FruchtBecher Coppa alla Frutta

Alle prese con una coppa di Gelato.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ouTn9L1wMM&hl=en

The Most Popular Cookies - A Delicious Recipe For Sugar Cookies

Sugar cookies are made with eggs, vanilla, sugar, butter, flour and either baking soda or baking powder. They can be cut into any shape you like with a cookie cutter or stretched into shape by hand. The dough is sometimes very sticky so you might find that spraying it with water before shaping the cookies helps.

These cookies can be decorated with sprinkles, frosting or both. Decorated sugar cookies are popular all year but even more so at Halloween, Christmas and other holidays. Their delicious flavor and colorful appearance makes them attractive to children and adults alike.

There are various kinds of sugar cookies and some contain ingredients like orange juice, nutmeg, cinnamon, or aniseed. Another name for Mexican sugar cookies is "polvorones" and they are popular at Mexican weddings, fiestas, and holidays. They can also be enjoyed at home with a cup of coffee or hot chocolate.

These crumbly, rich cookies are found throughout Spain and Mexico during the holidays. They are simple to make and they keep for several days in an airtight container.

The History of Sugar Cookies

German protestants who settled in Pennsylvania in the mid-eighteenth century are credited with the invention of the "Nazareth Sugar Cookie," named after Nazareth, the part of Pennsylvania where they lived. This cookie has been Pennsylvania's official cookie since 2001.

It is thought that sugar cookies are derived from jumbles, which are a similar type of unleavened cookie. Jumbles can be traced back to medieval Arab cuisine, which contained a lot of sugar. These little cookies also contained spices and nuts and the Moors introduced the recipe to Spain.

Jumbles were baked thickly and would keep for up to a year, making them ideal for travelers. They were often baked in knot shapes. The nuts and spices were dropped from the jumbles recipe and sugar cookies were born.

Recipe for Mexican Sugar Cookies with Vanilla

This recipe makes delicious vanilla flavored cookies. You can frost them and add sprinkles when they are cool. Not every recipe for sugar cookies contains vanilla extract but it does give the cookies a really nice smell and flavor. The combination of shortening and butter gives these cookies plenty of rich flavor and also keeps them light and crumbly.

What you will need:

1/3 cup shortening
1/3 cup butter
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup white sugar
Pinch of salt

How to make them:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Beat the shortening with the butter, and then add the salt, baking powder, and sugar. Keep beating this mixture until it is well mixed. Add the vanilla and egg, then the flour. Divide the cookie dough in half, then cover it in plastic wrap and chill it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

Roll half the dough out to 1/8 inch thickness on a floured board and cut it using a cookie cutter. Arrange the cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet. Repeat with the other half of the dough. Bake the cookies for about seven minutes or until the bottoms are golden brown and the edges are firm. Let them cool on wire racks.

How Can a Small Business Profit From Customer Reviews?

Word-of-mouth marketing has changed completely for the small, local business. In the past, if someone had a bad experience, it may only reach a few of their friends. In today's world, with the ease of online review sites, social media, and blogging, a poor customer experience can reach hundreds or even thousands of people. This revolution has caught many owners off guard and they are scrambling to figure out how to manage and improve their online reputation. Many are hoping that Yelp will fail and online reviews will go away, but with Yelp's recent influx of $100 million in capital, they are going to double in size. Furthermore, AT&T will be launching a new review site, buzz.com. Customer content is exploding even more as the penetration of mobile devices makes it very easy to rave or rant at the moment it happens. Customers are posting about their experience before they even get the check! Here's a great example:

I don't know how I feel about paying $3.50 for a plain crepe. That's right. ONE. PLAIN. CREPE. $3.50!?! Anyways, I'm here right now waiting for my two crepes, starving and kind of still thinking that I paid too much for a crepe. It better be really really good. Waiting. Still waiting and there's only two other people here. Hungry. Eating. I'm not exactly impressed or satisfied right now. I should have just gone down the street to Osha and gotten real food. I got one plain crepe and a turkey and cheese crepe. Nothing special about them at all. What a waste. I'm going to cry one tear for my unsatisfied agony right now.

(Additional information: small restaurant with about 5 tables, in a decent neighborhood with an American Apparel across the street, has gelato, and accepts Visa and MC.)

The impact of reviews is very broad as well. 84% of Americans say online customer evaluations have an influence on their decision to purchase a product or service. (Opinion Research Corporation, 2009). You can no longer avoid monitoring these reviews. In addition, if you're business only has a few reviews, even if they are all positive, you are at an extreme risk. Just one bad review (1 star) can have an immediate impact on your overall rating and reputation. Therefore, you should work on a company or store wide campaign to generate reviews. There are a few other great reasons why reviews can benefit you:

What many business owners don't realize is that reviews have shown to actually increase profits and drive new business. Businesses with great reviews and online reputations use this as a competitive advantage over others in their area. Consumer research from the Kelsey Group reported, "Consumers are willing to pay at least 20% more for offline services that received an "Excellent" or 5-star rating than for the same service when it received a "Good" or 4-star rating, the study found. More importantly, merchants are seeing the effect on their bottom line. Of the 30 percent of small business retailers who had integrated product reviews into their Web sites, 43 percent said reviews had resulted in more sales, while 28 percent indicated reviews had resulted in more traffic. (Ratepoint, Nov 2009).

In addition, positive reviews can also help drive profits through search engine optimization and may impact your rankings on local search and general search results. For local search and mapping sites from Google, Bing, and Yahoo, the search are aggregating reviews from many sites and use both quantity and quality (overall rating) in their ranking algorithms. It helps to get great reviews across many different sites as well. For sites like Yelp and Citysearch, review quality and quantity are very strong influences on determining rankings. Reviews can even benefit you on general search engine rankings. The more review sites that have content about your business (and links to your site), the more this provides validation and "trust" from the search engine's perspective.

Review management is vital for success for local businesses. The chatmeter is designed to help you manage and monitor your reviews and save time from visiting over all these sites looking for your reviews.

Interpretive Pie Throwing Part I

Klown Snot Bombs and Agadir Circus presents: Intrepretive Pie Throwing Olympics: Circo Gelato competes for the gold with this pie dancing themed piece featuring the world premiere tap-dancing cupcakes and pie dancing unicyclists at People's Park 41st anniversary, Berkeley Ca, April 25th 2010



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqvhxoXLIZM&hl=en

Nancy drew Phantom of Venice Easter eggs!!

Durr. This isn't high quality. Click this! www.youtube.com There. High quality. =) This has ALL of the easter eggs from Nancy Drew: Phantom of Venice. --------------------------------------- 1) Gelato: Scoop up red, white, then green. You made the Itlaian flag! ^_^ --------------------------------------- 2) Pick the OTHER door lock: Go to the door left of Colin and pick the lock using the hairpin from your closet. Another easter egg. Cool. --------------------------------------- 3) Nancy in the bathroom: If you keep on going into the bathroom in Helena's and Nancy's bedroom, Nancy makes a lot of references. Cheeseburger. --------------------------------------- 4)Binary: Check out the binary coding in Fango's office. It translates: I love cute fuzzy animals. --------------------------------------- 5) Sausage mishap: People are saying that the basket appears randomly. Go to your bedroom and you will have to see a basket of sausages. Examine the note left by Colin. It automatically goes into your inventory. Eat the sausages, then exit the room. NOES! Nancy passed out. Now talk to everyone. Colin's like 'What? That wasn't me who gave you sausages!', Helena says, 'Are you ok' and...where's Margarita? Let's check her writing. Go to the rooftop and examine her notepad. Hm...not hers. *Also Nancy says 'Hm.' A soundbyte from Haunted Carousel?* Now lets check Colin's. Go to his work table and click on the book of relics. A letter? Click on the letter. Nancy examines the letter with ...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a44qMZvVyc&hl=en

Making Homemade Baked Ziti

Baked Ziti is an easy and popular Italian dish that you can make at home yourself. All you have to do is follow the basic recipe listed below.

The Sauce

While you could use jarred marinara sauce of the baked ziti if you are really pressed for time, the dish will be so much better if you make it yourself. Mastering marinara sauce is not that difficult, and it provides you with a base for numerous pasta recipes, including baked ziti.

To make marinara sauce, you will first need to get the following ingredients:

o 1/4 cup of olive oil

o 4 garlic cloves, halved

o A 35 ounce can of imported Italian tomatoes (can be substituted with fresh tomatoes if you prefer)

o 3 basil leaves, washed and chopped

o Salt

o Pepper

Pour the olive oil into a large sauce pan and add the garlic. Turn the heat to medium and cook until the garlic is soft and slightly browned. While it is cooking, crush the tomatoes, saving the juices.

Add to the garlic. Add in the basil and salt and pepper to taste. Bring the entire mixture to a boil, and then lower the heat so that it simmers. Cook the sauce for about 20 minutes or until thickened.

Baked Ziti

Once you have your sauce prepared you are ready to make your baked ziti. There is some debate as to whether the dish should contain ricotta cheese. Baked ziti does not. However, a very similar dish, Ziti Sorrentino, does have the ricotta added in. So you can choose to add it into this recipe or leave it out as you prefer.

To prepare baked ziti, you will need the following ingredients:

o One pound of ziti pasta

o 4 cups of marinara sauce, either jarred or from the recipe listed above

o 8 ounces of fresh shredded mozzarella

o 1/2 cup of fresh grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

o Optional: 1 pound of ricotta cheese

Start by cooking the pasta. You will need to bring a large pot of water to a boil, and then add in the ziti. Cook until it is almost al dente, but remains somewhat undercooked - it will continue to cook while baking. Strain the pasta.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Pour the strained pasta into a large baking dish. Add in half of the sauce, half of the mozzarella cheese, and half of the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

If you are using ricotta, add in all of it now. Toss with the pasta until it is well mixed. Top the mixture with the remaining sauce, and the sprinkle on the remaining cheese. Bake the baked ziti for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and lightly browned. Serve immediately or freeze for a future meal. You can serve your baked ziti alongside a traditional Italian salad and some garlic bread.

To finish the meal, consider adding in a glass of fine Italian wine and even a slice of tiramisu or a bowl of gelato. This meal is so easy to prepare and so delicious you will look for excuses to cook.

Hillbilly Hot Dogs

Hillbilly Hot Dogs



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60NqPsDfCeM&hl=en