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A few weeks ago I was interviewed by Gabe of the God’s Mac podcast. That episode is now available via their website or iTunes. Gabe and I chat about the tools I use for my graphic design work, the journey to my day job at a mega-church, as well as my t-shirt shop at birddoctor.biz and stopforwarding.us.

If you can sit through all my “uhs” and “ums” (so shamefull) you might learn something interesting.

The God’s Mac podcast offers a unique blend of Christian and Mac cultures. Each episode covers Mac related news, interviews with Christians who use Macs and a devotional. Go subscribe now!

Over the past few months, I have made a habit of preparing breakfast for the family on Saturday mornings. This has always included pancakes and, more recently, eggs, turkey bacon, toast and coffee has been added to the fare.

When I first started making breakfast I used a boxed baking mix like Bisquick for the pancakes. Since then, at the urging of my wife, I have begun to make pancakes from scratch. I’ve often been frustrated with pancakes served at home because they never quite tasted like the ones at iHop. I visited Google and soon came upon a top secret recipe for iHop pancakes. These pancakes are bad to the bone! Since finding the recipe I have altered it to use whole wheat flour and I ad a touch of vanilla extract. The result is a sweet pancake that tastes a little hardier and is nutritionally justified (somewhat) thanks to the whole wheat. I’ll admit a pancake breakfast isn’t the best thing to eat, but I’m trying to make it better by altering recipes, using turkey bacon instead of pork, and using low-calorie jams and syrups.

In the past week I have found two new resources to help me get better at cooking and, hopefully, do a better job feeding my family foods that will keep them healthy.

startcooking.com
I found this website via Guy Kawasaki’s blog. Guy has a recipe for his famous teriyaki sauce at startcooking.com along with dozens of instructional videos and tons of recipes. The videos are perfect for those with little attention span. Everything is shown to you quickly and the videos use stop motion, bright colors, and fun music which keeps things quirky and casual. The entire site is designed and written in this manner which puts me at ease and presents cooking as a skill that is accessible to anyone. The creator of the site and host of most of the videos, Kathy Master, is very personable and can totally be my friend.

Jessica Seinfeld: Deceptively Delicious
Okay, the above link is to Oprah’s website, but hear me out! I work with a lot of ladies. Ladies who are wise in the ways of feeding their kids and wiser now thanks to Oprah. Yesterday the ladies at the office were telling me about Jessica Seinfeld (Jerry’s wife?) who had a hard time getting her family to eat their vegetables. She punched this problem in the throat by sneaking pureed vegetables into foods like macaroni and cheese, brownies, and pancakes. She recently appeared on Oprah for some demonstrations and to pimp her new book. I have not tried any of these recipes yet, but I did download the sweet potato pancake recipe (find it using the link above) and this weekend I will modify my current pancake recipe to include pureed sweet potatoes (I’m thinking about just using baby food). I’ll let you know how it goes.

Oh and by the way, I’m still waiting for my Oprah connection to pay off. So if anybody with Oprah Infulence™ is reading, I’ll appear on the show at an affordable rate;-)

UPDATE: The sweet potato pancakes were great and the kids liked them too! I made a ton so we had them for Sunday breakfast with sliced bananas. Delicious! Also, thanks to startcooking.com, I am now an omlette master. I prepared bad-to-the-bone omlettes for the wife and I and they looked and tasted great!

Tonight I was going through some old starred items in Google Reader and came across an article at Lifehacker about alternatives to soda. I’ve gotten a little nuts with the Diet Dr. Pepper lately so I gave it a read. There is nothing groundbreaking in the article but it did remind me of something worth mentioning.

I’m a sucker for free samples and months ago I signed up for samples from True Lemon. True Lemon makes crystallized powders from lemon, lime and orange juice that come in sweetener type packets. When I got my samples in the mail I added the powder to a beer (pretty good), a diet soda (good, but not really the point), to water (good again) and I sprinkled the lime over popcorn once with some chili powder (awesome).

These little packets make a bottle of water a lot more interesting and they do it without artificial sweetener. The flavors are very natural and bright tasting. As an added bonus, you can take them to restaraunts and use them in your beverage instead of having a sketchy, potentially filthy, lemon wedge floating in your drink. So, if you’re a sample junkie like me or are looking for an alternative to soda, check out that article and then visit True Lemon’s website.