Ellie's Black Bean Dip

This recipe is so easy, and healthy, and really good.  Hopefully this post is in time for a few holiday potlucks, to provide a healthy alternative to all the other fattening dips.  This isn't just good for being healthy, it is delicious regardless.

By Ellie Krieger, MS, RD

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 1/2 medium onion, diced (about 3/4 cup)
• 1 clove garlic, minced (about 1 teaspoon)
• 1 tablespoon seeded and minced jalapeño pepper
• 1 (15.5 ounce) can black beans, preferably low-sodium, drained and rinsed
• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
• 2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 tablespoon water
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Cooking Instructions

1. Heat the oil in a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring, until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic and jalapeño and cook for 1 minute.
2. Place the beans in a food processor. Add the onion mixture and the remaining ingredients and process until smooth.

Beef and Macaroni

This recipe is so easy, and a crowd favorite.  This recipe makes a pretty large portion, so I freeze the extra, and reheat it in the microwave later. 

serves 6, prep 15 min, cook 40 min

• 1 pound ground beef, I used the leanest I can get
• 1 red onion, finely diced
• 1 red bell pepper, finely diced
• 2 carrots, finely diced (or 10 baby carrots)
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp oil
• 1 small can tomato paste
• 28 oz canned diced tomatoes
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• 1 tbsp dried parsley (or dried basil, I was out)
• 1 tsp sweet paprika
• 2 tsp sugar
• salt and pepper
• 2 cups uncooked macaroni noodles
• Red pepper flakes (to taste)

1. First finely dice the onion, pepper, and carrots.
2. Cook the ground beef in a dutch oven, seasoning with salt and pepper. Drain fat and discard.
3. In the same durch oven, heat oil over medium heat and add butter.
4. Add the vegetables and garlic and stir to cook several minutes until soft.
5. Add the tomato paste and cook, stirring for a minute.
6. Add the un-drained diced tomatoes to the pan and the cooked ground beef.
7. Add the spices and turn down the heat to a simmer, cover the pan and cook for 30 min.
8. While sauce is cooking bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
9. Cook macaroni until tender, reserve 1 cup of pasta water, drain.  Do not rinse.  If your sauce seems to be drying out at any point add in some of your reserved pasta water as needed.
10. Taste sauce and season with salt and pepper.
11. Combine with noodles. Toss to mix well and separate the noodles. Serve.

Essential (or just plain cool) Android Applications

Do you want more cool app recommendations?  Download my App, and get them delivered daily:

http://mswolfson.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/droid-of-the-day-available-now-in-android-market/

My list of indispensable apps:

I don’t remember all of the cool Android apps I have downloaded, but here is a rundown of the ones I find most useful. I intend to keep this post updated when I find cool new apps. If you know of an Android app, that is really cool, or that you can't live without, please list it in the comments!

Linda – file manager Google Voice (but only if you have a GV account – which I have invites) – look online for what this does, it basically allows you to control all your communication (works on Verizon too!);  Now allows you to use GV for all your voicemails - so you get transcription, and visual voice mail - this is a must have, even if you don't use a GV number. ACast – podcast aggregator (I am sticking with this over Google Listen, as it is more straightforward, and finds updated feeds quicker) SavvyShoppper - comparison shop products by bar code MissedCall – changes LED based on type of notification (SMS, VoiceMail); fully configurable (this doesn't work on my Nexus One - I miss it) Barcode Scanner – read all sorts of different barcodes (including 2D) MyTracks – good for running or hiking; keeps track of distance traveled, speed, elevation gain etc; good for keeping track of workouts (From Google) Scoreboard – for sports fans, gives you notifications of sports scores (From Google - doesn't reliably give my updates on my N1 unfortunately) USA Today – news Facebook – they have an official app Twidroid – my favorite Twitter App (but I don’t use Twitter that much, so I may not be the person to endorse this).  People like Seesmic too. Shazam – identify any song by “listening” to it; tells you song information Pandora – internet radio Layar – augmented reality puts information on top of the map (or streetview) with tons of different information; This is just the beginning of this sort of app, this sort of functionality will be huge in the future Locale - change phone settings based on location; kind of buggy but when it works, it is great.  When going to download this to my N1, they are now charging for this - $9.99, this is too expensive, as this app doesn't work reliably.  I am willing to put up with bugginess on a cheap app, but not if I am paying for it. 3Banana – list manager (integrated with website to keep lists on phone and web) TuneWiki - alternative Media player, with the coolest feature that is downloads lyrics, and displays them in sync with the music;  Also will link out to music video of songs if it knows of them - Ad Supported. Dolphin Browser - alternative browser with some cool features.  I like the way it handles tabs, and it uses some great getures, to allow easier navigation.  Also includes multi-touch, for all phones, which is pretty cool.

Some apps I am playing with, but can't endorse yet:

Pro Paint Camera - replacement for stock camera, with enhanced functionality (photo effects, advanced white balance, etc) http://www.popcrowd.com

Geogad Tours - audio and video clips that create tours of specific locations. Web site: http://www.geogad.com Download link: http://market.android.com/search?q=pname:com.geogad

ShapeWriter - different on-screen keyboard that allows you to link words by holding down on keyboard to make work (with predictive text correction). http://www.shapewriter.com

Swype - another alternative keyboard.  Didn't work great on my N1, kept giving me screen resolution errors.  But I liked the idea, thought it worked pretty well.  Here is a link to a site with a link to a beta copy of it.  Not sure if it will always be available.  http://www.androidcentral.com/download-beta-version-swype-android

Cafe Bink Review (Carefree, AZ)

Ate there this weekend.  The experience was great, but the food was just OK. First off, I would say the patio is a wonderful place to spend a fall afternoon.  Sitting in the shade, looking across Tom Darlington Road at the mountain vista is special.  The restaurant has a killer location, and atmosphere.

Me and my SO each had a bowl of soup, and split a sandwich.  She had the butternut squash soup, which she loved.  They presented the soup, as a bowl, with a crouton in it, then they poured the soup at the table out of a small tureen.  This is a classy service step (and one of the many things they do here, to "turn it up a notch" just a bit)).

I had the french onion soup, which was great as well.  This soup takes a long time to cook right (reduce the onions over and over), so not something I will make at home.  It was pretty good at Cafe Bink.  The flavors were balanced, if a bit salty.

We then split the corned beef sandwich.  I was pleasantly surprised to find the corned beef was obviously home made (in hindsight, I guess most of the items on the menu were probably made from scratch, as that is the Binkley way).  The sandwich was fine, but nothing amazing.

Finally, we split a baby order of french fries.  We are glad we got the baby, as it was a very large portion.  The fries themselves were pretty great.  Crispy on the outside, and soft on the inside.  The 3 sauces that came with them (truffle catchup, garlic aioli, and sauce vert) were not great.  The catchup was overwhelmed by the truffle, not balanced, the sauce vert didn't have much of a taste, and I didn't try the aioli (I am mayo averse).

Overall, while the quality of the food was all pretty good, I wouldn't say that any of the dishes were really outstanding, and probably not worth the high prices.  Nothing we had "wowed" us.

I have to give major props to the service.  We had our 14 month old in tow, and the staff bent over backwards to make us comfortable (the server even offered to have the chef make a special macaroni and cheese dish - off the menu for her).  I am the kind of person who is very self conscious of my child interfering with other peoples meals, and generally uncomfortable with taking her out.  The staff really put me at ease, and allowed me to enjoy my meal.  I can't say enough how their attitudes really enhanced our experience.  From what I saw, the service at Cafe Bink is excellent all around.

So bottom line, I can't exactly recommend Cafe Bink as a destination restaurant, it probably isn't worth the drive.  But, if you are already in Cave Creek, or Carefree, you could certainly do worse.  One thing is for sure, the staff will bend over backwards to make sure you have a great experience, and that  says a lot.

Microsoft Retail Store (First Impressions)

I am definitely a geek, so naturally when I heard Microsoft opened their first retail store today in my hometown, I made plans to head there as soon as I could.  Overall, I was actually impressed with what I saw.

First off, although I am sure the MS guys wince every-time someone compares this store to an Apple store, it is a natural thing to do.  I found a lot of similarities.  The store layout was almost identical, with tables displaying products, employees in different colored t-shirts, an "Answer Bar" in the back, and sleek/modern design.  To be clear, on first impressions, this really felt a lot like an Apple Store.

But digging a little deeper, there were some really cool things.  The first cool thing about the store, is there was a ribbon of video screens completely surrounding the top of the store.  When I was there, some were being used to play XBox, some were displaying static info about products, and some had general news info.  In videos I have seen (like the engadget one: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/22/microsoft-store-opens-to-scottsdale-campers-video/ )  you can really see how they leverage these screens to change the atmosphere of the store.

Otherwise, as expected, they had a bunch of  "Surface" machines setup.  They were wide open (ie. there wasn't a employee monitoring them or anything), so people could pretty much play with them freely.  I didn't have a chance to play with them today, but this was the first time I have seen one in person, and it was really cool.  I look forward to getting back there (when it is less busy, and a little easier to get my hands on the demos).  They also had a lot of Zune's setup throughout the store (this is the first time I got my hands on one, and I was impressed, it is a nice little device).

Something really cool, that wasn't getting much attention (but should have) was the giant touch screen in the back of the store.  It was being used to display a map, and I am pretty sure it wasn't open for public use.  It was multitouch ( I definitely witnessed someone pinching to zoom).  Bottom line, this was a huge screen, and adding touch technology to it, was something I haven't seen before (and something pretty rare).  I am sure there is a lot they can do with this, once they get settled in.

Otherwise, the product selection was interesting.  If I was in the market for a new computer, I would most definitely make this a stop in my shopping tour.  They had computers from Dell, Sony, and HP (maybe more, those are the ones I saw for sure).  They had all the latest models (probably due to the fact that the store just opened).

They were promoting the store by offering free tickets to a concert by "Ashley Tisdale" (from High School Musical I guess).  The tickets were limited to the first 1000 people in the store.  I was there 3 hours after opening (and there were a ton of people at the store), and there were still tickets available.  I am thinking that a lot of people didn't take the tickets (I certainly didn't - I did get a free Bing t-shirt though).  My guess is MS missed the boat, and didn't quite figure out their target market.

Bottom line, I was actually impressed with this store.  It represents the Microsoft product line really well, and is a well stocked "Adult Tech Toy Store".    I look forward to going back soon, when there are fewer crowds, and playing around more.

First Impressions of Samsung Moment (Android Phone)

I attended CTIA last week, and was at the Sprint event, where they announced their first Android phone.  It is made by Samsung, and will be called the "Moment".  I was very impressed with my initial impressions of it. At the event, they were not allowing people to handle the phone, and hired pretty women to demo the phones.  The women clearly didn't know anything about the phones, but were accommodating to the attendees, and would press any buttons, and show us whatever we wanted.  I apologize for the poor quality of the images, I took them with my G1, which has less than stellar photo performance.

The form factor of this phone is the classic slider design.  I found it well executed.  The phone was large enough to be useful, but still thin enough to easily fit in a pocket.  There were also some nice chrome accents on the phone, for a little bling.

I made sure to test the keyboard, as this is super important to me.  I did some typing on it (again, while the pretty girl made sure she kept an iron grip on the device), and found the keyboard great.  The keys were spaced well, and had good response.  An interesting feature that the Moment had, was haptic feedback when keys were pressed (ie. the phone vibrated slightly when keys were activated).  While I personally would probably turn this off, this is an innovation.

Another interesting feature of the Moment, is that it is the first Android phone to use a different a chip than the Qualcomm MSM7201A.  Samsung is using their own ARM11 chipset clocked at 800 MHz.  I would expect this will result in improved performance.

The phone does have an AMOLED screen, but quite frankly, it didn't look any better to me than the screen on my G1 (maybe the lighting in the hall was bad or something).

Samsung and Sprint are releasing the phone without any custom skinning, or other significant features on top of Android.  I asked the girl to navigate to the about screen, and noticed that the demo phone was running the 1.5 release of the OS (even though Eclair - ie. 1.6, had dropped already).   Following up on this on the intrawebs, it does sound like they will be updating this before they officially release the phone.

The last compelling feature of this phone worth mentioning, is that the camera has a flash (which you may be able to see in my blurry picture).  This is a great inclusion, and not something I have seen on any of the other currently released Android phones (but a feature I think should be on all phones).

Overall, on first impression, I really liked this phone.  The form factor and keyboard were great.  Samsung has included some advanced features (AMOLED screen, faster processor, camera flash, haptic feedback)  that should make this phone standout from the other Android phones.  It is a compelling device, and a great first Android phone for both Samsung and Sprint.

Google Wave

I attended the last Google IO, and in addition to walking away with an HTC Magic phone (sweet), I got early access to the Wave Sandbox. I haven't really done anything with it yet (I don't know a lot of people with Wave accounts, so I don't have anyone to communicate with).

Yesterday I received 8 invites for the Beta preview.  I have already given most of them out, but will give out one randomly, to a person who comments on this post.

• Bonus points if I know you (I am looking for people to Wave with).
• Bonus points if your comment makes me smile
• To reiterate, I would like to give this to someone I know, so random internet people, who comment on this post won't be in the running (unless you are particularly funny).

I will send out the invite Monday morning - Oct 5th.