RECIPOSITORY: What do you think?

Earlier on this year, I had rather interesting idea on how to combine my two passions, computer science, and cooking! I think I came up with the perfect idea. I will make a computer I have to feed!

No, I'm only joking, that's not my idea. My real idea is to create a web application where users can create an account and browse multitudes of recipes. A repository of recipes. Recipository!

That's been done before, so whats so unique about this idea? The main feature list is the following:

• Ability to schedule any type of meal by day in a calendar-like interface. You can add any number of meals to a day, but typical ones are breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack thrown in for good measure.
  
• The system will AUTOMATICALLY generate a grocery shopping list of all the stuff you need for your meal "schedule". This list can be printed in the order things appear in your local grocery store! Talk about streamlined!
• If you're the kind who likes to eat healthy, you can enter a target amount of calories or have your meals selected from certain "health" categories.
  
• If you're the budget oriented type, you can select a minimum and maximum amount of coin to spend in the grocery trip and it will automatically find you cheaper alternatives to some ingredients and meals.
• If you just want to click-n-go, you can have the system select from pre-defined groups, or your own presets.
• Integration with online grocery shopping. Click and go TO THE EXTREME.
  
• ... and so much more!

The whole idea was birthed from my laziness to figure out what to make. I'm sure many other students have been in the same trouble, so why not leave a comment and tell me what you think?

The system is about half way through development... but I'd still love to hear some comments or suggestions about this!

Why is junk food so much more satisfying?

Being in computer science involves long, late night hours. I'm talking going to Middlesex college at 9pm and not leaving until 8am the next morning. No word of a lie, go there any time and you'll see at least 3 computer science students staying over night.

So, naturally long midnight shifts require some sort of nourishment. For most CS students, its chips, pop, candy... mostly junk. Anyway, the point is, I wish I had that junk food right now. And I ran out of nuts because I've been too busy to shop lately! Nuts were at least better than this!

There's something about making one of these that just doesn't work when combined with programming.

Veggie Stuffed Peppers

I was making a tomato herb salmon tonight in the oven, and in an attempt to use up items in the fridge, it was suggested to me that making tomato veggie stuffed peppers would nicely compliment the flavour.

Here's what I came up with on the fly!

Ingredients:

• Bell peppers (3)
• Tomato sauce (I had some left-over home made stuff, but you can use canned just as well)
• Zucchini (1/4 cup diced)
• Mushrooms (1/4 diced)
• Garlic (2 cloves)
• Onion (1/4 cup diced)
• Rice (1 cup)
• Butter (4 tsp.)
• Fresh mozzarella cheese (much tastier than the mass produced stuff!)
  
• Salt
• Pepper
• Basil
  

Instructions:

1. Chop the zucchini, mushrooms, garlic, and onion finely. Grate the mozzarella and set aside.
2. Carve the bell peppers like a pumpkin, and scoop out the insides. Rinse out and set aside.
3. In a small pot, add water and rice and butter (2 tsp.). Keep at medium heat until the rice is cooked.
4. In a medium saucepan, heat butter (2 tsp) until melted. When hot, add the garlic and onion. It should sizzle lightly.
5. When the onion and garlic are golden brown, add the zucchini and mushroom. Cook until tender.
6. Fill a medium pot 3/4 full with water. Place the peppers in it and bring to a boil. When the water is boiling check the peppers for tenderness. You want them to be soft enough but not complete mush. I don't really know how to describe it any better than that. I took mine out about 3-4 minutes into the boil.
7. When the rice is done cooking, add it to the mushroom and zucchini. Add pepper, salt and basil to taste. Mix well.
8. In a glass oven dish, place the peppers so that they stand upright and spoon the rice & mushroom mix into the peppers. Pack it tightly in there!
9. Drizzle the tomato sauce over the peppers so that a good portion of them is covered. I also think putting some sauce inside would have been good, but I didn't think of it at the time.
10. Sprinkle the mozzarella over the peppers, and bake for 20 minutes at 350F.
11. Remove from the oven and let the peppers stand for 5 minutes.
12. Serve!

And the winner is....

Congratulations Thinking Revised! You've won the first weekly MIT2412 blogging award!


Written in a more serious tone, Thinking Revised always prompts me to think a little bit harder about (mostly US) political happenings, and their would-be implications on us Canadians. Never missing a beat or a post, Thinking Revised has had an excellent week of posts.

Now, lets get this going. What the author of Thinking Revised has to do, is make a post on his blog with one of the images he likes, and about how he's won this award. The images can be found here.

Then at the end of the week, he should nominate three blogs he thinks have had a good week in posts. Mull it over a little on the weekend, and then decide who he thinks should win.

When he's ready to pass the award on next Monday, he can put the little glass trophy icon in his sidebar to let others know he's won previously! You can find the code at the bottom of the post, here.

Thats it! Congratulations again, and lets get this award going!

ATTENTION MIT2412: New blogging award!

Have you thought blogging awards such as "The Lemonade Stand" award were pretty fun and awesome? Well, now you too could potentially have an award for your blog!

Every week, we're required to post 5 blog posts. We're all busy university students, so, naturally some weeks will have more / better quality posts than others. Why not be rewarded for time and effort spent on them!

Here's the lowdown:

1. At the end of the week, nominate 3 other blogs of students in MIT2412.
2. Over the weekend, think about who you think the award should go to.
3. On the following Monday, make a blog post about who you've selected as the winner!
4. The winner can then make a blog post and place one of the following images on their blog. Their post should also have a backlink to the person who gave the award to them. Don't just pick your friends, explain why you nominated them.
   
5. The person who passes the award on can add a smaller version of the trophy to their sidebar, using the HTML widget code at the bottom of this post.
6. To be fair, you may only win once!

A day late, but I'll get us started. Here are my nominees:

1. Laur Lore: Exploring Lunacy, Lies, and Folklore - Her posts are more complete than an encyclopedia.
   
2. Thinking: Revised - Plentiful and well thought out posts, written in a quizzical writing style.
   
3. Magda and the Great White North - She will not get off my feed! ... Which means she's posting quite a bit.
   

Check back on Monday to see who won!!

Here are various images you may link to, depending on the color scheme in your blog:

(The last photo has a transparent background. Blogger puts in the border...)

and here is the picture and HTML widget code for your "I'm a previous winner" sidebar:

<div style="border: 0px; text-align: center; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;">
<a style="text-align: center; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" href="http://flavourfiasco.blogspot.com/2009/03/attention-mit2412-new-blogging-award.html"><img style="border: 0px none ;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4mcR3TbVwKZ4ltxuhJgPCymyE1CBH4pY0KkRTZLb49GpwinbPdLJNpNn49uzQ0IMfIso8_zwZAj0b1yZxsyDJxs_f1dhych0ZsFgIvC8yyeUsG-ISB4Gv_DrnM5mLeJ19pHYwcmGA7Sa7/s320/award_small.png" /></a>
<p style="text-align: center; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;">I've won the 'MIT 2412: Best week in blogging' award!</p>
</div>

Copy and paste that code into an HTML sidebar widget and you're ready to rock.