Spinning Cook Giveaways

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Ryan

Spinning Cook Giveaways

I must admit, at first I wasn’t really into the giveaway concept. But as I look for ways to promote my blog and app, I’d rather pitch in for a gift card for some lucky winner, rather than pay out ad money to mega-sites. Wouldn’t you? Plus it’s loads of fun to tell the winners. So briefly, here are two giveaways (plus a new review) you should know about, and it if’s not your thing then I’m sorry, you’re definitely not going to be the lucky winner.

Action shot – thanks Beth!

Shut Up And Run

Shut Up And Plan? My new friend Beth, the hilarious potty-mouthed running mom at http://shutupandrun.net, has just reviewed Spinning Meals and is running a giveaway this week for two gift cards: Whole Foods ($100) and iTunes ($20). If you like any of those things or just want to laugh at a great blog you should check it out.

The iPhone Mom

In other news, Heather at the iPhone mom just reviewed Spinning Meals and loved it. No giveaway here, just an app reviewer we contacted who knows her stuff and really seems to appreciate what we’ve made.

Mother’s Day Bash

Lastly I’m one of the many sponsors of a $600 mega-giveaway with over 300 points you can earn to enter. Knock yourself out people, and good luck!

All mothers deserve the best. That’s why this year, voiceBoks, Planet Weidknecht, Good Steward Savers, Terri’s Little Haven, and About a Mom Blog are throwing a BIG Mother’s Day Bash Event! together to help you celebrate the special day with yours truly.This year’s Event features 3 Prizes! 1) The First Place Prize is a $600 Paypal CASH Prize for you to splurge on your mom. 2) The Second Place Prize will be a Spa Perfect Relax & Rejuvinate Tote worth over $100 from Bea’s Gift Baskets and Gifts 3) The Third Place Prize will be a 3D Family Portrait on Canvas made by Emsheldesigns.

3 WINNERS FOR 3 CHANCES TO WIN! There are plenty of points and opportunities below to win the big prize!Good Luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This giveaway was made possible by the following sponsors: Spilled Milkshake | Cute-Ecakes | Insights By April | Mommy’s Memorandum | Military Wives Saving | Sister’s Saving Cents | Couponing From Florida to Michigan | This Mama Loves Her Bargains | Angela Calavicci | Crazy Life of a Writing Mom | Mom Blogger Buzz | Frugal Fanatic | Mommy LaDy Club | Powered by Mom | Peanut Butter and Whine | Racing and Saving Mama | Mark Your Savings | The Kid’s Fun Reviewed | Mommy Writes | Frugal Friends Network | Baxtron{Life} | November Sunflower | The Mommy Bunch | Mommy Blog Designs | Giveaway Promote | A Living Homeschool | From City Corporate to Suburb Mama | Sweeping The USA | The Frugal Freeloader | Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks | The Epic Adventures of a Modern Mom | Simple-Homemaking | Like a Bump on a Blog | the Crazy Nuts Mom | Debbie Does Coupons | JadeLouise Designs | Diary of a Working Mom | Giveaway Bandit | Clipping Money | D.S. White | Connecting Piece by Piece | Shootie Girl™ Custom Rhinestone Apparel & Blog | Super Blake Books | Work, Interrupted | Coupons For Wisconsin | Adventures of a Maui Mompreneur | The Penny Hoarder | A Thrifty Diva Surviving Mommy Hood | Cyns Coupons 4U | GiaVanne’s Gems | Roscoe Ramblings | Its the Simple Things | Grandma Bonnie’s Closet | The Frugal Free Gal | Spinning Meals | Dawns Delights Art | CountryLife4Me | Latina Reddick (NaturalHairLatina) | A Happy Hippy Mom | Savior Cents | Our Full House | Wrinkled Mommy | Great Beauty Buys | Gay NYC Dad | The Life of a Not So Ordinary Wife | Single Mom Saving Money | My Side Of Life | Cocoons 2 Butterflies | Linkie’s Contest Linkies

Tagged with: Food Articles, Ryan Smith, Spinning Cook, Spinning Cook Giveaways, Spinning Meals
Posted in Fitness, Food Articles, Fun

Cooking Techniques & Kitchen Formulas: Pasta Toss with Asparagus and Chicken

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Ryan — 2 Comments ↓

Use whatever vegetables and other ingredients are in-season to make this formula work year-round.

I had the privilege of speaking with Michael Ruhlman the other day, one of my heroes who also happens to be from my hometown. We talked about apps (his are Ratio and Bread Baking Basics) but also about food of course, and his “I’m not a recipe person” philosophy. Michael is really into techniques and methods, but recipes…not so much. Is an exact detailed recipe too limiting?

This takes me back to high school actually. I hated Biology because the memorization was a painful obstacle, solved only by brute force. Chemistry was better, with more reusable concepts. Physics class was heaven, as the entire year could be boiled down to a handful of core formulas, from which everything else could be derived (no brute force required). Everybody with me on that? No?!?

Back in the kitchen, general methods which can be easily memorized and used a myriad of ways, hold a lot of value. A detailed recipe where each ingredient is carefully pre-defined and measured out, there’s value and predictability there but less far-reaching potential.

But conventions and expectations call for specific details and recipe standards. So here’s a specific recipe meant for tampering, more of a method or master recipe. My employer’s cafeteria does a great job of executing this formula with many different seasonal ingredients year-round. And I hope this “master recipe” is predictably good for your family, with many variances you invent along the way.

What do you prefer, a specific recipe with all the details laid out, or a general method pointing you in a general direction? What are your preferred cooking techniques in the kitchen?

Recipe: Pasta Toss with Asparagus and Chicken

Summary: This ‘pasta toss’ approach is a great method which can be varied with whatever ingredients are in-season.

Ingredients

Pasta and toppings:
1 pound uncooked fettucini noodles
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
salt
pepper
1 pound asparagus spears, washed, snapped, and cut to 2-inch lengths
1/2 cup pine nuts, toasted
For the parmesan cream sauce:
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon flour
1 cup whole milk
2 ounces Parmesan cheese (plus extra for topping), shredded or grated finely as with a Microplane grater
1/4 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Heat a large pot of water to a rolling boil over high heat. Add one tablespoon of salt to the water, then add the noodles. Return the pot to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally to avoid clumping. Cook the noodles until they are just slightly firm to the bite, about 12 minutes.
Meanwhile, lay each chicken breast on the cutting board and cut it parallel with the cutting board to make two layers (butterflied). Sprinkle both sides of the chicken breast pieces with salt and pepper.
Heat a wide heavy-bottomed skillet over moderately high heat until it just begins to smoke. Reduce heat to medium, add the chicken in a single layer, and cover with a splash guard or lid. Cook for two minutes, then turn the chicken pieces and continue until cooked through, 2-4 minutes.
To make the sauce, heat the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. When the butter has melted and began bubbling, whisk in the flour. Cook for 1 minute, stirring occasionally, and then begin adding milk gradually while whisking constantly. Continue cooking until the sauce begins to thicken. Remove from the heat.
Allow the sauce to cool for one minute before adding the Parmesan cheese and salt, being sure that the cheese is finely shredded not grated. Stir until the cheese is incorporated and the sauce is smooth.
When the fettucini has finished cooking, lift it out of the water into a serving bowl using tongs or a pasta fork. Add the asparagus spears to the water and cook until just fork-tender, about 2 minutes.
Serve the fettucini with the parmesan cream sauce, topped with chicken, asparagus, pine nuts , and a sprinkling of parmesan.

Culinary tradition: Italian

Tagged with: Cooking Techniques, Food Recipes, Pasta, Ryan Smith, Spinning Cook
Posted in Dinner, Fast, Food Articles, Kid Friendly, Philosophies, Recipes, Techniques

Spinning Meals The Movie

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Ryan — 64 Comments ↓

Entries are closed – congrats to FoodInJars reader Dani Wolber who won the $100 Whole Foods gift card! Winners of the app were also notified, so if you haven’t heard from me you’ll just need to buy it…but I have great news! An update to the app is now available with a HUGE new feature: Internet Recipe Capture! Go to websites you know and love like Epicurious, AllRecipes, BigOven, Food in Jars…and tap “Capture Recipe” to save into Spinning Meals. See below for screenshots, watch the trailer/tutorial video, or just get it now!

Thank you all for spreading the word about Spinning Meals, many families will eat better next week thanks to you! This giveaway seemed well-appreciated and was very effective so we may repeat it again soon. Stay tuned, and don’t stop sharing!

Spinning Meals the Movie

Internet Recipe Capture Combined Screenshot

Capture recipes online!

If a picture says a thousand words, how much does a 2-minute, 30-frame-per-second high definition video tell? I don’t know but it’s a good question for pi day, right?

Below is the trailer for Spinning Meals, a video that steps you through the app and what it means for your weekly routine. I hope you’ll agree, it’s pretty great, thanks to the amazing folks at myapptrailers.com, and some great teamwork scripting it and getting all the visuals and text to work together. Captions, too. What do you think?

You’ve Got To Give It Away

I like giving, and obviously want the world to know about what Spinning Meals can do for them, so we are running a giveaway. For the next 48 hours, everyone who shares the Spinning Meals trailer will be entered in a random drawing to receive a $100 gift card to either Williams-Sonoma, Whole Foods, or Amazon, winner chooses. And three other randomly-chosen participants will receive a promo code to use or give away, to download Spinning Meals for free. People, this is a SMALL BLOG. Your chances of winning are very good, compared to large sites. More importantly, you know you’ll be helping some families find more time and organization.

The address is easy to remember: http://trailer.spinningmeals.com

How To Enter

Doing any of these three sharing options will qualify you for the drawing:

1. Be sure to Like Spinning Cook on Facebook, then find this post and click Share. Last (important) come back to this post and say “shared” or something similar in the comments. (Since I’m not friends with all of my fans, I don’t have access to your walls and so fb can’t show me who shared it, thus the comments approach.)
2. Tweet the link to the trailer, or this post, on twitter, and (IMPORTANT) be sure to mention @spinningcook when you do so.
3. Share the trailer publicly on any other social media site (LinkedIn, Tumblr, Reddit, your blog, you name it) and tell me that you’ve done so (leave a comment on fb or tweet to me). Honor system applies here.

NOTE: You get credit for each social media channel you’ve shared on, not limited to one per person. However, multiple shares/tweets on the same site still count as one – please report accordingly.

This runs through Friday at 68pm, at which point winners will be randomly chosen and notified. Yes, I realize that Blue Like Jazz is running a similar trailer-sharing giveaway, which I feel comfortable shamelessly copying, given the interesting parallels between the two projects as I wrote about on Tuesday.

Good luck to all!

Ryan

Tagged with: Food Recipes, Ryan Smith, Spinning Cook, Spinning Meals App
Posted in Family, Food Articles, Spinning Meals, Techniques

Announcing a Game-Changer for the Family Table: Spinning Meals iPhone App

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Ryan — 3 Comments ↓

Spinning Meals Opening Screen Screenshot

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Spinning Plates Announces A Deliciously Brilliant Meal Planning App For Busy Families

Portland, OR – March 14, 2012
Saving Family Dinners, One Meal at a Time

We all know that meal planning is a great approach to groceries, but it requires time spent in advance each week. Until now…

Spinning Plates LLC is proud to release Spinning Meals for iOS. Spinning Meals is the only iPhone app that automatically plans your weekly meal schedule for you, based on your own recipes and preferences. Make healthier choices and save time and money by taking the headache out of weekly meal planning.

Create an entire week’s meal schedule with a simple “spin,” based on users’ individual tastes and preferences and randomly generated using a patent-pending planning engine. The app even automatically generates a shopping list to make sure you have all the ingredients you need to make tasty, nutritious meals for the whole family.

Spinning Meals is a powerful resource with an intuitive design that goes to work for users – saving them time and money. This leaves parents free to do what their iPhone cannot (ie, cooking dinner and guiding their children into healthy eating habits). For a comprehensive list of features, see the trailer above.

Supports Seasonal Eating

Spinning Meals eliminates the up-front time burden of weekly meal planning. Families spend more time cooking and eating rather than filling out a worksheet and re-writing as a shopping list. Seasonal meal designations allow users to pick up their favorite produce at peak times, when local organic offerings are more available and prices are low.

Make It Yours

Designed to fit each family like a glove, we know that everyone’s diet and schedule is different. Configure planning capabilities day-by-day, adjusting time limits to shift longer meals to the weekends, or toggling planning on or off for any day or meal of the week. Parents can capture the recipes that work for them, and tell the app how and when their family eats them. The planning engine does the rest, avoiding repetition and introducing variety that still fits your parameters.

What’s Cooking?

The iOS launch is only the beginning of Spinning Meals. The Spinning Cook is hard at work already cooking up incredible updates to the app which will include, among other things, the ability to easily capture and integrate recipes from websites into their personalized schedule. Spinning Meals will be launching on additional platforms soon.

Screenshots: http://screenshots.spinningmeals.com

iTunes URL: Get the app here.

YouTube Trailer: Go here to see the trailer or click the graphic above.

For more about Spinning Meals iPhone app for iOS, please visit the Facebook page, web page, or my ever-expanding and entertaining food blog.

CATEGORY:

Lifestyle

RELEASED:

March 14

VERSION

1.0

SIZE

7 Megabytes

PRICE

$2.99

WEB

www.spinningmeals.com

www.spinningcook.com

ABOUT SPINNING PLATES LLC:

Spinning Plates, LLC was started by a foodie and family man. Ryan Smith is a freelance food writer with a background in technology and consumer products who currently works at NIKE, Inc. He blogs about family cooking and the challenge and importance of healthy eating on his blog, The Spinning Cook. He lives with his wife, three kids, and an Australian Shepherd in the local seasonal food haven of Portland, Oregon. Spinning Plates, LLC developed Spinning Meals in partnership with Polanco Media and Crysp Creative.

Tagged with: Food recipe App, Food Recipes, Ryan Smith, Spinning Cook, Spinning Meals App
Posted in Fast, Food Articles, Spinning Meals

Spinning Meals App: Big Announcement and a Stunning Coincidence

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Ryan — 17 Comments ↓

Tomorrow my blog makes its biggest splash to date: I’m launching the Spinning Meals App! A good one, carefully crafted for busy families who eat. You’re going to love it, but first let me tell you how it came about.

Four years ago I went on a men’s conference with Don Miller (author of Blue Like Jazz) as the featured speaker. I was in a difficult place as a food writer, glad to be writing freelance for The Oregonian but stuck with a well-crafted book proposal that no agent or editor would “bite.” Enter Don, talking about crafting your family’s story.

The Story Of Your Life

Filmmakers had approached him about making Blue Like Jazz (largely autobiographical) into a movie. But they had to “edit his life” to be good enough for film (too boring? Awkward…) so this would be a based-on approach, not true story. Learning the well-developed story theory of Hollywood (and novels, etc), and asking how to make his life “better,” he got skilled at recognizing meaningless storylines in real life as well as good ones. He challenged us to make our families’ lives more epic, based on the principles of a compelling story: be a relatable person with a meaningful purpose, and relentlessly overcome obstacles to achieve that. These are transforming ideas, which he has since written in his Million Miles book which I highly recommend but can’t begin to cover in this small space.

Saturday With Don

Paper Scroll on Easel with "The End" at bottom

The app launch is just the beginning, but to make a great story, start with The End in mind!

Saturday afternoon we had recreation time, and I asked him to chat about my writing predicament. It took a pair of…courage, to ask – he’s kind of a big deal. He’s also a great guy and was willing, so off we went with a group for a round of Frisbee golf and semi-public introspection.

That conversation freed me to let go of (postpone?) the dead-end book idea, and explore other paths, one of which was the idea of the ultimate simple cookbook for busy families. It would be a collection of ultra-fast healthy recipes you can repeat with confidence, which would include a spinner in the back to randomize the week’s meals. This would bring my writing interests closer to my young family, and we would develop it together essentially, a team project.

Better Than A Book?

Well, the app store now lets developers build cardboard spinners in thousands of more elegant ways, and lets content and functionality blend seamlessly. So the book idea split into a blog and an app, each of which has been a labor of love for me and the small team which has come alongside.

The app Spinning Meals launches tomorrow, on pi day (3.14), initially available for iPhone (iPad compatible). It plans your meals and creates your grocery list. It’s a joy to use, and a powerful tool to help families keep cooking real food at home despite the time pressures all around us. It’s not yet packed with recipes, that part of the vision is still in progress. Look for lots more info tomorrow.

This Coincidence Took My Breath Away

Do you believe a coincidence is just that? Do you agree that good things take time?

From that conference in 2008, the film Blue Like Jazz will finally premiere one month from today, April 13. It looks good, and much of it is true, I’m sure.

My own journey’s length? I looked it up today to measure the labor of love since that first seed of an idea sprouted. The date of my talk with Don? Pi day, 2008.

Tagged with: Donald Miller, Food Articles, Ryan Smith, Spinning Cook, Spinning Meals App
Posted in Cookbooks, Food Articles, Philosophies, Spinning Meals, Techniques