Hasta La Gadget!

Chocolate chip cookie dough pizza combines two of the greatest things in food; cookie dough and pizza. What are you waiting for? Make it!

Hey, Food Fanatics!

I am SO excited to be the newest member of the Food Fanatic Family! I feel like I’ve been adopted into a gigantic family full of food bloggers which is both so awesome and a little dangerous for my waistline.

If you don’t know me, my name’s Hayley and I blog over at The Domestic Rebel.

The Domestic Rebel is all about baking fearlessly in the kitchen and using easy, accessible ingredients to make outrageous, extraordinary desserts. Can you guess what my favorite ingredient is to work with? I’ll give you a hint: it’s raw. It’s all natural. It’s transformative. It’s versatile. It’s freaking delicious. It’s… cookie dough! And while I’m a cookie dough lover of all kinds, the classic chocolate chip has to be my all-time favorite.

Another one of my favorite foods? Pizza. I seriously cannot get enough of the stuff. I could eat it daily and be smitten. It’s just the perfect food. And when you combine pizza + cookie dough? Oh, HONEY. You best believe it’s going to be a life-changing religious experience.

This pizza has a crispy, chewy chocolate chip cookie crust which bakes up simply since it’s made with refrigerated cookie dough – easy! After it’s cooled, the crust is topped with a sinfully smooth chocolate ganache sauce. Hold me. And on top of the ganache is the piece de resistance – huge, gratuitous, irresistible chunks of chocolate chip cookie dough. If you ever wondered if heaven existed on earth, it does – it is located in your mouth whilst eating this pizza. No joke.

Methinks this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship between you, me, and cookie dough pizza, don’t ya think?

We definitely think so! Welcome to the family, Hayley. We’re so glad she’s here to share cookie dough creations, because we LOVE cookie dough. Try Hayley’s peanut butter cookie dough balls and Kate’s cookie dough cupcakes recipe too.

Get the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Pizza Recipe on Food Fanatic now!

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About Hayley

Hayley is known for over-the-top desserts of all kinds on her blog, The Domestic Rebel. Since she’s fanatical about cookie dough, she’s our cookie dough fanatic!

Whether you’re working a dream job, or even a “meh, it’s fine” job, rocking your career feels great. How good does it feel to strut into a meeting, knowing you are fully prepared? Or stand in your boss’ office for a performance review, and hear him or her shower you with praise? Answer: It feels good. Really good.

But no matter how effective you are or interesting your work is, everyone suffers from productivity issues from time to time. Sometimes, you know it is happening, like when you get caught up in a hilarious conversation with co-workers, or wait for 30 minutes for your computer to reboot. Other times, you might not even realize you are being unproductive, like when you are attempting to multitask, or compulsively checking email.

According to David Allen, author of “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity,” “You don’t actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it.”

So how do we ensure we are putting our best foot forward when taking these steps? In partnership with Hewlett Packard, we’ve pointed out the biggest workplace time-sinks… and how you can quash them.

The time suck: Checking email as it comes in

According to a study commissioned by the time-tracking software company OfficeTime, workers see email as their top time suck. In fact, over 30 percent of them spend up to two hours per day dealing with their email instead of working on tasks.

What you should do instead: Carve out specific chunks of time to check email, and ignore it the rest of the time. An article in Forbes suggests creating an email filing system, preparing pre-written responses that can be used more than once and turning off email notifications.

The time suck: Leading long, unproductive meetings

Even if they might SOUND productive, most meetings are useless. Inc. Magazine found that 67 percent of meetings are deemed to be “failures” by executives, and more than $37 billion are wasted on these unproductive gatherings every year.

What you should do instead: Keep it short, sweet and well planned. Schedule meetings for no longer than 30 minutes, with detailed agendas. If it seems like a conversation is going off the rails, move on to the next meeting point. And whatever you do, don’t spend too much time setting up the projector!

The time suck: Multitasking

It may seem productive, but it’s not. Yes, even those of us who can pat our heads and rub our tummies at the same time can’t effectively check email and fill out Excel sheets. According to a 2001 study titled “Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching,” an employee’s attempt to multitask can cost a company between 20 and 40 percent of potential efficiency. Joshua Rubenstein, the author of the study, says that the time cost increases with complexity, so the harder your tasks are, the less productive you’re being.

What you should do instead: Commit to a task and stick to it all the way through. If you’re making a PowerPoint presentation, close out your email and calendar until you finish. If you are writing an article, find all your quotes and sources, and turn off your Wi-Fi connection until the last sentence is done. And if this system isn’t feasible, break your day into time chunks and work from there. Focus on nothing except the task at hand during that time slot, and move on to the next when your time is up. Make sure to give yourself enough time in each chunk to really gain traction on your project!

The time suck: Going into the day without a plan

Even if you are one of those people whose disorganization IS their organization, moving freely throughout your tasks is enormously unproductive, and probably means that a lot of tasks slip through the cracks of your day.

What you should do instead: Find some version of a to-do list. Whether that means downloading an app that helps you organize your day, writing down a list on a piece of paper, or even using sticky notes, experiment with different systems and stick to the one that works best for you.

The time suck: Grabbing bits of office chatter

Don’t get us wrong; office camaraderie is key to a healthy work environment, and engaging in friendly conversation can make it easier and more comfortable to get your work done. However, when chatter turns to gossip, office morale can plunge and distract you from finishing tasks. Even when the gabbing is totally innocent, you can lose hours of productivity when you treat the workplace like a garden party.

What you should do instead: If your office has an open setup, trying putting in headphones while you work (even if you aren’t playing music). Also make an effort to socialize with your work buddies only during lunch breaks and after work hours. And when it comes to gossiping, recognize the difference between venting and slandering; feel free to let your co-worker vent about a specific task or request (after hours, of course), but gently switch the subject when the conversation becomes gratuitous.

The time suck: Using outdated equipment

While some industries are at the top of their tech game, many of us are still using older desktops and printing, faxing and copying on ancient machines. That time you spend every morning waiting for your PC to boot up, and the minutes (that may seem like eons) spent hanging out by the copier aren’t just annoying — they are a waste of time for both you and your company.

What you should do instead: There’s no way around it: You need to upgrade. Even if new and shiny equipment may initially seem like a huge financial burden, the costs to efficiency will quickly catch up.

HP Officejet Pro printers: Meet the inkjets engineered for business at up to half the cost of laser.

The world is a dangerous place these days – and one would definitely have to do their bit to ensure that one is aware of the surroundings, especially at night when it can be hard to tell whether there are threats lurking around every corner. Having a personal safety device might be useful, and the Safeti is one of them. Specially designed to trigger a customizable alert which will be sent automatically to emergency contacts, not to mention one’s GPS location, this unique tool has an added advantage – it will not require itself to be connected via Bluetooth to another smartphone in order to work.

Right now, the Safeti is available for pre-order over at IndieGoGo for $89 a pop, and early birds can place an order for $10 to $15 off. Should all go well, do expect the Safeti to begin rolling off production lines some time in August later this year. How does the Safeti work? Whenever one clicks and holds the button on the Safeti , it will then send a message to the people in a pre-determined safety circle with a text message, as well as a link to the existing GPS co-ordinates.

In an actual emergency, just click the button three times, and a personal safety concierge will be notified. This person will talk you through the situation, providing advice on various useful locations, such as the nearest open convenience store or brightly lit street is. If you fail to pick up your phone then, the police will be notified. Each Safeti will arrive with four free calls from a personal safety concierge, where subsequent calls will then be chargeable.

Safeti Personal Safety Device , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

I make a point of knowing as little as possible about the films I see at the Sundance Film Festival (or any other film festival — or just films in general, for that matter) before I see them because I want to see them with a blank slate.

As I set up my schedule for my days at the festival roughly a week before I leave (in long hand, on a legal pad), I’ll skim the synopsis and credits in the catalog online deeply enough to decide whether to add the film to my schedule. Often as not, by the time I actually get to Park City, I couldn’t tell you what any of the titles on my list are actually about.

Which, combined with the occasional audible at the line of scrimmage — such as an added press screening of a movie I knew nothing about today and a paucity of anything else — leads to some interesting scheduling surprises.

Such as today, my final day at Sundance: I wound up hitting the trifecta of addiction movies, with a side order of depression.

I also managed to miss the final film on my schedule when I went to the wrong theater at the wrong time. Hey, it’s been a long week; the three films I saw today brought my total to 17 films in four days.

The least compelling of my addiction ménage a trois was Zipper, a film by Mora Stephens that starred Patrick Wilson. He plays Sam Ellis, the righteous, even self-righteous assistant state’s attorney in an unspecified Southern city who is being mentioned for higher office. Just one problem: His frequent forays into Internet porn suddenly escalate to an insatiable appetite for high-priced escorts. And this guy is married to Lena Headey.

But the script by Stephens and Joel Viertel is overheated melodrama, aided and abetted by an incredibly on-the-nose score that feels like something out of a Douglas Sirk movie. Wilson, usually a nuanced actor, darts his eyes, wipes his anxious brow and does everything except pull at his collar ala Rodney Dangerfield, when the FBI turns out to be running an investigation into the escort services. Their sting seems bound to expose him, even as he’s being mentioned seriously for a run at the U.S. Senate.

Wilson is wormy, and Headey ravenously eats him alive in every scene they share as his angry, smarter wife. Ray Winstone shows up as a national journalist who happens to be friends with Headey, and Richard Dreyfuss is on hand as a political fixer who bears more than a passing resemblance to Roger Ailes.

Eventually, Zipper cools down and gets to the point (about the hypocrisy that’s frequently a part of holding public office), but that’s long after the whole thing boils over into a sticky mess.

I Smile Back is a movie with the courage of its convictions — and what darkly pessimistic convictions those are about the nature of addiction. They’re embodied by Sarah Silverman as Laney, a Long Island housewife with two kids and bipolar disorder, which she self-medicates with liquor, cocaine, downers and men.

This commentary continues on my website.

After a blizzard moved up the East Coast earlier this week, the Mayor of New York City and the state’s Governor were being criticized for “over-reacting” and “over-planning.” The storm turned out to be less severe than anticipated and the shutdown of the subway system together with travel and parking bans seemed excessive — in retrospect. Of course, had the opposite been true, namely had there been a huge storm for which NYC was unprepared, its mayor would be taking considerable heat. Mayors across the nation have been criticized and lost reelection bids due to poor snow removal. Basically, no matter what Mayor Bill deBlasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo did, they were in a lose/lose situation, unless of course the storm proceeded exactly as predicted by the National Weather Service – a near impossibility.

Decisions by leaders are fraught with risk. No matter what decisions leaders make or fail to make, whether on profound or trivial issues, they are bound to be criticized. And, with the advent of social media and a 24-hour news cycle, the criticism is often swift and very public. Consider decision-making by college presidents, the subject of considerable recent media attention. There are so many constituencies that can challenge the leader’s decisions — trustees, faculty, staff, students, parents, alums, neighbors and other community members, elected officials both near and far, among others. It is hard to be “right” and satisfy everyone.

Unfortunately, we treat all decisions as if they have the same impact and importance to a city or institution’s well being. And, therein lies the problem.

I remember not calling a snow day early in my presidency, likely an effort on my part to show that a New Yorker was not intimidated by the Vermont weather. I immediately started to get emails along these lines: What are you trying to do? Kill us all? Chastened, I called a snow day several weeks later only to get emails suggesting that I had inconvenienced folks because now they had to make up classes as the semester progressed, and I clearly was a wimp in terms of understanding Vermont weather.

Take another, certainly more difficult, example. To address the fiscal strains most higher education institutions confront and determine where required cuts can be made, a president decides to eliminate two of the more expensive NCAA men’s sports it offers; simultaneously, the president adds one women’s sport. Now, the student athletes of those terminated teams and their coaches are furious; the athletic conference may be angry too, needing those teams to meet NCAA post-conference eligibility. Alums who played on these teams are fit to be tied and start fund raising on their own to pay for reinstatement or refuse to donate to the college more generally. Female athletes may be pleased, seeing greater compliance with Title IX and more opportunities for women athletes. Faculty and staff could be pleased since the cuts are not being made in their areas, and they desire that more money be directed to non-athletic areas of the college that more effectively serve its mission from their perspective.

Here’s the point. My experience is that quality leaders do not make decisions cavalierly. They ponder carefully their decisions before making them; they try to make the best choices with the information they then have. They rely on data models that should have validity. They word their choices carefully when they both speak and write; they think through the myriad of pros and cons. They consult with others with experience. But, no matter how reflective leaders are, they will make mistakes and there are folks who will disagree with them, whether or not the decision is erroneous. It is worth remembering too that twenty-twenty hindsight is spectacularly good.

With all the public hue and cry about leaders’ decisions, we do need to distinguish among the types of erroneous decisions that can be made. Some have little or no lasting impact on a city or an institution. Few decisions are truly institutionally transformative or damaging. We need to save our venom for and target our attention on ill-conceived decisions that truly merit the criticism — decisions made by presidents that are academically and psycho-socially unwise by most measures, decisions that fail to protect students and academic integrity. Best to target our anger for presidents who make decisions that are unethical or discriminatory or reckless. Wise to save the angst for decisions that are misunderstood due to poor word choices or poor planning. There will be no shortage of content.

Bottom line: Give Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo a break on their response to a blizzard. And, give college presidents a break on decisions that are not institutionally threatening, decisions that do not undercut our respect for education and the students we serve. We can’t afford, as is presently happening, to lose more quality higher education leaders because the job has become too hard, and leaders are perpetually caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Never being right can’t be right.