Salad Dressings

This week's recipe's are taken from the American Academy International Cook Book. These salad dressings are from our Top 10.  Prepare your favourite salad and dress it up with one of these delicious dressings.  Our Cook Book is due for release in September 2012.

SALAD DRESSINGS

  

Caesar

1 cup mayonnaise

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp Worcestershire

1 clove of garlic (minced)

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp pepper

1/2 cup Parmesean cheese

2 tbsp of milk

Mix all ingredients together and shake or whisk until well blended.

Blue cheese

4 oz good Roquefort cheese, chopped

1 cup mayonnaise

1 cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Freshly chopped tarragon to taste

Place all ingredients in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Process until smooth.

Greek

2 fresh garlic cloves (crushed)

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 tbsp fresh lemon juice

1/2 tspsugar

5 tbsp red wine vinegar

1/2 tsp basil leaves (optional)

1/4 tsp oregano leaves (optional)

Mix all ingredients together and shake well to mix

Enjoy!

Marilyn x

Larnaka Municipality Press Release 13th-19th August

This weekly press release is part of an effort to inform our citizens and the public in general about the activities of our Municipality.

Cultural Events

For more information call the Larnaca Municipality Cultural Department on 24657745 or 24629333 or Visit the website: www.larnaka.com 

Construction work

The Department of Construction of the Municipality of Larnaca informs the public that since August is the month of the summer holidays, a special construction crew will be responsible for any problems that may arise during this period.

Visit the website: www.larnaka.com

Energy Team and Environmental Management Department: www.larnaka202020.eu

Contact: 24816559, 24816581/email: perivallon@larnaca.com

Translation kindly provided by

Eri Constantinou

 www.greek4kids.eu 

Facebook for LPNeurs - What, how and when to post on your page...

Dear mumpreneurs and dadpreneurs,

Once you have set up your Facebook business page and as you are building up your fan base by sharing your page in groups, on your personal account or with your email contacts, you must keep your page 'alive'. This is the greatest challenge for page owners and page administrators.

There's no need to worry, here are three key elements to focus on: Content, presentation and timing.

Great content is essential. You must keep it real and you must adapt to your audience. There's no magic recipe but in general remember that Facebook users are unwinding while they are connected. An infographic on content that people crave made by marketing experts gives you 21 possibilities.

 http://contently.com/blog/21-types-of-content-audiences-love-infographic/

As you can see, you are not supposed to be posting about your products or services.... all the time. You are allowed a 5% of your total posting quota. Your Facebook page is for you to communicate with your fans, to create connections and to build trust. Once they know you and if they like you, they will buy from you. This is a long term process. You have to spend time or money building this engagement and then you will see results. You have to wait at least 6 months, so be patient.

How can you come up with ideas for your posts? We recommend Pinterest at www.pinterest.com, an online pinboard that allows you to organise visuals in categories that you choose and you can always go back to them to use it for your posts or follow pinners with similar interests for new ideas. It also has a Search function that I always use when I have an idea and need a great image to go with it. 

Go to their site, request an invite and you'll get an email within 2 days. Happy pinning!

 

Pinterest and Facebook go hand in hand as the former provides all the visuals that your posts require plus it is an unlimited source of inspiration. Remember that the best way to present a post is accompanying it with a photo or a graphic, colourful and meaningful. Recent findings suggest they are 3 times more attractive to a fast browser than posts without a visual.

The third important point to consider is timing of your posts. In the Summer people are more active during the hottest times of the day when they are indoors or late at night before they go to sleep. I've noticed people are most active between 2:30 and 5 pm and then after 10 pm until early morning hours. Your audience might not follow this pattern and patterns change with seasons, so you must always check the response to your posts. One way of doing this is by clicking on your Insights from the Admin Panel for your page: a couple of line graphs will show what posts were more popular and you can click on each post individually and revise posting time. 

A final piece of information for today is that unfortunately not all your posts will be seen by your fans, even if they have your page in a special interest list and if they have ticked your page to show on their news feed. There is an algorithm called Edgerank that ranks posts according to 3 criteria: each fan's previous interaction with the page, how many likes, comments and shares the post got overall and how recent the post is. Then Facebook will filter accordingly and decide what posts will appear on each fan's news stream. The average percentage of posts seen by any page's fan is only 16%. This all leads to the general recommendation of posting interesting content with calls to action like asking your fans to 'like' or 'share' or 'comment' and posting more than once a day.Five very simple ideas and a clear explanation on this are given by Jonathan Payne on the following link http://www.business2community.com/facebook/edgerank-and-five-simple-ways-to-increase-facebook-engagement-0227704#comment-446931

The latest posts, the ones with a visual and the ones from the pages you have interacted more with will be at the top of the list at any time you, as a fan, log on to Facebook. So post more than once a day from your page, but at least once a day, at peak times to target your audience and prompt them to interact with your page by liking, commenting or sharing your post. You can schedule your posts ahead, share informative links and always be real and be yourself. You can also post the same content more than once, at different times, on different groups and/or on your personal account as well as on your page. 

Please feel free to ask or comment on any of the points above. For details on how to do any of the above you can visit my page on the link below, call me or email me.

Many thanks for reading,

Veronica

99 66 32 86

orokliniconcierge@gmail.com
www.facebook.com/GeekOroklini

Oriental Beef with green beans

This week's recipe is taken from the American Academy International Cook Book, and was supplied by my very dear friend Debra Mc Kay.  Our Cook Book is due for release in September 2012.

Oriental Beef with green beans

Ingredients

500g Fillet of beef

2tbsp Oyster suce

1 tbsp Dark soy sauce

Splash Light Soy sauce

Pinch of sugar

Sea salt and black pepper

handful of green beans (blanched for 3 minutes)

1 Red chilli (deseeded and sliced)

2-3 small cloves of garlic (finely chopped)

1 tbsp Groundnut or sunflower oil

Method

1.  Marinade beef in 1 tbsp dark soy sauce and 1 tbsp of oyster sauce for 30minutes

2.  Heat wok until smoking hot - then add oil

3.  Add beef and stir fry for 1 minute

4.  Add garlic, chilli and blanched green beans

5.  Add remaining oyster sauce and a good splash of light soy sauce

6.  Stir fry for a further 5 minutes (don't over do it!!)

Serve with egg fried rice - delish!!

Egg fried rice

Ingredients

1 tbsp vegetable oil

2 eggs

2spring onions, finely chopped

2 tsp soy sauce

100g rice, cooked according to packet instructions

1/2 tsp sesame oil

Method

1.  Heat the oil in a wok until smoking then add the eggs and cook them, stirring vigorously until they are set.

2.  Add spring onion and soy sauce and stir-fry for two minutes.

3.  Add the cooked rice and sesame oil, stir-fry for a further two minutes

4.  Place the egg-fried rice into a bowl and serve immediately

Enjoy!

Marilyn x

Just So Crafty Ladies Pottery Evening

Just So Crafty are pleased to announce that they are holding a Ladies Pottery Evening.

Place: Just So Crafty

Date: Thursday 13th September

Time: 7.30pm

There will be Wine, Nibbles and Giggles supplied, just come along with a friend and spend an enjoyable evening painting your own pottery piece in the beautiful courtyard.

A fun relaxing evening for ladies only! booking essential....

Contact numbers: 24647750 / 96396784