Looking through other Weekend Cooking posts the weekend before last, I came across a recipe for Honey Beer Chicken I thought I’d try. It was described in a post titled Weekend Cooking – Pinterest Testing Three Chicken Recipes written by Diane on her blog, BookChickDi. The chicken looked delicious in the photo, but I read through the post again because I couldn’t find the recipe or the link to the recipe. Then, I realized that was because it was somewhere on Pinterest. (Should I say “in” Pinterest or “on” Pinterest? Could someone clue me in?)
Ugh. I’ve been resisting Pinterest for many months. Literally don’t want to go there. Don’t want to join another social media site. Don’t want another space on the Web to maintain. Etc.
But the chicken looked good and I had defrosted chicken breasts sitting in the fridge. Still, I couldn’t see how to get to the actual recipe. So I went to Diane’s Pinterest page (called a “pinboard”) and looked through all these attractively organized recipe categories like Main Dishes, The Lighter Side, etc. (Also got sidetracked into looking at Beverages, Appetizers, and Side Dishes because of all the pretty pictures, but of course didn’t find the chicken recipe in any of those categories either.)
Falling back on good old Google, I found this recipe for Chicken with Honey-Beer Sauce on the So, How’s It Taste? blog that looked pretty much like the one, and which I followed exactly. Except that I over-salted the chicken by accident (not the recipe’s fault), the dish came out really well.
I credit BookChickDi for the original inspiration (and her photo looks much better than mine.)
But I really needed to figure out how Pinterest worked, so I went back to BookChickDi’s Weekend Cooking post and there it was, in tiny print, but right under the photo of the Honey-Beer Chicken: Source: betsylife.com via Diane on Pinterest. Click on betsylife.com and you go straight to the recipe. It was the same recipe I followed, posted on a different blog, with credit in both places given to a recipe printed in the September 2012 issue of Cooking Light.
So I think I finally get it. Pinterest is basically a visually appealing update of the old “Cool Links” page you can still find on Web sites that haven’t been redesigned in the last ten years. Instead of plain old text links, pretty pictures on Pinterest draw you further in and keep you clicking.
But, no, this is not an announcement of my new Pinterest pinboard. I still haven’t joined the in crowd. I do, however, plan on doing more “research” into Pinterest to see how libraries are using it for reader’s advisory. Hmmmm. Where can I find the time for that? I guess I’ll stop trying out recipes and just read them online and look at all the pretty photos instead!
Weekend Cooking is a weekly feature hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Click here to check out all Weekend Cooking blog posts.