Starting today, September 23, 2008, HP is giving away 15 laptops through 15 websites and Cooking For Engineers is one of them! You can actually participate in all fifteen giveaways to maximize your chances of getting a laptop. Cooking For Engineers will be giving away an HP Pavilion dv5t notebook computer on October 11, 2008.
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Starting on September 26, the first site will have one week to determine the winner of their giveaway computer. Every two days, another contest will begin on the next site in the giveaway. This gives you a decent amount of time to get the word out to your friends and to participate in as many giveaways as you can. Each site will be running a different contest (details will be announced on the day the contest begins for that site).
Here's the schedule of the other participants in "The HP Freshman 15" giveaway (go to their sites to find out how to participate in their giveaways):
- Poorer Than You - Contest Starts 26-Sep; Giveaway 3-Oct
- Broke-Ass Student - Contest Starts 28-Sep; Giveaway 5-Oct
- Broke Grad Student - Contest Starts 30-Sep; Giveaway 7-Oct
- Study Hacks - Demystifying College Success - Contest Starts 2-Oct; Giveaway 9-Oct
- Cooking for Engineers - Contest Starts 4-Oct; Giveaway 11-Oct
- College Being - Contest Starts 6-Oct; Giveaway 13-Oct
- Paul Stamatiou - Contest Starts 8-Oct; Giveaway 15-Oct
- DormDelicious - Contest Starts 10-Oct; Giveaway 17-Oct
- Student Bloggers - Contest Starts 12-Oct; Giveaway 19-Oct
- Jessica Mah Meets World - Contest Starts 14-Oct; Giveaway 21-Oct
- UNEASYsilence - Contest Starts 16-Oct; Giveaway 23-Oct
- Gomeler.com - Contest Starts 18-Oct; Giveaway 25-Oct
- CampusGrotto - Contest Starts 20-Oct; Giveaway 27-Oct
- Hack College - Contest Starts 22-Oct; Giveaway 29-Oct
- The University Blog - Contest Starts 24-Oct; Giveaway 31-Oct
Here is the system we'll be giving away:
HP Pavilion dv5t (click for details)
Update Oct. 4, 2008:
Let the HP Freshman 15 begin for Cooking For Engineers!
I want to keep the contest pretty simple, so here are the rules:
- Any one can enter even if you aren't in the United States. You have to be prepared to give me your mailing address (so I can have the laptop shipped to you if you win) and social security number (so Hewlett Packard can handle the taxes for this prize) if you live in the U.S.
- Post a comment to this article with a picture of food showing the phrase "cookingforengineers.com" in the picture. Note: the phrase has to be present at the time the picture is taken - no image editing or Photoshop allowed!
Some examples are:
- bake a cake and frost it with CookingForEngineers.com (then take a picture)
- take a picture of your entree at a restaurant along with a paper that says CookingForEngineers.com
- take a picture of an elaborate construction of French fries that spells out CookingForEngineers.com
You can post pictures by uploading first onto the internet somewhere. An example is to upload it to Flickr. Then come to this article and reply to it and post a comment with the picture embedded in it. To do this, you'll need to copy the location of the image that you uploaded. If you uploaded it to flickr, just go to the page where the photo is and right-click on the photo and select "view image" on your browser. Then copy the url from the location bar of your browser (it should look like: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/67/227507648_d9211a6c78.jpg?v=0) and put it into the comment that you're posting like this:
[IMG]http://farm1.static.flickr.com/67/227507648_d9211a6c78.jpg?v=0[/IMG]
I hope that all made sense...
On October 11, 2008 the contest ends. I'll be traveling, so the exact time that it ends will be when I get a chance to log on and post a reply to this article announcing the end of the contest. Any entries after that won't count. Then in the next couple days, I and a panel of five (Tina and a few friends) will decide which of the entries we like the most. Then I'll contact the winner via email to get their address.
To ensure that I'll be able to contact the winner, please be sure to register for an account first OR leave you contact info in your comment. You can make an account by going to this page. Once you've made your account, click on the post a comment link here or below and post your entry.
Update Oct. 6, 2008:
I forgot to mention that by entering the contest, you're also giving Cooking For Engineers the right to use the photographs submitted in the future. If you don't want Cooking For Engineers to be able to use your photo in the future, you can remove your entry (or email me at cooking@cookingforengineers.com to have it removed.
Also, I didn't realize it earlier but I'll be giving away a couple HP messenger bags (~$40 value) to runner ups.
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Sue
Sue
I'm not allowed to post rules until the day of my giveaway, but it's not limited to college freshmen - HP just intends the laptop promotion to be oriented towards recent college grads and there are 15 units to be given away, so Freshman 15 seemed like a fun name.
So, to be clear, anyone regardless of age or country of residence will be able to participate in my giveaway. Full rules will be published on October 4th.
Remember, anyone can enter - just post a picture involving food and the have the phrase "cookingforengineers.com" showing in the photo. The phrase has to be there when the picture is taken - no image editing or photoshop!
Can a person have more than one entry? I have a couple of great ideas and was having difficulty deciding which one to go for.
Can a person have more than one entry? I have a couple of great ideas and was having difficulty deciding which one to go for.
Feel free to enter more than once.
I just removed the floor from my moms kitchen, so I decided to cut some of it out, then decided that would take way too long, so I just burned the rest, with sparklers and a blowtorch.
I just removed the floor from my moms kitchen, so I decided to cut some of it out, then decided that would take way too long, so I just burned the rest, with sparklers and a blowtorch.
Nice, I was a bit surprised at first (looked at the picture before reading the whole comment) then I realized it was a kitchen floor and it had been removed (thank goodness)!
Here is my entry into the competition. Click here for a larger view. I have a posting on my friend's blog where I go into detail about each dish, and with more pictures. Visit here for the juicy details.
I got to say, out of all the HP contests so far, this has been the most enjoyable one.
Richard.
My entry (if it's allowed - I hope it's allowed!) is of a dinner I made for my wife and I. We're stationed in South Korea living off of the installation. Because of that, we don't have an oven or anything so I made do with what we have and made a pretty tasty dish.
It's Toasted Turkey and Cheese Sandwiches served with a side dish of Cream Soup with Mandarin juice.
I'd love to have made a more elaborate dish, but it was kind of impossible at the moment. It was something I made myself though. :D I hope this qualifies!
Photoshop: yes, you can adjust levels, white balance, hue, clarity, etc. You just can't go in and paint the words "cookingforengineers.com" into it. You have to put the words have to exist in real life while you are taking the picture.
I have used Custard, Jelly, Bananas and lost of Cream.
Only WELL AFTER the salad was tossed and eaten did the realization strike us down, that to the technical eye...there is no "dot-com" in this salad. And shoot, what is this, if not a forum for technical eyes!
But we pitch... should one well up inside with tenderness for each and every pomegranate seed, as can happen from time to time, then surely it won't be long before, as happened to us, those pearly rosate pixels form into little digits, spelling out clearly what we left off...
- Gustavo A. Pinto
my email is fritcb@gmail.com
I used vegetables that were 'leftover' from our garden. The words are made from peppers and a tomato, the word "engineers" is carved into a zuchinni. The leafy stuff around the edges is basil.
This sign was made with some of my husbands favorite snacks-Cheezits (tobasco flavor) and Corn-nuts (Ranch style)...I had so much fun with this and only hope that it is good enough for this competition!!! (this was the only food available in our house...trust me!!! Thank goodness their was a sale at our local store for buy one bag-get one free...
:D
Entry #1: The cookie defense:
Entry #2: (And I must point out, you didn't say it had to be people food)
Rupert (our cat) just can't get enough of Cookingforengineers.com:
Hope you enjoy my entries... :)
twinjackienurse@gmail.com
Mandarin oranges and Ghiradelli chips.
Care to elaborate on future uses of our photos? Plan on making a gallery of our pictures? Or something else? I've just curious to know.
I'm probably going to copy all the images, resize, and repost them on this thread so the images will stay up as long as Cooking For Engineers does. That way we can all look back on this fondly :)
Depending on if they work out, it's possible that I could do T-Shirts or something in the future. Any other ideas?
Contact: feliperm at gmail dot com
In the picture chicken with spices and cognac, rice and grape water.
Also a N95 showing cookingforengineers.com web page ;)
Just in case :-)
I'll do one better. Not only do I have a picture (two, actually) of something I've cooked, but I'll include a recipe! It's not a very "engineering" approach, nor is it formatted appropriately for the site, but what the heck?
Pictures:
More at My flickr, cookingforengineers set
Recipe:
Ingredients:
Steps:
Prep
Dice the onion into small pieces. Mince the garlic into the smallest bits you can within reason. Rinse and slice the mushrooms.
Brown the meat
Heat a large pot (5-6 qt.) over medium-high heat. Once it's hot, toss in the ground beef. Add:
Once it's started to brown, pour in ~2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar (if you're using it), the rest of the garlic and the onion. Continue cooking until the beef is cooked through.
Add the sauce
Reduce heat to medium. Add canned tomato stuff (diced, sauce, paste). Once it comes to a simmer, add in the mushrooms and some more spices. I'd suggest some more pepper, salt, and Italian seasoning. Go easy for now, you can always add more.
Once the sauce starts to bubble, reduce the heat to low. You want it to lightly simmer. On my stove, this is just a touch above the lowest flame it will give me.
At this point, the sauce is "ready". The more it simmers, the better it is. I would suggest half an hour as a good starting point. When you're getting hungry, make the pasta. I estimate 15-20 minutes for the pasta to happen (from starting the water to pouring into a colander).
Assemble
Toss a serving of pasta into a bowl, spoon some sauce on top, and sprinkle generously with cheese. Nom. Adding a slice of bread or two is nice, though it's adding more carbs to an already heavy meal.
Store
Unless you've got a big group to feed, this will leave you with a lot of sauce leftover. Spoon it into containers and freeze it in 1-2 serving portions. It thaws easily and reheats well in the microwave, or on the stovetop. There, quick dinner for several nights!
Who doesn't love a sunday with fresh strawberries, real whip cream, sprinkled with bits of walnuts and cinnamon and sugar ?
Thanks for the chance to win
fritcb@gmail.com
So here they are again!
This time 3 different versions of the same food and the last one is what I had for breakfast this morning! :'D
almond biscotti
Cooking for engineers with awesomely hot little peppers.
Always liked slice and bake cookies and it's much more fun when you make your own designs. A bit harder to do that many letters out of one recipe, but at least letters are fairly simple.
While I was at it took other pictures too, here's the in-progress when I started slicing: http://img.movoda.net/ghktbpd5.jpg and all the extra letters I ended up with at the end: http://img.movoda.net/x6itfxy3.jpg
I really shouldn't put a bowl of oats and cranberries on a bed and expect it to stay there:
I have a few more ideas that I'll try to add later. :)
Here is my first entry into the contest. Since Halloween is approaching, I decided to make a spooky dinner:
Cheeseball bats served as an appetizer to the main course of meatloaf rats, served with mashed potato snakes.
Thank you, Cooking For Engineers and HP, for hosting such a fun contest!
-Beeb
bakahentai AT gmail.com
Home-made Indian Puries toped with Biscuits.
CookingForEngineers.Com is writen with Choco-Vanilla Icing.
Lots of Hard work put in this.
Its like a grand project for me.
My friends enjoyed eating it after I was done taking pictures.
Everything was gone in 10 mins. :)
*crosses fingers*
CSA and CFE,
K-I-S-S-I-N-G...
Community-supported agriculture and Cooking for Engineers have both changed the way I eat -- thank you! (And now it's even becoming normal to play with food....)
Here you can see it all spelled out.
My entry for the contest is a home made cake; what we call a marble cake.
Please check the link below.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31217512@N05/?saved=1
The hardest part was to write 'cookingforengineers.com' on the cake itself. By the way, the cake is as tasty as it looks.
Prashant
elizardkwik@yahoo.com
shanawoodman (at) hotmail (dot) com
i hope you like it
thanks for the competition...
Cooking beans & salsa for nachos:
Finished product:
Slightly different angle:
I took this first photo when the light was right, then realized I'd forgotten to put .com in and took another. Alas, the sun had moved, so it's not as good.
This is all produce from my garden, in my garden. Lots of good vegetables and herbs for cooking, even by a non-engineer.
I posted about it on my blog, too:
http://kittbo.blogspot.com/2008/10/cooking-for-engineers.html
Thanks for hosting the contest! This was fun to do. Love everyone else's pics. Some serious competition here!
Kitt
kittbo AT gmail DOT com
[img]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_0HkDmCHh5O8/SO6HKL7-uRI/AAAAAAAAAD
A/wgqOoGlqLwU/s1600-h/100_1185.JPG[/img]
Or, if that doesn't work, go here: http://lizardpa.blogspot.com/.
Thanks!
elizardkwik@yahoo.com
at ten o'clock we hadn't had dinner, but then we found avocado AND cucumber AND crab meat were all on hand....
with this mochi to split afterwards:
& weeping in our soy sauce that cfe week is coming to its end.
(In honor of Halloween)
Cookingforengineers.com is a sweet treat-
And here is two:
Don't be a DumDum, check out Cookingforengineers.com-
Hope you like these...they took some time to construct but it was fun. :D
Here are two more entries by me:
Cookingforengineers.com is saucy-
(And anyone that goes to college knows-whether first hand or through friends-that the college experience includes alcohol, so...)
Cookingforengineers.com, knocking back the other website competition-
I couldn't come up with the dough to pay for a computer...but I did come up with some dough for this entry (ok, ok-- it's actually pie crust):
I thought I would try to spice things up a bit with this second entry:
C:\Users\james\Desktop\0.jpg
Not sure if my other half appreciated me digging through his salad to find the right size and shape items.
:P
I tried to register but had problems, here's my info.
shay_tx@hotmail.com
A close up (I now need to search this site to find out what to do with the spaghetti squash:
For my second entry, as a fellow engineer, I thought some pumpkin pi would be appropriate:
Danielle
djwain@gmail.com
CFE written in angel hair pasta
Cute kid with CFE written in pasta
Chicken Piccata from House of Annie
http://chezannies.blogspot.com
contact: lj_jensen88@yahoo.com
Since my husband is a computer engineer, we had to include this. Took a while at the grocery store to find snack items that would work as 1's and 0's. The end result: pretzel sticks and the pretzel circles from a few bags of chex mix.
-Christina
cmd277 at gmail dot com
Now I can play with my food mom!
It was taken on my favorite sushi place on Wednesday night.
My email address is gonzalo_garcia@hotmail.co.uk
thanks. :D
My e-mail is bridget_hoffman at yahoo dot com
OK, I hope I'm not too late. It isn't really fair if I am, because here in Texas, it is still early evening on Friday! So, I figured why not make my entry an engineering marvel. I ran out of toothpicks, so I just used gravity to turn food into a bridge!
Jace
JaceRoscoe@gmail.com
by way of:
props to 'rtrieu' for really opening this up with those links to really nice close-up photos! here's a link to the photos of making this cake, aspiring to be a CFE-style recipe, but for the moment more like 'photo-essay':
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31174744@N04/sets/72157607915334544/
Had to take the opportunity to make our favorite recipe from the site. They were devoured quickly after the photo was taken. See the full size version here
I tried to combine both elements of the website's name:
Cookingforengineers.com, a blueprint for success-
Enjoy! Oh, and it is still October 10th here is Ohio (it's 10:20pm) so I hope this still counts...I had to hurry and construct this as soon as I was off work.
Here is my second entry for the contest:
I was in the mood for some fall flavors, so these are Apple Spice cupcakes. I found the recipe here, if anyone else is in the mood for some Apple yumminess:
http://sassandveracity.typepad.com/sass_veracity/2008/09/apple-walnut-cu.html
When I baked these, I made some substitutions - I didn't have any Walnuts on hand, so I omitted those, and I also added more spices. I then used cream cheese frosting and a variety of sprinkles to pretty them up.
I have two more entries on the way, which I will post as soon as I pull them out of the oven. :)
Spencer
sspagnol@calpoly.edu
Sugar cookies, sprinkled with tinted sugar. I made this using my favorite sugar cookie recipe, from Betty Crocker's Cooky Book, circa 1963:
Ethel's Sugar Cookies
3/4 cup shortening (part butter or margarine)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp. lemon flavoring or 1 tsp. vanilla
2 1/2 cups Gold Medal Flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp salt (which I always omit)
Mix shortening, sugar, eggs, and flavoring thoroughly. Measure flour by dipping method, or by sifting. Stir flour, baking powder, and salt together; blend in. Chill at least 1 hr.
Heat oven to 400 degress (mod. hot). Roll dough 1/8" thick on lightly floured board. Cut with 3" cookie cutter. Place on ungreased baking sheet. Bake 6 to 8 min., or until cookies are a delicate golden color. Makes about 4 dozen cookies.
Yum!
But the impending invasion was thwarted...
The spaceship is a cake that I made from a recipe found in another Betty Crocker cookbook. This one is a little more modern - it's from 1972.
Dinette Cake
1 1/2 cups cake flour or 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt (again, I always omit this, because I think it's gross!)
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup shortening
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour square pan (or spaceship), 8x8x2 or 9x9x2 inches. Measure all ingredients into large mixer bowl. Blend 1/2 minute on low speed, scraping bowl constantly. Beat 3 minutes high speed, scraping bow2l occasionally. Pour into pan.
Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool.
I also added lemon flavoring, because I thought it would be nice. I frosted it with plain old Vanilla frosting, and added the alien, who flew down from outer space (OK, he actually came from the batch of Ethel's Sugar Cookies). There's a somewhat clearer picture of the cake here, but you can't read the writing because of the flash. My camera isn't very well suited to taking food pictures, alas!
Thank you again for offering this fantastic contest. What fun! I spent half of the day in the kitchen playing around with these recipes - I love to bake, so this was a fun creative project! Thanks again for the chance to enter! :)
-Beeb
bakahentai AT gmail.com
How do you when spaghetti is done? When is sticks to the refrigerator door and you can spell stuff with it.
So, get your last minute entries in!
I'll have to make the final decision when I get back to California so I'll contact the winners around noon on Monday and when I get responses from everyone, I'll post the winners.
Great response guys!
Dont know if you guys are familiar with TF2 at all, I made a spray of the website name, and just took a screen capture of the heavy eating a sandvitch underneath it. Thought I might try to be a bit different from the other entries ;)
mikehutch06@gmail.com
Here is my second entry, a bit less electronic. I make my own dill pickles every year, and it always looks like a small army on top of my cupboards. I would definitely be willing to give out the recipe if I win :)
mikehutch06@gmail.com
now i get to eat it!
my pumpkin swirl cheesecake that is!!
lights on!
lights off!!
Aloha, Nate
House of Annie food blog
http://chezannies.blogspot.com
saw this contest at the very last moment. Didn't have time to bake a cake or anything! Damn those 'e's were hard to get lol!
Oh and the letters are made of gum paste--another brand new ingredient for me! I colored it with gel food colors then used molds to create the letters. I also dusted it (and the cake) with pearly dust (edible of course!) because I do love sparkle.
I've always wanted to experiment with fondant and gum paste and cake decorating in general, but never have, so I used this as an opportunity to give it a whirl. And it was so much fun! Thanks for the opportunity. :)
So here it is:
Registration wouldn't process correctly. I can be contacted via http://www.tiwtter.com/cmduke
I'll be going through the entries when I get back to California and have my panel of judges pick out their favorites.
Thanks for playing - stay tuned for the winners!
Michael
**** CONTEST IS CLOSED ****
I advice you to use Mozilla FireFox, so that you can see the pics that IExplorer doenst show.
Thanks
Roof on the table and food over my head
Shane Joe Lazar
drsjlazar(a)gmail.com
The winners of the messenger bags are:
Dani - for the salad and cake contributions
djwain - for the gutsiness of spelling out cooking for engineers in a grocery store
Kara - for the geekiness of the ASCII binary entry
katherinego - for the carved pumpkin and it's timeliness to the season