A Hard Earned Cheesecake

Something I don't openly advertise is that I'm a culinary school graduate (CCA in San Francisco, CA). As soon as people find out that little know fact I find they look at you differently and their next sentence is usually, "So when are you making me dinner?". I quickly figured out that cooking as a career wasn't for me and the truth is that I retained very little of what the chefs taught in School. I would say 87% of what I do in the kitchen is a result of the kitchens that I cooked in after School. Working 12-13 hour days 6 days a week you learn pretty quickly how to make your time in the kitchen the most pleasant.

I graduated from CCA in 2005. The same year that one of my oldest friends, Troy began begging me for a cheesecake. Baking isn't really my thing. There's a whole other program for that. The main problem that baking and I encounter is that I'm a rebel when it comes to measuring cups. In savory (everything other than sweets) cooking you can correct seasonings by taste. Baking is a science. So I don't have that luxury when baking.

Since I just moved to San Diego (where Troy has lived since 2003). I thought the least I could do was bake him a Cheesecake when he came to visit me in my new digs. So I headed over to Whole Foods and $40 later I was on my way. It cost so much because I didn't have sugar, vanilla extract, etc. I also didn't invest in a whisk, a spatula or reasonably sized mixing bowls. So it took me a while to get all of the lumps out with my handy fork! I looked over a couple of Cheesecake recipes. In general I like Tyler Florence or Jamie Oliver's recipes. Tyler bakes his Cheesecake surrounded by water. Which should make the texture more velvety. I would have liked to do it this way but I baked mine in a toaster over (convection setting) and didn't have another baking this that was the right size for the job.

Troy's Raspberry Cheesecake
Golden Graham Crack Crust (pre-made from WFM)

Filling ( listed in the order you put them in together)
Cream Cheese
2 Eggs
2 cups of Sugar
Lite Sour Cream
1 Lemon (juice & zest)
2 Tblspn. of Vanilla Extract

Raspberry Topping
1 Package of Frozen Raspberries
1 Lemon (juice only)
Sugar
1 Dash of Strawberry Lemonade

Combine all ingredients and bring to a light boil. Then turn down to a simmer (this will thicken the liquid part). You can mask up some of the raspberries but I like to leave a lot of them whole so there's a little texture. Taste it. If it tastes too tart from the lemon add a little more sugar. It needs to be a little tart to balance the richness of the cheesecake. But you don't want anyone to "pucker". There are seeds in Raspberries. If you have a very fine strainer you can get out all of the seeds. If not, well your friends have all eaten seeds before.

Putting it all together
By now you've taken out the Cheesecake (done-ness tested by a toothpick that was dipped in the center of the cake & that came out clean) put it into the fridge (no lid/plastic wrap) stat. This stops it from cooking further. After the Raspberry topping is reasonably cool. Spread a medium layer of it on top of the Cheesecake with a knife (or a spatula if you have it). Leave the Cheesecake in the fridge for at least 6 hours before you slice & devour it.

Split Second

Yesterday was the worst day for me. I can't put my finger on exactly one thing that brought my day down. It was a million little things. I felt like everything I touched just turned to crap. I spent entirely too much time putting together one of my "e" marketing projects. Usually when I work on putting together eMails, Flyers, Posters for one of my clients. I just open Photoshop and get the layout, type, etc. figured out as I go. For the sake of not pulling my hair out I'm going to try to start sketching these out before I start to build them. That's what my old creative director used to do (with good reason).

But this story has a happy ending. Against all internal instinct I drove to the College area to meet my friend, Erin for the MGMT concert. I'm one of those people where I have to force myself to go out. Then once I'm out I have a great time. But my day was going so bad that I was nervous about getting into a car accident on the way to the concert!

We weren't able to buy tickets. So we were stuck sitting outside the concert (all outside sitting with a view was blocked off) listening to this amazing show on a cement bench. We're sulking on a bench and this guy walks up and asks us if we want two tickets for the show. Apprehensive Erin asks, "How much?". To which the guy hands the tickets to us and says, "FREE". Can you believe it? I swear as soon as he said it I felt all the ugliness of my day just wash right off of me. The show was AMAZING. Probably even more so for me. They sound exactly the same live as they do on the record.

Family Outing - Alexis graduates High School

This past Friday, June 18th, my cousin Alexis graduated from Buena Park High School with Honors. After her it's gonna be around 8 years until our next graduation ceremony so everyone was pretty excited. A interesting little tid-bit is that my grandma lives across the street from the High School (my Mom's alma mater). I just got a Flip video camera. Now I want to film EVERYTHING! I still remember when Alexis was a baby. I used to plant her in our Papasan chair (so early 90's right?) and talk to her when no one else was around trying to get her to say my name. So "Amanda" could be her 1st words. That plan didn't really work. But I'm proud of her none-the-less.

Yelp Elite Event at the Wavehouse

I'm one of those snooty people that yelps all the time and belongs to the official "Elite" club. My friends make fun of me for this. But it's really just a cooler way of getting free food at the new joints in town. Many of which I hope I would go to anyways. I dragged my buddy Troy to go with me to this one. Hands down the best food was Berkeley Pizza. It's really similar to Zachary's in Berkeley, CA if you've ever been. It's the ultimate deep dish pizza (Chicago style) with a twist. The tomato sauce layer is on top and the best tomato sauce on any pizza that I've ever had. The owner was handing them out at this event and he was soooo nice. He took the time to tell every single person (that he served) about the fresh herbs that he uses in his sauce and that he uses no sugar in his dough. If you live anywhere near downtown San Diego then you must give Berkeley Pizza (http://www.berkeleypizzaonline.com/) a try.


Berkeley Pizza on the right, Shredded Pork, Sope (SOH-peh) & Cilantro Micro-Greens courtesy of Soho Restaurant

Old friends make my heart go BOOM

For the last 3 years I lived in the Bay Area. I wish I could say that I loved it but the truth is the weather depressed the heck out of me up there. I think they call that SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) but there's not really a definitive test for it so I guess I'll never know. Best believe I won't be signing up to live in Seattle anytime soon. It probably took me 2 years to get adjusted to the cold, overcast-ness and gather a small group of friends (most of them co-workers). So really I just enjoyed that last year and the food.

Last weekend, one of my friends (Bex, short for Rebecca) came down here (San Diego) because a friend of hers was relocated temporarily for work. The funny thing is Bex is a San Franciscan (born & raised) through and through. Even though I lived just over the bridge in Emeryville I only managed to see her a handful of times. Most of those times involved Dim Sum. I see her more now that I live in the opposite part of the state from her. Ooh should tell you that I met Bex all the way back in 2004 when I was living in San Francisco and going to Culinary School. We were pretty inseparable. I saw her everyday! Usually she followed me home because she was still living at home. I miss my little apartment in the Haight sometimes.

Anyhoo, Bex has this huge group of friends that she goes everywhere with. I finally got to meet about 10 of them. They were so so nice. Do you ever meet someone and it just feels like you've talked to them a million times before? Well that's how this went. Ooh and they are all so stylish. Wish I was petite and Chinese so I could borrow all of their clothes and more importantly their minuscule sized shoes. I met them in the Gaslamp and we went out to this really horrible bar called, The Fleetwood. I say horrible because it was so, so hot in there. It felt like you were going to melt. I even welcomed escaping with Bex on the smoke deck. For anyone who has never met me I have a serious dislike of anything that involves smoke. I'm usually that one annoying non-smoker friend you have that tries to get you to quit every 5 seconds and reminds you that you are killing yourself (politely of course). Oh and some of the shot/wine glasses they gave us were warm. But regardless I had a great time with the old bestie!

HootSuite anyone?

In working for one of my Retail clients I got a request for demo-ing how to write tweets and manage multiple social network accounts by using HootSuite.com, a professional Twitter client that I absolutely love. The how-to screen cast below is really basic but some of my favorite features are scheduling tweets in advance, tweet statistics, and the customizable drag +drop dashboard. One of the things (that I'm sad about) on the Twitter UI is that you can't see all of your twitter lists, @mentions, re-tweets, direct messages and so on in one screen. Which the HootSuite dashboard amends. On Twitter they make you click on different links in order to see that info. Oh and did I mention HootSuite is free? Give it a try if you haven't all ready. Let me know if you have any other how-to videos for Social Networking sites that you'd like to see.

My YouTube channel - http://www.youtube.com/amandarecord
My Twitter - http://twitter.com/amandarecord

Email Marketing - Small Business Style

Small businesses out there I thought I would help you out with a quick list of my favorite ESP's (eMail Service Providers). I've either used or tried out every service on this list (and many more). Feel free to ask any questions later on. After you've used one tool/software it's kind of like riding a bicycle. Sure some things (layout wise) differ from site to site. But all should have a tab for Create, Send, Track, Lists/Segmentation (creating defined list of customers for certain campaigns) at a minimum. Going a little bit above the basics.... A/B Testing capabilities, Deliverability reports (hard/soft bounce).

Please note that all the options below have a FREE test drive (no credit card required). I highly recommend browsing around at least 3 eMail service provider options before you settle on your solution.


Oh iContact. I'll cut straight to the point. I don't like these guys. On the range of small business solutions I would say iContact and Constant Contact are on the bottom. In eMail Marketing I've found the saying " You get what you pay for" to be very true. The only reason I would really use these guys is if I were a retail only business (or something similar) where I could not easily track my eMail conversion (define). iContact offers a monthly plan for $9.95 for 1k subscribers (6K max. monthly messaging). But if you are really just starting off MailChimp lets you use their tool for FREE as long as you have 500 subscribers or less.

Pros -
*designed for small business owners. Interface is very basic and easy to use.
*switching from double opt-in to single opt-in is a click away
* can reach support by phone, chat or eMail (eMail response wait is bad)
Cons -
*Use live to chat to contact support. Email response rates are very bad if they respond at all.
*Their definitions of terms like campaign and bounces are not consistent with industry standards. For them
Campaigns = List Name
Released = Sent
* Bounced # is not broken down into hard bounces vs. soft bounces (email addresses that don't exist/ typed wrong vs. correct email addresses where the mailbox was busy/full). In the reporting the # for bounces is not reflected in the Released (aka sent #). But in order for those messages to bounce they had to be attempted.
*Not all of their buttons/icons work. This is especially true for their icons for editing your eMail. Which are supposed to be useful for non-code people. If anything I find these "helpful" icons make it more difficult to produce a good looking eMail.
* Low customization for your opt-in form. Also to track opt-ins for different forms you need to keep a separate eMail list for each form.
* Pixelated images in reports (see your pie graph for message reports). Never a good sign.


For the most part I like Vertical Response. These guys are definitely a step above iContact and Constant Contact in my humble opinion. Vertical Response was the 1st ESP that I ever used for a client. That client used VR for about 1 year and 3-6 months. In the end they outgrew VR due to the length it took for updates to the tool. Since the last time I used VR there have been alot of updates issued.

Pricing - sorry if the image below is too small to be useful. In the past my clients have gone with Pay-As-You-Go with these guys. They advertise unlimited sending for a list of 500 subscriber per month. But you could be paying nothing for a list that size at through MailChimp's Forever Free Plan


Pros -
*Homepage Dashboard - Drag 'n' Drop customizable
*Lists have "mapping". So say you upload a list with a field name. After you upload the list you can choose the field in VR (ex- zipcode, retailstore) that you want the info to be used for. So your field names headers don't have to be identical to the headers in VR.
* Customizable sign-up form - add fields like zip code, state or any custom field (ex- retail store, birthday). You can also add your logo to your form, choose your redirect for a thank you page (after sign up is complete) and customize your doubt opt-in (aka email confirming you really did sign up for email from sender)
* Option to integrate your reports with your FREE Google Analytics account (do this!).
Account> Analytics Settings> Google Analytics
* Social sharing - add your Twitter and Facebook account info to automatically share your eMail campaigns on these networks.
Account> Social Sharing
Cons -
* A little slower on updating the tool.
* Based on the east coast. So get you campaigns in order early in the day in case you need help.


Yay! Now for the fun stuff. My recommendation for small business owners would be MailChimp! Especially since they have the Forever Free plan (unlimited sending to list size of 500 subscribers). Once you get out of the Free zone it does go up but in comparison with the other options MailChimp is only $2-$5 more per month. For most of my clients monthly pricing makes the most sense.


Pros -
*Simply put the UI rocks! It's pretty but more importantly it makes sense. You basically have 5 tabs (dashboard, campaigns, lists, reports, autoresponders).
* Templates are worlds ahead of templates offered by other ESP's.
* They have a how-to video for virtually anything that you will ever need to do. Check out their YouTube channel here.
* On-going free webinars and daily/weekly technical updates from various staff members.
* Follow them on Twitter (they respond to every @mention)
* Most customizable sign up form. You can even add your own header image (for branding purposes). You can also create "hidden fields" that your subscribers can't see on the sign up form but you can use for segmenting in the backend. Example would be creating a "source" field of where you got a list of email addresses (ex- partnered eMail sweepstakes).
* Reporting integration with Google Analytics through SiteAnalytics 360
* You can synch your customer database (through your shopping cart) with your eMail database through MailChimp. Once you do this your list will automatically be updated and you can start getting into behavioral eMail targeting (ex- segmenting by purchase history). This is huge!
* For your lists you will want to create 1 list and with either groups (dynamically defined segments/preferences that are then on your sign-up form) or you'll define your segment criteria (based on zip code, etc.) with each send. If you do it the 2nd way then those options do not have to be on your sign up form.


Cons -
* Based in Atlanta. I'm west coast based so I wasn't able to get a hold of them if I was trying to contact anytime after 1-2pm.
*The biggest complaint I have for MailChimp is that there is NO PHONE NUMBER for service. Reaching support through email or live chat are your only options. Even if you beg for a number you are really out of luck. They just don't have one. Probably the reason why they have so may help docs for everything.
* In their segmentation tool they do not have a "not" statement ability. So say I want to mail to all my customers whose country field is "not" Canada. I would create the segment using criteria that the customers I want to include "do have". Having a "not" or "does not" statement ability would be alot faster. You basically have to create a work around for these cases.
*Pain in the butt to get rid of double opt-in (they don't recommend it). Solution for Single Opt-in here.
*API documentation is written strictly for developers (aka in greek so good luck understanding it). Frankly I got the feeling they didn't want any Marketers getting involved in the process. I just wanted to be able to understand what I needed from my developer before I had to ask him for it.
If you need to integrate your customer database with your email marketing database then I would join the MailChimp jungle round table and their Google API Discussion Group.