Awesome Mother's Day, with a little help from Twitter

I wanted to make my wife something Italian for Mother's day.  I found a great recipe on a random blog (everything I need to know I learned from blogs), copied it down, then headed upstairs to put the kids to bed. Afterwards I ran out the door, and of course I forgot the recipe.

I had my iPhone with me, so could have attempted to browse the web and find the random blog on the painfully slow cellular connection and tiny screen, but I would have surely become frustrated and given up.  Instead, I decided to do the modern day equivalent of "phoning a friend", I sent out a tweet:

About 30 seconds later, I got my first sarcastic reply (it was Saturday about 10 PM after all):

But about a minute later, I got a helpful reply

Monica, author of the amazing blog Pixel Perfect had linked to this amazing Chicken Brie Pasta (with pinenuts!).  It took me a long time to figure out what Brie Cheese is (they were literally kicking me out the door ... "sir, we're closed now"), but once I did I was in good shape.  Monica even sent a follow-up tweet:

Which was very helpful because I surely wouldn't have cut the rhine off given that one minute earlier I didn't know what Brie cheese is.  The pasta was AMAZING.  If I had any food photography skills, I would post a picture, but I don't.

I've never met Monica before, but that's the power of Twitter.  You can leverage an expanded circle of "friends".  Facebook never would have done the job because my "friends" are too small and intimate, and the newsfeed is "filtered" so you don't see things in real-time.  Twitter is real-time, which means 99% of my followers will never see my message, but that's okay, because 10 people did see it and one was able to help.

I can't wait till BlogFrog has an iPhone app and I can get quick answers from like-minded people in my favorite communities!  Thanks Monica, and thanks social media!