Tonight I was driving home dancing to the radio and using my legs to steer the car.  I came to an intersection that I needed to turn at and my jeans couldn't get enough friction to turn the wheel.  This has to be the most frustrating part of driving with your knees.  I am sure I am not the only one who finds themselves in this situation either.  My wife suggested a good solution to this problem, putting rubber in the knee area of your jeans.  You could keep them in the car and then strap them on when a good song comes on.  What do you think?

I have a vision of a future where programmers compete in televised events like athletes.  This future is similar to present day South Korea and their televised startcraft competitions.  I want to watch a show that alternates between showing source code and then programmers writing it.  I imagine these athletes (programmers) would be sponsored by companies like starbucks and logitech. 

A sign of a programmer athlete is a mighty clicker muscle.  The clicker muscle is the one that flexes whenever you click your mouse.

Do you have any ideas for other geeky challenges that could be televised? 

For a couple of years my wife and I have kept our commonly used vegetables on a nice serving platter on our counter.  This is an easy way to keep track of how many onions, garlic, potatoes, and any other common items you have on hand.  We simply keep our platter stocked in abundance.  I encourage you to keep your vegetables out like you would fruit.  It not only is handy when you are cooking, but it also adds a variety of color to your countertop.  We keep the vegetables that we use less frequently in the crisper.  We do find that this collection changes with the season too, where winter squash and summer vegetables circulate.  Here is our current stock of common vegetables.

Below is a list of my favorite cheap recipes to make.  All of them are vegetarian and all of them are good.  With the depression lurking and people trying to tighten their belts and spending, I think it is only appropriate that we all try to cook more healthy cheap food.  That is not to say that all of these meals are healthy, but they are going to be better for you in the sense that they are cheap, you cooked it, and there is no meat involved.  If you do not currently cook the majority of your weekly meals then I encourage you to first and foremost not buy any prepared foods.  To get you cooking more it is best if you also avoid the frozen foods section of the grocery store completely.  Another tip if you are just getting into cooking most of your meals is to become vegetarian or cutback drastically on your meat.  I am not vegetarian, but I do enjoy the novelty that cooking vegetarian food encourages.

Veggie Burgers with Fried Potatoes

This is a Bittman adaptation.  He has a section in his How to Cook Everything Vegetarian covering veggie burgers.  Once you read this section you will soon realize that you can make anything into a burger pattie, minus meat.  I would say that I enjoy these more than actual burgers too, they are quite enjoyable, and very cheap to make.  The following will make 8 patties and when you combine with fried potatoes or sweet potato fries your set.

Ingredients:

1 can garbanzo beans

1 medium onion

1 egg

1/2 cup rolled oats

salt and pepper

1-2 cloves garlic (optional)

1 dash cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes (optional)

1 tablespoon chili powder (optional)

Steps:

1. Combine all of the above in a food processor, I use the chop or mix settings and pulse it until it is mostly smooth

2. Heat a skillet and form the mix in step 1 (with wet hands) into patties

3. Cook each burger on the skillet

For the fried potatoes I do the following:

1. Cut red potatoes into coin size slivers

2. Heat a nonstick pan on high heat, add butter

3. When the butter is melted add the potatoes

4. While cooking top the potatoes with heavy salt, pepper, and fresh thyme

5. When the potatoes are mostly browned they are done

Jamaican Style Rice Casserole

This is a combination of a Bittman recipe, the Joy of Cooking guide to cooking rice, and feedback from my wife.  This is a hearty dish and is also super simple to make.  One of the best parts of rice casseroles in general is that you can embed a large variety of flavors.  One variation idea is to add mango in addition to the pineapple, and to counter this with more pepper.

Ingredients:

1 can coconut milk

1 cup long grain rice

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 15oz can chopped pineapple

2 cans kidney beans

1 large onion, chopped

5 cloves minced garlic (if you like garlic add more)

1 bell pepper

Steps:

1. Heat oil in a pan on med-high heat, then add the onion and cook till translucent

2. Add the garlic, beans, and pepper, cook 5 more minutes (you can use an immersion blender at this point for the beans)

3. Heat the oven to 350 degrees

4. Stir in the rice, pineapple, coconut milk, pepper flakes, salt and pepper, add thyme if you want, bring to a gentle boil then turn heat off

5. Place the mixture in a baking dish and place in the oven for 30-45 minutes.  You may need to add water during this time if the rice remains crunchy in parts.

Granola Encrusted French Toast with Berry Compote and Vanilla Yogurt Cheese

This is a recipe that my wife and I created after eating a similar item at Zell's in Portland.  They used corn flakes to encrust their bread, and a different style for the cheese.  Warning, this may cause you to stop using syrup on your breakfast items, I know we no longer own any.  Below is a picture from Sunday's version of this recipe that I created.  Another great thing about this recipe is it should take only 15 minutes to make, max.

Ingredients:

8 slices of bread

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

2 eggs

1 cup milk

1 cup vanilla yogurt (If you use whole milk vanilla you can omit the cream cheese)

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon cream cheese (optional)

6 oz berries of your choice, blueberries work well (frozen work work well)

1 bag of granola (I like the archer farms granola cereal)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Steps:

1. Wisk the milk, eggs, 1 tablespoon sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla in mixing bowl

2. Put the berries in a bowl and put in the microwave for 1 minute 30 seconds on high

3. Put the cream cheese in a small bowl and put in the microwave for about a minute on high

4. Heat a skillet, add butter to it, medium-high heat

5. Put granola on a plate and break it apart if needed, I use a pestle for breaking apart

6. Take a piece of bread and soak in the mix from step 1, next encrust it with the granola in step 6 by rubbing the wet bread over the granola, finally add it to the pan to cook, repeat for each slice of bread until the mix is all gone.

7. Combine yogurt and 1 tablespoon of sugar or honey in a small bowl.

8. To serve I put the bread on a plate and keep the yogurt, berries, and cream cheese separate.  Put a spoon in each bowl and let each person add however much of each they desire.  This is good because some people like it more bitter while others will enjoy more of the cream cheese and yogurt.  Just top the bread with however much you desire :)

BBQ and Caramelized Onion Pizza

This is an instant favorite for anyone who eats it.  I end up cooking one of these almost every other week it seems.  Pizza is really easy to make from scratch.  If you add more than the caramelized onions then you may end up over the $5 limit.

Ingredients:

For dough -
  1 cup warm water

  2 1/2 cup flour (1 cup wheat, 1 1/2 cup all purpose)

  2 tablespoon oil

  1 teaspoon salt

  1 tablespoon sugar

  1 teaspoon yeast

For Topping -
   1 bottle BBQ sauce
   4 large onions
   4 clove garlic
   anything else you want to add, I like to finish with chevre

Steps:

1. For the dough just combine all of the ingredients in the order listed and knead with hands.  When everything is mixed, cover the bowl with a wet cloth and let rise for 45 minutes or so.  You can add some extra sugar to help it rise faster if you want.

2. While the dough is rising caramelize the onions by following the steps in the next recipe.  When the onions are about done caramelizing slice the garlic and add it to the onions to cook alongside them.

3. When the dough is ready spread it out on pizza stone, I like to put wheat flour or corn meal on the stone first.

4. Put the bottle of BBQ sauce on the dough, then top that with the garlic (if you like) and onions.

5. Bake at 400 for 15 minutes

Caramelized Onion Linguine

This is a recipe I got from Bittman in his How to Cook Everything Vegetarian cookbook.  This should cost you $4.  All you need are 4 large onions, 1 box of linguine, and parm if you want it.

Ingredients:

4 large onions

1 box linguine

Shredded Parm

Steps:

1. Caramelize the onions.  This is really simple to do, heat corn oil in a tall pan on med-high heat.  Cut the onions and put them in the pan and cover.  Stir occasionally for 10-15 minutes.  After 15 minutes or so when the onions are browning and starting to stick sprinkle with sugar and a little balsamic vinegar.  Continue cooking for another 5-10 minutes.  You may want to turn the heat down to medium if the onions are not caramelizing as evenly.

2. Boil water and cook the linguine

3. When the linguine is cooked put in bowls, top with the caramelized onions and parm.

Biscuits and Gravy

This is a favorite of everyone in my family.  You can always cook eggs or the fried potatoes from the recipe above to complement this one.  With making everything from scratch this will cost you less than $5 to feed 4 people.  Here is the full recipe.

Grilled Cheese with Tomato Soup

This is one of my favorite meals to cook in a pinch.  I can whip this meal up within a few minutes and it always tastes great.  The key, I believe, is the quality of bread and mustard to use.  I like to use dijon with large mustard seeds in it.

Ingredients:

8 slices Whole Wheat Bread

Shredded cheddar works best, but you can use slices of a sharp cheddar

Dijon Mustard

2 tablespoons or so of butter

I buy organic tomato soup and just heat that up.

Steps:

1. Heat a cast iron skillet on Med-High

2. Butter the slices of bread

3. Spread mustard on one slice of bread, then add cheese, then another slice of bread on top.

4. Put the cheese sandwich on the skillet and brown each side, remove from heat and cut in diagonal after it is browned evenly

5. Heat the tomato soup.

Serve the grilled cheese on a plate next to the bowl of tomato soup.  I think you can get enough out of this for 2-4 people, depending on how hungry everyone is.  This entire meal should come in under $5.

Cheesy Beans on Toast

This is exactly as it sounds, I first had this at McNivens in Indianapolis.  McNivens is a Scottish pub.  I think Cheesy Beans on Toast goes well with beer or scotch.

Ingredients:

1 can vegetarian baked beans (or your own homemade baked beans)

2 pieces of toast

1/4 cup of grated cheese, colby jack works well.

Steps:

1. Heat the baked beans in a large bowl or saucepan.

2. When almost done top with the cheese and let the cheese melt

3. Serve the cheesy beans on top of the toast, top with fresh pepper

My wife and I love to cook and entertain.  To help us become better at both we plan to journal most of our cooking experiences at consumerless.com.  The information provided would have traditionally been written into our cookbooks and entertaining journal.  Instead, we have decided to make the information public so that anyone else trying out any the same recipes has useful suggestions.

This should also help us to remember what we have been eating and also assist us in making sure we are trying out lots of new meals.

I encourage you to do something similar if you also like to cook.  I have comments on, so if you have suggestions for any of the meals please provide it.

Windows 7 Beta was just released to the public and Microsoft indicates that you need Vista SP1 in order to upgrade.  Even though it says you need Vista I have found a way to upgrade my Windows XP install so that it has most of the new features in Windows 7 by following these steps.

1. Install Windows XP SP3 so that your computer is more secure and running the latest

2. Disable your themes and search services (start -> run -> services.msc) as well as any other services you do not require.  After this your computer should be running close to what it will with Windows 7.  Also, for good measure, remove any extra non-sense from your startup items.  Better yet, do start -> run -> msconfig and uncheck "Load startup items" then click apply.

3. To get that shiny new finder you need to install Directory Opus.

4. For the nice way to rearrange your taskbar use Taskbar Control.

5. You will want to also install Windows PowerShell 2 CTP3 if you plan on using it.

6. You can also install Internet Explorer 8

7. Download Windows Live if you use IM or blog

I think that pretty much covers all of the new features, and I bet the above steps will take you less time to follow than to upgrade to Vista, then to Windows 7.  Once it is out of Beta and I have more time I do plan to install it.  Until then, the above will get my by.

Here is a package for Graffiti that allows you to specify a theme to present to an iPhone user or the Google Bot.  The package comes with a couple of themes I created for each type of user to get you started.  I originally created this to provide a more performant scenario for when a Google bot visits my site.  Google has stated on their webmaster blog that you should avoid providing different content to the Google bot other than the content you provide to a normal user.  However, I believe they are more focused on the content that is delivered, instead of how the site is laid out.  Either way, the plugin for switching themes allows you to disable either theme for the iPhone or Google.

You can download the package below:

You only need to install this through the graffiti control panel.  After this you will have 2 new themes and a new plugin installed.  You need to edit the settings on the plugin to have it running, both the iPhone and Google theme switchers are disabled by default.  Also, if you want to provide a different theme you can change the name in the settings.

The iPhone theme is from Engage Interactive with only minor tweaks.  Here is a sample of what this looks like on an iPhone, mind you I added margins and better formatting in general after this picture was taken.  I should also point out that I don't have an iPhone, so any feedback from iPhone users on how my site looks would be helpful.

For any developers out there, you should note the following lines which show how simple it is to switch a theme in Graffiti inside a GraffitiEvent object.

        public override void Init(GraffitiApplication ga)
        {
            ga.BeginRequest += new EventHandler(ga_BeginRequest);
        }

        void ga_BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
                GraffitiContext.Current.Theme  =  "MyThemeName";
        }

Last night I logged into my site and noticed that the Graffiti News section in the dashboard mentioned that a new version was available.  I clicked the link and downloaded the updated version.  Because the update doesn't include any database changes the update process involves only xcopy steps.  Here are the steps I followed to upgrade my site and avoid interrupting service to it.

1. Extract the 1.2 .zip package to a temporary directory.
2. FTP to your site and download the api, bin, graffiti-admin, and search folders to a temporary folder on your local drive.  This is a just in case step so that if something does go badly with the upgrade you can roll back your changes.
3. Now open a browser and point it at your site so you can guarantee your site doesn't go down
4. Copy the Search and api folders over the live copies on your site.  So upload these two folders from the "Upgrade 1.1 to 1.2" parent folder to your site, overwriting the copies on your site.
5. Copy the graffiti-admin folder from the upgrade package over your live copy
6. The last folder to copy is the bin folder, so copy the assemblies in the bin folder over the top of those on your site
7. Refresh the browser window you have open directed at your site to see your site automagically be on a new version.  To verify that your site is indeed updated you should view the source on your homepage and look for this line:

If for some reason your update fails, follow steps 4-6 except use the backup copies of the files you made in step 2 to overwrite your site files.

Here are a couple of other notable updates that were also released in the last 24 hours.

1. PowerShell V2 CTP3
2. TortoiseSVN 1.5.6