Recipe: Spicy Vegetable Sauce

Ingredients

• Oil: 1 tablespoon
• Asafoetida powder: 1/2 teaspoon
• Zucchinis: 3, sliced
• Capsicum: 1, seeded, and cut into thick strips
• Pumpkin: 1 cup, cubed
• Potato: 1, peeled, coarsely chopped
• Water: 2 cups
• Turnip: 1, cut in half and sliced lengthwise
• Chickpeas: 1 cup, cooked and drained
• Tomatoes: 4, diced
• Coriander powder: 1 teaspoon
• Cumin powder: 1 teaspoon
• Turmeric powder: 1 teaspoon
• Black pepper (ground): 1/2 teaspoon
• Hot green chillies: 2, finely chopped
• Salt: 1 teaspoon
• Fructose sugar: 1/2 teaspoon
• Coriander leaves

Method

1. Heat the oil in a pan.
2. Add the asafoetida, zucchinis, capsicum, pumpkin, potato, and turnips.
3. Saute for 10 minutes.
4. Add 1 cup water and bring to a boil.
5. Reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
6. Add chickpeas, tomatoes, coriander powder, cumin powder, turmeric powder, black pepper, chillies, salt, and sugar.
7. Add 1 cup water and stir well.
8. Let simmer for 15 minutes and set aside.

Serving Suggestion

Garnish with coriander leaves and serve hot.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Me Against The Tech

Okay. It’s not technically all tech in consideration… I’m writing about the specific domain of software and related hardware.

How many times have we encountered folks throw up their arms and exclaim, “Oh I’m just hopeless with this tech.”

And what’s the “tech” in question?

Most times… something as asinine as getting a word-processor to not nudge a chart into la-la land on some other page.

Yet, it’s amazing how much effort people put in to learning hip and cool hard-to-use tech even if simpler and effective alternatives exist. Plus of course the smug superiority of those-who-know is a major barrier for widespread use of best-practices.

Or perhaps, folks just like the pain of it all. (Yay for the appeal of sweeping generalizations.)

Testimonials for software…

Testimonials galore!

Testimonials for software are wildly rampant. They range from endorsements to scathing rants about operating systems, compilers, web browsers, games to productivity suites.

And they’re no different from the various gimmicks marketed on tele-shopping networks.

Rational logic seems to head out to lunch when “expert” opinions come forth at dizzying rates, when the distinction between belief, opinion, extrapolation and fact gets blurred, where the writers resort to “neat” tricks that show off their “mastery”.

However, it’s not just software. We are now sifting through more mis-information than ever, where “research” and “reporting” seem to be  pulling numbers and statements out of your most-favorite-anatomical-organ.

Rediscovering the Cimmerian

The muscle-bound screen-hero goes grunt-grunt in technicolor bloodletting glory in the Conan movies, and it’s terrificly entertaining.

Still, Hollywood can’t hold a candle to the original!

Robert E. Howard’s tales of Conan the Cimmerian make for a great read as a book, even if it is now fashionable to loathe laying to waste a few trees.

provenance

n. a place of origin, as of a work of art

petersham

n.

1. a thick corded ribbon used to stiffen belts, etc
2. a heavy woolen fabric used for coats, etc
3. a kind of overcoat made of such fabric

sleeping policeman

n. a bump built across a road to deter motorists from speeding

uprear

vb (tr). to lift up; raise

white sale

n. a sale of household linens at reduced price

operant

1. adj. producing effects ; operating
2. n. a person or thing that operates
3. pyschol any response by an organism that is not directly caused by stimulus