We had a member, Helen, share her family's Oven Hangi with us this week. Do you know what Hangi is? I'd never heard of it, so @Helen Harris thank you sharing in the Cooking Skool. Hangi is a traditional Māori way of cooking. Dig a pit, heat rocks with fire, wrap the food in wet sacks, cover with soil, leave it for hours to steam. Helen's family does an oven version instead. Custom packs wrapped in cabbage leaves and foil, hot oven for an hour, then low and slow for 2-3 hours to steam. Same spirit, no digging required. This is what I love about Cooking Skool. It's not just recipes and technique. It's members sharing how they actually cook at home, traditions and all. Right now it's $5/year to join. That goes up beginning of next month, so if you've been curious, now's a good time to jump in, esp if you want quick, fast healthy meals made for family in under 30mins. https://www.skool.com/cooking-skool-6111

There's no such thing as curry powder in an Indian kitchen. None. Not in mine growing up. Not in my mum's. Not in my grandma's. Curry powder was invented in Britain. A shortcut. One blend, mixed to taste vaguely "Indian" for people who didn't grow up cooking Indian dishes. Real Indian cooking doesn't work off just one blend mixed together. It works off spices. Whole ones. Ground ones. Added at different times, in different amounts, for different dishes. Whole mustard and Cumin Seeds, ground coriander, chilli and turmeric and garam masala at the end. That's not more complicated. It's not scary either. It's just 7 spices, used properly, instead of one blend. What do you use? One blend of curry powder, or building it up spice by spice?

You know when you belong to several Skool communities and you start scrolling through your feed... There's Sarah's event. Oh look, there's Sarah's event again. And... yep. Sarah's event. Same picture. Same headline. Same words. Copy. Paste. Next community. Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with promoting your event in different communities, in fact, I think you SHOULD be getting it out of your own little corner of Skool and putting it in front of new people. 𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝗱𝗼 𝘄𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗲 𝗴𝗼? Apart from being a little bit boring, I think it's a wasted opportunity. If I'm promoting an event in Skool Events Daily, I might talk about the 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲, what you're going to walk away knowing, doing or understanding. If I were promoting that same event here in the Classifieds, I might tell you 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝗜 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝘁, share a cracking testimonial, tell you something about me, or approach the whole thing from a completely different angle. Same event. Different reason to stop and read. There's a fair chance some of the people in here are also members of the other communities you're posting in. Give them something NEW to discover rather than making them think... “𝗢𝗵, 𝗜'𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗹𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁.” And scroll straight past. We actually talked about this in this week's Skool Events Daily publication in an article about @Shannon Boyer's 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗸𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗱𝘀 and why I think these two communities complement each other rather beautifully. And because it would be spectacularly hypocritical of me to copy and paste the whole bloody article into the Classifieds after everything I've just said... 😂 𝗜'𝗺 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗹𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗶𝗰𝘀. I'm curious though, when you promote the same thing in several communities, do you change the post? Or have I just caught a few of you with your finger hovering over 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱 + 𝗩? 👀

Our first recipe inside Cooking Skool was simple tomato sauce. Not fancy. Not complicated. Just tomato sauce. (recipe below) Onion. Garlic. A tin of tomatoes. That's it. Because that's where confidence starts. Not with a ten-ingredient dish. With one you can actually make, and make well. And here's the thing. Once you know that base, you can go anywhere with it. Add mince, it's bolognese. Spread it on dough, it's pizza. Can't eat tomatoes? Swap in beetroot and carrot instead. Same method, same sauce, no nightshades. It's called nomato sauce. (recipe below) That's what Cooking Skool is. Learn one thing properly. Then use it a hundred ways. No jargon. No assuming you already know the basics. Just real cooking, one step at a time. Cooking Skool currently only $5 yr if you want to learn simple healthy quick meals come and join us. I've popped the recipes below, they are so versatile, easy to make and delicious too. https://www.skool.com/cooking-skool-6111

I was talking to one of my clients this week about why her posts weren't landing in a community she'd joined. She was posting good stuff. Nobody was replying. The problem wasn't the posts. It was that nobody in there knew who she was. @Heather Wilson also agreed. Have a look at the feed in The Skool Classifieds (this community you are reading this in), and you'll see it. People turn up, post about their own thing, and leave. Post and ghost. Then they wonder why 2,000 members scrolled past it. It's the same in every other community I'm in, and it was the same in mine before I worked it out. Think about how it works in a room. If someone walks in, talks about themselves for two minutes and walks out, nobody follows them to the door. But if they'd spent twenty minutes talking to people first, they'd have half the room listening when they finally said something. A feed is the same room. It just moves slower. What I'd do instead is pick the communities where the members might plausibly want what you do. Not every community you're in, the adjacent ones. Then spend 5 to 10 minutes commenting on other people's posts. Not "great post". Something that shows you read it. Five to ten posts. Ten minutes. Do that for a couple of weeks before you post anything of your own. Two things happen. People recognise your name when you finally post, so they stop and read instead of scrolling. And a fair few of them turn up in your comments, because that's what people do when someone's been showing up in theirs. Works the same way here as it does anywhere else. Classifieds, someone else's community, your own. Nobody replies to a stranger, and ten minutes a day is what it costs to stop being one. The faster version of this is turning up live. If you want to see who's running events across Skool this week, that's what Skool Events Daily is for.