Alert! Guest Post from Foodinthebrunz: The In’s and Out’s of Elijah’s Promise

Hi all, as you know one of my collaborators are Zoe Zschack, editor of Foodinthebrunz. Other than supporting Elijah’s Promise in ways that I’ve mentioned in my video of cooking meals to serve in the community, Zoe has provided a video that demonstrates how you can directly work with Elijah’s Promise!

She provided a video where she explains how to be a volunteer for Elijah’s Promise. This video has a lot of helpful information and I hope you all take a look and can find an opportunity to volunteer and help play a part in alleviating hunger in the New Brunswick area. Enjoy!

Hi bloggers! I’m finally presenting you with my long awaited screencast about Elijah’s Promise soup kitchen. This video will give you all of the necessary information that you need in order to volunteer for Elijah’s Promise! This includes the different types of volunteer shifts that are availible, including how old you have to be to volunteer! Important dress code rules and regulations can also be found listed in this video. I have also included a video from the Elijah’s Promise website, in order to give you a first hand look at how rewarding volunteering is! Continue to check out my  collaborators blogs, Cuisine4College and Posilive, to review their videos too. I hope you enjoy and please feel free to share feedback with me via zschackzoe@gmail.com.

(Video from Elijah’s Promise)

Make a Meal to Serve Your Community – Elijah’s Promise

Hi everyone! Cuisine4College (editor Yasmeen Marques) has officially started the collaborative campaign you’ve been waiting for with Foodinthebrunz (editor Zoe Zschack), and Posilive (editor Brian Oates). As we’ve announced previously, we will be collaborating to spread awareness to our audiences about Elijah’s Promise, which is a non-profit organization that aims to alleviate hunger in the central New Jersey communities by serving as a community soup kitchen.

Elijah’s Promise fights to end hunger through promoting good food for all, providing education and job training for the food industry, and creating social enterprise food businesses that help build a better world.

I have created a video that will demonstrate an example of a meal, Spaghetti, that can be served as dinner for those who are hungry. Spaghetti is a meal that requires cheap ingredients to incorporate and is easy enough to make in bulk in a small amount of time. This video has the purpose of encouraging those who wish to cook and support their local community by serving a meal. There are tips provided on how to make an affordable spaghetti dinner in a hearty and skillful way.

 

I have utilized a video I found on Bing titled, “5 Meals that Feed 10 for $5 Big Meals CHEAP for tight budgets” by Big Family Homestead, which gives specific ingredients for the recipe and price ranges. I also utilized an article I found on Delallo titled “How to cook perfect pasta,” which gives tips on how to properly cook a pasta dish. Take a look at my video combining these sources to create a how-to guide on how to cook a bulky dish that is cheap and tasty that you can make and serve to your community.

Elijah’s Promise not only provides a soup kitchen, but also provides cooking classes which demonstrate how to cook meals that a great for families. This video can be used for those who cannot attend these classes, but still wish to learn about meals they can make for their families on a budget! Please support Elijah’s Promise or any other organizations with the same mission to alleviate hunger in your area in any way that you can.

Thank you for watching!!

Feel free to contact me about any further information through the contact page of via email: yasmeenmarques@gmail.com

 

 

Funny Recipe Meme

Image provided by knowyourmeme

This meme should be extremely relatable and humorous to those who view my site because it exemplifies the actions we sometimes wish or actually do take when hungry in college. Especially for new beginners in the kitchen, some recipes may be so difficult and detailed to follow to ensure a great meal. The irony in this meme is that it’s a quick and easy recipe that some would either find delicious and great or absolutely amateur and unappealing. This meme is relevant to my topic of easy and quick meals, but luckily my recipes are actually more dense in flavor, variety, and health! For those college students who still want the quickness of this bacon recipe, but with more richness and nutrition, please help yourself at looking through Cuisine 4 College.

The underlying memetic concept that makes these memes spreadable is the man’s facial and gesture expression of sarcasm. In almost all types of humor, sarcasm is found, which is why memes with this feature are so spreadable. The meme without the image of the man may not have actually been a meme at first glance without it. The universal understanding of the sarcasm through his image is what creates the joke within the meme and makes it humorous to widely spread audience.

There aren’t many memes that are related to food recipes that are humorous, but many people who find the humor in “veganism” tend to create memes that may be funny to some, but can offend others.

This meme in particular is an example of user-made content that does not have the intention of promotion/branding, but instead has the purpose of humor. However, it can be looked at as promoting the food network since the original recipe was posted on the food network. This can either be viewed as bad promotion or good, depending on the audience’s feelings towards the humor or seriousness of this recipe.

Posting Reliable Content 101

The following post is a video dedicated to identifying “100 life saving health food tips” that the general person should know about. The video includes pictures of the food items and describes some of the benefits of each in the span of less than two minutes.

The creator of this video is identified with the title “favorites100com” and was found by searching food tips on Youtube. The user has a profile picture of a fish and has previous posts of various unrelated content. The actual identity of the person behind this account is unknown as the only picture is the profile picture of the fish, which indicates that the person does not want their identity exposed. The account doesn’t have any name of indications of the person’s name behind the account as the only identifier is the username which is “favorites100com.” The username seems to be a url, which when typed in leads to a website that doesn’t seem legitimate, but rather seems like a platform for ads and viruses.

Even though many of the tips and bulleted benefits of each food item are pretty accurate, the account in which the video is being provided on does make me question the sincerity/legitimacy of the content. Therefore, I acknowledge that when I post content on my site, it is beneficial for me to not only cite where I get my information from, but to also bring awareness to my audience of who I am. Allowing my audience to see my name and have access to a “Meet the Editor” page, can make my site more reliable and create a sense of belonging and accuracy to content that I provide for my audience.

Update on our Collab!

Image provided by flickr by eliteautocollision

Hello all! As you know, I am collaborating with Foodinthebrunz and Posilive to promote Elijah’s Promise, a non-profit organization, and their efforts to spread awareness about alleviating hunger within our communities.Throughout our collaborative process so far, we have reached two milestones that we have successfully accomplished.

Our first accomplishment was finding an organization to promote that equally satisfied all of our interests and had a mission that was reflected, in some way, on our sites. We recognize that our shared audience are college aged students, especially those in the New Brunswick area to be specific. Elijah’s Promise is an organization that is based in New Brunswick, where a lot of Rutgers students have access to visit and volunteer. Our second accomplishment was being able to each pick a way to tie our site into the promotion of Elijah’s Promise is a unique way. You will all get the chance to see how we went about this once we post our videos up (which is very soon!)

Two milestones that we foresee for the future of our collaborative project include finishing our videos in a timely manner (so we don’t have to keep you all waiting too long), but being thought out well enough so our final products are concise, yet full of useful information. We do not want to have videos that do not provide useful information. We plan on preventing these issues by utilizing the screen cast platform to show helpful tips and information from various sources of media during our videos. This way, our audiences can see where we get our information from and can then search more on their own if they’re interested. We also utilize vibrant images to attract our audiences visually and aim to continue to do so by using creative commons to ensure visual aesthetics to you all! We’re working together to put all of our ideas into one successful effort to promote Elijah’s Promise!

Announcement! Collab coming soon

Hi Everyone! I am pleased to announce that Cuisine4College (editor: Yasmeen Marques) will be collaborating with Foodinthebrunz (editor: Zoe Zschack) and Posilive (editor: Brian Oates) to promote to Rutgers college students who wish to cook and live positively the organization, Elijah’s Promise! Since all of our sites are related to food and positivity we felt we could best promote Elijah’s Promise with their mission and values of ending hunger and working to make positive change in the lives of those in their community. This organization pushes to alleviate hunger in the New Brunswick and central Jersey communities. We aim to demonstrate ways that college students in the area, specifically Rutgers, can contribute to the Elijah’s Promise and their cause.

We will be posting videos that show meals that can be easily cooked in bulk and served to those suffering from hunger as well as videos demonstrating how to support Elijah’s Promise. Cuisine4College will post a video showing tips on how to cook meals that are easy and affordable to make for large consumption. I will be posting a guest post from Foodinthebrunz with more information soon! Giving back is an act that can help relieve stress and increase happiness which promotes a positive lifestyle. Those who find joy in cooking can participate in giving back by making meals for others! Please tune in soon to view our videos on how to get involved and learn more about Elijah’s Promise and contribute to ending hunger in your community.

Contact info for all participants:

Yasmeen Marques (Cuisine4College): yasmeenmarques@gmail.com

Zoe Zschack (Foodinthebrunz): zoe.zschack@rutgers.edu

Brian Oates (Posilive): bjo27@scarletmail.rutgers.edu

Image provided by Elijah’s Promise

Helpful Cooking Tips Videos to Compare

Since this site is designed and targeted towards college students, especially those who are beginning to learn how to cook, I figured a video demonstrating some useful cooking tips would be beneficial for my audience. Here is a youtube video I found that visually shows 6 helpful cooking tips that can make your cooking experience easier and quicker.

In this video, you are presented with tips that demonstrate how to peel a hard boiled egg, peel garlic cloves, remove the skin off kiwis, cut a banana, cut paprika, and peel a potato.

These are just a few hacks that I thought would come in handy for these type of kitchen duties that may feel tedious. By following these tips, you can get through the process of preparing a meal with much more ease and save yourself some time.

One more youtube video that I found and thought would be awesome to share shows a cool and innovative way to separate egg yolk from egg whites.

This video is especially useful for those who want to cook healthy meals. A lot of healthier meals incorporate egg whites, which usually seems like extra work when having to separate the yolk from the whites. However, now that there is a new trick that can make the process easier, there is no excuse to not choose the healthier alternative of eating when cooking a meal that contains eggs!

Both of these videos seem to target an audience of those who like to spend time in the kitchen, but want to prepare meals in the most effective ways. However, the videos demonstrate what seems to be effective in the kitchen in two different ways. The first video shows effectiveness as shortening the time it takes to perform certain tasks by providing us with tips on how to do things more easily and quickly. The second video demonstrates effectiveness as cooking towards certain desires such as health (hence, the egg whites).

These videos are for all members of the kitchen, but one is more geared towards those who want to make meals quickly and the other is more focused on making procedures in the kitchen easier for those who wish to be healthy. These tips are activities that all who share the interest of cooking can find useful which relates to Bennett’s claim that “many forms of shared activity online … represent forms of civic or media engagement.” We look to find tips online because we see that some parts of the cooking process are time-consuming. Through tip videos like such on the media, we are able to share these tips with others who share our motive to cook more effectively!

Sources:

Bennett Article

6 Amazing Cooking Tricks – Youtube Video

Very cool way to separate egg yolk – Youtube Video

 

Chicken Spinach Bacon Alfredo Pasta Screencast – Audio Demo

Ingredients:

• 6 strips of bacon
• 2 chicken breasts
• 5 oz spinach
• 4 garlic gloves
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 5 cups milk
• 1 lb penne pasta
• 1 cup parmesan

 

Recipes that have video demonstrations to accompany them make the cooking process a lot easier for beginners. A component that I wanted to include on my site were video demonstrations of step by step instructions of the recipe because many people are visual learners, especially those who are in college. In this respect, I figured a screencast that explaining some tips for each ingredient in between scenes of the recipe would help make my audience’s experience better. My audience is mainly college students who wish to find easy quick recipes because of their lack of experience in the kitchen.

I used the screen-o-matic platform to create my audio because it allows me to switch through screens on my browser while recording a video. This effort was convenient for me because I was able to allow the Tasty video, Bacon Spinach Chicken Alfredo Pasta, to play while I explained tips to the viewers. I did this with the intention of allowing my audience to have the opportunity to follow the recipe during the video demonstration and also have tips in between so that they can pause the video when needed in order to complete the meal without having to replay the video too many times. Screen-o-matic allows me to run through the video while switching tabs which helped me pause the tasty demo video and click straight to tabs that presented tips that my viewers not only heard me say through the voiceover, but also gave them a visual of words to read over. I did this intentionally in case some people prefer words or audio for instructions.

This was to satisfy my viewers because I know that they are generally college students who are beginners so they may need some extra tips on how to properly cook each ingredient, which the original tasty video does not provide tips on. The tasty videos seem to target an audience that has more experience in the kitchen because the recipe does not state how long the bacon, chicken, or pasta should actually cook for. My goal was to incorporate tips on how long to properly cook each ingredient as well as how best to prep the ingredients to compensate for the lack of those details in the video.

 

Recipe video provided by Today Food from Tasty

Screencast on How Cuisine4College Differs From Other Recipe Sites

When trying to come up with the format of my website, I looked at other recipe websites to see which components I did and did not like to incorporate in my mine. The two other websites that I looked at to base my website design off of were allrecipes.com and saveur.com. I utilized screen-o-matic as my foundation to record my screen while having a voice over simultaneously to demonstrate my feedback on each of these sites. To prepare for my recording, I wrote down bullet points of what I liked and disliked about each site and why. I focused on what components of the site would be best for me to incorporate in mine that are best suited for my target audience of college students.

I had some problems with the screen-o-matic platform because I did not understand how to pause the video and continuing the process when pressing play. Instead, I would click the pause button and the video would stop recording as a whole and I was not able to continue playing the video after pausing so have a smooth transition. I could not figure out how to use screen-o-matic enough to be able to learn the functions of pausing and continuing the video. This was a problem because I had to keep recording the audio from scratch if I made a mistake. I recorded about ten different audios until I finally got the one with the least mistakes.

I had bullet points for my script of what I was going to refer to when recording my voice over. I did not prepare a word for word script to use for my video, which was a challenge because I was more prone to making mistakes. However, I Intentionally chose not to make a script and use bullet points instead because I wanted the audio to sound more authentic. I do think the sound of speaking over a specific script is organic enough to capture the audience’s attention.

Fresh Tomato Sauce Pasta (25min)

Image by Kimbacub provided by all recipes

Ingredients:

• 1 (16 ounce) package of any pasta
• 8 tomatoes, diced
• 1/2 cup Italian dressing
• 1/4 cup finely chopped basil
• 1/4 cup diced red onion
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

Directions:

Prep: 15 min Cook: 10 min

1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil.
2. Place the pasta in the pot and cook for 10 minutes, then drain.
3. In a large bowl, toss cooked pasta with tomatoes, Italian dressing, basil, red onion, and parmesan cheese.
4. Mix and serve.