Digital declutter 101 💼
Organize 60,000 photos in less than 60 seconds!
Good morning! It’s great to be back and hope we’re not too rusty after the break! New to Simmer? — we’re very excited to have you with us.
In this newsletter you’ll find important food news, less important food news, and things that would be inaccurate to classify as food news, like trivia, quizzes (we have a special one today!), random tips and bizarre shopping recommendations. We hope to become as much a part of your Friday morning routine as forgetting your packed lunch at home.
As for you grizzled vets, you know we love you. Take it easy on the new kids.
In the food world
⚡️ Going electric
The Domino’s pizza tracker may soon have a new step of vehicle charging. This week the pizza chain announced a rollout of over 800 new Chevy Bolt EVs. The move to make the vehicle charging and delivery times the same, offers plenty of advantages. Beyond the obvious zero tailpipe emissions, the chain also points out that an electric fleet is an opportunity to recruit delivery drivers.
⏳ Tik tok on the clock
A woman is suing Kraft for $5 million, saying Velveeta microwave mac and cheese takes longer than advertised three and a half minutes to make. The lawsuit argues that the 3½ minutes doesn’t account for the other three steps required to prepare the pasta: removing the lid and sauce pouch, adding water and stirring… That comes to ~$1.67 million per additional minute.
🚬 Minced weed lasagna
A Florida bride and her caterer were busted and are facing $30,000 of charges for spiking food served at wedding earlier this year with pot — including weed-laced lasagna. In what is the modern day “red wedding”, guests overcome with edibles, exhibited excessive vomiting and heart attack like symptoms. Eventually calling authorities to have them transferred to a hospital for treatment.
Organize in 60 seconds
We are constantly taking pictures of our kids, pets, or meals (sometimes pets eating kid’s meal or vice versa). With the number of pictures increasing as rapidly as the charges against FTX, finding a photo of that Sicilian slice from 3 years ago is also seeming as daunting as SBF’s day in court.
While not much can be done to reduce your digital footprint, we can help you Marie Kondo your way around it with this tried and tested, automated method of organizing photos.
Why is it a problem?
Think of it this way… without proper organization, all this data is like empty calories — not harmful but not satisfying either because:
Images are as easily searchable as your TV remote.
Unless you understand the end of Interstellar and the concept of time travel, retrieving a picture from the past can be painful at best.
Sorting or backing up your images can feel like watching How I Met Your Mother on repeat.
Can’t I just use the cloud?
Google Photos and others do a great job of storing and cataloging images. They even take us down nostalgia lane with “Memories” of those unforgettable dining experiences, while we contemplate resuming our healthy diets.
However, targeted ads aside, the free tier of such services gets consumed faster than the packet of airline pretzels and additional storage comes at a cost.
It’s all in the name
Contrary to Shakespeare, getting out of this digital muddle is “all in the name”. Instead of saving images in folders with random names, organize them as YYYY/MM/DD/Device/Images.
Example: An iPhone 14 (Pro if you’re one of the cool kids) photo of your Thanksgiving feast this year should be saved in a folder called 2022/November/24/iPhone14 while backing up your files.
But isn’t this tedious?
Yes, if done manually. But being two stingy and lazy engineers, we have you covered with this 4 step, Casey Neistat inspired, free and automated digital declutter process:
Dump all the raw photos into a “source” folder on your computer.
Delete the unnecessary ones — 50 pictures of avo toast is never the answer.
Run this script on the remaining photos and within 60s you will be set.
Back up the pictures to an external drive. The number of which is directly proportional to your paranoia.
For extra credit: share this with someone in need of a digital intervention!
Cup of life!
Every four years, the FIFA World Cup brings minute-long “GOOAAALLLL” announcer celebrations and remarkable athletic achievements with the winner receiving $42 million in cash prize. However, this year’s winner will have to pay for additional check in bags as Budweiser, the official sponsor of the World Cup, pledged to send all its unsold beer in Qatar to the winning country!
Why is there unsold beer? Fair question. Two days prior to the first match, Qatari officials laid down the alcohol gauntlet: no beer at the games. Drinking and being drunk in public are illegal and Qatar’s drinking culture is non existent.
Can I get a drink? Booze will still be served in designated fan zones and high-priced stadium suites for tournament officials and rich folks. But considering Budweiser shelled out roughly $75 million to hold the yeasty title of the tournament’s official sponsor, the company can’t be too happy right now.
What are Budweiser doing? Despite Bud’s powerful influence at your family’s Fourth of July bash, its presence in Qatar has been spotty. As it’s illegal to advertise alcohol in Qatar, Budweiser is using this opportunity to promote its nonalcoholic beer, Budweiser Zero.
Quiz
With the World Cup in full swing, we thought it’s only fair to sidetrack from our conventional food quiz and try something different. We have added a few more balls to the image above, Can you identify the correct location of the ball? Special brownie points if you can identify the team that is complaining!
*Answer at the bottom
🇮🇹 Rustic almond cake — Torta sbrisolona
- by Tarun Sehgal
Italian cuisine is one of the most popular cuisines in the world and pizza should rightfully get credit for that. But I do feel at times pizza outshines some of the other traditional Italian recipes — like this torta sbrisolona courtesy my fellow Instagram chef friend Stefania.
Torta sbrisolona feels like something in between a crumbly almond flour cookie and an almond cake. This north Italian, low-carb dessert is easy to make, tastes incredible and can can be pronounced correctly only with some torta sbrisolona stuffed in your mouth… Give it try!
Cooking tips
Surprisingly helpful tip to reduce stress "you can always stop cooking." Take it off the burner or out of the oven if you need to.
Crumple the parchment so that it stays in place while baking. A lot of parchments were crumpled and discarded (figuratively) while finalizing this edition.
When cooking fresh apples for pies or sauces, the yield is slightly more than our productivity at work… about 50%
Did you know?
Science is to blame for those awkward dinner table silences… Fear of dining and dinner conversations is a real thing and is called deipnophobia.
Farm-raised salmon is as pink as a blue whale is blue. They are naturally gray; the pink color is added 😱. Wild salmon on the other hand, are naturally pink due to their diet.
Oyster mushrooms are carnivorous. They eat nematodes from the soil.
Scan & Go
Holiday season is upon us. It’s that time of the year when we can justify buying unnecessary stuff that we all need! Here are some of our picks that can make you a star at your secret Santa this year!
Hot pocket cargos: These "first-ever" shorts with literal hot pockets to keep your sandwiches hot and your calves cool.
The Cheetos duster: An appliance to grind your favorite Cheetos into dust, to sprinkle over all your favorite foods.
Olive Garden’s matching pj set: Bringing your family together over unlimited salad and breadsticks.
While this simmers…
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Answer
The correct ball location is 2. I For those who are even more curious, this is the last time you’ll see Belgium play in this World Cup.