Tomato Sauce - The Yearly Ritual

The yearly ritual of making tomato sauce has been a part of my life since, well, since before I was even born. Its in my blood, literally, and I look forward to this time of year like a kid in the candy store. I can remember sitting across from my grandma and pouring ladle after ladle of freshly juiced tomatoes into jars. I remember watching my grandfather wrestle with that machine of his - a large metal funnel with a grinder and pulp filter attached to a nine volt battery, operated by a rubber belt and a large wooden club, pushing tomatoes through and watching the liquid pour out into 10 gallon buckets. I remember my mom and my aunts cutting through box after box of tomatoes passing them down the table to my grandpa, and I remember my father washing every tomato in 2 large metal drums, one box at a time. After everything was jarred, my grandpa would fire up two large propane burners with 5 ft tall metal drums filled with water and all of the jars we filled that day, letting the water boil the jars shut, thus allowing the sauce to be preserved for the whole year. This was like a family holiday every year, sure it was hard work, but it served as lunch and dinner for the whole family multiple times a week. It served as the base for all of my favorite childhood meals, from baked ziti, sicilian pizza, lasagna, meat balls, sausage and peppers, and the ubiquitous rigatoni with meat sauce. I may live a thousand miles away from any close members of my family, but the tradition lives on in my house, and I will hopefully be able to continue it my children. For now, I only have the time and back muscle to work with a box at a time, but after a couple of efforts I can have enough for the whole year for my house. I like to use it for pizza, salsa, chana masala, taco meats, and of course marinara sauce. I just went through my first box of the year and I would like to post some pictures for posterity. I visit my local farmer's markets weekly and watch the tomato stock come to life as the summer passes, and just the summer heat waves break and most people start to cycle off their air conditioners, I buy tomatoes. I bought two boxes (25 lbs each) for $15 a pop, and spent half the day on Saturday cleaning, cooking, milling, and jarring the tomatoes. I have adapted the process to fit my kitchen and my own needs, instead of cutting each tomato and pushing through a machine, I cook them down a bit to soften them up and use my hand-grinder (food mill). I then continue to cook them down to get as much of the water out as my bedtime will allow, then jar it hot so that the jars will seal by themselves. Here are some photos of the first effort this year:

I washed these in my sink and immediately threw them into the largest pot I had, which just barely fit the entire box. I also added a little water to keep the bottom from burning since I could not reach all the way down and turn the tomatoes until they were cooked a bit.

This is what they look like after they have cooked down a bit, maybe 1 hour later.

Before you know it, the tomatoes have broken down and then its just a matter of letting them cook a bit longer to get the water out. I estimate about half of the original volume is cooked out during the process.

I got this food mill from my mom as a birthday gift a few years ago, it works wonders. It has an interchangeable screen so that I can puree something more or less coarse, this helps keep the seeds and skin out of the final product. I transfer the milled sauce into another pot where I add some salt and let it cook down a bit further.

About the time when my wife and I can no longer handle staying awake, we start the jarring process, which wraps up quite quickly and leaves me with enough sauce for about 15 meals. This makes me so very happy, hitting the bed that night is a wonderful feeling. At this point is when I realize I do not ever want to work as a restaurant cook, a standing on my feet all day, sweating, and working hard for something that I will not be able to enjoy immediately hits me like a ton of bricks. But it is oh so worth it, and as long as there is still enough time left in the summer to get cheap boxes of tomatoes, I will be keeping my saturdays busy with sauce.

Pumpkin carving competition in downtown Charlotte

Testing is important, intuition...not so much

One of my favorite topics in economics has always been the idea of rational vs. irrational decisions and how we can understand why people do the things they do.  This is really at the heart of economics, as the monetary system is just another way to place a value on making specific decisions.  If you have ever heard of things like the prisoner's dilemma, the tragedy of the commons, or the concept of util's, then you probably know what I am talking about.  Dan Ariely takes it a step further into the world of social science and really challenges what we think about rational decisions and intuition.  Check out this TED lecture on his experiments on cheating, it might make you think twice about what your own intuitions.  

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html

Social Media as a tool for customer engagement

Lately I have been thinking a lot about social media's impact on the business world. Its not just 12 year olds out there just telling us they tied their shoes, its millions, and soon to be billions of people conversing and engaging each other. If you still think social media (SM) is for kids, here a few tidbits that might change your mind:

Facebook has over 500 million unique users, if Facebook were a country it would be the third largest country in the world.

A company called Zynga makes social games for Facebook and the like, and it has over 250 million unique users on its games, that would make it the 4th largest country in the world.

The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is 40-60 year old women.

Even if it is all kids, those kids are going to buying a lot of lollipops this year. Wouldn't you like to have your shiny lollipop staring them into the face every time they log in, don't you want to know how to tap into the vast array of information that people voluntarily(!) give to Facebook about what they like and don't like? Don't you want to hear what your customers are saying about your product in real-time and even interact with them to make their experiences more meaningful and important to them? This is the next wave, ride it or drown.

I would like to touch on each of these topics in my next couple of posts. First I would like to address engagement.

One of the best things about SM is that it makes the web accessible to anyone with a keyboard. No more reading "HTML for dummies" to put up a website, now you just sign up for a MySpace account and key in your age, gender, and favorite movies, select a picture that captures your essence, and boosh! - instant web page. This allows everyone to have a place on the web, its not just for Wikipedia, Google, and porn any more.

Not only is it accessible, but it is self-propagating, and therein lies the engagement. Once your friend builds a profile, he will send out emails to all his friends to connect and create their own profiles. Then someone will post on his wall, and he will post back, then someone will see that post and say they like it, then they will dig a little deeper and more people will get interested, then they will talk about it at the bar/school/water cooler, and new people will join the fray, its almost like a cheap, white powder my Colombian friends would be familiar with - addictive.

The conversations continue and propagate themselves, they add more users to the system, which thereby add more conversation and interact with each other more and more. Now they say the best way advertisement that one can get is word of mouth - why not stick the words in your customers' mouth's? Get on there, get active, participate, be apart of the ecosystem, bring new people on board, show them you are real people too, in short - Get Engaged!

Blog is Back! Adding some tech focus

Sorry for the long absence, but it was an attempt to cleanup my online profile for any potential employers. That whole situation is still in the air, but I have not been happy with the kind of success that I have had. Yes, some job offers have been forthcoming, but everything has been of the lackluster variety. I understand that the economy is still pretty rough and the luxury I have of being surrounded by employers through my graduate program is akin to an "adult Disney World" (as Dr. Rappa likes to put it) however, life is short. I am circling around the idea that I need to start doing some things at home and just trying to build myself out a little more in the industries I want to focus on. The world of social media is ripe for new businesses and new ideas, the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. have created a whole new ecosystem for startups and new business ideas. The only problem with this idea is the lack of health insurance that comes with it...

So to kind of help me frame some of the subjects I am interested in investigating, I would like to take a more technology focus with the blog. I have been thinking a lot about measuring effectiveness of social media advertising campaigns. There is some combination of click-through analysis, reach measurement, and sentiment analysis that needs to be done to effectively measure and understand your social media advertising strategy. My next couple of posts will surround these topics. Let me know if you have read any good books or any other blogs that talk about these subjects. I am ready to learn what is already out there and build on it.

Thanks for your patience, and I hope you come back and join the conversation after my long absence. You can also find me on Twitter @marcomascioli

Job Search

Folks,

I am cutting down who is allowed to read the blog. I am trying to trim down my image for the job search, so I want to make sure this blog is available to only people I trust for the time being. I know I haven't posted much recently, but just take it as a sign of how busy I have been with school. I will be around more in the next couple of months, for sure.

-Marco

Apple Pie Time

Amelia made this.

Finally, a break, sort of

So I guess my last post was probably some random picture from a night
out or it was something about BBQ. Whatever it was it was too little
too long ago. The program I am in is quite intense, and if I miss
just a few minutes, let alone a full day, then I spend twice as long
trying to catch up. So enough complaining and let's get to a little
update...

I am spending the week in New York City catching up with some family
and probably eating more pasta than an entire Italian village. I met
up with Don Ball on the way up here and found that he is starting his
own company around bringing people together and facilitating
conversations between leaders and intelligent people of all types. I
am not exactly sure how the money comes in, but he is a real pro-
active, quick-thinking type, and he has a lot of something I am still
working on - patience. So good luck to him, don't think he has a web
page going but here is a link to his Linked In profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/donball

Something about catching up with family is relaxing and a little tense
at the same time. You want to see everyone and spend time with
everyone, but it's not really possible. The time you do get however
is just like apple pie though, just comfortable sweet and warm.

Here's to family, pour one out for all of your aunts and uncles and
cousins for me.

One other note, after getting drunk almost everyday last week,
including a trip to Beerfest in Durham (I must have tried over 50
beers in one night), I am hanging it up for the rest of the month.
Sobertober, OcSober, whatever you want to call it, it's time for a
break.

I will post some pics this weekend, maybe on facebook if I have enough.

-Marco Mascioli
marcomascioli@gmail.com

Bunch of BBQ

If you are unfamiliar with North Carolina-style BBQ it can be a little intimidating, a sloppy mess of shredded pork may not be exactly appetizing to the untrained eye. Here is a tip, the juicier and sloppier, the tastier. Pretty much the same as good brisket. Which is made similarly, cooked low and slow. Some BBQ is smoked, some is pit-fire cooked, some is electric heat grilled, some is even slow-cooked in a pot. By the way, another important distinction for North Carolina BBQ is that it refers to a specific dish, not just the event or the style of cooking. North Carolina style BBQ is shredded pork, usually cooked over a fire pit, sometimes on wood planks, sometimes smoked, always delicious, and ALWAYS with a Vinegar based sauced.

So as part of my re-introduction to the North Carolina, I am going to be doing a tour de force of the best BBQ joints around. Clyde Cooper's (downtown Raleigh) has been around since 1938 for good reason, Allen & Sons in Hillsborough serves BBQ out of an old farmhouse, and Bullocks serves family-style. I will start my review with Clyde's since it is the closest to my house.

Clyde Coopers
Location: Raleigh, NC
Cooking Style: Electric Grill
Price: $6

I was pleasantly surprised with the meal here, it was cheap, fast, and tasty. It wasn't the best BBQ around, but I think they hold themselves up well as a stalwart in the capital city.

Pros: Cheap, Fast
Cons: A little bland, slightly dry

Overall (out of 10): 6.5

Ladies in Love

A new school wedding on the Delaware shore. With the blessing of the
great state of Connecticut, they tied the knot and begin a life
together. Evolution is wonderful.

I'm on a boat!

The man of the hour

I flew over 3000 miles to see this guy get married, I've known him
since I could play Risk. This is a cheers to Doug.

Re: New SkyMall product

Oh goodness, it gets even better, there is also a laser photo-therapy
medical hair growth device, medically proven to regrow hair!

What ever happened to Kojak?

On Jul 31, 2009, at 4:03 PM, Marco Mascioli <marcomascioli@gmail.com>
wrote:

> It's a Hair Laser! Guaranteed to stop hair thinning!
>
> A laser that adds hair!
>
> Wow, we are quite an amazing civilization.
>
>

New SkyMall product

It's a Hair Laser! Guaranteed to stop hair thinning!

A laser that adds hair!

Wow, we are quite an amazing civilization.

Analytics

It is almost like having two heads is the only way to get through this
program.

Light Em Up

Entering the Method Man/Redman Show. As was explained to me, the
difference between a Bentley and.a Rolls is that you drive a Bentley,
but you get driven in a Rolls.

Back in NC

I hvae been pretty busy since school started, but I finally have a day
to relax and my neighbor is holding a pig pickin.

Check of the Beast

Bathroom Graffiti

Bathroom graffiti has always been one of my under-spoken loves. It's
not the dick and fart jokes that I really dig, but some people have a
gift for summing up the essence of complex topics in just a few
words. Some really great stall etchings have definitely served me
well over the years.

So in South Carolina we stopped just outside of Columbia, I got some
great barbecue and we even found a small independent organic grocery.
As we were filling up the 40 gallon tank in the Uhaul I went inside to
use the facilities, and on the condom machine above the back of the
toilet was written in pure black marker was:

"for refund insert baby"

Count it!

Goodbye Louisiana

I will surely miss everything I found there.