New Web - hRecipeHelper released!

Do you like to blog recipes but don't use Chrome? No problem! Now you can use my new web version of hRecipeHelper in any moder browser. I know it works with FireFox 3.6 and up as well as IE8, I can only assume it works with IE9 if IE8 works. I haven't tested on IE9 and Safari because I don't have them and can't even run IE9. If you trying it out and find bugs please post a comment here and I'll have it fixed asap.

Just like the Chrome Extension its free, Enjoy!

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!

Dragonflies everywhere!

In the summer our backyard is a buzz with hoards of hovering dragonflies! Its largely due to a nice little pond we built and all of the flowers and such which draw in more then enough for 1000s of dragonflies to consume. This is perfectly fine with us because the guys have a special place in our harts, something of a spiritual creature in our own little mythos. I drew one that landed on a stalk of corn a while back and I'm missing my backyard friends right now so I post while we sit moving firmly into Spring here.

I have also suddenly realized that I have never posted my art work here and it seems especially remiss since I list sketching as one of my blogs interests AND the drawing is garden related. Time to get on that eh? I have a few more garden related works to post so more will follow!

GardenDroid Update 1 week later!

Well its been over a week since I planted the spinach in the my experimental mini-greenhouse and things are on the grow! As one would hope and expect the plants have germinated and up came some lovely 2" sprouts. This should happen with soil and moisture so I really can't credit the Droid with that bit of progress really but I will say that the container made a perfect humid and moist seed starter! If you need to start a bunch of seeds then a plastic storage bin might be a good option, especially if you have a few empty ones laying around after cleaning out the garage like I do!

Here's the little sprouts doing their thing after 7 days. The cord in the way is the soil moisture sensor cable.

I'll probably give the plants a week or two before thinning or transplanting the seedlings, I like to make sure they are growing well and I have another location to move some of the seedlings to so why pinch them off, might as well give them a chance elsewhere.  More to come!

It's been forever! (But I actually have stuff to write about today)

Wow it's been a long time since I posted anything but with good reason I think. It's been a rough couple of years and I haven't been feeling very "bloggish" so to speak. Finally though I have motivation and things I want to blog about!

First things first, garden report. It's winter but here in Florida that just means it is time to plant Broccoli and  did! The plants have been out in the raised bed now since some time in November and they are now on their way to producing with little inch-wide florets showing on the healthy looking plants. I specify that because I had quite a few failed plants this time around. It could be because the soil has been poorly cared for over the past year or just bad luck with sprouting because some of the sprouts were pretty leggy. No worries, the blame lies on the less then prompt actions of the gardener in this situation but just growing this single crop has really renewed my gardening motivation and a full well cared for garden is in the works for late February which is the last day of frost around here. I'm feeing motivated and seeds are about to be ordered.

OK the second thing going on that I'm pretty excited about and incidently also the cause of the less attentive start to a winter garden is a project I have been thinking about for years, an automated mini-greenhouse.  I finally started the project way back in February of last year and last night was the official first planting of a crop of Spinach.

So what is a mini-greenhouse? Well in one sentence it's an electronically maintained greenhouse which can be maintained indoors and monitored from your web browser.

This is my mini-greenhouse which I am calling The Garden Droid (you know like garden gnome?)

So what you see up there is my Garden Droid which boasts a whopping 3 sq. ft. of well lit gardening space, soil moisture monitoring, temperature logging, LED grow lights and wireless transmission of data to my computer. Coming soon it will also be self watering, monitor humidity and ambient light as well as have an upgraded wireless protocol so it can transmit small pictures of the plant growth. And I mentioned the website where I can monitor everything going on? Below is a quick snap of the web application which is used to monitor not just the Garden Droid plants but your whole garden.

The whole project is open source and built on free software with open hardware that anyone can buy and build. I will be trickling out technical details and how to's in the following weeks for anyone interested and heck if my plants grow well I might even sell kits but first lets see if I can get spinach to grow well.

Part of my motivation for this project was to be able to grow salads year round but here in FL most of the summer is not kind to regular spinach and other leafy greens, its just too darn hot and all my efforts have been a failure. I figured that since I am keeping my house artificially cool all summer and the temps would be great for growing greens, why not give it  ago? I plan to eventually get this little box powered by a solar panel collecting dust int he garage as well then there will be a net gain of energy savings though just growing at home saves oil I would think.

Anyway I am really excited about version 1 coming together and I am looking forward to the next version with the enhanced capabilities. I'll also be producing technical details which I might post here or perhaps only on my technical blog, lees2bytes not sure yet on where it belongs.

Kinda figures I was an I...

Your Personality is Very Rare (INFP)

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Flickr Garden Show

I was playing around with flickr apis and found this nifty little slideshow!