Cooking made easy

After an exhaustive search of the Internet (well, about an hour-long odyssey) I found a solid video blog site that might be of interest. It is produced by a Minnesotan and is therefore superior to any similar sites produced by those from the other 49 states. Especially North Dakota.

I took a peek at Rob Barrett's site, Cooking for Dads. On it he offers, well, what the title suggests: basic recipes geared toward dads who may not really like to cook but are forced into it by circumstance.

With that in mind, his video blogs start with a 10-second intro and then starts cooking. The video I watched was 7 minutes long, which seems like the right amount of time for one of these. Much longer and I don't know if I would want to watch it all through. Unlike most "live" cooking shows, he doesn't have commercial breaks during which bread can rise, so he just cuts the down time between steps.

It is not a still shot; he has a camera person, which gives it a faster pace and much more interest. Also, he flashes text - tips, serving sizes, calories, etc - through the video so he doesn't need to talk through everything. The nice aspect of watching a recipe is that it takes out a lot of the ambiguity so often present in (poorly) written recipes.

Overall, the video is cleanly, tightly edited. It is easy to follow and interesting enough to hold attention for 7 minutes.