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Peppers Unstuffed...

8/20/2012

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This page is about observations and not about cooking. But this post is an observation and it happens to include  cooking. First, I am not a chef, or even a good cook. I think if myself as a functional cook, and prefer to make fresh food, particularly from my garden vegetables. But, within this framework lies an observation.
I think that it is easy to get into a rut when preparing food, and we tend to do the familiar things with certain foods. For example, we all know that when we make stuffed peppers, we make the stuffing with ground beef, rice, tomato sauce, and whatever else we like, and place it into a pepper that has the top cut off, and the insides laboriously removed and cleaned. Then, the bottom is trimmed so that they will stand up straight for cooking. I sense a rut coming on!
But, this year, as in some years past, the pepper crop was small, the peppers ripened at strange times, and the yield was diminished. But the last time this happened, I changed the recipe to include "unstuffing" the peppers. It occurred to me that after cooking the traditional stuffed peppers, the first thing that we do is cut the pepper open. So, now, I blanch the clean cut-up peppers for 5 minutes in boiling water,, and just throw everything together in a large frying pan. It is faster, easier, and it still tastes like stuffed peppers. The photo shows my bell peppers at different stages of ripening as explained over on the Odds 'n Ends page. Same pepper, different ripeness and more nutrients in the riper red peppers. The photos below show the meal with some added cherry tomatoes which will pop apart with cooking, and the finished unstuffed peppers:



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Incidentally, I do something similar with baked beans. I have a perfectly good bean pot but I cook baked beans in a sauce pan on the stove-top. The beans don't realize that they are not in the oven. Its cheaper, takes less time, and tastes the same! There is a basic stuffed pepper recipe here. Try it Mikey, you will like it...

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Self-Aware computers...

8/10/2012

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One of the most frustrating problems with computers and smartphones is the tendency for programs to freeze up or slow down dramatically. Watching a video "refresh" or to keep "buffering", can result in simply getting aggravated and just closing the video. We are living in a video driven computer world that also utilizes large, resource consuming applications. And, just because we leave a program or application does not mean that it has stopped running. It can continue running in the background, and consume valuable processor space and use.
The simple explanation is that all computers suffer from an inability to communicate internally with itself. It is not self-aware! There are three main activities and processes in all computers. Software, Hardware, and Operating System. The operating system controls the use of the hardware and software and controls the use of all of the resources. But, the operating system has no idea of what is currently being utilized bu the user. So, if you leave an application and it keeps running, and you go to a video or other application, the OS has no clue what you may be doing, so it tries to run both processes. So the video may begin to run at 20 frames per second instead of the better 30 FPS. And, to complicate matters further, most processors are now dual-core or multi-core. This is great for parallel processing but still leaves the computer looking pretty stupid.
There are efforts to alleviate the problem, but it will take time to get it into an operating system The research people at MIT are working on a self-aware solution through CSAIL, Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Scientific American has chosen the effort as one of ten world changing ideas. The link is here. Fortunately, humans are sell-aware, but we just don't always use this feature...

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