cooking and beyond

sometimes a random read takes you million places.

here’s where “Are Apps Making Cookbooks Obsolete?” transported me:

1) the moment of iPad is now.

i am not that much of an early adapter of gadgets.   far from it.   when all my college mates where updating their phones every month, i used the same old Nokia 3310 for years.   then, all my phones and laptops were provided by the advertising agencies i worked at.  trust me, far from what one would call “innovative technology”.   and it was only a year ago when i was awarded an iPhone 4, which was a leap, alike to Kubrick’s primitive human meeting monolith (in awe, not familiarity).  it was it’s “now” moment for me, and we grew to be best pals.  still, my propensity to spend on shiny new thingies was at its minimum level.  i thought i was immune.  i looked at Kindles and iPads of the world, and i paused, and i listened to my soul… and i was somewhat proud there was a total, idyllic silence.  good, i am higher than this.

well, was higher.  i am with you now, mortals.

it started when i noticed that all my favorite glossies offer some (to LOTS!) of extra stuff on iPads.  and many titles that i dont find on sale in Romania i can get in a click.  immediately.  with all them ads.  hm.  then, at our recent get-together, Barna got his pencil stylus and started taking notes and drawing directly on the screen of his flat friend.  hm, hm.  now this cooking apps story, which to me is a simple indicator that the content is finally catching up with the potential of the device, and you can hardly argue the added value… hm, hm, hm, three in a row.

so here i am, checking out prices at apple.com…  damn you.

2) food is big.

all the Jamies, and Anthonies and the likes, they are just a tip of a big food movement.   and with the abundance of junk and E-s and copy-paste apples and smell&taste-deprived tomatoes, are you surprised?  there’s a renewed global interest in what and how we eat, and it’s just warming up.  if clean water is next petrol, good food cooked well (and i dont mean restaurants) is next luxury.

3) beautiful everything.

are you noticing how more and more things just start to look better?   better thought-through, better designed, often times simply beautiful.   i see it every time i go to the supermarket, how the share of nice packages starts to get out of invisible minority ranks.  same with the way the stores dress-up, websites look, books cover present themselves, magazines are laid out, in what people wear, and even what their facebook pictures start to look like (god bless instagram and the likes for the latter).   and i speak Bucharest, not your design-forward London or Helsinki.

there’s a new sense of design appreciation (and affordable copies and low cost-of-entry to design smth decent and…), and while many attempts are only attempts, the intention and the direction matters.

4) coexistence

i paused at this quote

“I never thought I would say this, but I don’t go anywhere without my iPad,” said Kristin Young, a collector of cookbooks in Santa Barbara, Calif., who said that even her favorite volumes are gathering dust. “If it’s not on my tablet, it’s just not useful anymore.”

i love books, to which Sufrageria is a public evidence.   but then, can one blame Kristin, COLLECTOR of cookbooks?  “useful” seems to be the key word;  and in the huge “useful” book category you can’t beat interactive, rich medium when it is starting to be used with sense and purpose.

mind you, i still want my War and Peace in hard copy.

5) am i getting older, reading cooking articles on  in the first place?

i calm myself down with a line of thought that includes words like “maturity”, “sophistication” and “quality of life”.  first hm.

UPDATE Nov 23:  how bloody awesome is this Domino’s Pizza iPad app!