More testing for my hRecipeHelper Chrome Extension, I'm adding new features! Check it out here

Curried Chickpea Stew with Spinach

Lee

Published 03/21/2011

A hearty curried stew

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, peeled and chopped
• 15 oz can chickpeas, rinsed
• 1 cup trimmed fresh spinach
• 2 tsp curry powder
• 1 tsp fresh ground pepper
• 1 cup water
• 4 oz baked tofu, cut into small pieces

Instructions

1. Heat oil in soup pot. Saute the onion and garlic in the oil for a few minutes.
2. Add the chickpeas, spinach, curry powder, pepper, and water. Cook together, stirring as spinach wilts, for about 5 minutes.
3. Take 1 cup of the pot contents and puree in blender to thicken.
4. Add back to the pot. Add tofu pieces and cook for a few more minutes.

Yield: 4 Servings

Prep Time: 0:10

Cook time: 0:20

Tags: soup, chickpea

hRecipeHelper - new Chrome Extension for Bloggers

A little while back Google announced a new Recipe Search function that can search just recipes and then filter the results on various components in the recipe as well as cook time and calories. Now that's how you can rapidly dissolve the agonizing question of "What's for dinner?" into immediate action! To do this Google is relying on a nifty standard called microformats and specifically in this case the hRecipe format.

What hRecipe provides is a standard of coding HTML which reveals to bots or other programs the exact meaning of the web pages content, specifically the data values it contains. As a programmer who has written website scraping programs more then once in the past, this sort of formatting is a wonderful and accessible way to publish data. Unfortunately HTML is not exactly everyone's best skill, in fact I am willing to bet that most people don't know HTML and would very much like to avoid ever knowing HTML. Honestly, those people are perfectly reasonable, why should they?

I started thinking of people I know who are advanced computer users who simply don't have the time or interest in learning to write web pages and realized that while microformats are freaking awesome to a developer they are still a bit demanding to the cook that just wants to share her favorite recipes with the world. I saw this as a chance to give a little something back to the blogging world and perhaps selfishly get even more great recipes turning up in Google's search. I've written a nifty Chrome Extension called hRecipeHelper to help recipe bloggers easily post nice looking; hRecipe (and Google) compliant recipes by simply filling out a recipe card and copying the code into their favorite blogging site. All the site needs to do is support posting of basic HTML which Blogger, LiveJournal and most other blog platforms support.

Click to get it now!

I hope this will help get even more recipes on the web and further the microformats cause.

Test Recipe for my hRecipeHelper Plugin.

I wrote a Chrome Extension and it helps format Recipes so they are easily indexed by the new Google Recipe search. The formatting is really simple html but its a lot of trouble to type up a recipe with HTML so this will help apply the current hRecipe micro-formatting rules so you don't have to worry with it.

Anyway I'm testing with this recipe, its my favorite way to cook catfish and its yummy and hot!

Barlow's Blackened Catfish

Indianabarlow, allrecipies.com

Published 03/15/2011

Cajun catfish served up with just the right touch of spices and flavor. This entree is perfect for a quick, excellent way to taste the unique flavor of catfish mixed with the traditional method of down south cooking, just without all the fat. Serve on top of white rice.

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
• 2 teaspoons lemon pepper
• 2 teaspoons garlic powder
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 teaspoons pepper
• 1 pound catfish fillets
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup Italian-style salad dressing

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a medium baking dish.
• In a shallow, medium bowl, mix cayenne pepper, lemon pepper, garlic powder, salt and pepper.
• Brush both sides of catfish fillets with butter. Rub fillets with the cayenne pepper mixture on both sides.
• Heat a large heavy skillet over medium-high heat until really hot. Add fillets, and fry approximately 2 minutes on each side, until slightly blackened.
• Arrange blackened fillets in a single layer in the prepared baking dish, and coat with Italian-style salad dressing. Bake 30 to 35 minutes in the preheated oven, until fish is easily flaked with a fork.

Yield:4 Servings

Prep Time:10

Cook time:40

Nutrition

Calories: 471
Fat: 22

Tags: catfish, entree

GardenDroid Update Week 7-ish

Well now it has been about 7 weeks since I planted my Spinach and I thought it was very much time for an update. Sadly I don't have any impressive news to report though as they say in Meet The Robinsons "from failure you learn, success, not so much." While I'm not willing to call round one a failure I this its about done.  I have learned plenty and thats no failure!

In retrospect I believe that spinach was not the right choice for this sort for lighting experiment. It requires full sun, something I had noticed right after planting and decided to live with. I was hoping that my lighting would be close enough and I believe its  just a little bit away from close enough to cause the plants to be leggy and fail to thrive. So with that said I'll be giving the greens that have a partial sun rating a run in the grow box here in the next week. Being a big softy, I'll move the spinach outside and see if they can recover enough from their starvation sun diet to flourish and produce. They may be lost but, it's the least I can do for them right?

Well as much as it is a total drag to report a failed experiment I hope its useful for anyone else looking into the project. I did promise to report my findings no matter the outcome which a number of these projects on the web haven't done, they just sort of drop the topic (yes I assume thats a failure because I know I would be singing aloud if there was success!)  One interesting thing I have found is the container keeps moisture fairly well which has kept watering to a minimal while soil moisture levels have been very high. I am wondering how this might all work out if I moved the box outside and skipped the LED aspect?  Humm more experiments will follow...

Ok I'm ready to grow some mixed greens!