Skip to content

Cranberries and Raisins Don’t Mix Well

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Or, perhaps it was the apple? Today’s meal was curried vegetables and rice. Since I use a rice cooker, I’ve been wanting to try cooking “extra” stuff in the rice at the same time. I added some raisins to the rice. It did a nice job of cooking the rice and plumping up the raisins, without seeming to absorb too much of the water for the raisins. But, it did leave the beginnings of a backed on layer on the bottom, from the raisins. The cooker is pretty new, so the non-stick bottom worked well anyways, and it didn’t burn. The previous time, I had soaked the raisins in hot water while rice was cooking and then just mixed them together before serving. Flavor was a little more separated when I did that, which I think I like better, so now I know.

While rice was cooking, I sliced up a large potato and a large onion and steamed them for a bit. Also added a medium carrot and green pepper.

I used a 50g package of powdered coconut milk and water, together with a package of curry. Directions said to mix curry and coconut milk, then boil the vegetables, but I didn’t trust that, so I steamed them for about 10 minutes before putting them into the curry sauce to finish boiling/cooking together.

I also added cranberries (they go great with curry!), and a sliced apple.

Well, the result was fairly good, but overall the meal was a little sweet. Also, I couldn’t really taste the cranberry, the raisins were overpowering, even though it was about equal mixes of the two berries. So, next time only one or the other. Perhaps the apple contributed too, but it was a subtle taste, so I don’t think that was the major problem.

We’ll see how it tastes as a leftover tomorrow.

Filed in Cooking, Daily Living, Food | Tagged , | Comments

Google as a poor man’s OCR

Friday, February 13, 2009

I was reading a couple days ago a post comparing different OCR programs. Turns out that Google’s own proprietary OCR engine is often better under some circumstances. It seems they’ve adjusted it to use specific handling for many more use cases.

So, I’ve scanned the first two pages of my upcoming semester book. You can read the Chinese here:

http://china.panlogicsoftware.com/ocr/Chapter16.pdf

Hopefully in a few days, Google will have scanned and OCR’ed it. Will let you know!

Filed in Chinese, Software, study | Tagged | Comments

One Laptop per Child and fast browsing

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Here’s a little different viewpoint on the OLPC XO program, from a web browser performance perspective.

This guy works at Google (near the top, btw) and normally writes about optimization, but this small blog entry deals with the OLPC XO program, so I thought it would be interesting regardless.

Of course, if you’re into fast browsers <smile> then perhaps all of the other blog entries are interesting too.

http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2008/12/26/sharing-olpc-xo/

Filed in Links, Software | Tagged | Comments Off

Is this site too difficult for comments?

Monday, February 9, 2009

Not withstanding the rather mundane quality or lack of regular posts, I’m wondering if it’s just too hard to register on the site (for real people, I mean).

Please let me know.

Filed in Daily Living | Tagged , | Comments

Coriander Pesto and Cranberries Over Noodles

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Tonight I continued my experiments with “unusual” noodle dishes, albeit still Western in style and flavor (see my other published experiment on curried spaghetti here: http://panlogicsoftware.com/wordpress/2008/11/curried-spaghetti/

I started by dry roasting a single layer of large pine nuts in a 14” pan. That usually leaves enough to put away in the fridge, and still have some for the current dish. You have to watch this carefully, as the nuts will go from white to “burnt-through” black very quickly, and taking away from the flame (I use gas here) doesn’t help because the pan is hot!  Fortunately, they start to glisten early on, and you can stir and scoop and flip them over repeatedly to keep from scorching them. It usually takes a couple minutes for this.

At the same time, I usually start the water heating, although with gas, it heats quickly, and one could wait until the nuts were finished to start it.

I peeled about 6 pieces of garlic (about 1/3 head) and sliced into thick slices. Thin slices burn, and also loose flavor, I think. I wiped out the pan from the pine nuts, to remove little bits of nut (so it wouldn’t have a burnt taste), and then added some olive oil, and the garlic slices. I washed up about 4 green onion stalks, breaking then in to pieces by hand (not cut). This leaves both small and larger “tubes” of onion, giving a good range of taste in my opinion.

When I started cooking the garlic, I also had the water boiling already (so, I guess start it with the roasting … you can always turn it down), and I added enough elbow macaroni for a couple meals. I’m using a small jar of coriander pesto, and I decided to use the whole jar, hence the extra noodles. It makes two meals, and I don’t have to cook up noodles, etc. for the second meal this way.

After onion and garlic have cooked to a nice brown garlic and somewhat clear onions (translucent I guess), then I added the pesto to cook a bit. I also added a small handful of the pine nuts, and a little extra “spaghetti spice” from a jar, since I like to improvise. I learned THAT from my wife! It’s a good way to learn what spices will do to the food, as long as you don’t add too much!  (Been there, done that! 8^) )

When the noodles are finished, drain in a colander and shake to get out extra water. Wash the colander immediately, because the starch from the noodles is hard to clean off if not done right away!

Put the noodles in the large pan with the pesto, garlic, onions, nuts, etc. and stir it up until all the noodles are well coated. You could add a little butter and a little milk but I didn’t do that this time.

Oh! almost forgot the cranberries!  I added them before the pesto, and let them simmer with the garlic and onion.

Finally, I cut up some small squares of a soft creamy cheese (don’t know the name since I threw the outside package away a week ago). That turned out to be a welcome surprise. It gave unexpected creamy and a little sweetness to the taste at times. The cranberries also gave occasional tastes of, well, cranberry. I learned that trick in a restaurant (that I was eating at) about 20 years ago. They really add taste to both pesto and curried dishes.

The dish was exceptionally good. Comments?

Filed in Daily Living | Tagged | Comments