Lately Maya and I have been preparing dinner from recipes 3-5 times a week, mostly recipes we have never used before. As a result, I've come to the conclusion that there might be some room for improvement in the presentation of recipes. The typical presentation, with the list of ingredients (sometimes indicating the initial processing, like chopping, necessary for each one) followed by the steps of preparation, is certainly functional and natural. But when I'm in the thick of cooking, I often find myself searching desperately through the recipe's prose for a piece of information that I've already read at least 5 times, and taking too long to find it. I also tend to get slowed down when assembling several ingredients to be mixed together. I read one off the list, fetch it, measure it out, find the next one, repeat, with each 'read' taking, in my opinion, a lot longer than it should. So I've been thinking about other ways of presenting the information that might either replace or augment the standard one.

The most radical innovation I've seen (my experience is still quite limited, and I'd be glad to hear about others) is by Michael Chu over at Cooking for Engineers. In addition to prose, he presents at the end of his recipes a table (patent pending, he claims at the bottom of every page on the site) with a row for each ingredient, and a column for each processing step, with the rows merging every time ingredients are combined. They come out very nicely in HTML. A simple example can be seen by scrolling down in his recipe for Asparagus with Almonds. I haven't actually cooked from any of his recipes yet, but it seems like the table would be a much easier way to get a glance at the ingredients I need to combine in a given step. I might still need to refer back to the prose for details about a step, such as that "[when done] the asparagus should be crisp but without a raw taste," but some of those could always be added to the table if one were willing to sacrifice neatness and compactness. I also want to mention how great it is that Chu provides copious pictures of how the food ought to look at each step, something sorely lacking in cookbooks and on mainstream recipe sites.

Another idea I've had is to provide some visual sense of how long each step in the recipe takes, so that you can have an accurate idea of how far along you are. Many times, despite trying to read the recipe thoroughly before starting, I have looked down to see what to do next with my nice mixture, and found "chill for one hour", or four hours, or overnight. Argh! A chart showing the steps in rows, with the height of the row being proportional to the time consumed by the step, would clear this up instantly. This could even be combined with Michael Chu's tables. Or it could be expanded upon with multiple tracks for steps that can be done simultaneously, such as chilling one item while cooking another. An example, taken from Cooking For Engineers' Cheesecake Recipe:

The basic idea in this recipe is that you make the crust, pre-bake it, and let it cool, and while you're doing that you make the filling, then bake both, then let the final product cool and refrigerate before serving it. In the table above the word "Bake" in the Crust row has been reduced to a single pixel to make everything the right size. But I think this is a pretty fast and effective way of letting you know that you should not be putting your cake in the oven a half hour before the company is to arrive.

Every so often, the New York Times really pisses me off by seeming to cater to the idle rich and pretend that they are the middle class. It happens a lot in the Real Estate section, with the stories of everyday people looking to spend millions on apartments. This time they've really gone overboard in the Home & Garden section with an article about searching for unique gifts that will truly surprise their recipient. I can't deny that they accomplished that mission, but in the process they selected some 33 items that have an average price of roughly $501, and several of which I would be befuddled or horrified to receive. I'm not going to be spending anywhere near that kind of money on any one gift, and I don't think my income is below the national average, though my generosity might be. And if I were going to spend that much, it would be on something I was quite sure the recipient wanted, not an oddball surprise gift.

The Times has written about the ever-growing gap between rich and poor in America, and yet they seem to embrace the rich minority as their clientèle. Another recent article described how the abundantly rich are growing further and further apart as a group from the merely rich. The article seemed to have genuine pity for the 'merely rich.'

But I would be truly remiss if I did not mention some of the lovely gift ideas they picked out. Who would not be delighted to unwrap a $4,100 life-sized lamp in the shape of a horse? This one would be less hilarious if the lamp element were not just a boring old conical lampshade above the horse's head. But seriously, I have an empty half a room in my apartment that totally needs this. Or a ceramic umbrella stand in the shape of a Roman gladiator's foot for $625, with umbrellas for $95-$175 (try to not to leave them on the subway). Or a bowl of golden fruit, $280.

As I look through the list some more, many of the items would be quite nice, if they cost about 1/100th of what they do. Maybe I'm just a member of the Wal-Mart/Ikea generation that expects everything to come cheap, but a glass vase for $3,150? A red leather album with "This Is Your Life" on the cover for $290? A 16-inch painted porcelain platter for $1,980? A set of six notepads with the names of the rooms in your house printed on them for $150? We're talking about pieces of paper here. They also have a set of 14 for $350. I guess if you have a Guest Cottage, a Library, a Butler's Pantry, a Pool House, a Sun Room, and a Private Jet, you expect to pay $350 for some stacks of paper.

Every time I see this ad on the subway I'm a bit mystified. I got the idea pretty quickly--that by using Lavalife you can expect to find a quick hookup and be happy right now, rather than a good long-term relationship, as advertised by other dating services. The picture also suggests, as their other ads have, that you'll get to go on a lot of dates with different people. But I continue to ponder the linguistic and philosophical implications of how they chose to deliver this message.

1. If the words 'ever after' were simply not part of the ad, the phrase 'Live happily' would not suggest short-term happiness. Only having the words there and crossed out communicates the desired meaning. It's a linguistic device that I don't recall seeing before, though I'm sure it's all been done.

2. If the choice is between living happily for a short time and living happily ever after, would people really rather live happily for a short time? Naturally living happily ever after is much more difficult to achieve, and a more ambitious promise from a dating service. But having 'ever after' crossed out, to me, implies forgoing eternal happiness for the short-term variety. I understand what they're trying to say, but with my literal mind I can't get past the irrationality at that level. If you're happy ever after you get to be happy in the short term too! Don't you know that, cartoon woman!?

Also odd is that most companies, Lavalife included, love to deploy a few related ads at a time on the subway, all delivering the same message, but with a few different clever turns of phrase. I'm sure there's a term for it in the ad biz. An ad campaign, I guess you could call it. But this ad has no partners, so I have no other context by which to judge their message.

This is another ad I've been puzzled by (what can I say, it's been happening a lot lately). In this case I feel more like a sucker for writing about it, because merely by hiring 50 Cent to be a spokesman for Vitamin Water, I think they must be going for some kind of studied absurdity.

In the photo, 50 is reading the Wall Street Journal with his Vitamin Water beside him while women in bikinis dance in the background. This, with the accompanying text, appears to be suggesting that behind all the champagne consumption of his public image, 50 needs to focus and take care of business without any distractions, and Vitamin Water is the beverage of choice for that hour. And here the questions begin.

First, it's pretty funny that even during his 'focus' time, 50's not going to actually leave the room in which the groupies dance in bikinis, presumably with loud music playing. Or is their presence figurative, showing that even though they are available, he is ignoring them, but not that they are physically behind him?

Second, does 50 read the Wall Street Journal? Maybe, maybe not. A lot of top artists are pretty business-savvy, some after having learned the hard way that it's a good skill. I know far too little about 50 Cent to say whether the photo is a plausible scenario; maybe someone can help me out with that. But is this how his fans want to picture him? I thought the idea in hip-hop was to make it look easy to be so successful. Odd, but I guess praiseworthy, that he's willing to be shown this way.

Lastly, wouldn't this be much funnier if it were a WSJ ad?

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Bonus edition: the moronic Washington Mutual ads in which archetypical aged white executives in suits are shown unable to countenance the idea of free ATM withdrawals (example). A while ago WaMu, as they like to be called so that one sounds like a baby or as though one's mouth is full of food when referring to them, had a policy that customers of other banks could use WaMu ATMs with no fee (although they might still get charged by their own bank). This always seemed strange: a policy that benefited everyone except than their own customers. Evidently the strategy was just to get these people into their banks and liking WaMu so that they would become customers, even if they knew that the policy would cease to benefit them as soon as they did. It must have worked, even if it seemed irrational, otherwise why would they do it? But then they eliminated the policy, so maybe it didn't work after all, or stopped working.

Now they expect us to believe that executives have fits over no-fee withdrawals from WaMu ATMs by WaMu customers, a service offered by every bank in existence? And they also expect us to believe that their own executives are not like the ones shown in the ad? Their own page suggests otherwise. Two out of twelve execs are female, and twelve out of twelve are white. All in all, it's a solid record of insulting the customers' intelligence.