Man v. Food v. Mobile v. Tablet

I had a pseudo-Eureka moment today. I stumbled upon Google’s Mobile Playbook, a fab little resource for comms/marketing people to get you thinking about what mobile customers want, why you should optimise your website for mobile and how to constantly innovate. There are some great examples from the likes of Adidas, Toyota and Coke with some really good YouTube clips, especially the one from Hotels.com. There was this one throw-away line ‘don’t ask tablet users to call by phone: tablets aren’t phones’. Well, duh! Except  . . .

When our web content and development team was discussing our whizz bang responsive design, mobile-optimised site it was pointed out that the Contacting us page was full of links back to content and email addresses when we should be providing phone numbers for the mobile version. Today I did some off-the-cuff device testing with an iPad Mini and my Samsung Galaxy Note II. I thought we’d got away with it – the iPad loaded the full version of the site with the full Contacting us while my phone went for the stripped back mobile version. However, I’ve just tried HimIndoors’ tablet and it’s showing the mobile version which should have the phone numbers but It’s Not A Phone. I’m sure it’ll be easily fixed by our developers but it just showed me that sometimes we can’t see the phone for the tablet or vice versa.

I’d recommend spending some time looking at the Mobile Playbook. It’s always easier finding ‘win moments’ in the commercial sector but a lot of this is transferable to the public sector and if you only take one thing from it, it should probably be to ‘assign everyone in your organisation the action of reviewing their programmes through a mobile lens’.

Tonight was camera club. They do these Match an Image nights with other clubs where each club comes together with 50 images and we challenge each other to match an image. Tonight’s job was for us to take along some quirky images that it would be difficult to match up with. I’m always quite dismissive about the photos I take but looking through them with a task in mind other than deleting them made me see them differently. I took along 17 images – images I probably wouldn’t have done anything with but now I’ve seen them again I might do something with these. I like the fact that in the first one, I’m in that other photographer’s photo. It would be really weird if he was in one of the other clubs and he put his ‘quirky’ image with me in the background into the pot 😉

Today I have learned:

• a tablet is not a mobile
• photos are like books and music – they mean different things at different times

Today’s recipe

Chilli quesadillas

These are heart-stopping in that they are full of calories and fat but then they are also heart-stoppingly tasty. They’re the kind of thing you see on Man v. Food piled high on a plate with a layer of fries on top and a sea of nachos and Jack cheese surrounding the tortilla island. Eat them at your peril cos you’ll just want more!

Ingredients:

For the chilli:

a splash of olive oil

an onion, sliced

a garlic clove, crushed and chopped

half a tsp lazy red chillies

half a tsp ground coriander

half a tsp ground cumin

2 cardamom pods, crushed and seeds taken out of the husks

1 sweet red pepper, sliced finely

500g mince

400g can of chopped tomatoes

a good squeeze of tomato puree

1 heaped tsp cocoa powder

grated cheese

tortilla wraps (2 each adult, 1 for each child)

Method: Heat the oil and cook the onion and garlic gently till soft. Add the chillies and the spices and cook for a further minute. Add the pepper and the mince and keep moving around the pan until the mince is browned and broken up. Add the chopped tomatoes and half a can of water, along withe the puree and cocoa. Simmer with the lid partially on for 1 hour.

Now to construct the quesadillas. Keep the cheese grater handy as I always need more than I think. You’ll also need a dinner plate, a fish slice and a pizza cutter or sharp knife handy.

Heat a frying pan over a medium heat and put in a tortilla wrap. Put some grated cheese on the wrap right to the edge. As the cheese begins to melt add a layer of chilli and another layer of cheese. Put another wrap on top and try to close them together around the edge with the melted cheese.

Now the tricky part – the flipping. Put the dinner plate over the top of the quesadilla in the pan and with your hand over the dinner plate flip the whole thing, pan and all upside down so the pan is empty and the half-cooked quesadilla is on the plate. Transfer it, uncooked side down back into the pan with the fish slice and cook for a further three or four minutes until golden brown on both sides.

If you’re doing one for a child fold the wrap over and balance the bit that’s not cooking over a knife balanced on the side of the pan then close it over once the filling is in and proceed as above.

Once cooked transfer the whole thing onto a chopping board, using the dinner plate method, and quarter (half for a child’s one) with a pizza slice.

Eat with a knife and fork or for the true experience pick it up like a sandwich and enjoy the oozy goodness!