Follow up recipe #2  from my Food Costing PAII webinar

-Makes 3 quiche/tarts

Filling  Base:
1 qt Heavy Cream
9 egg yolks
3 whole eggs
2 Tb. Fresh Dill chopped
-whisk together with
fresh ground pepper and 2 tea kosher salt

Filling Content:

• 12 oz. + (6 oz. reserved for garnish) Smoked Salmon, slice the slices in 1 inch strips (recommend either home smoked salmon or Ducktrap Farms, inexpensive smoked salmon loses more flavor when cooked. This is also a good recipe to use with hot smoked salmon or smoked trout or mackerel.

• 18 oz. Goat Cheese (other cheeses can be substituted, cheddar, blue cheese etc., particularly good with smoked gouda)

• 2 lbs. broccoli florets

Roast broccoli at 400 degrees, toss with pure olive and roast for 20-25 minutes  or until the edges turn dark, if the edges start to get crispy remove immediately. Crispy over roasted broccoli is a little bitter

Let cool and distribute evenly in par baked pie shells, crumble goat cheese evenly over the broccoli, pour egg filling over the top of the vegetable and cheese (make sure to whisk filling first as the dill has a tendency to settle)

Bake at 325 for approx an hour or until a knife comes out clean an inch in from the edge and the middle is firm but not solid.

Let cool on a wire rack.  Tart stores well up to 5 days in the refrigerator and can be portioned or left whole and frozen. If freezing wrap as air tight as possible as it can pick up freezer oders. Keeps well frozen up to 3 months.

3 Pre-made quiche shells parbaked
or homemade:

Pie Crust (Pâte Brisée)

• 5 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling out the crusts
• 1 lb. unsalted butter, very-cold, cut into very small cubes
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 6 to 8 Tbsp ice water
• 1 tea dried dill
• 1 tea dried thyme
• 1 tea dried basil

In a food processor, pulse the flour, dried herbs, salt and butter until small pebbles/crumbs form.
The next step can be done by hand or by mixer with a paddle attachment. Add the water and knead dough until cohesive, do not over mix! Refrigerate until ready to roll out and then parbake  and cool before adding the savory tart mixture.

For those who need a bit more information about mixing a good dough, a good explanation can be found here: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_pie_crust/

Garnish with smoked salmon, fresh dill and Creme Fraishe or Honey Dill sour cream (1 cup sour cream + 1 tea honey + 1 tea fresh chopped dill, S+P to taste)

Follow up recipe #1 from yesterday’s PAII webinar, first post here: http://chefforfeng.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/follow-up-to-food-costing-paii-webinar-for-bed-and-breakfasts/

Chocolate Balsamic Vinegar

The Balsamic

-4 cups good quality Balsamic Vinegar (if you use cheap vinegar you still get cheap reduced vinegar)

-Reduce the balsamic to 2 cups on a simmer (do not boil) let cool. (I recommend if you are going to cook this and especially if your going to cook larger batches of it, do it after guests are done and gone after breakfast, it does smell up the kitchen quite a bit, not in a bad way, it’s just quite strong.

The Chocolate Syrup

Ingredients:

• 2 cups water
• 1 cup sugar or for a more earthy taste 1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
• 1.5 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, good quality is preferable.
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 teaspoon pure vanilla

-Bring the sugar, salt and water to a boil, add the cocoa powder and stir until slightly thickened, remove from heat and add the vanilla. Result 2 cups of syrup

-Mix the 2 cups reduced vinegar and 2 cups syrup together.

Cheater Maple Balsamic:

Suggested Chocolate Syrups:

• Torani Chocolate Syrup
• Ghirardelli Barista Chocolate Syrup
• Da Vinci Chocolate Syrup

-mix with

Suggested Balsamic Glazes:

• Roland Vinegar Balsamic Glaze
• Modenaceti-Glaze, Balsamic Glaze
• Blaze Balsamic Glaze

Each glaze and syrup has a different amount of sweetness and acidity, so a general ratio would be one cup to one cup, but vary the amounts depending on what tastes good to you.

Gluten free cookbooks (suggested)

• Cooking Free, Carol Fenster, Ph.D.
• Easy Gluten Free Baking, Elizabeth Barbone
• Gluten-Free Baking Classics 2nd Edition, Annalise G. Roberts
• The Ultimate Gluten-Free Cookie Book, Roben Ryberg
• Simply . . . Gluten-free Desserts: 150 Delicious Recipes for Cupcakes, Cookies, Pies, and More Old and New Favorites, Carol Kicinski

Gluten Free Online Recipes and Resources

• http://glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com/
• http://glutenfreefoodideas.com/category/gluten-free-recipes/
• http://www.celiac.com/categories/Gluten%252dFree-Recipes/
• http://simplygluten-free.com/
• http://glutenfreegirl.com/

Calorie and Nutrition Calculators

1. http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calculator.asp
2. http://www.fitwatch.com/database/analyzer.php
3. http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php

Fangating:

Is Fangating a good option for B&Bs? That’s a tough one to give an answer to, so I’ll give you a couple of pros and cons.

Facebook landing pages are great for first time Fan Page viewers and encouraging them to “like” the page on the landing tab page is always helpful, especially because Facebook made a little known change several months back and gave people the ability to post on a business fan page without actually becoming a fan.

Fangating is a little different in that Fans must “like” the page to see other specials or offers.

There are dozens of blogs and articles out there about why Fangating is the cat’s meow of getting more fans, as well as the ones saying that Fangating is the biggest mistake a business can make.

Pros:

-It’s an incentive to get more people to “like” your page. As a B&B you may want to offer incentives to guests and potential guests (please see the note in bold at the end about this though) as “private” content.

Cons:

-They have done studies on bounce rates (i.e. click through to the actual page) of Facebook users that have been to Likegated or Fangated pages and they have a much higher click-away rate then a simple landing page tab. This is primarily on small business pages as opposed to big brand pages, so you could be driving away people from checking out the rest of your fan page by Fangating it, as opposed to having a regular welcome/landing tab or having people land on your main wall.

-Search engines can’t see the content. Custom tabs hide text content from search engines, so it’s not being spidered by them. If you have content hidden by a custom tab Fangate, Google can’t see it and can not index the content.

A great article on Fangating with some takeaways http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/does-facebook-fan-gating-hurt-facebook-engagement/ “However, this begs the question of the value of a required Like. Should this individual be considered a true fan? Is he or she likely to remain engaged with your brand after accessing whatever content you have gated?”

The article also has some great points about pros and cons of fangating, as well I suggest reading through some of the comments which have some interesting takes from what could be “potential” guests in the context that anyone is a potential guest.

Something to keep in mind when running fan only options, once a person “likes” the page, this is the one and ONLY time they will see your specials and offers, if you really want to keep that content front and center in front of your Facebook fans eyes, minds and personal timelines, you need to keep posting it on your fan page wall, so whether its been Fangated or not, the content is always fresh.

A couple of useful articles if you are going to think about developing a landing page or Fangated page for your Bed and Breakfast Facebook page.

Top 10 Facebook Apps for Building Custom Pages & Tabs

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/top-10-facebook-apps-for-building-custom-pages-tabs/

And since many of the incentives to “like” a page involve promotions of some sort, it’s a good idea to stay up on what the rules and regulations regarding FB fan pages and promotions.

Facebook Promotions: What You Need to Know

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-promotions-what-you-need-to-know/

From a couple of hours to digging around in the site (all in the name of research of course) I can’t really say the site is “social”, you can connect with other people who have pinned items by pinning things yourself but even comments don’t seem to have much interaction.

I CAN say that the site is highly addictive, so be warned!! Best investigated at night when the dishes are washed and the guests retired for the night, I understand it makes a good place to poke around if you have insomnia as well.

From a Bed and Breakfasts standpoint here are some notes that might be helpful on seeing whether you want to dive in and spend time online on yet another site.

I think that the ideas that can be garnered for breakfast ideas alone are worth visiting the site. If you check out http://pinterest.com/all/?category=food_drink and http://pinterest.com/search/?q=breakfast you can see that even if you don’t want to check out the recipes, the visual ideas alone are enough to make you go, “hmmm that looks interesting to try to recreate.”

Of note is the amount of ideas for redecorating bedrooms and bathrooms, as well as exterior landscaping, I am hard put to think of any innkeeper I know, that is at some point during the year is not renovating, revamping and redoing some portion of their inn.

Of note as well are the amount of B&B photos from websites and blogs that have been pinned by users. Even BedandBreakfast.com  http://pinterest.com/bnblovers/ has jumped on the bandwagon.

While it’s too soon to tell whether you have one pinboard or many on Pinterest and if it will affect search engine rankings or not. Pinboards are showing up in Google search. Each time a user pins a B&B photo it also pins the link it originated at.

Some notes on using Pinterest:

Your profile on your Pinterest account offers you a link to your twitter account, a link to your Facebook account (personal only) and a separate area where you can add a hotlink of your choice to where ever you might want it to go, a website, a Facebook fan page, a G+ page or a blog. Links put within your profile/bio do not become hotlinks.

You can’t pin photos from Facebook that includes Facebook Fan Pages

You CAN pin photos from Google+ personal pages and business pages

Comments can contain links and they are hot/clickable.

There is a 387 letter count for your profile/bio

When you pin something you can also send it to your twitter and facebook (personal accounts)

Pinterest does have a app https://www.facebook.com/pinterest that you can add to your FB business page but apparently it doesn’t do anything (as of yet)

You can add a pin button to your browser tool bar at https://pinterest.com/about/goodies/ as well as a “Pin It” and “Follow” button you can add to your website or blog in multiple locations.

There is an option in your settings to “Hide your Pinterest profile from search engines” although I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do this.

I would suggest reading the help pages at http://pinterest.com/about/help/ as well as the Pin Etiquette page at https://pinterest.com/about/etiquette/  They do make it clear that self promotion is fine so to speak as long as it’s not ALL of what you do.

Here are a few examples of innkeepers that I have found using Pinterest so far.

Thomas Shepherd Inn

http://pinterest.com/jeannemuir/

Claiborne House B&B

http://pinterest.com/innkeeperva/b-b/

Butterfly Gap Retreat

https://pinterest.com/crescentmoon56/

Royalton Bed and Breakfast

https://pinterest.com/evelynsaenz/royalton-bed-and-breakfast/

Red Bud ValleyResort

http://pinterest.com/tandybelt/

The Old Hen

http://pinterest.com/deannamorauski/

The Flying Frog B&B (not yet open for business

https://pinterest.com/sisselhardt/

I would recommend checking out Mankin Mansion http://pinterest.com/mankinmansion/ which is doing some very nice focusing on weddings. I actually found their pin boards by Googling “Pinterest bed and breakfasts” and came up with their blog: http://historicmankinmansion.com/mankin-blog/2011/12/12/were-in-it-to-pin-it/

An examples of what is clearly a Bed and Breakfast lover:

https://pinterest.com/marklipinski/bed-and-breakfast-love/

I also came across this pin, which I’m not quite sure what to make of: https://pinterest.com/pin/160370436700422013/ but does make one wonder if B&Bs should start monitoring their brand on Pinterest as usership grows.

Some recent articles to note.

Pinterest: A Beginner’s Guide to the Hot New Social Network

http://mashable.com/2011/12/26/pinterest-beginners-guide/

Pinterest: A Hotel’s Quick Guide to the Hot New Photo Sharing Site

http://www.reviewpro.com/pinterest-hotels-6442

From the blog post: Hotel Indigo does a great job of “guestsourcing” – using photos that guests have tweeted or uploaded as a Pinterest board: http://pinterest.com/hotelindigo/hotel-indigo-through-the-eyes-of-our-guests/

Pinterest How and Why

http://blog.mannixmarketing.com/2011/12/pinterest-how-and-why-19/

From the blog post:  Pinterest has jumped from only 40,000 users in October 2010, to more than 3.2 million in October 2011! This is pretty surprising, considering you still need an invitation to join the network. You can request an invitation from Pinterest, or if you know anybody that is already active on the site, they can hook you up with one. Once you get your invitation, you can sign in through Facebook or Twitter. (Pinterest does not post status updates or tweets automatically, unless you ask them to). I think that the most striking thing about Pinterest’s popularity is the amount of time that people are spending on the site. The site is relatively addicting, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if most users spend upwards of an hour there, each time they visit.

Pinterest is also quite useful as far as SEO goes. Each Pin contains a few links, that will certainly help SEO rankings. ‘Pin It’ buttons can be positioned right next to an image on your site, which is what I see a few retailers doing. If you are browsing the Internet, and see something that you want, pin it up for everybody to see! This is a fun and useful way to share what you think about the products you have, or wish you had. This also promotes the product itself, and depending on the popularity of the subject, could be repinned or shared over and over again.

If anyone would like an invite to Pinterest please put in the comments (I won’t publish the email address) It seems to take about a week otherwise if you apply to it.