On July 30, Jennifer James was in a little fix. She needed a certain cookie recipe, but all she knew was that it had appeared some time ago in Texas Co-op Power magazine.
Can you guess what she did next?
A. She went to her tidy little Texas Co-op Power recipe filing system and quickly pulled out the recipe.
B. She went online to the new and improved www.TexasCoopPower.com.
If you answered “A,” we can only imagine you have more time on your hands than James or most of our other readers.
James, 33, is a busy homemaker who cares for two young kids and her husband, Mark. They are members of two electric cooperatives: Jackson Electric at their home in Edna and Victoria Electric at a fishing cottage on Garcitas Creek in southern Victoria County. Like most readers, the Jameses are ill suited as historians, even just to clip and sort recipes each month—and having piles of magazine archives is simply unmanageable.
James says she isn’t a regular visitor to the magazine’s website, so she didn’t know that the magazine’s staff had, only moments earlier on the same day, launched its redesigned website. She didn’t know that searching for recipes is now easier than ever: Just type in a keyword (for example, you’ll find many listings under “cookie”), or search by selecting a course or key ingredients.
What matters is this: James found a cookie recipe (not the one she was searching for initially, but one she thought was just as good or better), and she found the website inviting enough that she decided to register for it. It took less than 30 seconds.
Thus, James was the first of many hundreds of Texas electric co-op members who have visited and registered for the new website.
Why register? Among other things, registered co-op members can instantly log in to enter popular recipe and photo contests, post events on the expanded online events calendar, and sign up for a free e-mail newsletter to make sure they don’t miss the latest co-op news, Texas feature stories and statewide happenings. Registered users can even save recipes and stories to a personal “favorites” list.
James expects she’ll be back. After all, she’s on a mother’s quest to find dishes her kids will eat.
“I like the recipes,” she says. “I like to try new things and with two picky kids, it’s always, ‘Oh, my kids won’t eat that.’ ”
