Deep Thoughts by Robert Felty

Tonight I tried another new recipe, this one from the Moosewood Classics cookbook, which our good friend Melanie gave us. It has many great recipes. This one did not disappoint. It was a little different than what I remembered as stroganoff as a kid, which was mostly just noodles in a creamy sauce with hamburger and mushrooms. This one has lots of vegetables, some red wine, some canned tomatoes, and some tofu sour cream. Overall it turned out quite well, though the next time I make it I will plan on cooking off a bit more of the liquid to make it creamier, and also to pan fry the tofu a bit to keep it from falling apart.

Tonight I wasn’t really sure what to make for dinner. I wasn’t really in the mood for any standards, nor did I find any recipes that sounded good to me. I kind of wanted burritos, but we didn’t have any avocados, and they are much better with avocados. I was also a bit in the mood for Italian, and had a hankering for barbecue sauce. So I decided that pasta with a sweet and spicy sauce would be good. I ended up making it too spicy, so I have adjusted the spices below.

• one large onion, diced
• 1/2 lb. mushrooms, thinly sliced
• 1 green and 1 yellow pepper, diced
• 1/2 cup dry red wine
• 2 cans diced tomatoes
• 1 can cannellini beans
• 3 Tbsp. sugar
• 2 Tbsp. italian seasoning
• 1 tsp. chipotle pepper powder
• 2 tsp. salt
• 1 small can tomato paste

First I sauteéd the onions until they were starting to get slightly brown, then I added the mushrooms and continued cooking until most of their liquid had been cooked off. Then I sauteéd the peppers for several minutes, and then added the wine. Next I added the tomatoes, beans, sugar, and spices, and simmered for 20 minutes. Finally I added the tomato paste, and served over al dente penne.

Yesterday I tried another new dish, this one inspired by a recipe I found on the internet. It was for pork, but I subsituted mock pork (seitan). I had half a head of napa cabbage that needed to be used, and I found this recipe looking around for napa cabbage recipes. I thought that apricots and cabbage sounded like an interesting pairing, and that turned out to be the case. I made a few other substitutions. The original recipe called for curry powder, but I used garam masala; I also added some curry paste. I actually only had about 1/2 cup of apricots on hand. I think that it would have been better with more apricots. The dish was also very quick and easy, which is always a bonus.

• 1/2 head napa cabbage, shredded
• 1 cup dried apricots
• 1 Tbsp. garam masala
• 1 Tbsp. curry paste
• 2 tsp. dried rosemary
• 2 cans mock pork (seitan)

I boiled the apricots in some water in the microwave for a few minutes, then drained them and chopped them up. I sauteéd the cabbage in a little olive oil until it wilted, then added the apricots, spices and seitan. Once the seitan was hot, it was ready to serve, for a total of about 10 minutes of prep time, and 10 minutes cooking time.

Last week I tried another recipe from the Bold Vegetarian Chef. Again, I mostly stuck to the recipe, but modified some of the quantities. This one called for one carrot and one celery stalk. That seemed odd to me, so I used about 3 of each. It also called for 1 tablespoon of tomato paste, which I left out entirely. The result was very interesting. I don’t think I would want to have it frequently, but it is probably good a couple times per year. I do agree with the author that having a variety of lentil soups in ones repertoire is a good idea, since they are easy to make, cheap, and nutritious.

• 3 stalks celery, finely sliced
• 4 carrots, sliced
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2 inch piece of fresh ginger, minced
• 2 cups green lentils
• 4 cups vegetable broth
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 Tbsp. cider vinegar
• 1 Tbsp. lime juice
• 2 Tbsp. Frank’s Red Hot
• Grated coconut to garnish
• Spices:
  • 1 tsp. cumin seed
  • 1 tsp. caraway seed
  • 1 tsp. black peppercorns
  • 1 tsp. coriander seeds
  • 1 tsp. black mustard seeds
  • 2 whole cloves
  • 1/2 ts.p paprika

First I toasted the spices over medium heat for a few minutes, then ground them up in a mortar and pestle. Then I sauteéd the onions, celery, ginger, and carrots in olive oil. Next I added the spices, lentils, the coconut milk, and the broth, and simmered for about 40 minutes. Right before serving I added the vinegar, lime juice, and Red Hot.

I was recently debating with my friend Danny how people navigate sites, especially blogs. As the author of 3 plugins designed to enhance site navigation (collapsing archives, categories, and pages), I of course had my opinions, but what is really compelling is data. So I finally decided to modify my links on my site a bit in order to figure out more exactly how people are navigating my site. There are several different ways in which people can navigate to a particular page on my site.

• external
  • search
  • social network (digg, reddit, friendfeed, etc.)
• internal
  • collapsing archives widget
  • collpsing categorries widget
  • collapsing pages widget
  • category page
  • archive page
  • search
  • index page link
  • prev page link
  • next page link

I added a ?nav query to each of these particular options, so that I could then find those values in the server logs. I wrote a little bash script which mostly does some grepping of the log. Here is the script, and the results for the last 12 hours or so. My plan is to collect about 30 days worth of data, and see what the data shows. I think the results will be informative.

TOTAL PAGES = 197
  EXTERNAL= 131
    EXTSEARCH = 51
    SOCIAL = 0
    NOREFERER = 43
    REMAINING = 37
  INTERNAL= 66
    COLLARCH = 3
    YEARLY = 0
    MONTHLY = 0
    COLLCAT = 4
    CAT = 0
    COLLPAGE = 0
    SEARCH = 1
    INDEX = 1
    PREV = 0
    NEXT = 0
    PREFETCH = 52
    REMAINING = 5