Amid a Feast of Foodie Videos, 6 Unusual Cooking Channels To Try on YouTube

Cooking on YouTube has become big business for audience views and chef revenue — but there are still a few truly quirky originals out there, from culinary canines to black metal vegans. Who knew?

I wrote this piece about YouTube's foodie success stories and some of its more, er, unusual cooking channels for KQED's Bay Area Bites blog, so go read it over there!

• Read Amid a Feast of Foodie Videos, 6 Unusual Cooking Channels To Try on YouTube

8 Things To Do Solo In San Francisco

Basheer Tome / Flickr

Sometimes you find yourself with the day off but no partners-in-crime available. Other times, you just really want to spend the afternoon on your lonesome. Whatever the reason for ditching the plus-one, here are eight things to do in San Francisco that are either best enjoyed alone, optimized for the individual visitor or at least won’t make you feel at all awkward for being by yourself.

Read my full piece over on KQED.org!

What’s the Great Fuss About ‘The Great British Baking Show’?

(Courtesy of © Love Productions)

No drama, no drumrolls: just twelve people baking in the middle of a field in England. So why is The Great British Baking Show (a.k.a the U.K.'s beloved Great British Bake Off) so hugely successful over here in the U.S? I wrote this piece explaining the mystique of Mary Berry and co. for KQED's Bay Area Bites food blog, so go read it there!

• Read What’s the Great Fuss About ‘The Great British Baking Show’?

What Facebook Graph Search Might Mean, or 'Last Recommendation in Brooklyn'

Facebook's Graph Search announcement yesterday has many people predicting the decline of other search services and platforms that the humans of Planet Earth would otherwise use for recommendations on what to do with their evening. And with the commentator focus on mining this functionality for guidance concerning, say, 'Mexican restauarants my friends have enjoyed in Brooklyn', I couldn't help wondering: when did the opinions and recommendations of our social circle become so important online?

Hey, I don't know any of these people!

What I mean is, speaking objectively: why should knowing somebody personally elevate their opinion above that of what might be termed an 'expert'? Just because my friend, er, Curly likes Mexican food and used to live in Brooklyn, why does that mean I should trust her experience or recommendation (as handed to me by Facebook Search) more than 450 reviewers on Yelp? Or (just imagine) a Brooklyn-based food critic, whose 50-year newspaper career has been dedicated specifically to the evaluation of local Mexican 'eateries'? Does knowing and (presumably) liking Curly make her recommendation any more valid, or me any more likely to agree with her tastes vis-a-vis carne asada?

Land of Opportunities to Spend Money

It can't all be raucous nights out and base jumping, so one of the games that I've particularly enjoyed playing since our arrival in San Francisco is the pithily-titled, entirely-subjective "What Seems Surprisingly Expensive Here, and What Doesn't?".

To partake you will need a) a foreign country, and b) another country (for scale). Let's play!


Part One: What Seems Surprisingly Expensive Here?

But imagine the salad!

• Grocery stores. A dollar an apple, really? To any San Francisco resident, complaining about Whole Foods and Mollie Stone's being expensive sounds like complaining about the rain being wet, but it's still startling just how much more costly these stores are compared with the higher-end UK equivalents such as Waitrose or M&S. It's especially confusing to encounter higher-than-expected prices in Safeway, although admittedly this perception might be due to their long-defunct UK incarnation as a decidedly 'budget' supermarket. Exhibit A: my friends' so-bad-it-must-be-true tale of purchasing a larger-than-average tomato from Mollie Stone's, which was rung through the register at a princely $12 dollars. That's right, c.£7: for one tomato.
  
• Mobile phone contracts. This is one of the aspects of US living that I - somewhat foolishly - assumed would be ridiculously cheap. Not so, fact fans! Verizon's basic Talk and Text plan giving me just 450 inclusive minutes would set me back $60 - and that's before adding any kind of web plan, which starts at $30 for smartphones. So that's easily $90 (£55) a month - for a pretty bog-standard contract. Come back O2 - all is forgiven!
  
• Home entertainment packages. The only impressive thing about our UK package was the undeniably remarkable way in which Virgin Media conspired to raise our bill by roughly 20% every single month. But at least they didn't charge me $99 (£60) for TV, internet and phone, which is what Comcast's pricing system begins at here. So, no TV and no landline for Chez Teacup, which is why you will not be able to a) talk to me about last night's television or b) actually talk to me.

Part Two: What Doesn't?

Golden Gate Pork

To kick-start this endeavour, I felt it important to establish from the outset the kind of thing the casual reader can expect: namely, lame puns and an unseemly emphasis on food.  So with that in mind, let's talk about pulled pork!

Oh, he knows...
(Image: BArchBot, WikiMedia Commons)

But pulled pork...it's a different world! If I didn't know any better, I'd say it was a different bloody animal! These oozy, butter-tender strands and lumps of slow-cooked pork, raked off the beast and stuffed into a sandwich that is destined to drip oil all over your front - humble pig, is that really you? Oink three times for yes!