As soon as Katherine was tall enough, she was peering over the kitchen counter watching her mom make Three Cup Chicken or lotus root soup. She grew up making potstickers, scallion pancakes, and winter solstice dumplings with her entire family; to this day, the kitchen is still the most popular room in her house. If Katherine isn’t lawyering or bouldering, you can find Katherine in her kitchen sleepily wondering why she waited until 11PM to start rising bread dough.

Click on the logo to learn more about this plugin

Ok, so I first heard of CommentLuv some 6 months ago when our blogger friend in Uruguay, Gera @sweetsfoods started raving about it.  I favorited his review about it, CommentLuv Premium Plugin Review: 7 Reasons Why this Plugin Rocks, and made a mental note “must go back and read all about this WordPress plugin for comments when I have a moment”.  Fast-forward over 5 months and I finally found that moment!

I am happy to announce on behalf of the Zomppa team that CommentLuv has now been activated on this site. For those of you not familiar with what on earth I am talking about, this is very much a give and take feature in the comment sections of blogs and websites where everyone gets to be a winner really.  It helps to build links and traffic to and from websites. Here is the basic lowdown:

1. This is a special premium plugin for self-hosted WordPress sites
2. It is really 8 plugins in one so if you know anything about WordPress sites, you know that the fewer the plugins you install on your website, the lesser the chances of miscommunications between plugins and also with WordPress itself.
3. It basically eradicates spam on comments
4. When fellow bloggers comment on an article of ours now, they can include a link back to a recent post of theirs.  This helps build-up their list of backlinks to the site, and we get to help promote your material.
5. When we comment on other CommentLuv enabled sites, we also got to do point 4 on other blogs which in turn will help drive traffic to our site.
6. There are additional features which you can activate on the plugin that allow people leaving comments to also include keywords of theirs and also share the fact that they have left a comment on your site on other social media channels.

Essentially, you will now notice we have a little CommentLuv icon at the bottom of our comment sections.  If you put in your details and your website address, the options to backlink to one of your last 10 posts will then come up.

I could go on about this more, but really, for a full review on the plugin, do check out Gera’s very comprehensive review  CommentLuv Premium Plugin Review: 7 Reasons Why this Plugin Rocks. We have only had it active on our site for about a week now, and look forward to playing around with it some more and see how it starts to affect our traffic and also that of our readers.  So, if you are already using CommentLuv on your blog, come join us! If you are not, consider joining in, I guess!

Check out this fun infographic by the creative, funky team of HackCollege:

Created by: Hack College

For some fun recipes with what you can do with those little packages of ramen, head on over to HackCollege.

Valentine’s Day came and went, but here at Zomppa, we profess our love for food everyday, and if you’ve enjoyed our Photos of the Day, you might wonder, Where did it go??

We still are posting up a photo of the day – only to make it easier for you to enjoy, we are now posting them on our Facebook page. So show some love for food – and head on over to the Zomppa Facebook page to get exclusive photos!

Happy Love Food Day Every Day!

Springing from a background in sexuality and gender, Madelyn uses an intersectional eco-feminist lens to interpret the world around her. As a passionate – newly vegan, amateur activist – photographer, she hopes to add an interesting perspective to Zomppa’s dialogue on food thought, policy and fun as its first intern. While she isn’t bouncing between classes on her college campus, she is found snuggling up to a good book with her cats or planning a new garden project.

You can find Madelyn’s photos and contributions at Rachel in Veganland and The Carrboro Citizen.

Source: Magnolia Pictures

“You have to fall in love with your job,” says Jiro.

He certainly makes us fall in love with his work.

Welcome to Neda’s ABCs from Zomppa on Vimeo.

I admit I haven’t eaten at a McDonald’s in the U.S. in years. But when I was in Orlando, my travelmates found out there was a gourmet one – touted as the “most unique in the world,” so off we went.

Walking in, I was immediately a bit blown away by the displays of gourmet foods – from belgian waffles to a Blue Bonnet ice cream stand. It was a little intimidating – the second floor was all about video games and birthday parties, downstairs was a mix of bar tables, leopard-print chairs, aquariums with live fish, and arcade games. It seemed to have an identity crisis.

I was nervous about what ingredients were being used – after all, it is a McDonald’s – and having so many more choices (there were 34 value meals) made it even more confusing.

I figured a simple pasta with marinara couldn’t be that bad, especially since the pasta would be apparently cooked fresh at the pasta station.

Like a family chain restaurant, I was given one of those little buzzers to let me know when my food was ready. This was definitely no normal McDonald’s, so I was getting my hopes high for an actual bistro-like meal.

My meal came – and admittedly, the pasta with buttered toast looked pretty decent. I got a milkshake, which was fantastic – real ice cream. But the pasta? It was simply a frozen one reheated on the stove. At least, it was heated as I watched. I almost paid $12 at McDonald’s…and I am pretty sure I could buy a frozen dinner entree for a lot less (though I wouldn’t).

The dishes looked better than a normal fast food meal. But the cost was much higher as well – my travelmate paid $17 for this lunch.

All agreed that it looked fancy, but there was something undeniably “McDonald’s” about the taste. Could it be that addictive flavors of fast food that Mark Bittman talked about?

Acknowledge McDonald’s efforts at a “bistro” menu, but despite the packaging, the flavor, price, and ingredients all made it rather hard to swallow.