Killer App: Sweet Potato and Bacon in Endive Boats

YumSugar — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:00:10 -0800

New Year's Eve is a time for celebrating, so I always like to keep the food simple and delicious - with lots of sparkling, of course. To avoid a bunch of cleanup after a party, I prefer to serve appetizers with no utensils required. An endive spear filled with sweet potatoes, bacon, crème fraiche, and a sprinkling of chives fits the ticket perfectly.

I experimented with these on Christmas to make sure they are perfect for New Year's Eve. The sweet potato and bacon I prepped the morning of, sautéing it until nearly finished. Just before my guests arrived, I reheated the bacon and sweet potato mixture in a pan and plated the dish. The bitter endive and peppery bacon balanced the sweetness of sweet potato. Each bite reminds me of a more complex baked potato with all of the fixings. Celebrate your New Year's with sweet potato endive spears, and get the recipe by reading more.

Until you get an iPhone: Read Any Site On Your Mobile Device

Shiloh Jolie Pitt — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 08:29:45 -0700

APP SCOUT - Stalking the killer App

Surfing the Web on your mobile device is a great way to pass the time, but many mobile devices lack in the browsing department. When you're stuck at the station, waiting for a train, you might not be able to city's transit site for updates. Enter Feedm8, a new Web service that uses a proprietary algorithm to scrub your favorite blogs and Websites for content, to create a mobile page based on that site's content.

There used to be a time when viewing sites on your mobile device required designers creating a whole separate mobile-capable site. You could only hope that the site had some mechanism in place to keep both versions of the site updated. Even today, a number of mobile devices sport stripped down and minimally functional Web browsers that handle text well, but don't support images or multimedia at all.

Feedm8 provides a way to view those image and multimedia-rich pages without having to run out and either buy an iPhone (which promises you'll see the "real" Internet when using it) or paying a hefty data bill, because you loaded all of those images and movies but couldn't view them on your device.

Feedm8 can be viewed either from your mobile device or from a PC, and you can choose from some of the service's most popular translated pages or create your own. A number of popular sites have already been translated and are available on the front page, like BoingBoing and Treehugger. If you don't see a site that you're interested in, getting Feedm8 to create a custom page out of it is simple. Just type the URL of the page you'd like on your mobile device in the text box at the bottom of the page and click "go."

The site will work for a moment and then display a URL for the new configuration. You can also do this directly from your mobile device; type in the URL you want and Feedm8 will spit out a new URL that you can immediately go to. If you're on a PC, you can enter your telephone number to get the link text messaged to your phone. The service is completely free, barring standard mobile Web fees.

The pages created by Feedm8 managed to scrub the front page of AppScout pretty accurately for the top stories at the time; but when I tried to dive deeper, I rain into problems. The service didn't always display the entire story when I choose an item to view, depending on how the site is formatted. Also, keep an eye out for ads from Feedm8 embedded in the pages that it creates.

Other sites worked without a problem, and the service even resized images to make them fit on my mobile screen. If Feedm8 isn't rendering your favorite site properly, you can even submit your issue to the service and they'll look into it. All in all, Feedm8 is a great way to size down those image-heavy Websites and blogs that you enjoy reading, but can't get to work on your Blackberry or mobile phone.