was really a nice experience. That Instagram community. So I'd like to maybe see something more in my age group because that was probably 20s, 30s, and that's not where I'm at. But I would like to probably get more involved with the Instagram community that way because I love pictures. I'm a Verizon ambassador and I always have a device that I'm testing and writing about. So to me it's perfect, perfect fit.

We met at that hotel. You started pulling phones out of your bag. Oh my God, how many phones do you have?

And I had a tablet. I had a tablet that I was demoing my first time, and he was my guinea pig. And I said, Dennis, you need to sit there because I'm going to record this whole thing. And it turned out that I recorded, I think, from here. I was like, alright, well, I guess we can't use this one.

I like Instagram. I tend to use it more for fun, although every now and then I'll throw a finished image up there. I just really started doing that, but I'll use it to take pictures of what I'm eating, of just something that might be interesting. Like, we found a beach the other day in St. Cloud that we had no idea was there. It's an actual beach, and people were swimming, and I'm going, What about the alligators? The first thing you learn is you don't go in the water in Florida. It's salt. But I took a picture of the beaches of St.

Cloud.

I said, who knew? But I'll take fun pictures. And I said, every now and then I'll throw something up that's finished. But I see a lot more food bloggers using it just as another medium, like Pinterest, where they're putting these beautiful finished photographs up. And I never really I hadn't looked at Instagram that way before.

Well, there's a number of restaurants that I'm becoming aware of that really the chefs really do not like people to be taking photos of their food in the restaurant. And I have to say that I really don't blame them because it's not showing their food in the best presentation, reflecting really, you know, their their end product. And there have been people now that I've seen, they're putting signs up in restaurants, "Please no photos." And that's out of respect to the chefs that, you know, work so hard on their presentations and then they see something show up, it's not lit right, the colors aren't represented, you know, correctly, and, you know, first impressions are first impressions. People walk away, "Oh, okay, is that what it looks like?" So I, I don't get offended when I see those signs because I, as an artist myself, I would feel like I was getting shortchanged if some amateur was taking my work and broadcasting it all over. Thoughts? Anyone have thoughts about that?

Do you use Instagram much, Jeanette?

You know, I haven't really used it a whole lot. I mean, I was for a while, and you know, there's just too many things to do, so I kind of stopped doing it. But then I started noticing I was on there more recently, and I see a lot of food bloggers are very, very active on Instagram, and they're more, like you said, Chef, more finished photos. I think Instagram, when they created it, I'm sure that it was intended as just you snap and see what's going on, and now it's turning into something where people are uploading their edited photos and putting links to their site and all this other stuff, which I think is changing the way that—

it's supposed to be instant.

But it's not anymore, right?

There's some really great editing programs out there that are in that sense of instant, like Snapseed. Are you guys familiar with Snapseed? I love Snapseed. I use Snapseed. Because of my son teaching me, I'm really proficient at that. I could do this really, really quick. Before it was like one finger, like half an hour, but now I know how to do the filters and all that, and I can instantly get something out there. And it really makes a difference. Going back to what I was saying about representing, you know, someone correctly, if I was to take a picture in a restaurant, I personally wouldn't put it out there unless I thought it was of good quality, you know, good enough to put it out there. And that's what I would use Snapseed for, to filter something like that in a restaurant.

Richard Clarkson in the comment stream said Instagram is a nice tool, but he can't put it on his SD card. So I think that's part of the problem, is knowing, you know, not all devices can view and do the same sort of things. But I don't— maybe we should set up a photo booth in the restaurants, and that way we can take picture of our food when we go in. Then you can charge for that. How about that, Chef?

And it's lit correctly. It was in the booth with all the lighting and the background and all.

Well, I did see a picture the other day, and I don't think it was on Instagram, but it was kind of when you're talking about how things look, and someone showed a picture of the new Taco Bell waffle taco breakfast taco they have, and it looked pretty bad. And they go, "What it really looks like." Not like the one they show you on TV.

Now that I would believe, though.

I know, exactly, because you get things— I mean, I don't go in fast food hardly at all, but the few times I do, you know it doesn't look like the picture. Anymore, it's got to be a really stressful occasion or something where I just have to get some food in me really quick, but I've been pretty good about staying away from that. Somebody posted a picture the other day too, it was for I think Leah Segedy's group, and it had all like the pictures of their drive-through next to their name but by going the wrong way and they all had "Do Not Enter" next to their name. So they put them up, McDonald's, Burger King, Taco, "Do Not Enter." This should be your motto, "Do Not Enter." That's great.

My husband and I had a junk food We were going to the gym and trying to eat right, and this one day, I don't know, it was one of those days, so he said, "Oh, let's just get Taco Bell." And I went, "Taco Bell?!" Okay, so we did that, and then later on we had a Wendy's, and we paid, and we were like, "We'll never do that." And then we told our kids, and they were like, What's wrong with you? You should know better. We were chastised by our older kids. We're like, I don't know, we're like teenagers, we're just eating junk. It was fun. We'll go back there again.

Well, I think when I stopped eating beef, that kind of really helped me not go into them, not want to go in there anymore because I don't eat a hamburger. So, you know, they started selling turkey burgers or chicken burgers, I might be in trouble. But, you know, because really there's not as much as I can eat or want to eat there anymore.

Well, I find that turkey— do you find that turkey actually makes a better burger? Because I do. I like chicken.

Personally, like, if I have a choice, I'll make chicken burgers.

I've never done that before.

It's wetter, it's a little harder to handle. Burger to me is more like— it's not beef, but I haven't had a beef burger in so long, I probably wouldn't know the difference. I mean, I wouldn't know if there's that much difference, but to me it eats really, really well. It's moister, it's not as dried out, it has a better bite texture to it. I really enjoy them.

Do you mix anything with it, Chef, when you're making the burger so it's not so wet?

No, I don't. It cooks up really nice and moist. I don't add anything to it. I buy an organic ground chicken so I can really be sure it's a better product. I salt and pepper it, sea salt and black pepper it, and put a couple slices of American cheese—that's the bad part of it—on it, and put it on my potato roll, and I'm living large. A little mustard. Maybe some grilled onion if I'm in a good mood, you know?

I had designed about 4 different recipes with turkey last year, and then in the same meal I had done some beef, and hands down the turkey was the best. In any one of the recipes, it beat the beef. It just seemed more receptive to flavoring and absorbing the flavoring, and it was much more tender. I think ground turkey—

go ahead, Jeanette, I'm sorry.

No, I was just going to say ground turkey I find is a great substitute for ground pork because in Chinese cooking they use a lot of pork, and so when I tried to get rid of all the pork, we actually used a lot of the ground turkey, which I find has more like the texture of ground pork.

Mm-hmm. I had the meatballs with— I had also the meatballs with I liked it, too. I was surprised how much I liked it.

I made an Italian wedding soup not that long ago. Traditionally, we would use veal for the meatballs, but I refuse to use veal for anything anymore. I used ground chicken for that. I had rolled them up. What I didn't realize is that ground chicken blows up almost like a matzo ball. It looked like it got so big when I cooked them. Really? They were delicious, but the meatballs I had made a little marble size were more like the size of a quarter. They just got almost double in size. I had put some breadcrumbs in them at that point, and an egg, and just made it like a regular meatball. Yeah, I can't use veal. I look at it, and I just cringe. Even in Whole Foods, I see veal. I said, "Why are you selling veal?" Everyone's face is like— I know. I know. That was the mainstay in the restaurant in my early days of cooking. Italian cooking, everything was veal. Good veal chop was like a thing of beauty, but not anymore. Oh, well. That's enough of these stories. Let's do one quick go-around and talk to everybody, and if you've got any projects you're working on or anything you'd anything you'd like to share with us, now's a good time to do it. So let's start with Wayne. Wayne, I know you got your show. Is there anything else you're doing? You got anything to share with us?

Well, I mean, I'm doing the show biweekly. Right now I'm trying to write a structured business plan, which is taking all of my time. But, you know, there's several things that are potential in the works, and I'm just, I'm just kind of waiting to see what happens. Right now it's just This kind of started as let me prove it can be done, and it was so much fun, we're just continuing on with it. But also I've been talking with Larry Fournier and his Larry Live group, and there may be something that comes from all that as well.

Yeah, Larry's a great guy, you know, he really is, and he's very giving and he's always there to help us with everything, so, you know, he's a pleasure to be around. Good, I hope to see more of you on Google+. And Jeanette, you know, anything new going with you? Any plans for the summer?

Conferences? Actually, I just came from the BlogHer food conference last Friday now in Miami. Oh, I see. You were in Miami. I was in Miami for a day. I landed like 10 minutes before the tornado hit. We thought we were going to die. The plane was like coming down really quick, and we got down and found out that the tornado literally hit a mile from the airport 10 minutes after we landed. We were the last flight in. Before they closed the airport. Yeah, so anyway, but I was there for a day. I had to come back the same day. But anyway, but it was, you know, I wasn't there long enough probably to really see everything, but it was pretty cool actually that the keynote address was on superfoods, which was, I thought, very interesting. For me, I love the topic. I think, you know, I think people were, some people were surprised by it just because It's, you know, the general food blogging population is still not, I think, along those lines, but there's more focus on it, which is great, I think, because I think food bloggers can actually make a huge impact if everyone gets on the same page.

Absolutely. Yeah, they can make a big difference. We all started using more superfoods and introducing them to people. So many people eat, so many different bloggers. I saw there's one of our bloggers, and I saw it on Facebook, had a sitcom made from a story they did, Young and Blogging or something, Young and Happy, about a young blogger and a family. I forget who it was now. I saw a notice on Facebook though, one of our group had a sitcom made. Oh, I didn't see that. It's premiering in like 8 weeks or something.

Yeah, so, and then I'm on the waitlist for the potluck. What are they calling it this year, the one in the fall? I saw your name on the list.

I wouldn't have known, but they sent me a tweet saying, "Chef, did you see the tickets are on sale?" I'm like, "No." Yeah, I went on the day after, so I'm on the waitlist for that.

So we'll see.

We'll see. But what is this?

What is it? That's the Big Autumn Potluck. It used to be the Big Summer Potluck, and evidently they delayed it into— what is it? Week of September. It's not a conference, it's more of a retreat, I'd like to say. We have some excellent topics, but it's not your normal food bloggers conference, but it's a place to go see your friends that you haven't seen for a while. Where's it held? It's in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Oh, okay. Should be relaxing. 3— oh my God, my brain is fried. 3 Many Cooks? Pam Anderson. Pam Anderson and her daughter and some other bloggers work on it and really do a nice job. You go to Pam's house and then we have the conference somewhere else and come back there Sunday for brunch. Usually you eat like you just can't believe. Food is excellent there. It's just a nice time. You just commune and enjoy music and drink and have a good time.

Sounds like my type of thing.

I would like that. Then I'm going to— the other one I'm going to is Isabelle Lacey's. Well, it's right in town, so it's easy for me. I flew in for it last year. It was the Food and Wine Conference, and that's coming up in the end of July. That'll be good. And that's at the Rosen Hotel. And my god, they feed us like there is just no tomorrow. It's really, really amazing.

And that nice video that you guys did, that was very nice. Yes. The promo.

I think we're going to come live from there with some different shows and stuff. And then, of course, Leah Segedy's invited me out to ShiftCon in Los Angeles. So I'll be there at the beginning of October for that. And that ought to be interesting. What is that one? ShiftCon. I haven't heard of that one. It's a really— she's a very pro-healthy eating, non-GMO, and she actually got me to change all of my— and she didn't tell me to. She just told me how— ways I could die from using these products.

I was on that tweet chat. I learned a lot. I really learned a lot from that whole tweet chat. Amazing.

I changed all of my household chemicals over. We now use all natural products, much to my wife's chagrin on some of them. But she goes, "Are you getting the other detergent?" I said, "No, you're going to use this from now on." At least I do the shopping. She doesn't have any control over it. But that's it. So yeah, those are my plans. Any other conferences, Jeannette, or any—

No other conferences. I'm actually volunteering my time helping a local foundation that is building a new facility. They're going to have actually a really nice kitchen and dining area, and so trying to help them think of ways to serve the community and use the facilities to help, you know, local nonprofits. So it's going to be a really fun project to work on. It's great.

And that's in Connecticut?

It's in Connecticut, yeah. Yeah, so it's beautiful grounds and everything, so, you know, I'm thinking, well, we can have cooking classes, but we can also bring in kids and maybe get them, you know, there's going to be a community garden too. So there's so many ways to tie in lots of different things locally.

Oh, that'll be nice. And you did start out with a lot of working with kids in your cooking. Now yours are growing up, so you'll have to support some, I guess. I guess, huh?

You think you're going to have more time.

I don't think I have more time. They're all grown up.

No, I know. My oldest son just came home from college and you know, there's always more. They don't really leave.

No, they don't. Even if they do leave, they don't really leave because they come back. Yeah, with all their laundry and everything else, right? Oh yeah, we had that. Yeah, we had it a lot.

I know, it's funny. He was up this morning for breakfast, and he learned the first day he came home that, you know, he got up at 11 o'clock, and he's like, well, where's breakfast? I said, well, it's 11 o'clock. You know, if you wanted breakfast, you should have come down when breakfast was served. So the next day he came down at 8:30, and this morning he got up again. But he's sitting himself down at the table, I'm making him breakfast, and he says, can I have a knife? I'm thinking to myself, you know where the knives are. Did you forget? I know. I think they just revert back to, you know, they want mom to do everything for them.

So funny.

Gotta love it, huh? So Kathleen, anything on the boards for you for this summer, or projects? I know you must have tons of them.

I have a lot of traveling that's going to be taking place between now and November. I'm also in the middle of developing, finalizing a project that I've been working on, a product. And my cupcake wrappers are becoming in demand, and we're going to be expanding that. We took our site down and revamping our site, but I'm going to actually have to hire some people now. And I'm looking for people, production people, and we'll be doing interviewing for that. And it's kind of hard to let go of your baby, but it's time for me to let go and give responsibility to some other people. It's nice, it's nice when things get to that point.

They're beautiful, by the way. I love your cupcake holders.

Oh, thank you very much. That was a happenstance situation that they got invented. We'll talk about that another day. But yeah, I actually just— I love cupcakes, and if anybody's on Pinterest, I have a great cupcake board that's really has grown, it's been around for about 2 years, but I get the most wonderful cupcake recipes and we have a great community on there. But I don't push my cupcake wrappers on anyone, I actually, it was my love of cupcakes that just, you know, that started that whole thing. But yeah, people are using my cupcake wrappers for promo, for weddings, for birthday parties, you know, big events, so I have to buy new equipment and when you say you have to buy new equipment then You're headed in the right direction.

We'll have to get you on Cupcake Wars. No! That would be a lot of cupcake holders, come on!

Well, if you've seen, it would be like an I Love Lucy sitcom, you know, setting it all up and producing it. Sometimes it might, because I work, I have in back of my house is my production, so we have to expand that and it looks like insanity with machines and everything laid out. But I've ensued my kids, and they can't always accommodate, so now it's time to hire better people. That's where I'm at. I think it's raining here in New York. Really? Mm-hmm. I think. Yeah, I think so. Oh well. Good way to start. The Jersey Shore traffic is supposed to be horrible, I heard, because, you know, we're a stone's throw away from the Jersey Shore. And anyone who has a brain, they don't leave to go to the Jersey Shore right now. You'd be sitting there for hours. That's right, you were from that area, Dennis Littley. You know what it's like.

Absolutely. I was in the southern end, but it still got pretty bad. And I miss it every now and then, but not enough to really want to go back that much. Florida's got some wonderful shorelines.

Oh, they do.

Yeah, I'll be happy with them, although Lisa wants to go back up. But you know, where she goes, I have to go too, so that's just the way it is. That's right. Well guys, that's it. Mom ain't happy, nobody happy.

My husband says.

On that note, we're going to sign off for today, but thank you all for coming. I had a great time. Guys, thanks for stopping by and spending some time with me, and I hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.

And we will see you. Thank you. Yes, we will. Take it easy.