Seasoned Code

Tomato Rice

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Ingredients

• 2 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 onion (sliced)
• 1 teaspoon fresh ginger (finely chopped)
• 1 teaspoon crushed garlic (about 2 cloves if done by hand)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 15oz can chickpeas (drained)
• a few shakes of mustard seeds
• 3 roma tomatoes (quartered)
• 1 cup jasmine rice
• 2 1/2 cups water
• pepper to taste
• Garnish
  • Fresh cut onions

Instructions

1. In a large pot heat olive oil on medium-high heat. When warm, add onions and cook for about 5 minutes till starting to turn golden-brown.
2. Add ginger, garlic, cumi, chili powder, salt, chickpeas and a few shakes of mustard seeds.
3. Reduce heat to medium low, and add tomatoes and sauté for 10 minutes.
4. Add the rice and allow to coat the rice with tomato mixture. Slowly add in water and stir. Reduce heat to low and cover till rice is tender (about 20-25 minutes).
5. Prepare to serve with fresh cut onions

Inspired by

There is no website for this recipe since it came from a book! The recipe is called ‘Tomato Rice’ on page 190 from [Ultimate Vegetarian Recipes, Dempsey Parr Book published 2000, Copyright (C) Parragon 1999], mind my poor man’s citation!

Closing

Edit: 2018.08.26: I grossly overstated the olive oil and rice, I realized this after referring to it once

I had to make a number of substitutions with the recipe since I did not have all of the ingredients. For one, cumin instead of turmeric and I added mustard seeds as well since it called for onion seeds (I know not much of a similarity). Also, original recipe called for canned tomatoes and basmati rice, and I used fresh tomatoes and jasmine rice, respectfully. Overall, I felt it turned out really well. I used half the amount of chili powder, but I would recommend using the suggested of 1 tsp in the future.

Enjoy!

If a Peasant had a Microwave Roast

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Ingredients

• 1 cup mini potatoes
• 3 carrots (sliced)
• 3 celery stalkes (sliced)
• 1 15oz can pinto beans
• 1/2 onion (sliced)
• 1/2 cup frozen corn
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. In a microwave safe bowl add all ingredients.
2. Cook in microwave until potatoes are soft (roughly 25-30 minutes), stirring periodically.

Closing

If a peasant had a microwave this would be it, it is so simple and filling. You could exchange the word, ‘Peasant’ with, ‘College Student living in a dorm,’ too! ;)

Surprisingly, you can do a lot with a microwave, if you’re looking for a quick, ‘whip up a relatively nutritious meal,’ this is it!

Biscuits with Mashed Chickpeas

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Ingredients

• Mashed chickpeas
  • 2 15oz cans chickpeas
  • 1/2 teaspoon oregano
  • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
  • a shake of salt (depends on whether the chickpeas has any salt)
  • pepper
• Green beans
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • half onion (chopped)
  • 2 cups frozen green beans
  • pepper
  • salt

• Biscuits
  • 4 cups flour
  • 1/8 cup wheat germ
  • 1/4 cup Organic LIVfit Superfood Blend
  • 2 Tablespoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 3/4 cup milk
• 1 cup frozen corn

Instructions

Mashed Chickpeas

1. In a medium pot, on medium-high, pour the chickpeas w/ liquid, oregano, garlic power, salt and liberal amount of pepper then stir.
2. As liquid boils off, you have the choice of making more of a gravy or a mashed chickpea.
3. Using a potato masher mash the chickpeas until smooth.
4. Turn down the heat to a simmer.

Beans

1. In a fry pan, on medium high, add olive oil.
2. When oil is warm, add onions, and cook for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.
3. Add frozen green beans, shake or stir the beans and onions until beans are hot, add salt and pepper to heart’s content

Biscuits

1. Preheat oven at 450 degrees fahrenheit
2. Add all dry ingredients together in a bowl.
3. Add butter and mix (ideally with a stand mixer) until crumbly.
4. Add in the milk and mix until forms into a ball.
5. Roll out onto a floured surface and cut into biscuits.
   • If you want the biscuits to be more flaky/layered when they are baked do not be too critical on the consistency when rolling.
   • You can use a glass to cut the biscuits
6. Bake for 8-12 minutes.
   • Alternatively, you can flash freeze the remainder on a cookie sheet for 1-2 hours. Place them in an airtight container for future glory.
   • Defrost them in the microwave for 45 seconds to a minute (at full power) before baking.

Corn

1. Microwave the frozen corn or cook on the stove, your choice. Nothing special going on here!

Inspirations

Making this biscuit recipe will be a large batch, you will not likely need to make all, so freeze them! Also, I added some nutricious goodness with the LIVfit Superfood and wheatgerm.

Closing

This meal consisted of a few recipes all at once, but they make a pretty good combination! Originally, I was intending to make a chickpea gravy, but I boiled off a little more liquid than I intended! However, the chickpeas turned out really nicely. With the green beans if you cook them too long they will get soft since they started frozen, so do not cook too long! The biscuits go really, really well with this food combination.

Enjoy!

Quinoa Mushroom Pilaf

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Ingredients

• 1 cup dried quinoa

• 2 cups water/broth (for quinoa)

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
• 1 large yellow bell pepper (diced)
• 2 cups sliced mushrooms
• Salt and ground pepper
• 1 teaspoon dried parsley
• 1 teaspoon ‘Greek’ Seasoning
  • crushed mint
  • splash of lemon juice
  • basil
  • oregano
• 1 onion’s inner most layers (sliced) [recipe called for scallions I improvised!]
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

• 2 tablespoons olive oil (additional)

• Optional:
  • Toasted pine nuts, to garnish

Instructions

1. Prepare quinoa with water or broth.
2. A heat olive oil in a fry pan over medium heat. Add the garlic, bell pepper; and stir over medium heat until slightly softened.
3. Add the mushrooms. Start seasoning with the salt, and ground pepper, to your liking and parsley.
4. In a separate bowl, add the ‘Greek’ seasoning ingredients that come to roughly 1 teaspoon combined. Stir and cook until the mushrooms are tender.
5. Pour contents in the frypan into the pot with cooked quinoa.
6. Add the onions. Stir to combine.
7. Add in lemon juice and olive oil and toss.

Sprinkle with toasted pine nuts, if desired.

Inspiration

I did not follow this recipe to a complete T, I had to make some adjustments since I did not have all of the ingredients on hand.

Closing

This was a really zesty dish that tasted REALLY good. I had to improvise quite a bit to get this recipe to fruition. Ideally, I would have had different types of bell peppers, and have scallions but the inner most layer of an onion worked alright, too.

Also, it called for a lemon, but I had lemon juice so I worked with that. The original recipe also called for this ‘Greek’ seasoning which can be pretty easily duplicated by hand. I think I had more quinoa in this preparation, but I was happy with it.

Oh, and be careful about toasting the pine nuts if you add them, it does not take long! My second batch of pine nuts were less cooked. :)

Have fun!

Electron is it a cancer?

Electron

Last week, there was a post by Casper Beyer arguing that, ‘Electron is Cancer.’ Now, I understand the reasoning for his argument, however, I feel that it is not a fair assessment. I will preface that I have never extended or built anything on top of an app on the Electron framework, but I would like to give my few cents.

I understand that it runs, predominately, in javascript through Node.js. This allows for a rather rapid development model for extending this framework for cross platform development. The author’s argument that its performance is poor because it is not native, which is a solid case (he even did a benchmark on native apps verse electron based editors e.g. [atom and vs code]).

Visual Studio Code

This IDE is amazing! On top of that it runs on my under-performing laptop that is more a brick than it is the former (you work with what you got)! Since I run in a Linux environment, naturally, Visual Studio Proper does not work, and I had been using a native IDE, MonoDevelop for a number of years, but since .Net Core was released the functionality just has not been keeping up in features for which VS Code has been invested with. I will admit, it’s been over a year since I have used it.

I had tried using Project Rider an IDE that utilizes Resharper for the .Net environment. Maybe it was that I had tested it out in its early phases, but the performance was so bad that my poor little laptop could not even start up the IDE.

Is Visual Studio Code perfect? No, but something new is released every month, and to top it off my pc still handles it and there are always new extensions being developed for VS Code. The detriment of using native apps is that it must be compiled in each environment and using Node.js will be available in these other environments for you already.

Are the suggested apps always better?

On a slight tangent, I have gone through numerous Desktop Environments that just never panned out. Oddly enough, I have been using Mate (a fork of Gnome 2) on Ubuntu for a number of months now and so far that has been a really good setup. It has been argued that it is not the preferred environment for low resourced systems, but that will be a discussion for another day!

Closing

Do I think Electron and its child projects is Cancer? No, I do not. It is just another tool to get the job done. If the market favours a more efficient environment then resources will be poured into it. Nothing lasts forever and something new will come along, eventually. Also, we can always work on improving the resource management of existing applications and frameworks. Simply put, if you like using other editors, feel free, and more power to you! I wrote this post with Gnu nano. ;)