From Blogging At Penn to Publishing 200 Gourmet Recipes For Any Budget

In continuing my "Penn Foodies" week, after yesterday's story about this restaurant entrepreneur, today I bring you a post about yet another set of Penn alumni working together. 

Great story here. Two friends (and now dating!) write blog at Penn, get approached by publisher and now have book!

Continue Reading...

Alanna Kaufman (C'08, DP, City News Editor, Kite and Key Tour Guide, Big Brothers Big Sisters Mentor) and Alex Small (C'08, DP Photo Editor) published a new book called The Frugal Foodie Cookbook: 200 Gourmet Recipes for Any Budget which features high-quality recipes at low costs, and is aimed at cooks at any skill level (or no skill level!).  The idea for the book stemmed from their food blog, Two Fat Als, which they began writing while at Penn.  Both the blog and the book include anecdotes about their experiences cooking at Penn and in Philadelphia.

How did they get started?

Per Alanna,

"After finishing our editorships at the Daily Pennsylvanian, Alex and I had a lot of free time on our hands, and we began cooking.  Though our kitchens were tiny and poorly equipped, we starting making dinner each night and recording our dishes on our blog, Two Fat Als.  The blog was designed to show other college students that it was possible to create tasty and sophisticated dishes on a low budget.  Alex has always been a great chef -- his Colombian mother and Jewish father put him to work in the kitchen at an early age -- so he taught me basics and we continued to develop our skills together. 

Cooking for the blog moved us to explore different food markets in Philadelphia (the farmers markets, the Italian market, Redding Terminal), and we would often have friends over multiple nights per week for dinner. 

After a literary agent found the blog online during our senior year and suggested that we write a book proposal, we found Adams Media and The Frugal Foodie Cookbook was born!"

Alanna and Alex's favorite meals for friends at Penn which they served pre-Walnut Walk their senior year (from their book):
Apricot Brandy Baked French Toast +/-

 

Per Alana, "The day we first heard from our literary agent was the same day as our Walnut Walk during senior week. We were hosting a huge pre-walk brunch for our friends -- we made the apricot brandy baked French toast from the book, as well as cinnamon buns and an asparagus frittata. That was one of our favorite meals for friends at Penn and everyone stuffed themselves in preparation for a long day."

And one of Alanna's favorite recipes (from their book):
Black Bean Soup +/-

 

...And this isn't the first Penn alum who wrote a blog about saving money as a student at Penn and then got discovered.  Remember THIS Penn alum whose blog got turned into a book and then was hired to write on "Scrubs"?!

Get in touch with Alex and Alanna! twofatals at gmail.com

Delicious nuggets from my "Penn Foodies" series HERE

More posts about Penn alumni authors HERE

Other money saving tips from my "Pinching PENNies" series HERE

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If Only These Existed When I Went to Penn...

Two stories from today's DP caught my attention. I would have loved advancements like these when I was at Penn...

• New feature allows students to track the status of their clothes
• SAS and Wharton create new dual degree(another way in which the college and wharton are working together!)

Check out what else is happening on campus

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DT Featured in The Pennsylvania Gazette!

It's finally happened!

While DT had been featured in the Daily Pennsylvanian both here and here, our only promotion to alumni has been through my Facebook profile, the DT facebook widget, MySpace and Friendster.


Now, we are featured in the July 2008 print* and online edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette!

Check out your mailboxes this week, or click here to read the article online!

For all those who are now new to DT, welcome!! You're probably asking, "now what should I do?" Here are my 14 easy suggestions!

1) Get email updates on the latest DT News here.

2) Register on this site here.

3) Add me (Matt Rosler) as a friend on facebook here.

4) Join the DT Facebook Fan page here.

5) Get the DT Facebook widget here to help me promote DT to other Penn undergrads and alumni.

6) Want to send me a story idea about something you're doing? Read more about what you need to do here.

7) Want to advertise on the site? More info here.

8) Snoop around! See the pulldowns at the top of the page? Go ahead and search by class year, name, profession, campus group, or location!

9) Check out 1,000+ videos here all related to Penn on campus and off, undergrads and alumni!

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12) Promote yourself on the boards here and check out the job listings, rentals, alumni quotes, and alumni beginning stories!

13) Catch up with the Best of DT here!

14) Always feel free to email me your suggestions, ideas, and tips at matt@duelingtampons.com!

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Major Film Company Wants This Penn Alum's Book!

What if you had the opportunity to go back in time and choose a different path? It’s a question we all ask ourselves and author Allison Winn Scotch's (C'95, Theta, DP Columnist) wrote a book about it...that's about to go Hollywood.



Not only will this book be published in October 2008, but the Weinstein Company has just acquired the right to it!



Per Harvey Weinstein, "Scotch's writing is both outright honest and at the same time comically engaging. She provides a strong female voice with characters that easily relate to the screen."



The Time of My Life (per Allison) is about an unhappy housewife who has been “whisked seven years back, back to her old life, her old self, back to the moments in which she made decisions that charted her future course. And now that she’s back, she’s faced with the same roadblocks and obstacles, only this time, armed with hindsight, she can choose a different path and finally lay to rest all of her "what ifs.”



Read a full synopsis of The Time of My Life here...+/-

“From the outside view, Jillian Westfield has a pitch-perfect life. Her cherubic 18-month old daughter, her wildly successful investment banker husband, a four-bedroom, five-bath, lemon-scented home with landscaping and neighbors to match. But that doesn’t stop her from mulling over the past, from pushing away the "what ifs" that haunt her when she allows them to seep into her consciousness. What if she hadn’t married Henry? What if she hadn’t abandoned her job at the first sign of pregnancy? What if she’d never broken up with Jackson? What if she answered her mother’s letter? Because underneath the shiny veneer of her life, Jill waddles around in a faltering marriage, brewing resentment, and an air of discontentedness.



But after an ethereal massage in which her therapist releases her blocked chi, she wakes up to discover that she’s been whisked seven years back, back to her old life, her old self, back to the moments in which she made decisions that charted her future course. And now that she’s back, she’s faced with the same roadblocks and obstacles, only this time, armed with hindsight, she can choose a different path and finally lay to rest all of her "what ifs."



Much more than a story about a real life desperate housewife. Instead, it speaks to so many of our tiny, lingering doubts, the same doubts that send us googling old friends and exes or wistfully pulling out pictures of days gone by. And through Jillian’s journey, in which she rediscovers the mother who abandoned her, reacquaints herself with the strengths she once deemed important, and may literally rewrite her future, we all get a chance to peek inside the windows of our own "what ifs," and consider if the path we took was the one that has granted us the most happiness.”

On a related note, as you may remember, another Class of ‘95 alum is also doing a project about a character going back in time to right wrongs with his younger self.



> Get Allison’s other book, The Department of Lost and Found



> Read Allison's insider's advice on how to become a published novelist



> Other Penn authors!



> Join the DuelingTampons Facebook Group!

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Bookmark This: Go Find Her Department of Lost and Found

Allison Winn Scotch's (C'95, Theta, DP Columnist) widely praised novel, The Department of Lost and Found comes out in paperback today.

The book follows the journey of a successful career woman who in coping with lost love and illness finds herself examining what went wrong in her life by tracking down five former loves. Per Allison, the main character learns "that sometimes when life is at its most unexpected, it’s not what you lose that makes you who you are . . . it’s what you find."

A more detailed synopsis here...+/-

"It didn’t start out as the worst day of Natalie Miller’s life. At thirty, she is moving up the political ladder, driven by raw ambition and ruthless determination. As the top aide to New York’s powerful female senator, she works hard, stays late, and enjoys every bit of it, even if the bills she’s pushing through do little to improve the lives of the senator’s constituents. And if her boyfriend isn’t the sexiest guy alive, at least he’s a warm body to come home to.

Then he announces he’s leaving. But that news is barely a blip compared to what Natalie’s doctor tells her: She has breast cancer. And she can’t cure it by merely being headstrong. Now the life Natalie must change is her own.

All her energy, what little of it she has left, must go into saving herself from a merciless disease. So when she’s not lying on the sofa recovering from her treatments and indulging in a curious addiction to The Price Is Right, she realizes it’s time to take a hard look at her choices. She begins by tracking down the five loves-of-her-life to assess what went wrong. Along the way, she questions her relationships with her friends, her parents, her colleagues, the one who got away, and, most important, with herself: Why is she so busy moving through life that she never stops to embrace it?

As Natalie sleuths out the answers to these questions, her journey of self-discovery takes her down new paths and to unexplored places. And she learns that sometimes when life is at its most unexpected, it’s not what you lose that makes you who you are . . . it’s what you find.

Hey Hollywood alumni, sounds like a movie to me. Get in touch with Allison at her website here!

Watch this space when I cover Allison's next book Time of My Life to be released in October!

Get Allison's The Department of Lost and Found

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He's Reporting On More Celebrity Snooping

As a follow-up to his UCLA "Britney Spears medical record breach" story, Charles Ornstein (C’96, Daily Pennsylvanian Executive Editor) has reported in yesterday's LA Times that both Maria Shriver's and Farrah Fawcett's medical records have also been breached!

Read Charles' article here!

More Penn Journalist posts here

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Funny Fridays: Political Documentarian Discharges Another Film

As you may recall from my previous post, filmmaker Stephen Robert Morse (C'07, DP /34th Street) got funding from Wharton to create a political documentary.

From his Spring '07 Cinema Production course, Stephen has now submitted an entirely different type of film he wants to show us. ...A comedy that deals with "the morning after", revenge, STDs and all sorts of goodness. Look out for the use of Smokes as a location in the film. And try not to cringe when you see how the lead character uses Listerine to help his "situation" out.

Watch The Morning After
Part 1
Part 2

Stephen is now pursuing a Master's in Scriptwriting at the University of East Anglia and working at Blake Friedmann Agency in London, and plans to move out to LA in May '08 to find a job in the entertainment business.

The Morning After stars:
Marc Friedman (C'07), Lia Zneimer (C'09), Lizzie Frasco (C'08), Alex Weinstein (C'07), Leah Feder (C'07), Tracy Webber (C'07), Caitlin Russell (C'07), The Spring '07 TEP pledge class, Eric Borowsky (C'07), Tom Campana (C'07), Alex Solether (C'08), Andrea Kohn (C'09)

Check out other creative Class Project Films

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Penn Reporter Catches 25 Looking Into Britney's Privates

Charles Ornstein appears on Los Angeles TV news station KTLA

Pulitzer prize winning LA Times journalist Charles Ornstein (C’96, Daily Pennsylvanian Executive Editor) just broke yet another story. This time it's inside UCLA Medical Center, a premiere Los Angeles hospital where Britney Spears' medical records were probed unnecessarily and illegally by 25 employees (including doctors). Thirteen of them were fired, another 12 disciplined.

Check out his coverage!

As mentioned above, Charles won a Pulitzer prize back in 2005. He was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its coverage of King/Drew Medical Center, which closed down after failing many federal inspections.

Read his award winning coverage

On a related note, Charles works with Daniel Costello (C'95), another Penn journalist alum at the LA Times covering health business.

Other Penn Journalists here

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She's leading the Quakers in a Meaningful Cause

Journalist and writer Jordana Horn, (C'95/L'99, Executive Editor of the DP, current '95 Class President) is hoping to rally the support of Penn alumni and undergrads for a fantastic cause.

Madness Against Malaria is a fun, international competition to identify the team that is best at raising funds to buy long-lasting insecticidal (mosquito) nets (LLINs) to help in the fight against malaria. In the time it will take you to read this post (30 seconds), one more child in Africa will have died from malaria. It's particularly horrible because it's so easy to prevent: bednets, which cost $5 each (just about the price of a venti frappucino), are almost 100% effective in preventing malaria. That's where Madness Against Malaria comes in.

Per Jordana:
"I read so many stories about the genocide of apathy - of 7 jumbo jets full of children disappearing because of malaria every day. I felt that it was unconscionable to read these stories, be horrified by them and then do nothing about it. So after reading an article in the New York Times on Lance Laifer, a hedge fund manager who'd started an anti-malaria campaign, I contacted him to see what I could do. When he asked me to start up a Penn team, I jumped at the opportunity. ...$5 literally saves children's lives. Plus you get to kick some Princeton ass in the process. Let's win this thing, people. Right now, Yale is beating us. That is just embarrassing."

Join the Penn team here!

More info about Madness against Malaria

READ MORE - She's leading the Quakers in a Meaningful Cause

Another Quad (plus more) coming to Penn!

Within 5 years, the chances of a freshman getting into the Quad are about to dramatically increase.

That's because there's going to be 2 Quads! ...Plus new parks and new retail and residential areas! And these are just some of Penn's many exciting developments.

For those of you alumni who heard about the eastward campus expansion initiative that was announced a few weeks ago, but didn't quite grasp what was going on, I found a great video hosted by Laura Sciuto (C'09) put out by the Daily Pennsylvanian that will make you wish (again) that you had this whole new campus when you were an undergrad.

Click here to check out the video

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We're in today's Daily Pennsylvanian!

Check out the article about Pennfest 2007 in today's Daily Pennsylvanian!

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Check out the Pennfest 2007 photos!

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Penn undergrads getting pissy...

It was that title or "People getting pissed off, Ben getting pissed on"

Anyway, from an article in last week's DP entitled "Red, Blue and Yellow", it was revealed that people are getting pissy when it comes to well, relieving themselves on the Ben on the Bench statue. I know.. this is pretty gross. I'm hoping this wasn't done in my day.

What do people have to say about this? You're about to find out...

Nathaniel Smith (Ph.D., Penn's Grad School of Education '00 / House Dean of Ware College House and Lecturer for the Graduate School of Education and the Critical Writing Program) has started a new web video series called "Question of the Week". This week Nathaniel has taken to Locust Walk and posed this issue to Penn students and other Philadelphians.

Click here for the video (Question of the Week: Episode 2)

Click here to check out Nathaniel's Episode 1

FYI, back in my day in the mid-90s this sort of thing happened with undergrads publically relieving themselves while they walked back to campus from Murphs on 44th and Spruce.

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It's gotta be better than the P.A.R.I.S. days....?

I just read in the DP online today that Penn in Touch, the current system students have been using for the past 15 years for class registration is needing a makeover.

It has to be better than P.A.R.I.S., the Penn Automated Registration Information System they had when I went to school in the early to mid 90s. (take a look at the image above to see the worksheet we had to fill out before dialing into the system!)

I guess times have changed... but maybe by not that much?!

Click here to check out some other "memoribilia" from back in the day

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DuelingTampons.com featured in Daily Pennsylvanian!

Earlier this week I was interviewed by Penn undergrad Alissa Eisenberg (C'10) for an article about DuelingTampons.com that came out in today's Daily Pennsylvanian.

Click the image above to see the article larger or click here to read the digital version in the DP online!

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