After a quiet weekend of with little cooking last week, this one was cooking at a torrid pace. Friday, we enjoyed London broil marinated with olive oil and garlic. Saturday was the day of the smoker. I cured and lightly smoked three salmon filets, 21 pounds of bacon, two turkeys, one chicken, one whole ham, cheese, sausages and one whole salmon. I was tired by the time dinner rolled around and copped out by fixing BLTs using the just smoked bacon. They were very good. It is amazingly simple to make house cured salmon. I like it better than gravlox and it is quicker to make. Cured salmon can be made in eight to ten hours, whereas gravlox takes several days. We ate the cured salmon (not smoked) with scrambled eggs Saturday morning. Sunday began with bagels and the smoked salmon for breakfast. It was very interesting to compare the flavor of the two types of salmon. We enjoyed both. For dinner, we had oven roasted cherry tomatoes, meatballs and pasta. It was very good. However, this is the week of Thanksgiving and I decided to share my Brandied Cranberries recipe. With four ingredients and two steps it is very easy to make. Additionally, it can be made ahead leaving the oven available for other food items. I love this dish and hope you will try it. Brandied Cranberries is the recipe of the week. Enjoy!

Is CDW Ahead of the Game?

Last week our marketing and sales teams were discussing the best way to introduce Unified Communications to the mainstream business person in America. Just as when asked by a lay person what is Broadvox’s business? One should not answer an Internet Telephony Service Provider. Instead, I suggest stating that Broadvox is a phone company, an Internet phone company. Is it a complete description? No, but for the lay person it established an understanding.

Unified Communications needs to be summed up in a simple phrase or value proposition as well. Yesterday as I was watching the NFL (specifically Dallas versus Washington), a CDW advertisement touted their expertise in Unified Communications. I immediately hit stop, rewind and listened to the statement a second time. Indeed, UC may be going main stream. However, I wondered how many small business owners knew what the phrase meant. The ad did not provide an overview of UC or describe its key value propositions and therefore didn’t add to anyone’s general knowledge of UC. But the ad did subtly increase an awareness of the phrase “Unified Communications”. That’s important because Unified Communications as a search phrase is so rare it is too low to generate a Google trend graph. Even “net neutrality” is searched enough to generate a trend graph.

As a purveyor of UC solutions, I support an increase in awareness and visibility. Go CDW. Yet, I remain deep in thought as I try to find a simple way to describe UC and its benefits. When that’s done businesses will proactively search for the right solution.

Please have a safe and happy Thanksgiving. I’ll be with you again next Monday.