Christine

Burning Man Recipes: Bacon Burner Mashed Potatoes

Despite best intentions, the feeding frenzy over at Y Combinator (which reminds me...I need to post my top ten list!) kept me from posting the fan favorite recipes from Open Kitchen Camp. But if you're headed to Burning Man tomorrow, there's one recipe you'll want to make ahead of time - and that's Bacon Burner Mashed Potatoes.

Boiling potatoes on the playa is nigh-impossible. Something about altitude and desert conditions...but if you just take an hour to prep these mashed potatoes at home, you'll be camp hero. Read on for playa-specific cooking tips.

Ingredients

• 15 pounds of peeled, cut potatoes (preferably Yukon Golds, though other types will do)
• 4 pounds of bacon (hickory smoked adds a nice touch)
• 2 pounds of butter, room temperature
• 2 cups of half-and-half
• sea salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. AT HOME: Fill a large stewpot half full of water and bring to a rapid boil. Note that if you're making this dish at full quantity, you will need two pots of boiling water.
2. Add your potatoes and half-cover. Let boil for 20 minutes, or until potatoes feel soft enough to eat when poked with a fork.
3. Drain water and discard. Add half of your dairy ingredients and a first round of seasonings. Mash until dairy is just mixed in. Taste and let your palate guide you as to how much more you want to put in. Mix in dairy and seasoning until it tastes good enough to serve as normal mashed potatoes. Just be careful not to overmash as you're mixing, or the potatoes will get gluey.
4. Scoop your finished potatoes into freezer ziplocs and make flat packs. Freeze them, along with the uncooked bacon. They will serve well to keep your cooler cold, and will stay frozen several days.
5. IN THE DESERT: When you're ready to serve this meal, let the potatoes and bacon defrost several hours ahead if you can. Then, fry up your bacon and set aside. Make sure to reserve the bacon grease. Stand a guard at camp perimeter, since the smell of bacon will attract packs of hungry burners. (Ever see Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds?)
6. Reheating potatoes on the playa can be challenging, but I've had good success with just stirring them in giant fry pans. Use bacon grease in the pan as needed. Microwaving not an option...the water molecules just don't seem to respond correctly for microwave heating.
7. Cut your cooked bacon into big chunks and mix into the potatoes.
8. While you have been in the desert your body chemistry has been changing, and your palate has adjusted accordingly. Go ahead and add bacon grease and salt until it suits your altered taste buds. It will be much more than you think, so try not to be horrified. Just eat and enjoy!

Shopping tip: You can buy Yukon Golds by the 15-pound sackful at Costco, along with both hickory bacon and butter in four-pound packs. Round it out with a half gallon of fresh half-and-half (just $2.99!) and you have the key ingredients needed for this taste treat.

Author's note: If you're making bacon mashed potatoes at home, you don't need to add bacon grease on top of the butter. Simply substitute bacon grease for one-third of your usual quantity of butter, and you'll achieve the right taste balance.

Burning Man Recipes: Sangria a la Playa

Much to my Burning Man camp's detriment, I lost this year's game of "new parent roshambo" and will be staying home in San Francisco instead of hosting potlucks. In the spirit of community, however, I'm sharing a few of my Burning Man recipes.

Unsurprisingly, the first request I received was for the tastiest of liquid refreshment: Sangria a la Playa. It's fabulous on OR off of the playa, and easy to customize to your taste, but be warned that it packs a punch. Instructions are below, and I've also posted the recipe at Yummly for easy saving to your recipe collection, access to nutritional info (one glass has 72% of a day's vitamin C!), and so forth.

Ingredients

• 1     orange (sliced thinly, in halves)
• 1     lemon (sliced thinly, in halves)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup brandy
• 1/2 cup cointreau (or any of peach schnapps (cheapest), triple sec, or Grand Marnier)
• 1     bottle wine (sauvignon blanc, white zinfandel, chianti, or pinot noir)
• 1     cup fruit (halved seedless grapes, halved pitted cherries, quartered strawberries, or sliced peaches)
• 6     tbsp lemon juice

Directions

1. Decide if you're going for a white, pink, or red sangria. White is the most refreshing; pink, the sweetest; and red, the heaviest. For Burning Man, I recommend going with the white zinfandel. Fruity sweetness on the playa is heavenly, especially if you have it later in the week.
   -  If white wine: choose green grapes, white cherries, or peach slices as the third (optional) fruit.
   -  If white zinfandel or rose: choose green or red grapes, or strawberries as the third (optional) fruit.
   -  If red wine: choose red or black grapes, red or black cherries, or strawberries as the third (optional) fruit.
2. Prep lemon, orange, and (optional) third fruit of choice. Note that halving the lemon/orange slices means that they will fit through the mouth of reusable water bottles. Mix. Set aside in bowl.
3. Pop open your wine and pour it into any large container, ideally one that you can cover from dust. Note that box wine (I'm partial to Franzia white zinfandel) is highly recommended for the playa - less waste, and dust won't get into the open container. More importantly, one box equals five or six bottles, so it's easy to make a large batch and share with your neighbors. 
4. Pour in your lemon juice, brandy, and cointreau (or one of the cointreau alternates listed). Add sugar and mix thoroughly.
5. Add as much fruit mix as you like. If you prefer to go heavy on the booze and light on the fruit, you may have extra fruit, in which case cover it up and use it later in the next batch.
6. Chill using block ice from Arctica, and wait an hour if you can. If not, drink and enjoy.

Shopping tip: If you're camping with friends, the easy way to prep is to swing by Costco and pick up a sack of lemons, a sack of oranges, a box of your third fruit, a case of wine, and your bottles of booze. Leave the citrus and wine in the shade under (not in) your car once you get to Burning Man and it will survive a full week just fine without taking up valuable cooler space. Just remember to rinse off the playa dust before cutting into your lemons and oranges.

More good playa eats to come. Enjoy, and let me know how it goes!

Vote for my SXSW Idea! --> Not Just a Pretty Profile: Building Online Persona

Are you more than just a profile? Join me at SXSW to discuss how to build an online persona. Think about it: What does your twitter feed say about you? What reputation does your blog cultivate? Whether developing a public persona for yourself or for your business, establishing an authentic online persona is a key strategic decision. Be proactive and build an online persona that works, using the right blend of public and private identity.

Questions answered during the session:

1. What's my persona and why does it matter? How is that different from my identity?
2. How does my persona (and how I present myself/my brand) change from offline to online?
3. What steps should I take to build my online persona? How many personas do I need?
4. How much control can I realistically expect to have?
5. What are some concrete examples?

Thanks and a shout out to Amber Case, Cathy Brooks, and Kaliya Hamlin for their various seeds of inspiration. Please give the session your vote, and I hope to see you in Austin!

Top Picks from 500 Startups Demo Day

Big congratulations go out to the well-prepped companies that painted compelling pictures at 500 Startups Demo Day this week. (Disclosure note: I am an advisor to 500 Startups.)

It's hard to pick just one favorite, so here are my personal top ten, clustered along leading themes from the evening. Given that most of my interest nowadays follows a mobile <--> social <--> commerce <--> cloud continuum, this high hit rate is no surprise:

Commerce

• Appetizer – Automated mobile app builder for small businesses; the company can deliver a startingly complete app using existing Facebook Page information.
• Daily Gobble – Sabre for restaurants; their go-to-market plan targets fast casual chains. 
• LaunchBit – Ad network for email newsletters.
• Snapette – Photo sharing and fashion discovery.

Social

• Loku (FKA Borrowed Sugar) – A Flipboard-like experience for local news, deals, and search.
• OVIA – A video screening platform that sharply reduces the time and expense spent interviewing job candidates. Current clients ran the gamut from Hasbro to Taskrabbit.
• Singboard – Online karaoke, unexpectedly interesting and the best pitch of the night.

Cloud

• LaunchRock – Platform for product launches that moves customer relationships (auth and user management) into the cloud.
• Tinfoil Security – Security screening and live monitoring for SMB web sites. Know where hackers can crack their way in.
• ToutApp - Salesforce–like email and email templates, structured along a freemium model. This sounds bland, but is quite cool in action. I'm definitely signing up as a user on this one.

Note: after a bit of consideration, I removed "mobile" as a theme...given the trends around connected devices, most models incoporate a substantial mobile component. There's also a notable amount of small business targeting, given both the consumerification (an ugly buzzword) of business services and the surfeit of mindshare allocated to local deals.

Though I forced myself to pick ten (leaving out plenty of other interesting companies), the class was uniformly impressive and there are a bunch of betas I'll be signing up for. Check out the bunch for yourself.