Unless you've been hiding out from the internet the past two months, you've undoubtedly heard about Google+, Google's new project that "aims to make sharing on the web more like sharing in real life," according to their site. It's being touted as a real competitor to Facebook and Twitter, the current social media titans.

There are some significant differences between Google+ and its cronies, however, such as "Circles," "Huddle," and the innovative "Hangouts" feature. When you start a hangout, up to 10 users can video chat together all at once. The main screen will focus on whomever is predominantly speaking. Users can even watch a YouTube video together. The tech blog Mashable recently published an article about creative ways folks are utilizing Hangouts, and the "Google+ Cooking School" caught my eye.

The founder of this cool new school, Lee Allison, took time out from teaching to answer some questions about his project via email.

Where do you live?

As of last winter, my lady and I live in Queens, NYC. We love it here. There is so much great amazing food that it’s not even funny.

Do you have a professional culinary background?

No, I am entirely self-taught and have been interested in things in the kitchen since I was in high school. In fact, I knew I was hooked when in my junior year I turned out a perfect angel food cake from scratch. I was completely enthralled that I could do that! Then about five or six years ago, I decided to teach myself how to bake an amazing loaf of bread. That process, the investigation into what to do and what not to do really kicked off my food-junkie habit.

What inspired you to start Google+ Cooking School?

When I saw how easy it was to setup the video session with other people, I immediately knew what I had to do. It’s obvious that people would rather be led through a cooking session than simply read a food blog or watch a dry video on some website. This is all about the socialization of cooking and I love that aspect of it.

Tell me about your first cooking class. How many folks participated, and how many cooked right along with you?

My first class had three cooking along, which is pretty normal. That session was full with ten people. It involved teaching people how to make and cook dumplings. Once you know how, they are amazingly easy. But most people can’t get past the initial dread of tackling such a dish. In fact, I had several people mention that if I hadn’t shown them, they never would have attempted such a thing. That completely made my day. It was a full class with people waiting to join in from the wings.

What are the pros and cons of holding a class with G+ hangout?

Pros: Super easy to setup, very inclusive, fun, spontaneous
Cons: No moderation of idiots (none so far, thankfully!), no support if someone has an issue

How can people participate if they’re interested?

Add me on G+ (mention this article) or email me at lee@thesocialskillet.com to learn more.

Classes are in Eastern Standard Time, so make you sure you plan accordingly when signing up for a class. And check out two videos from a previous class that demonstrated how to make margherita pizza and ice cream.

Google is out to tame the Wild West of the food world, and I'm not really sure how I feel about this. A couple of weeks ago, Google introduced Recipe View, a search function Bing had added last year. Initially, I loved the idea that people would be able to search for recipes exclusively and that Google had taken the time to create a recipe search tool specifically for cooks, but then I saw the search results and my hopes deflated. I was disappointed to see that although larger recipe food sites are well represented, nary a blog post was listed for the many searches I initiated. Allrecipes.com, Food.com, the Food Network, About.com and Epicurious made up the majority of search results, while blogs -- both well-known and obscure -- seemed not to have been invited to the party (yet).

The whole point of Google's new recipe search is to allow people to designate what they're looking for in a recipe, which in turn limits the search to recipes only. So if you're looking for information on "sardines" you will end up with just recipes instead of a Wikipedia entry plus a bunch of shopping results. Google Recipes also allows you to limit your search by ingredients (do you want to cook your sardines with fennel and without capers, just check the boxes on the left side of the page), cook time (less than 60 min.), and calorie count (any calories). Helpful and fantastic, right? Yes, but recipe blog posts that might rank high in Google's Everything search due to popularity are not likely to be there. Not yet.

Sardines search using Google Recipe View

Why I am disappointed
It appears that Google has chosen to given preference to large company recipe sites over smaller sites, newspapers, magazine, and blogs. According to The Stew, a food blog put out by the Chicago Tribune who interviewed Jack Menzel, Google's product management director for this project, "About a year ago, Google began asking food sites if they would add a snippet of code to their HTML pages which contained time and servings info." But it seems they primarily asked the larger sites, like FoodNetwork.com, to partner with them in this endeavor. The Stew then goes on to say:

"It's going to favor some of the biggest sites and those who have optimized their content to be found easily by search engines. Expect a lot of FoodNetwork.com and AllRecipes.com recipes to pop up on the first page of any search."

So, how do blogs get included? In order for a site's recipes to be indexed by Google's new recipe search they have to meet some specific and not-so-specific criteria.

Format Recipes Using Rich Snippets and Microformats
Recipes need to be formatted to generate rich snippets. For recipes, using hRecipe microformat is a good way to go especially if you are using WordPress as your blog software since there is a plugin. For those of you who aren't web designers or programmers, I should explain that rich snippets are generated by using specific tags within HTML code that allow Google to recognize data as a recipe along with the various components that comprise a recipe. Here are some good resources to understand the process:

• Google's Webmaster Tools documentation of the process for recipes, Rich Snippets Testing Tool, Rich snippets general info (microdata, microformats, RDFa)
• Google's Recipe Search and Rich Snippets Elise Bauer (simplyrecipes.com) at Food Blog Alliance. Simply Recipes recipes are showing up in the Google Recipe search so she clearly knows the scoop.
• Making Microformats Manageable: The New RecipeSEO Plugin Allison Day (recipeseo.com) at Food Blogger Forum. Here is the direct link to her WordPress plug.
• Food Bloggers: How Google's New Recipe Search Works Meathead Goldwyn at Huffington Post
• New Google Recipe Search Means Extra Coding for Food Bloggers Dianne Jacob at Will Write for Food
• How I adapted my blog to Google’s recipe search at Café Liz
• Amanda Hesser at food52: Google's New Recipe Search

Basically, you should know that recipe data now has to be marked with specific tags so Google's search engine can recognize the information as a specific content type namely, a recipe. Right now, doing this takes time and some coding knowledge, which is a pain, but doable. Hopefully, this process will get easier as more editing tools become available to bloggers.

Submit a Form to Google about Including Your Site
Google suggests you fill out this Interested in Rich Snippets? form to alert them that your site is now using the required markup code and should be indexed by Google Search. You are required to submit four examples of pages that incorporate rich snippet code and have been validated using the Rich Snippets Testing Tool but it is not clear how much of your site needs to be compliant or how long it will take in order for Google to start displaying your results.

Follow the Procedure, Validate your Recipes, No Guarantee
Once your page validates there is this message:

"Note that there is no guarantee that a Rich Snippet will be shown for this page on actual search results. For more details, see the FAQ."

This FAQ seems like an earlier version of the information displayed on the page "Rich snippets not appearing" since the FAQ page does not mention including recipe sites being eligible for rich snippets.

"Note that there is no guarantee that a Rich Snippet will be shown for this page on actual search results. For more details, see the FAQ."

So, even if you go through the process of tagging and validating your recipes you are not guaranteed that your posts will display as Rich Snippets which I am guessing means that they may or may not show up in the Google Recipe Search. So, you are left to wait and see.

Maybe I'm suspicious, but what seemed like a cool idea -- a search tool that enables readers to quickly find recipes -- now appears to be a tool catering to larger company sites and I'm concerned about what this means for food bloggers. It seems that many established recipe sites started incorporating the markup to generate rich snippets once they were aware of Google's plan to develop the Recipe Search but the urgency to start using microformats did not appear to reach the blogger community. The lack of integrated and easy to use plugins for the various blogging platforms speaks to the absence of this necessity. Elise Bauer points out the irony that Blogger, Google's blogging platform does not have tools developed for recipe markup that would help bloggers generate rich snippets.

Okay. Whine whine, gripe gripe. Poor bloggers. But what about readers and cooks? How does Recipe View change their experience? The average recipe seeker may be unaware of the filtering that is currently going on and miss out on much of the user-generated food content that has accumulated on the web over the years. On the other hand, it will provide a faster and more efficient system to access information they are seeking without having to manipulate their queries or apply advanced search techniques.

Regardless of the effect on my posts, as a reader I'm a bit frustrated that I may lose out on seeing an innovative recipe with a great story, which is why I read blogs in the first place. I love reading about David Lebovitz's various forays into Paris bakeries that end with a lovely tart recipe, or getting inspired to try making a Death in the Afternoon cocktail after giggling over one of Michael Procopio's pieces.

I should note that many major sites with extensive recipe collections (but are not exclusively recipe sites) are also not yet displaying in Google Recipe View. For instance, I haven't seen any New York Times recipes listed (by them) and I am curious about how large sites that have food as a topic area and a wealth of recipes are approaching the situation.

Maybe this will all work itself out soon. The problem, however, is that bloggers and readers alike have now come to expect immediacy. When I post a recipe it shows up without any delays and people can read it. You can twitter about it and the information is distributed without a waiting process. Perhaps we all need to just learn (or relearn) to be patient again and this post is the equivalent of Chicken Little yelling that the sky is falling on food bloggers everywhere. So although I'm finding the new Google Recipe View a bit frustrating, it may not be elitist. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it ends up being inclusive and helpful in the end.

What do you think?

(Wendy Goodfriend co-authored this post and provided research and experiential information about Google Recipe Search )

Some of you may have read my post last week about Google dining. I was fortunate enough to be asked to have lunch on the Google campus, and while I was there, Google was incredibly accommodating. They set up a time for me to interview Scott Giambastiani, one of their Executive Chefs, and tour some of the Google cafés. But what was the food like? Eclectic, fresh, and small. Let me explain.

When I first walked onto the Google campus, I have to admit my expectations were pretty high. My friends Carol and Dan had filled me with stories of wonderful lunches they'd had there, including one day where they were met with heaping trays full of shucked oysters, buffet tables stacked with cracked crab, and mountains of shrimp. Yet although I didn't find a "Seafood Friday Extravaganza," as Dan and Carol dubbed that wonderful lunch they had a while back, I still had a more than decent meal and was impressed with the varied selection of dishes available and the quality of ingredients, not to mention the sheer abundance of food.

After sitting at a table outside with Scott, we journeyed inside the Big Table café for lunch. Now there seem to be two types of cafés at Google: themed and cafeteria style. Big Table is the latter. It's a general all purpose eating facility that offers a varied menu and doesn't really cater to any particular taste. Unlike Google's Mexican taqueria or Spanish tapas café, Big Table has a diverse array of foods available for every taste.

Before I discuss the actual food, I should mention that Google has a small-plate philosophy. There are no heaping portions at Google. Sure they offer burgers and fries (albeit grass-fed beef burgers with organic potato fries), but the burgers come as small sliders and the fries are on proportionally-sized plates. The idea is for people to try a variety of dishes when eating, instead of gorging themselves on only one or two large items. The chefs are also hoping diners will eat a more varied diet. It seemed that in the midst of all the Google plenty, the chefs themselves advocate an aura of restraint: take what you need; include some vegetables to go with your meat; have an apple or banana; and try something you've never eaten before.

The first thing I noticed after getting my tray and silverware was a sushi bar to my left. Growing up in the sticks outside of San Diego, I didn't even try sushi until I was in college, but when I did, I immediately fell in love. I therefore made a beeline to the sushi queue. While I waited for my turn, I noticed the sushi chef hard at work, cutting up pieces of salmon and eel to create fresh rolls. He seemed just as adept at his job as the guy behind the counter at my local sushi restaurant. Everything seemed to be made on the spot and I was impressed that Big Table hadn't resorted to making a bunch of rolls earlier in the day so they'd have a stock on hand for the lunch rush. All the rolls seemed to be made fresh, right where the crowds could watch as they grabbed their small plates. Next to the sushi counter was a selection of regular and low-sodium soy sauce, along with wasabi and what looked (and tasted) like homemade pickled ginger.

After leaving the Sushi counter, the world was literally my oyster. Laid out before me were barbecued pork sliders and a variety of salads to go with them, Indian curries, pizzas, Asian rolls, calamari, meat-stuffed artichokes with a breaded topping, an enormous salad bar, soups, and other items that I just passed by in the whirlwind of food. I grabbed items here and there, completely skipping the curries as the line was outrageously long and headed to the beverage area.

Normally the drinks in a cafeteria aren't remarkable, but of course at Google, even beverages get their moment in the sun. There seemed to be two main drink areas that on first glance seemed de rigueur, but not for long. Alongside the iced tea and apple juice sat a vat of lovely organic raspberry tea that was refreshing and sweet without being cloying, as juice teas often are. The soda fountain, meanwhile, was also unique. Instead of the normal "Coke," "Pepsi," and "A&W," there was "Cola," "Diet Cola," "Root Beer" and so on, but with the clever inclusion of a short ingredients list for each. So instead of just grabbing a Coke, you were faced with the words "Sweetened with Cane Sugar" beneath, reminding you that your beverage of choice is laden with sucrose, although not the normal Beelzebub corn syrup.

Okay, now I’m actually going to tell you how the food tasted.

The sushi was great. The fish tasted fresh and the rice was sticky but not gummy. My friend Carol said she got a tough piece of salmon in her roll, but my salmon and eel were both tender and delicious. The barbecued pork sliders were decent, but I have to admit they weren't the best, or even great. This may be due to the fact that I like my barbecued pork laden in a tangy cider vinegar sauce and these had a sweet barbecue topping, but they were still good and I ate my entire sandwich. The stuffed artichokes were the least desirable item on my plate. The beef inside was just too dense and overwhelmed the sweet meat of the vegetable, and the tomato sauce on top was nothing of note and also detracted from the flavors of the dish. The pizza was better than your standard fare -- cheesy and with a crisp crust -- but not in the same league as what you'd find at Pizzeria Delfina or Pizzaiolo.

What impressed me most on my plate were the salads. The greens were fresh and crisp, the beets were sweet and earthy, the carrots perfectly blanched, and the dressings subtle in taste. Overall, I would rate the food as equivalent to what you would find in a two-star restaurant. That said, it was quite good for a workplace café. Dan and Carol both insisted they have often had better meals at Google, so maybe I was just there on an off day. Whatever the case, if my meal was the norm, those Googlers are pretty lucky to get such a variety of organic and freshly-prepared food for free. If I worked at Google, I would happily eat at Big Table or its equivalent every day with a big smile on my face.

After we were done eating, Carol and I perused the dessert area, but didn't see anything too enticing. I was hoping to find a good cookie, but as none were available, I tried the brownie which had an odd flavor (I thought maybe it had peanut butter in it, but Carol thought it was made of carob). I was a little surprised the dessert at Big Table was lackluster as we had already enjoyed some wonderful mini-banana cream tarts before lunch while touring another café. The tarts' crusts were flaky and crisp and the cream filling had a sweet banana flavor with a luscious texture. Everything a mini tart should be.

On the way out, Carol and I stopped by Slice, the smoothie bar. She got a Mangolicious while I asked for a Banana Split. Behind the counter, a café worker whipped up smoothies and poured them into glasses for anyone interested. The mango drink had a bright and fruity mango taste, while my smoothie had fresh coconut and chocolate flavors to accent the bananas. Both were lip smacking.

In each café, the focus really did seem to be on using local and organic foods that are in season, and the cleanup was equally green. Each restaurant has an area where you return your trays, compost your compostables, recycle your recyclables, and plant your reusable plates and silverware on a conveyor belt to be washed in the back. I also noticed the trash seemed relatively empty, which was impressive given the number of people having lunch at the café where we dined.

My overall impression was that serving that many people is a huge undertaking, yet everything seemed to run with a smooth efficiency. I was happy to see an overall emphasis on healthy eating and the choice to serve organic and local foods didn't seem like a sham. Most importantly, the food was fresh and tasty. So if you're thinking of applying for a job at Google, put some extra effort into your resume. The banana cream tarts are worth it.

For years I have heard people wax poetic about the food at Google. The rumors seemed unbelievable: fresh organic, sustainable and locally grown foods prepared under the tutelage of a five-star chef. Oh, and did I mention it's all free? Well, free if you work there. As if those stock options weren't sufficient. It's enough to make a freelance editor and writer cry.

So when a friend of mine who works for Google asked me join him for lunch one day, I jumped at the chance. I wanted to see for myself how the food operation at Google worked, and, more than that, if the hype lived up to the reality.

I had my own employee on-site dining experience years ago, when I was just out of college and worked as an assistant in the script development department at Walt Disney Studios. I quit after a year as I wasn't up to swimming with sharks, but while I was there, I was able to benefit from a fairly good company commissary. It was run by Marriott Foods and although it wasn't a five-star restaurant, it had a decent burger, a nice daily fish entrée, a solid deli, and breakfast at reasonable prices. Yet while I and the other underlings were dining at picnic tables outside, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the directors, agents and stars were all on the upper floors of the Team Disney building. In a circular dining room with views of, as Johnny Carson used to say, beautiful downtown Burbank, the mucky mucks would eat food prepared by a noted chef on china plates that had little Mickey Mouse ears around the edges. So as I walked onto the Google campus, I couldn't help but wonder if there was downstairs-picnic-table dining for the masses and Mickey-Mouse-china dining for the brass? Just how good is the food for the everyday workaday engineer at Google?

Through my Google friend Dan, I set up an appointment with Scott Giambastiani, one of seven Executive Chefs at Google, and we arranged a time to meet. When I googled Scott from my home computer, I realized that if he was any indication of this company's seriousness about food, I was in for a nice lunch. Scott was trained at the California Culinary Academy and then interned at The Lark Creek Inn (a restaurant I have loved for years). He has worked with Gary Danko at the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, and then spent 9 years at Viognier in San Mateo. He left in 2006 to go to Google and seems quite happy with his choice. I had a great conversation with Scott. He was very welcoming and happy to share with me the ins and outs of Google dining, give me the skinny on some Google food legends, and detail how the dining operations are run.

Once I was on the Google campus, I was happy to see that dining at Google isn't like dining at Disney. Google offers 18 cafés for their employees, which includes one at the San Francisco campus and one in San Bruno. There is no upstairs dining for the elite and outside dining for regular employees. It all seemed pretty egalitarian.

The many cafés at Google are run by individual vendors who report to Google. Chefs like Scott act as ambassadors for Google and make sure all the cafés offer equivalent quality and value. As in many dining establishments, the menus are created daily and are dependent on what foods are available that day from the many farms and vendors they use. Local farms, such as Happy Boy, drop off food daily and the meals are then prepared on site. Other items, such as rolls and pastries, are purchased from local vendors and quality-checked by Google's chefs.

In addition to its many cafés, Google has set up micro-kitchens throughout their offices. These are stocked with fresh coffee and often espresso machines, sandwiches, Naked Juice, cashews, dried fruit, It's It cookies, and a variety of sodas and chips. As with the cafés, each kitchen is different. Although they all offer the same basic items, 20% of each kitchen's offerings are unique to that kitchen and are chosen to meet the demographics of a specific office area, which are determined through surveys. So, as you might guess, the kitchens on floors with sales and marketing people have more raw nuts and the engineers want more chips.

When I walked through a few buildings, there seemed to be a kitchen around every corner. When I asked Dan about this, he said that according to Google lore, there is food within 150 feet of every office. Scott then confirmed the rumor as true. It seems that Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google's founders, believed no one should ever be more than 150 feet from food (a philosophy I can get behind). They therefore had their offices built with numerous kitchens so workers could easily pop over for a quick bite while never needing to leave the near vicinity. I have to say that although this seems pretty convenient to the workers, I'm sure Google is getting a nice return on the fact that employees don't ever stray far from their desks. Sort of like supplying pollen at the bee hive.

The food choices at Google are very research-driven. Googlers (this is what Google calls its employees) can fill out online and paper questionnaires about the food they're served; polls are taken; and they even have a Lego voting system in the dining areas where employees can vote through building a Lego structure using different colored blocks. The color you use says what you thought of your meal (i.e., red means "better luck next time," yellow means "keep trying," while green means "very good"). I couldn't figure out how this actually worked as each dining area offers an abundance of food and the Legos didn't seem to actually pinpoint a specific entrée, but it was interesting nonetheless.

The data Google gets from all those polls and surveys is crunched and then used to shape their food program. To satisfy the needs of their diverse population, they offer a variety of different dining venues. No Name offers a healthy vegetable-focused menu that includes raw food, while Pintxo has Spanish tapas and paella. 150 offers only local food grown within a 150-mile radius from the Google campus. There's also a Mexican taqueria, a deli, and numerous all-purpose dining areas, like Big Table where I ate. These offer a variety of choices, including Indian food stations, pizza zones, sushi bars, and anything else you could really think of. Before leaving, my friend Carol (Dan's wife) and I stopped off at the smoothie bar, named Slice, which was full of funky red and blue chairs and stools: quite a hip place to set up your laptop and work while drinking a free wheat grass shot.

So how was the actual food? Read Part 2 Next Thursday where I continue my review by covering the café Big Table along with the smoothie bar. In the meantime, here's a Google recipe for Heirloom Tomato and Summer Berry Gazpacho with Goat Cheese Ice Cream that Scott gave me.

Heirloom Tomato and Summer Berry Gazpacho
Makes: 8 servings
Ingredients:
3 lbs. red heirloom tomatoes, washed, stemmed and chopped into 1-inch pieces
1 ea. red bell pepper, washed, seeded and chopped into 1-inch pieces
2 ribs celery, washed and chopped into 1-inch pieces
1 ea. English cucumber, washed and chopped into 1-inch pieces
1-pint each fresh strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries, rinsed and picked over.
4 tbsp red verjus or red wine vinegar
2 cups club soda or cold water
2 tbsp brown sugar
8 sprigs cilantro, chopped (reserve two sprigs for garnish)
10 ea basil leaves, chopped (reserve two leaves for garnish)
12 sprigs parsley leaves, chopped (reserve two sprigs for garnish)
1 each lime, juiced
Salt to taste
cayenne pepper to taste

1 recipe Goat Cheese Ice Cream, prepared (below)

Preparation:
1. To begin this easy and delicious soup, start by making certain that all the fruits and vegetables are rinsed clean under cool running water.
2. Rough chop the first four ingredients as stated above.
3. Place the chopped vegetables, berries, verjus, club soda and brown sugar into a blender.
4. Cover and puree until smooth.
5. Adjust the seasoning with salt and cayenne to taste.
6. Next, pour the soup into a mixing bowl and stir in the chopped herbs.
7. Allow the herbs to sit in the soup refrigerated for 15-20 minutes.
8. Finally, strain the soup mixture through a fine strainer, pressing firmly with a spatula or ladle to force the pulp through the strainer.
9. Discard any pulp that remains in the strainer.
10. Add the juice of one lime to the soup.
11. Serve at once. Garnish soup with fresh berries, diced cucumber, fresh herbs and Goat Cheese Ice Cream.

Goat Cheese Ice Cream
Makes: 4 cups
Ingredients:
2 cups Heavy whipping cream
½ cup Whole milk
4 egg yolks
¼ cup sugar
3 Tbsp corn syrup
6 oz goat cheese, Laura Chenel brand if possible
Pinch of salt

Preparation:
1. In a heavy-bottomed saucepot, bring the cream and milk to a scald.
2. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar and slowly pour in some of the hot cream to temper the eggs. This keeps the eggs from scrambling.
3. Pour the eggs into the cream and continue to cook for 2 to 3 minutes over medium-low heat, while constantly stirring the gently scraping the bottom of the pot with a rubber spatula.
4. Continue cooking until the mixture coats the back of a spoon and steam rises from the top.
5. In a separate mixing bowl, whisk together the corn syrup and goat cheese and then whisk this mixture into the cream mixture until smooth.
6. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer and chill this mixture in an ice bath.
7. Once chilled, place the ice cream base into a single serving ice cream machine and follow your manufacturer’s instructions for spinning.