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User:Chriswaterguy/recipes and cooking tips

This is the recipe page of Chris Watkins.

I'm going to start adding recipes here when I come with something particularly good --16:35, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

If you try these recipes (especially the ones I've written myself) please give me feedback - thanks.

Good sites
Check Varsha's recipes and homepage. She also makes lots of good comments and suggestions on other recipes - I would try anything she gives 4 or 5 stars to.

I've been using the foodie view recipe search engine, and it's fantastic - just choose the recipes that have 4 or 5 stars, and preferably have been rated by a lot of people.

Beans, dal & chickpeas
My own recipes:
 * Chana dal with panch phoran and pumpkin
 * Chana dal with pumpkin and sage
 * My basic chickpea & vegetable tagine

Here's some that I found with foodie view:
 * Yellow split pea Dal Recipe - Note I followed the advice in the comment by Varsha, and added q/2 tsp of garam masala 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, and some mild chilli flakes.
 * Lentil Dal with Garlic-and-Cumin-Infused Oil. I've also cooked this with other dals, such as chana dal, and it was still great.
 * Sambhar, which requires the preparation of Sambhar Masala powder. Quite involved, but worth it. This is the kind of thing I would prepare for a dinner party.
 * Yellow Split Pea Soup. Simple but good. An alternative to the mustard is to use a spoon of soy sauce (or to taste) for a bowl of soup. (I like to have it with mustard, but sometimes with soy sauce instead, as a change.)
 * Moroccan Lentil Soup. I added 2 tsp salt. I served with couscous (not really necessary, but nice.
 * Split Pea-Spinach Dal with Cauliflower - quite good as a side-dish. It uses a lot of mustard and cumin, making it slightly bitter, so I wouldn't use it as a meal on its own.
 * Spicy Red Lentil Dal with Pita Wedges - a thick dal with Indian spices. I had no onion or garlic, so I used hing instead (half to one tsp). Also I had only black mustard, but it shouldn't (and didn't) cause a problem.
 * Sweet and Spicy Soup with Black-Eyed Peas and Sweet Potato - I used dried black-eyed peas soaked overnight and fresh sweet potatoes and made a few adjustments, partly based on others' comments, and used fresh herbs. I'll write up my own version. (oops, forgot to write up... might try this again some time.)
 * Black-Eyed Peas and Sweet Potato Stew. Very good, hearty and flavorful. As I don't have Old Bay Seasoning (I've never seen it in Australia and I wasn't going to go hunting), I did a little research and replaced it with: 3 bay leaves (torn on the edges to let flavor out), 1/2 tsp black pepper corns, 1/4 tsp cardamom seeds, 1/4 tsp ground ginger, 1 tsp black mustard, and 1/2 tsp paprika. I also didn't have celery seed, celery or parsley, so the extra sspices were to make up for that. Also added a handful of wholemeal pasta swirls, 1 tsp of dark brown sugar, 1 large green/orange capsicum (bell pepper), 6 tsp of Massel's "beef" style stock (that's vegan, imitation beef, but v nice) and 1 1/2 tsp salt. Bay leaves went in with the beans. Paprika and cinnamon also went in the pot. Whole spices were dry fried till they blackened a little, then added a little oil, fried some more and into the pot (I don't have a spice grinder, and I wanted to soften them properly - only partly successful with the cardamom). garlic, then capsicum and onion fried in EV olive oil with the ground ginger. Stock and salt go in when the beans are soft (as always), as does the tomato. Then sweet potato, and finally wholemeal pasta. Simmered till the sweet potatoes are soft. Very nice. I served with wholemeal toast drenched in EV olive oil.  The sweet potato was just tender when I ate it, not mushy - not sure if it might have been slightly nicer if I'd cooked it a little longer or cut them smaller. 05:44, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Black Bean Soup - very nice. I used dried beans soaked overnight (1 and a quarter cups equates to two 400g/14-ounce tins). Used fresh thyme - it was a little lacking in flavor, so I added more thyme at the end (making 10 sprigs for the doubled recipe) and it was great. I stripped the leaves and tips of the sprigs and mixed them into the hot soup - didn't need extra cooking. These were young, soft thyme sprigs - older leaves might be much stronger.
 * Creamy Chickpea & Rosemary Soup - nice, very easy, and proved popular with my friend that I cooked for. But it feels to me like it needs something else to be a 5 star recipe. Next time I'll try either a little bit of tomato/tomato paste, or some butter or cream. Or perhaps I'll try replacing the garlic with hing, or with onion and hing.

Other meals

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 *

Vegetables

 * Vegetables cooked briefly in miso & water. Potato goes well; haven't tried other veg yet.

It's good to have some quick and delicious food ideas, such as:

 * Stir fried vegetables with hing (or garlic)
 * Vegetables with herbs & lentils
 * Vegetables with turmeric and yellow bean sauce - have cooked this twice, and it was nice, but I need to test it a bit more...
 * Amit's Indian vegetables
 * Curried String Beans. Instead of curry powder (which I didn't have), I used 1 tsp garam masala and half a tsp turmeric. Also, I had no onion, so I used double the garlic. I had no fresh tomato, so i used a 440g tin diced tomato instead of tomato and tomato paste. Used 2 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper (use less salt if tinned tomatoes contain salt). Very nice, and went very well with the Spicy Red Lentil Dal with Pita Wedges (above).

Quick soups
A good soup is nourishing, tasty, and light, and keeps appetite at bay between meals.

No-cooking
Add hot water and serve:
 * Miso with silken tofu & baby spinach (or seaweed, for a more traditional version). Avoid mature spinach - it should be the young tender leaves.
 * Good quality stock (e.g. Massel) with baby spinach (or salad greens), and possibly silken tofu.

Microwave & serve:
 * Brown rice with kecap manis - if you have leftover cooked brown rice. Option: tiny sprinkle of chilli.

Marinades
Garlic marinade: In Java, I often saw tofu & tempe done this way, and it was very nice. (It was also often fried plain, and wasn't very nice). Mash garlic on the grinding stone, add salt and a couple of spoons of water. Should be quite a watery mixture. Place tofu & tempe, cut into oblong pieces, on the grinding stone, in the liquid, while the oil heats up. Press the pieces into the liquid (don't know if it helps, but that's what they did). Turn the pieces over so the other side contacts the garlicky liquid. Pick up and let the liquid drain off for a few seconds. Drop gently into the oil and deep fry. BE CAREFUL! As the pieces are wet, they will tend to splatter a bit. If you know what you're doing and don't stand too close, it seems to be fine... but remember, I warned you!

Bu Yem's marinade: I don't know whether this was a common recipe, or a specialty of Bu Yem, the East Javanese woman who cooked for me sometimes. Garlic, ginger, galangal, turmeric root, coriander, cumin and salt. (I can't remember if she added chilli - probably a little.) Grind the spices and add enough water to make a thin paste. Soak tofu & tempe in this (a few hours, or overnight in the fridge). Fry as with the garlic marinade. I don't know the proportions, so go by experience or seek advice.

Now, strict vegetarians please avert your eyes. This marinade goes really well with ikan lele, the delicately flavored freshwater catfish popular in Indonesia - the cheapest but also the best-tasting fish. (Nothing like the large, strong-tasting catfish I tried in Australia... and yes, in spite of all the spices, I could tell that the lele was delicately flavored.) From the very delicate flavor of the lele I had in Indonesia, I would say that I haven't eaten the shitty ones! If you're in Indonesia though, get help when buying the fish... you don't want the fish that have been used for cleaning up rather disgusting... er... water.

Desserts

 * Adzuki (red) beans with cinnamon, palm sugar and cinnamon is easy, but not quick... you need to soak the night before (or several hours ahead) and simmer for perhaps 30 minutes or more. There's not much to it but I'll write the recipe later.
 * Indonesian kacang hijau (green bean). Soak mung beans overnight, then boil till soft with pandanus leaves and palm sugar (the lighter one, or a mix of the dark red palm sugar with ordinary sugar). Make it to a porridge-like consistency.
 * Yoghurt with apricot & toasted almond. Michelle made this, and it was delicious. Natural yoghurt (home made is nice, and cheaper); mix chopped dried apricots with syrup. Toasted almond slivers with a little olive oil and cinnamon powder. Add the almonds and apricot syrup mixture to the yoghurt, according to taste.

Good foods for vegetarians & vegans
This is about taste, pleasure, satisfaction, not just about nutrition - I'm assuming you know to get protein from legumes (and/or dairy/eggs), and that if you don't eat a lot of animal products you should consider B12 supplements.

There are some foods that I find particularly satisfying and - and when they're well made, I feel that being vegetarian isn't a sacrifice at all. Some of my favorite things are:

 * Legumes. The variety of legumes makes for a variety of meals... even if I only had one recipe for dal, at least it would taste different when I made it with different legumes (chick peas, black-eyed peas, lentils, adzuki beans...). They also make me feel great physically - I was satisfied but felt lighter. It feels more easily digested than meat, and maintains a healthy blood sugar level as well as making you very "regular." (The soluble fiber content contributes to the last two benefits.)
 * Baby jackfruit. Delicious, mild flavor with a satisfying texture. The first time I had this, in a coconut-based soup called "lodeh," I wasn't sure if it was meat or a vegetable. Also used to make gudeg, a kind of stewed, spiced & sweet baby jackfruit. Some versions use chicken (so ask, if you're Indonesia, but maybe take the answer with a grain of salt). Vegetarian versions here, but I haven't tried the recipes: White Curry Jackfruit - (Gudeg Putih), & one in Indonesian, Gudeg Nangka
 * tempe - pressed soybean cake. I love this in Indonesia, where it's bought from a cart that goes down the street each morning, with a heavy layer of natural mold. Dipped in a mix of garlic, salt and a little water (and occasionally marinated in other spices such as coriander, cumin, ginger, galangal and turmeric root) before frying, it was delicious. I avoid it in Australia, where it comes from a packet - though I had a nice tempe burger in Nimbin, with sauce, mayo and lots of salad that covered up any deficiencies in the tempe.
 * Organic milk - preferably from a cold climate where the cows make nicer milk.
 * Coconut cream - goes well in most dals and in desserts. I've discovered delicious coconut cream in a tetra pak, Kara brand, from Indonesia and available at my local Indian shop. However you buy it, stick to the cream - as far as I can work out, the difference is just the water (and maybe thickener and flavor) that they put in the coconut milk and lite coconut cream.
 * Good quality stocks. My favorite (in Australia) is Massel - no flavor enhancers, no animal products, yet a great flavor and comes in beef/chicken/vegetable style. Interestingly, meat-eaters think they taste like meat, but life-long vegetarians don't find they have the "off" taste and smell of meat.
 * Fresh vegetables. That's fresh vegetables. Fresh. When you buy veg and cook them the same day, it's amazing how much better and more satisfying they are. If the vegetables you eat are 2 weeks old, no matter how well cooked they are, you'll find yourself daydreaming about hamburgers and such.

=Misc= Here are some notes and recipes... feel free to browse.

Simplicity
I'm getting into simplicity. A couple of flavors can be enough to make a great meal. This morning it was cracked black pepper and turmeric. I microwaved some chopped veg (a chopped carrot with a spoon of tomato paste and 1/8 tsp hing, for a minute, then a chopped yellow squash, cooked together for maybe 2 minutes), then added the black pepper (1/2 tsp) and turmeric (1/4 tsp), salt (3/4 tsp) and cooked kidney beans. Heated till it started bubbling slightly (2 minutes) then 4 minutes on minimum heat. Very nice. Would also work well with chickpeas.

Not that I'm giving up on the wonderfully complex flavors of Thai curries, Indian sambhars, African tangines and Middle-Eastern baharat, of course. But it's good to have a simple and delicious option as well. --04:16, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Philosophy
My personal aims are pleasure, energy, well-being. A broader aim is encouraging a diet which causes less damage to the environment and less suffering to animals. And possibly promotes justice (a la "Fair Trade," though I'm still unsure how much I believe in the effectiveness of this).

I'm trying to eat more veg, and be more like those long-lived Okinawans. Or, to be more precise, I want to increase my veg/(grain + dal) intake ratio. I.e. more high water content food, providing satisfaction and nutrition with fewer calories.

Low meat versions
I know that many people are not ready to give up meat entirely, but want to eat more vegetables. Many of these recipes are suitable to use either as an accompaniment to a meat dish, or can have a little bit of meat added to satisfy the craving. (You may find, though, that the vegetarian versions are more satisfying than you expected.)

Casseroles
One way to get the most out of the meat is to use a small amount of an older, more strongly flavored cut of meat, in slow cooked casserole style dishes - try mutton or hogget, or ask your butcher for what has good strong flavor for casseroles. This works especially in the Middle-Eastern and North African dishes.

You may benefit from the extra browning effect of cooking it in the oven, or perhaps on the stovetop, rather than in the microwave. I'm not really sure how much difference there is, though - certainly any form of slow cooking will break down the proteins and bring the flavor out.

Cravings for something sweet
If you feel like something sweet, consider that a cup of tea with a teaspoon or three of sugar can be very pleasantly sweet, while not having nearly as much sugar as a soft drink (9 tsp to a can, they say!) or a slice of cheesecake.

I avoid sweet things until at least mid-afternoon. If I have something sweet in the morning, I want to keep eating all day.

Environment
There's a new diet, called the "100 mile diet" or something like that. It's based partly on the assumption that the major environmental impact of what we eat is transporting it long distances from where it is grown. I believe this assumption is wrong. It depends on the form of transport, and how bulky or heavy the food is - air travel is fuel-hungry, though the impact of a small piece of chocolate made from cocoa that's flown across the world hardly matters. If we're talking about sea freight, that is extremely low in fuel usage due to the huge size and large Froude number (i.e. streamlined character) of the ships. Thus I'd expect that legumes shipped from India would have far less environmental impact than beef grown locally.

I don't know the full answer on this, but I plan to look into it, sometime before the end of 2006.

Cautions

 * Anything containing turmeric will cause a yellow stain. Don't slop it on your best shirt (or if you do, run for the laundry), or spill it on an expensive carpet or white tablecloth. Plastic cooking utensils will change color permanently (unless they're black). Don't let this put you off - brightly colored foods are often extremely good for you, and I've heard turmeric is good for cancer. (I'm not going to look up a source for that claim, because I don't really care - as long as it tastes good, and I'm getting a varied diet rich in veg, my health will benefit.)

Where to find good recipes
I like to follow recipes (more or less) but as I've become more confident, I use my own judgement and experiment more.

The books that got me started. When following some of the recipes, you may need to reduce the amount of chilli used, to avoid breathing fire - I only use a fraction of the chilli recommended in the Thai and Indian cookbooks. (Note - the ISBN can help you find the book, but won't show you other editions of the same book - so also search by book and author's name if you have problems):
 * Kurt Kahrs, Thai Cooking. The author cooked at the Bangkok Hilton (from memory). This is the book that first taught me to cook well, and taught me that the secret to learning is to have an excellent cookbook. My brother's Thai girlfriend gave this to my mum as a present, and I found my own copy for $3.50 at a sale. I learnt to make my own curry pastes and developed a reputation among my friends as a cook, largely thanks to this book. Since going vegetarian I haven't been cooking so much thai, but some of the recipes do adapt well for vegetarians, especially if you make an exception for shrimp paste... (not sure if there's a a vegetarian alternative for that). ISBN 078581731X, ISBN 1931040273, ISBN 1850764204 & ISBN 0831787244
 * See also this list of Thai cookbooks, sorted by their rating at online bookstores. I've used Thailand, the Beautiful Cookbook (ISBN 0002550296) and it's good, and makes a great coffee table book, but Kahrs' book is my first choice.
 * Graimes, Vegetarian - the Greatest Ever Vegetarian Cookbook. I'm suspicious of books with recipes from every kind of cuisine - sometimes they're bland and unauthentic. This one, however, has some great recipes. My tagines are partly adapted from this book (though the one in the book is unnecessarily involved, in my view, with coating vegetables with the oil & spices and grilling them before adding them to the dish - my experience is that it's delicious with or without this fiddly, time-consuming step.) It has a habit of recommending organic vegetables and such - I ignore this hippy propaganda. ISBN 0681020725, ISBN 0754800903
 * Chandra Padmanabhan Dakshin: Vegetarian Recipes from South India - gave me a whole new approach to Indian spices and dals. Fairly daunting recipes to look at, but I luckily had an Indian flatmate (Amit, who already knew about North Indian cooking) who got into it and demonstrated - and I learnt that the recipes are delicious, and not so hard when you understand what's going on. If you're a keen, patient student, you can learn a lot from this book. ISBN 9625935274, ISBN 020718187, ISBN 0062511750.

Books that I might buy or borrow:
 * Nancie McDermott, Real Vegetarian Thai gets a 4.5-star rating on Amazon. It apparently has curry paste recipes (no adding curry paste from supermarkets, thank God! And Fried Cashews with Chilies and Green Onions...? my mouth is watering at the thought. ISBN 0811811514
 * Rachel Carter, The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook - could be interesting, for quick recipes. ISBN 1571459987

Online recipes
foodie view searches for recipes and ranks them by rating - so you find recipes that other people think are good. Apart from that... If you know a link to someone whose recipes you think I'd like, especially if it's an online source, please let me know on my talk page.

Hot drinks
It's good to have a selection of teas - keeps the appetite at bay, improves digestion. Can help get things moving in the alimentary canal of a morning.

My favorites include:
 * Rosehip
 * A nice black tea. Flavor varies a lot (you'll notice it if you drink it regularly). Try different teas to see which you like. My favorites are the Twinings range, especially English Breakfast & Prince of Wales (a bit smoky).
 * Dark berry tea - found in a Polish shop - which goes to show, it pays to experiment.
 * Mint tea. Peppermint tea bags can be nice, but it's far better to pick fresh mint (e.g. spearmint, garden mint or other variety) from the garden.

In the morning, it's good to start with teas that have a slight laxative effect - black or white tea, or rosehip tea, are pretty good. Having a piece of fruit will also help - apples are suitable (because of their pectin content I think). But find something that you enjoy, and that makes you feel good.

Rice
I'm starting to experiment with brown rice. I liked it when the Hare Krishnas cooked it when I went to Veg Soc at Sydney Uni in '96-7 or thereabouts. It was very soft, with a nice but mild flavor.

I avoid white rice when I can - little fiber and nutrients, not very filling so you can keep stuffing your face too easily.

Brown rice is more challenging to cook, but it's not difficult once you learn.

Cooking brown rice

 * 1) Buy a good rice,
 * 2) follow the instructions on the packet for ratio of water to rice. The ratio will vary according to the type of rice, so the packet is your best guide.
 * 3) I like to cook it by the absorption cooking in the microwave, (or on the stove if need be).
 * 4) I bring it to the boil, and then let it cook on minimum power for 30 minutes or so while I make the rest of the meal. And if I put it on early, it won't hurt the rice it to let it sit while I finish cooking the meal (leave the lid on keep the heat in, and it will keep cooking slowly, getting softer).
 * 5) If using the stove, the minimum temperature is probably too high, so after it's been simmering for 15 minutes, turn it off and leave it for another 15 minutes or so (and perhaps put the minimum temperature on again). Something like that - I don't measure the time, I just go by feel and make sure it's cooked for a long time till it's soft.

It should come out very soft.

If you need to use the microwave for something else, that's not a big problem. Get the rice cooking early, then swap the dishes when you need to. As long as the rice is near boiling, it will keep cooking. Perhaps wrap it in a towel if it's out for a long time (though I don't bother) and pop it in again later and bring it back to a simmer.

Make it mushy. If you follow the instructions. I used to dislike mushy rice, and made an art of cooking rice so that it was just tender but still separate. But in Indonesia I got used to having it mushy - it seems to mix better with the food and the sauce. Now, with brown rice it's even more important, as if it's not mushy, it's probably chewy, and that makes eating into hard work. It's your choice, but I like mushy.

How to eat brown rice
It's delicious on its own with kecap manis (Indonesian sweet soy sauce) - I often have a small bowl like this if I'm in the mood for a second course.

It goes better with some dishes than with others, so I'm still experimenting. Strongly flavored tagines go well with brown rice. The Hare Krishnas' mild curries also went well. I'll keep you posted as I learn more.

Vegetables
If you have good quality vegetables, it's often best to do them done simply to make the most of their flavor. The Stir fried vegetables with hing (or garlic) is an example of this approach.

Or you can go for something more full flavored, such as a tangine (yet to be posted).

Stir fried vegetables with hing (or garlic)
Great accompaniment for Indian food such as dal.

Very simple - you need:
 * oil
 * hing or garlic. Not both.
 * vegetables
 * salt.

Chop the vegetables, heat the oil, medium hot. Once it's hot enough to sizzle when you add a pinch of hing (or garlic), then add all the hing (or garlic). Avoid burning. Add the vegetables, starting with what takes longest to cook.

For example, I cooked it tonight as follows:
 * 1/2 tsp hing in the hot oil, stirred briefly, then chopped vegetables as follows:
 * small pontiac potato, (quick cooking, great flavor), cut into narrow lengths, and a small carrot, chopped (I could tell you how I like to do it, but some people might do it wrong and cut their fingers off); then once that had cooked a few minutes, but not yet soft...
 * half a head of broccoli, cut into florets, and half a zucchini, chopped as for the carrot.
 * 1/2 tsp salt.
 * left until all the veg were soft enough, but still slightly firm.

Tonight there was enough there for a satisying side dish (with dal) for two hungry guys.

If eating with dal in a bowl, as I do, I advise a separate plate or bowl for the veg so they don't mix together in one blend of flavors..

Variations: You can add one or more spices to this - don't add too much until you've got the hang of it. A little fresh or dried chilli, added early. (I prefer not to fry chilli with the oil unless I have a cook lid on the pan AND a good exhaust fan. Half a teaspoon of turmeric sprinkled over & stirred in, a few minutes before the end. A little mustard, or cumin seed or curry leaves fried with the hing should also work well. Thanks to Amit for the basic idea. --14:07, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Vegetables with turmeric and yellow bean sauce
This is inspired by a yellow curry recipe in Kurt Kahrs' book... though the only thing left from the original recipe is the idea of using turmeric and yellow bean sauce

Choose fresh vegetables in season, including tomatoes and onions (preferably spanish onions). I wouldn't use spinach or silverbeet in this one.

Chop vegetables into bite size pieces. The total should be enough to slightly overfill a 2 L dish if chopped and piled together except you won't put them in all at once, and they will settle down, enabling you to add more as it progresses. (I just figure it out as I go along, but I'm trying to give an idea of quantity)

Put the harder veg in first (cauliflower, carrots), sprinkle with: ...and start cooking. Cover and cook on high in the microwave for a few minutes; or add a few spoons of water and bring to a simmer in a covered saucepan. Don't overcook - they should be just starting to soften a little when the next ones go in.
 * 1/2 to 1 tsp turmeric
 * about 40 ml yellowbean sauce,
 * chilli flakes to taste. (I'd use a teaspoon of mild chilli flakes)

Then add the ones that need less cooking (Japanese pumpkin, eggplant if it's tender without prominent seeds, squash, tomato), mix and heat again; continue this way through vegetables such as zucchini, and lastly putting in things like broccoli and green beans which only need a few minutes.

''Use your own judgement for times - it will depend on the quality and varieties sold in your area. Tomato can go in earlier or later - earlier for a smoother sauce; later for a fresher taste.''

Variations: Add coriander powder with the turmeric, 1/2 to 1 tsp, and/or a teaspoon of regular soy sauce, and/or a teaspoon of grated ginger. My experience with this was that it needed a lot more cooking for the flavors to blend and mellow - it was actually better the next day. Personally I prefer the light flavor of the simpler recipe given above.

Amit's Indian vegetables
Another of the recipes I got from Amit... actually just a variant of the one above.

Start with a 2 L saucepan. Heat 2 tsp oil, then add: Fry the spices for a minute, don't let them burn. Add: Stir to mix in spices, adding a couple of spoons of water if necessary to avoid sticking. When heated through, cover saucepan and cook on a low heat until vegetables are soft enough.
 * 1/4 tsp hing
 * 1/2 tsp cumin
 * 1/2 tsp mustard (or use mustard oil, later)
 * curry leaves, several (optional)
 * mango powder (amchur) (optional)
 * Chopped vegetables, to almost reach the top of the saucepan, adding the slower-cooking vegetables first. I like to use two or three types. Suitable vegetables include cauliflower, potato, eggplant, tomato.
 * 1 tsp salt
 * 3/4 tsp turmeric

Variations: Vary the result by using different vegetables. E.g. whether or not you use tomato makes an enormous difference to the flavor, though it's nice both ways.

Tagine
Tagines are a North African style of richly spiced, slow cooked dish.

They often have a sweet ingredient such as apricot or raisins. I've found apple works well - placed in early so it breaks down and sweetens the sauce. Pumpkin may be used instead, or as well as the fruit.

My versions of these dishes use a vegetable base, sometimes with chick peas.

They can be cooked on the stove, in the oven, or in the microwave. The oven give a nice browning effect, and some caramelisation, and the stove does this a little bit too. I mainly use the microwave as it's easiest, but I'm going to try the others.

Notes:
 * If this is different to what you'd ever usually cook, don't be put off by the list of ingredients. Once you've done it a few times, you'' find it's quicker, and you can start changing the mix of spices slightly, for variety.
 * These recipes often have a lot of ground cinnamon. A side-effect is a slightly powdery effect when you eat it. If this bothers you, reduce the amount of cinnamon slightly and the effect will disappear.
 * The vegetable pieces don't have to be very small - larger pieces are nice, and chopping time is reduced, but it will need to simmer for a bit longer.
 * Use your judgement and preferences to decide which vegetables to use. Zucchini goes well, and possibly swede and turnips (I'm planning to try them - I saw them in a recipe online). When I was cooking a Baharat vegetable dish with a friend, snow peas found their way in... I don't think snow peas suit tagine or baharat - I leave them for stir fries. But it's entirely up to you.

My basic chickpea & vegetable tagine
Here's one I cooked on 12 July 2006. I've used this basic recipe regularly, with consistently good results, so this time I'm recording exactly how I did it. Most often I just use vegetables and eat it with a good wholemeal bread, but this time I added chickpeas.

Use a clear 2L microwave dish. Add:
 * 1 T ground cinnamon
 * 1 T ground coriander
 * 2 t turmeric
 * 1/2 t cumin (up to 2 t... I just reduced it to get a different effect)
 * 1/2 t chilli flakes (To taste. Or use fresh chilli or black pepper)
 * 1 red onion, chopped
 * 2 t salt
 * 1 t Massels stock powder (beef style) (optional)
 * the harder chopped vegetables (the veg that needs cooking for longer - I used 1 carrot, half sweet potato; if you use potato or cauliflower, put it in now; pumpkin).
 * 2 to 4 T tomato paste
 * a little water (say 1 cup - use boiling water if you want to speed it up a little)

Cook in microwave to while chopping the next ingredients

Place in microwave, and start preparing:
 * 1 small apple, chopped. Remove core, of course, but don't bother removing skin. Or use another sweet ingredient: apricots, dried apricots (avoid the heavily preserved ones with sulfur, that make you cough); or sultanas/raisins. (I wonder how peach would taste...?)
 * 1 400g tin chickpeas, drained (or a cup or so of home-cooked chickpeas). Optional.
 * 1 red onion, chopped
 * 2 t salt
 * 1 t Massels stock powder (beef style) (optional)
 * the harder chopped vegetables (the veg that needs cooking for longer - I used 1 carrot, half sweet potato; if you use potato or cauliflower, put it in now; pumpkin).
 * 2 to 4 T tomato paste
 * a little water (say 1 cup - use boiling water if you want to speed it up a little)

 * chopped vegetables - now add the ones that cook relatively quickly: Japanese or Kent pumpkin; a few button mushrooms, halved or quartered, go very nicely; eggplant goes very well; broccoli goes well, but add this a few minutes later - and remember its distinctive taste also changes the taste of the dish, which can be nice as a change.
 * more water if needed (it's all guesswork, really - I was going to say there's no wrong answer, but considering some of the things my flatmates used to cook at Abercrombie St, I know that's not true. Add another cup, as long as the water level isn't more than 2/3 of the dish).

Cook further - bring to a simmer, then reduce the power and simmer for, say, 15 minutes. Mix in

 * 1-2 T Extra virgin olive oil

Taste test, and adjust the flavor if necessary.

Pumpkin and bean tagine
''Note: this is for my own notes - I haven't cooked it for years, and I recall it was slightly disappointing in the vegetarian version. I'll add Massels stock powder and see if that solves it. A "low meat version" should also work very well if you're a carnivore - just add say 200g of mutton or hogget.''

This gives a much milder, lighter version of tagine.

 * 2 garlic cloves, crushed
 * 1 onion, chopped
 * 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (if unavailable, next best might be 1 tsp of sweet paprika - but make sure there's some form of chilli or (black) pepper in the dish, otherwise you'll miss out on the hotness.)
 * 2 tsp turmeric
 * 4 medium tomatoes, ripe, chopped. (Or 400g tin diced tomatoes if unavailable)
 * 2 tsp sugar (optional - shouldn't be necessary if you've used a nice ripe pumpkin)
 * 1 tsp chopped fresh chilli, or 1/2 tsp chilli flakes or powder; or to taste.
 * 1 tbs raisins
 * about 250g pumpkin, cubed
 * 500 g green beans, halved
 * 1 tbs vinegar (white wine vinegar should be nice; not sure about balsamic)
 * 2 tsp Massels beef style stock powder (or vegemite, 1/4 tsp might help?)
 * 2 tsp salt or to taste. (Note: if you use a stock powder other than Massels, it might already have a lot of salt, so don't overdo it.)

Vegetarian version: Use a 2L or larger casserole dish. Put ingredients up to chilli in the casserole dish, (saving raisins, pumpkin, beans and vinegar for later). Bring to a simmer. Add raisins, pumpkin, beans and vinegar and cook till pumpkin is very soft.

Low-meat version: Note that you may not need the stock powder if you are using meat - or not as much. Use a 2L or larger casserole dish. Put ingredients up to chilli in the casserole dish, (saving raisins, pumpkin, beans and vinegar for later) together chopped meat, and cook for 1 hour or until meat is quite tender. Then add raisins, pumpkin, beans and vinegar and cook till pumpkin is very soft.

Baharat
Baharat is a wonderful Middle-Eastern spice mix, a little bit like tagine but with no turmeric, and with paprika, pepper, cloves, cardamom and nutmeg. I'll post my recipe here when I can... you can also buy it from Middle-Eastern stores, but it's a bit of a gamble - I tried buying it from one shop, didn't like it at all, and now always make my own.

You can use it as in the tagine recipes, above - however if if you've ground the coriander yourself, it will have a quite rough texture, and you may be better sauteing it briefly in olive oil on the stove, before adding the vegetables. I'm still experimenting with this.

Making the Baharat spice mix
II need to find tthe cookook, but it goes something like this:

/3	cup	Black pepper
 * 1/3	cup	Coriander powder
 * 1/4	cup	Cinnamon
 * 2	Tbs	Cloves, ground
 * 1/3	cup	Cumin
 * 2	tsp	Cardamom, ground
 * 1/4	cup	Nutmeg, ground
 * 1/2	cup	Paprika, ground

That's moderately spicy - reduce the black pepper to reduce the heat. (You can always add more later).

Optional: grind the spices yourself for an even better flavor. Takes work. It's best to dry roast the spices first - this makes them grind more easily (and it's supposed to bring out the flavor).

For cinnnamon, use cassia bark for a slightly stronger flavor - that's the straight one rather than the quills. Cassia is standard in Middle-Eastern and Indian cooking, though it's usually called cinnamon.

Using Baharat
You can fry it with onions in olive oil - or just put it into the sauce as you start. If it's rough ground, you'll need to make sure it's cooked enough - dont' add a big amount of Baharat at the end of the cooking time or it'll be gritty.

I find it goes well with tomato, and with pumpkin.

For, say, a 2L dish/saucepan almost full of veg and/or chick peas, use 1 Tbs or more of Baharat.

Optional: add Massels chicken or beef style stock powder.

Pasta sauce: A tiny amount of Baharat gives a lift to tomato based pasta sauce. Say 1/2 tsp in 2 L of sauce.

Soaking
Rinse, discarding any legumes that are broken or have holes in them, as well as any pebbles or other crap. I don't worry too much about defective legumes - I just remove any that float... it usually becomes an issue if they've been stored for a long time and have been eaten by insects, which does lead to a stale taste if it's at an advanced stage.

But... the important thing is pebbles - not good for your teeth. Usually I find it's not a problem, but be especially careful if you're using a new source or a new type of legume.

Cooking
Don't add salt until they are soft enough that you'd be happy to eat them. Salt stops the legumes getting nice and soft. But don't add right before serving as well - give the salt time to be mixed and absorbed in.

Pressure cookers are often used, but as long as the legumes are soaked for several hours this is quite unnecessary. Mostly they will cook in 20 min or less - even chickpeas should be nice and soft by this time, though it depends on the batch.

The smaller lentils don't need soaking, but I prefer to soak all of them. I figure that the soaking process activates the enzymes that start to break down the tough material inside, ready for sprouting, and that is probably good for digestion and nutrition.

Microwave cooking appears to be a good alternative for legume preparation, in terms of nutrition. It also has the advantage of being able to set a time, so you don't accidentally overcook them and turn them mushy.

Adzuki (red) beans
Used in Asian desserts. I sometimes use them in Indian style dals as well. These beans need more cooking than most - make sure you soak them overnight to make cooking easier. But it's been a long time, so I need to check I wasn't just doing something wrong (like adding salt too early).

Chickpeas
(Also known as chick peas or garbanzo beans)

One of the most versatile foods in vegetarian cooking. They go well in:

 * Salads, soups and curries
 * European cooking. Rosemary goes particularly well.
 * Middle-Eastern cuisine - nice with tagines and baharat.
 * Indian cuisine - delicious with a thick gravy-style curry (with lots of ground spices), or in a thin, soupy curry, using mango powder for sourness along with other spices.

What chickpeas go well with:
 * Rosemary
 * Silverbeet, not spinach. My experience is that spinach goes well with lentils, chickpeas with silverbeet, but not the other way around. This is my own taste, of course - you might disagree.

The best tasting, nicest textured chick peas are the larger ones. They might cost twice as much, but if you've found a reasonably priced Indian shop,<;ref>It's worth comparing prices. Sometimes you'll find a shop that does its own importing and is much cheaper. There are about 5 Indian shops where I have been staying in Ashfield (Sydney) but one (The Indian Spice Warehouse) is the cheapest by a long way. it's not too expensive. They often come in two sizes, with the larger ones something like 10 mm.

Soak for at least several hours. Overnight is good. However, if you soak them too long outside the fridge, especially in hot weather, there is a danger of food poisoning.

Split peas
Considered a very low grade lentil by Indians; however, can make a tasty soup. Corn kernels go well.

Vegetables with herbs & lentils
Posted 17:01, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

1 L microwave dish with lid or cover. Use the lid always, to prevent drying out.

Sometime during the day, or just before you cook: put red lentils and/or split mung lentils in a cup - about 1/4 to 1/3 cup. Add water and leave to soak. ''Actually, you don't need to soak them, but I prefer to. You could just rinse them and put them in the container with water to easily cover them, if you prefer. In that case, microwave for about 2 minutes while you start chopping.''

Dice 1 medium or 2 small carrots,, microwave a minute or two while you chop cauliflower, smallish (2 cm or less), enough to nearly fill container, tuck in bay leaves, 2, microwave 2-3 minutes.

While that cooks, put spices in a bowl: salt 1/2 tsp; cracked pepper 1/4 tsp; 1 Massell's beef stock cube, or 1 tsp stock powder.

Pour spices into the cooking container - and the lentils, if you haven't added them yet.

The veg in the bowl will have settled down a bit, leaving room for Japanese pumpkin - take a slice (ooohhh... say 200g? As much as you can fit into the bowl) and cut into smallish pieces (1 cm avg). Also add half a Spanish onion and some 1 sprig fresh thyme, may stripped, and any tiny branches chopped a bit. Add boiling water so liquid is about halfway up the side.

Microwave long enough to bring to the boil. If you have a very low setting on your microwave, set that to say 5 minutes. Or just wander off. I came back in about 15 minutes, and it was delicious. I ate with wholemeal toast. Served 2 big guys. If I'd cooked a larger amount, I could have eaten it on its own.

Variations:
 * Cook less if you like your vegies firm, though reasonably soft is nicest in this dish.
 * Add chopped olives? But not really needed.

Dal
Dal is the Indian word for lentils. This section is for the Indian recipes.

Vegetables: Most will work well - though I'm not keen on carrots in Indian dal (they don't seem to work in my recipes, anyway).

Basic dal recipe
A fairly standard approach that that works well for me is:

Cook together:
 * 1 cup legumes, already soaked overnight and drained. Or soaked for an hour for the smaller split dals. Chana dal, toor dal, red lentils, mung or adzuki beans, or chick peas should all suit this recipe.
 * 3-4 cups water
 * 1 T ground coriander
 * 2 t ground cumin
 * 2 t mango powder (adds sourness).
 * chilli (fresh, flakes or powder) to taste.

When the legumes are soft enough to be ready to eat, add:
 * 2 t salt
 * 2 t turmeric

Stir in, and continue to simmer.

If you don't use mango powder, you can add tomato paste, or a tin of diced tomatoes after the legumes are soft. You can add other vegetables here if you want. (Silverbeet goes with chickpeas; English spinach goes with lentils, but not the other way around. I'm told that chana dal is traditionally cooked with vegetables from the gourd family - pumpkin goes particularly well. Other vegetables according to preference.)

Now, the next step is called tempering. Take a frypan which has a lid (or find a cover). Heat to a moderate-high temperature.

Add: Keep covered while seeds pop. Shake or stir frypan. As the popping dies down, but before it gets too burnt, add the fried spices to the dal mixture. Stir well, taste, and adjust if necessary. For a more South Indian effect add at the very end:
 * ~1 T oil or ghee
 * 1/2 t hing. Add a pinch to test that it sizzles, then add all.
 * mustard seeds - they start popping,
 * 2 branchlets of curry leaves
 * 1 tin coconut milk (or to taste) (optional). Add right at the end, rather than cooking it, to retain the flavor.

Can be eaten with rice or Indian bread. Traditionally dals are made very thin an used as an accompaniment to other dishes and used to wet the rice. My preference is to eat it with a good quality wholemeal bread, or have on its own as a soup.

Serve with natural yoghurt (i.e. plain, unsweetened). Perhaps try a chutney from your local Indian store.

Here's something that possibly appeals only to me: When reheating the next day, it may seem to have lost its zing. Add a drizzle of olive oil, and it will bring out the flavor of the spices in a quite unusual way.

Other flavor ideas

 * Lentil Dal with Garlic-and-Cumin-Infused Oil Very nice. I adapted this to my style, and what I had handy: I used half chana dal and half red lentils, and a bit less water; half clove of garlic and half a red onion, which I fried with the spices. To the spices I then added the salt and some eggplant and then zucchini, cooked them with the onions and spices till soft enough and browned; I used a bit more salt (1.5 tsp for a cup of dal) of which half went into the cooking spices and half into the dal (after it's soft); no fresh coriander; no lemon juice (forgot). I ended by adding the spice-onion-veg mixture to the dal, followed by the chopped fresh tomato, mixed in, and turned off the heat. Leave for 2 minutes or so and serve.

Chana dal
Chana dal has the lowest glycemic index of any food, last I looked. But it has a much greater advantage: it's delicious. Seriously.

It takes more cooking than other dals. However, if you soak it for a few hours, it can cook with as little as 20 minutes of simmering (depending on the batch, and how old it is - so if you're not sure, allow at least an hour of cooking to be on the safe side).

Vegetables: Traditionally eaten with gourds - the family that includes pumpkin, zucchini, and bitter melon. Superb with pumpkin. Bitter melon is delicious if you acquire the taste (it's seriously bitter). (It took me about 10 minutes to acquire the taste, which makes me wonder if it contains something addictive.)

Chana dal with panch phoran and pumpkin
Panch phoran is a bengali spice mix. I make my own up, and leave out the fenugreek (which is bitter). Something like: 3 parts mustard 3 parts cumin 3 parts fennel 1 part nigella (black cumin). Some use a kind of onion seed instead.

For every cup of uncooked dal, I use 8 tsp of panch phoran. I fry this with hing and curry leaves (optional), and perhaps 2 to 4 tsp coriander, and perhaps ground fenugreek (1 tsp?) for a couple of minutes, so that the mustard pops, but being careful not to burn it. then add onion, and add to the cooked dal mixture. The result is a dal that's full of cooked seeds - more exotic that you'll find in a standard Indian restaurant.

Use a bit of chilli, to taste.

''trying tonight - a huge pot with 4 cups chana dal & pumpkin. Spices start with 8 tsp ea cumin & fennel, 6tsp mustard, and 3 tsp nigella... update later. '' --Singkong2005 · talk 10:51, 8 November 2006 (UTC). ''Missing something, better with coconut milk. Using ghee instead of oil would help. Forgot to adjust sourness - will add lemon juice to leftovers...'' --Singkong2005 · talk 09:17, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Chana dal with pumpkin and sage
This is my own invention. I know that sage and pumpkin ravioli is delicious (having bought some in Haberfield, a suburb of Sydney with many Italian shops). And I know that chana dal goes very well with pumpkin. So with a bit of creativity and a bit of guesswork, I tried this - and loved it.

Rinse, soak dal for a few hours. Drain, add 1.5 L boiling water, then simmer for 20 minutes.
 * 1 cup dal

While it simmers, prepare:
 * 500 g Japanese/Kent pumpkin (more or less, to taste). (Other pumpkins will work more or less well... I stick to Japanese.)

Check the dal for softness. Chana dal won't go mushy like other dals, but it should be very soft and smooth when tasted.

When soft, add the pumpkin, and salt:
 * 1-2 tsp salt (more or less, depending how much pumpkin you used, and whether you follow one of those awful low-sodium diets. Another teaspoon is added to the onion in the final stage.)

Bring back to a simmer. Now prepare the remaining ingredients:
 * 1 medium onion, chopped, preferably Spanish (purple) onion.
 * 2 tsp fresh sage, chopped. (Up to 3 tsp, according to taste. If you use dried sage, the usual advice is to use half as much, though I haven't tried it.)
 * 1/2 tsp cracked or ground black pepper
 * 2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
 * 1 tsp salt

Once the pumpkin is soft, start cooking this final herb-onion mix.

Heat the oil in a frypan over moderate heat. Don't let it smoke. Add the onion, stir, and add the sage and pepper. Cover the frypan and turn down - this can keep some of the natural moisture in, and reduce the need for extra oil. Stir regularly, and when translucent, add 1 tsp salt. Stir for a minute, add to the soup.

Serve with a good wholemeal or rye bread.

(You may wish to mash some of the pumpkin with the back of the mixing spoon, in order to give the soup a thicker texture. You can do this while waiting for the onions to cook.)

Variations: Chilli instead of pepper; stock instead of water.

''Note - the chana dal will remain separate, but become soft. If they break down and make a very thick soup, you've probably been sold the wrong thing: i.e. split peas. They look similar, but are very different to cook and taste. If this happens... add extra water as needed, then write and tell me if split pea soup with pumpkin and sage is nice.''

Spicy mung dal
Mung is the small, round green legumes used in Asian desserts and for making mung bean sprouts. Indians tend to use split mung; I prefer the whole dal. Sometimes they use a smaller variety for spicy food and the larger one for sweets (I think...?) but I haven't figured out whether that's necessary - I use the standard larger one and it works fine.

When cooking with mung, I use a larger amount of spices.

See also the recipe for kolak, below.

Adzuki (red) beans
Mkes an interesting change. Goes well with pumpkin and sweet potato; spanish onion (the purple one) goes well, fried with the spices. I have cooked this with mustard, cumin and turmeric (pretty standard) plus some coriander powder and some of the "sweeter" spices such as cinnamon, fennel (or star anise), cloves & cardamom. It turned out pretty well. Be careful to use a tiny amount of cloves & cardamom. I'll post a proper recipe one day.

Bean salads
Extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, a little salt, chilli pepper or black pepper, and some kind of salad or vegetable, are key ingredients for a great salad. If you've got fresh herbs such as basil, that can work.

I haven't used black beans before, but otherwise this is similar to what I do: Black White and Red Bean Salad. I usually add a bit less oil, and more balsamic vinegar. And I use about 1/2 tsp of salt per 16-ounce/44 g tin of beans, (assuming you're not adding salt through in the sun-dried tomatoes or whatever).

I often have a bean salad as a meal for breakfast or lunch. They're quite high in protein, and not excessive in carbohydrates - that's good to help stay alert during the day, without going overboard on protein, Atkins-diet style.

These are some examples I came up with, but use your imagination.

Each provides one large serve, or two serves if with (wholemeal) bread or toast.

Chickpeas with eggplant and thyme
Posted 17:01, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Use a chunk of eggplant about the size of the tin of chickpeas. Dice in 1 cm pieces. microwave, covered, 4 minutes or till soft.

Drain a 440 g tin Italian chickpeas, add to eggplant in a bowl. Mix in 1/2 tsp salt, 1 sprig fresh thyme, stripped and chopped, 1/4 tsp cracked pepper. Add 1-2 tsp extra virgin olive oil and 2-4tsp balsamic vinegar. Stir, and eat.

Eggs
I don't use a lot of eggs, but I always use free range when I do. That doesn't solve all the animal welfare issues, but it's an improvement.

The ideal is having your own chickens, or buying from someone you know. Cage chickens have a hard life, it seems to me.

Aston's egg surprise
serves 1 I interrogated Aston after he made a delicious egg thing... and this is his memory (and estimates of quantity)
 * 4 eggs
 * 1/2 cup plum wine (I imagine sweet sherry or verjuice would be a good alternative.
 * 2 pinches of salt
 * seaweed
 * 1 tsp sesame oil
 * 1 sheet seaweed (the one used for sushi)
 * pinch chilli (or to taste)
 * 1 rounded tsp peach conserve
 * about 100 ml leftover veg mix (cooked with turmeric & yellow bean sauce... the recipe for that is coming soon...)

Beat egg (with fork).

Mix conserve and wine (shake or stir thoroughly together) and add to eggs, and mix.

Add seaweed, salt and chilli flakes, mix.

Cook in frypan - standard scrambled egg method. When eggs have solidified, but still soft, mix in

Serve with: 1/2 bunch spinach and 2 tomatoes, cooked with 4 tsp yellow bean sauce & a dash of sesame oil. I would have liked an extra pinch of salt, but this was quite a good accompaniment as it was...

Spice mixes

 * Old Bay Seasoning (CopyKat.com) - could be interesting. However, Old Bay Seasoning seems different, incl ginger, but no cloves mentioned.

Bread: Toast & sandwiches
Always use a good quality wholemeal bread. Bread is cheap, relative to other foodstuff, so spending even $4 for a good quality loaf of bread is well worth it. I love Helgas and Noble Rise wholemeal loaves (in Australia), and you get quite a few meals from one of these large loaves. If you can make good bread yourself in a breadmaker, that's a great option. I haven't had consistent results, so I'm happy to pay a few dollars for a nice bread.

I'll occasionally use butter, but usually I take a spoon of extra virgin olive oil and drizzle it over the bread.

Quantity: I find that more than two slices of bread makes me sleepy (due to the carbohydrates), so I make sure there's plenty of healthy vegetables as filling, or some other bulky, filling food, like soup.

Ideas for ingredients:
 * Thinly sliced (0.5 cm or less) pumpkin, cooked slowly in a little olive oil, in a covered frypan. I'll generally add the pumpkin seeds around the side - cooked slowly like this, they turn out delicious (serve with a sprinkle of Massel's stock powder or salt, and/or paprika and cracked pepper).
 * Savory peanut butter - best on a slice toast. Peanut butter with cracked pepper and herbs (dried mixed herbs, or fresh thyme works well). Paprika is an option. A sprinkle of salt if there's none in the peanut butter. (It will be quite dry, unless you've got something like salt and herbs to make your mouth water. The other option is to add olive oil, but go easy - that's getting to be an oily meal).

Jam, conserve or honey as a filling is fine, if you regard it as a dessert. --03:00, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Not your average jam on toast
Something simple like jam, conserve or honey on toast, with butter, can satisfy the need for something sweet and tasty. To make it special, try something unusual:
 * Basil goes well with dark fruits. E.g. strawberry, raspberry or plum conserve - break up some basil leaves on top of the butter, then spread the conserve. Note: The best basil for this is the basil you find at Vietnamese grocery stores and restaurants. It's a flat-leaf basil, like Thai basil, but without such a strong aniseed flavor, and is delicious but not overpowering even with a full layer of leaves on the bread. It also grows very easily. If you can't get this one, then try ordinary basil, but use a tiny bit and see how you like it.
 * Lemon basil goes well with a wider variety of fruits & conserves, including not only the dark fruits, but also apricot. Use sparingly, leaves broken into smaller pieces. --03:00, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Kolak
My ex was a lousy cook when we were married. Now she's a great cook. "Not fair, huh?" she says. She does a version of the Indonesian kolak that I really like - it's got less sugar, and as a result the pumpkin and sweet potato stand out for their sweetness. The Indonesian version is sweeter, and making the pumpkin in particular taste bland and out of place - but that's just my opinion.

 * mung, cooked till soft
 * water
 * sugar to taste. Best to add too little, early on, and adjust towards the end. You can keep the liquid only slightly sweet, and it will be a healthy food to indulge in without nausea or guilt; or add more if you want a more traditional sweet dessert to be eaten more sparingly.
 * coconut cream/milk - one or two tins in a big saucepan should be fine. Add at very end for the best flavor (unless you're in a third world country using freshly squeezed coconut milk made with unsafe water).
 * pinch salt, perhaps?
 * pumpkin (a ripe, sweet pumpkin with a good orange color. A good Japanese pumpkin is nice and sweet).
 * sweet potato
 * banana (or plantain if available)
 * pandan leaf (pandan) - Optional. In Sydney these are available from Indian shops, fresh in the fridge. Add a couple of leaves at beginning... I guess.

Can't remember what else... Jackfruit is sometimes used in Indonesia. Boiled cassava root is also added, which I think is disgusting.

Instructions: cook. :) Obviously put slow cooking things in first, such as mung, then sweet potato, then pumpkin.

There's no fixed rules. Don't overdo the mung, though - it's usually watery in consistency, with mung mostly at the bottom.

It is served hot (especially if freshly cooked) or cold.

Foods I want to learn about
Moussaka, Ratatouille, corn bread, felafel,

Amit suggested I try tandoori paneer - made with this Tandoori chicken recipe, substituting paneer for chicken. Marinate overnight, or in the morning, before cooking at night.

Soba
I recently had Soba noodles (made from buckwheat) at a Japanese restaurant and they were delicious! One dish was hot, another was just cold noodles with a dipping sauce - which would be wonderful in summer. Must learn to cook this... watch this space.

Using peanuts
Over the years I've had these delicious things made with peanuts:
 * Wonderful sate (satay) sauce in Indonesian food stalls, ground on the spot from roast peanuts, and raw garlic, onion, & chilli, with kecap manis (sweet soy sauce) and salt.
 * "Chicken and groundnut curry" - an African recipe, which I helped make for a charity event. Wish I had the recipe. Thinking about a vegetarian version.
 * Sweet peanut soup, as a hot dessert at a Chinese restaurant. My father knew the manager, and I occasionally got treated to things that weren't on the English menu...

Other suggestions?
Can you suggest any other vegetarian cuisines...? I know there's plenty of vegetarian options in Indian and Middle-Eastern cooking, Thai has quite a few vegetarian options, and Indonesian, though mostly a minefield for vegetarians, does have wonderful things like baby jackfruit (in gudeg and lodeh). Vietnamese vegetarian food is better than the meat version, according to some accounts I've read (as it's fresher). But what else? Please enlighten me - leave a note on my talk page.

A great place to search
foodie view which is a fantastic, handy site for recipe searches, which gives the highest rated recipes first. This is where I found Varsha's recipes and comments (above).

I have a recipe box which contains recipes I've bookmarked, for reference. It doesn't mean I endorse the recipe - I haven't tried most of them yet.

I'm looking for an actual recipe site to post my recipes - I'll wait and see what the upcoming Communipes is like before I decide on one. I've been in touch with one of the developers (on 13 July 06), and he said it's coming soon and is going to be very snazzy. Other options: Allrecipes looks good.

Beans and Lentils has some useful stuff (preparation tips, etc), & Google Base could be worth a look, but neither seem as good as foodie view.

I probably won't contribute much to the Wikibooks Cookbook, as it's trying to be a textbook. I want creativity. And comments, and voting.

Measurements
You should know the volume of your cooking containers - I often use this as a guide to amounts, e.g. I give the amounts of spices to use for a 2 L cooking pot/dish that's almost full. Note: it's almost full at the end of cooking, so if you put all the raw ingredients in at once, it would be much more than 2 L.

If you're American... well, it's about time you learnt the metric system ;). If there's a good conversion page, put the link here, thanks. olives nutrition facts


text:
User:Bcrowell~enwikibooks

I wrote a lot of the Modern Greek book. Here is my e-mail info -- that's the best way to contact me, since I don't log in to wikibooks regularly.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:Bcrowell~enwikibooks


text:
User talk:Mingan

I welcome all!

My name is Alexander.

I the web designer and creator of anime websites:

World of the Japanese animation also responding to the address of Anime in Ukraine

[http://forum.anime.org.ua World of the Japanese animation. Community of forums]

Rating of sites anime, manga and hentai

My personal website is located here

I Hope to you I will be interesting. Welcome!

title: User talk:Mingan


text:
User:Mingan

I welcome all!

My name is Alexander.

I the web designer and creator of anime websites:

World of the Japanese animation also responding to the address of Anime in Ukraine

[http://forum.anime.org.ua World of the Japanese animation. Community of forums]

Rating of sites anime, manga and hentai

My personal website is located here

I Hope to you I will be interesting. Welcome!

title: User:Mingan


text:
User talk:Zegaldis

I welcome all!

My name is Alexander.

I love cinema and I is the author of websites about cinema:

the Best and popular TV serials

[http://kinotime.com Cinema and serials which we look. The information on cinema]

Keira Knightley, funsite of actresses

I hope to you I will be interesting. Welcome!

title: User talk:Zegaldis


text:
User:Zegaldis

I welcome all!

My name is Alexander.

I love cinema and I is the author of websites about cinema:

the Best and popular TV serials

[http://kinotime.com Cinema and serials which we look. The information on cinema]

Keira Knightley, funsite of actresses

I hope to you I will be interesting. Welcome!

title: User:Zegaldis


text:
Horticulture/Fruit Growing

 * Cucumbers
 * Strawberries
 * Summer squash
 * Tomatoes

/Finder/Types/Fruits and Vegetables

title: Horticulture/Fruit Growing


text:
Talk:LaTeX/Lengths

Typo
"\unitlength    Units of lenght in Picture Environment" "lenght" should read "length"

Examples
How about some examples - cookbooks are always the best?
 * Examples have been written. More are always welcome! --Ambrevar (discuss • contribs) 15:18, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

need examples
this definitely needs examples - I would put them if I knew how to use these...Towsonu2003 (talk) 03:53, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
 * See above. --Ambrevar (discuss • contribs) 15:18, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

depth of text?
Width and height seem obvious, but what does the depth of text refer to? (I'm assuming we are not dealing with 3D fonts here.)

 * I've put a link to Boxes for the details. --Ambrevar (discuss • contribs) 15:18, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Broken references
I have tried the link in the reference now, and it was broken. -- Harp (discuss • contribs) 18:30, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

LaTeX default lengths
Is this section a complete list of LaTeX default lengths? -- XonqNopp Tk 06:26, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

warning at the end of "Fixed-length spaces"

 * "Anyway, these commands should never be used in regular documents."

"should never" is quite strongly worded, which means there should be a very good reason not to do this. I am not aware of any, the only thing I can come up with is that it mucks with the formatting in a lower-level way. The strongest phrasing corresponding to that would be more like "should be avoided" and not "should never". Hence:
 * Why is using these commands bad?
 * How bad is using them? What will happen?

I'd be grateful if anyone could clarify this in the article.

-

A meta-remark: Wikibooks doesn't yet have other inline cleanup templatesundefined (while Wikipedia has quite a few of them), so I used even though it doesn't match the purpose. Template:Fix says that creation of new Templates should be discussed first, so I didn't create a new one but picked the closest existing one. I spent more time than I should on getting the question I'm concerned with acceptably presented, so I will not spend even more time on finding the right page for this meta-concern.)

-

I don't agree with this either. There are plenty of cases in which these commands are useful, including in the definition of commands (which even people who get very upset about the use of low-level formatting commands in the middle of the documents should be able to agree is okay). Also, sometimes it’s just easier to manually drop a space in than to go correcting all sorts of complicated parameters that might cause effects throughout the rest of your document (today I used \smallskip because the space before and after my table wasn’t quite balanced – for whatever reason LaTeX was treating one side as elastic and the other not).

Perhaps it could instead say something like “The use of these commands should be avoided within running text whenever possible.” Even then, I’m not sure this really belongs in the box with “This is a common error.” This page is about lengths, which are by definition lower-level formatting commands, and it doesn’t really seem like an appropriate place to preach about separating content from formatting. Sobjornstad (discuss • contribs) 15:42, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

title: Talk:LaTeX/Lengths


text:
User talk:65.115.220.89

Please stop coming to Wikijunior, a project that is there for children, and making edits that will only serve to confuse them. There is no need at all, as far as I can see, to swap one very common system of notation for one used only a fraction of the time and which has proven controversial almost everywhere where it has been introduced to the general public. If you do this again, you will be blocked. On the other hand, if you would like to assist in improving the book, bearing in mind its target audience of 8 to 12 year olds, that would be welcome. Kind regards, Jguk 19:48, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

 * The system I am reverting to is the most common system in use for text books and other academic texts, and is generally preferred in general usage, and was originally used by the book's authors. Abuse of administrator powers to gain an advantage in content disputes is frowned upon, I believe. Kind regards. 65.115.220.89 20:04, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

First, that is untrue. A straightforward google search, for example, would show that what I said is correct. Secondly, you were warned that if you made the same adjustment again, you would be blocked. I have therefore blocked you for three days - please do not repeat this. You may, in the meantime, discuss the issue, if you so wish, on this, your usertalk page. Thirdly, since you appear familiar with wiki ways, you will understand that suddenly appearing on a wiki and making edits as an anonymous user, and then continuously remaking them when they are reverted is likely to end in a block of some sort. Please desist. If you wish to help write textbooks, that is ok - what you have done today, however, is just plain disruptive. Kind regards, Jguk 20:10, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism on Wikipedia
I also note that this IP was responsible for vandalism on Wikipedia on 29 May 2006, Jguk 20:31, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Open proxy
This IP has now been permanently blocked as it is an open proxy. Wikimedia rules are that editors may not use open proxies to edit, Jguk 20:40, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:65.115.220.89


text:
Wikijunior:North America/United States/Alaska

Alaska is a U.S. state, located on the northwest tier of North America. It is by far the largest state in area, but one of the least populated. It is the 49th state, having been admitted to the Union on January 3, 1959. The name "Alaska" is most likely derived from the Aleut Alyeska, meaning "great country", "mainland" or "great land". The capital of Alaska is Juneau, and the largest city is Anchorage. Residents are known as Alaskans.

History
Humans have lived in Alaska for 13,000 years. Native American tribes that inhabited Alaska included the Inuit, Tlingit, and Yup'ik.

The first European contact with Alaska occurred in the year 1741, when Vitus Bering, a European explorer, led an expedition for the Russian Navy aboard the St. Peter. After his crew returned to Russia bearing sea otter pelts judged to be the finest fur in the world, other fur traders began to sail from the shores of Siberia towards the Aleutian islands. The first permanent European settlement was founded in 1784. New Archangel on Kodiak Island was Alaska's first capital, but for a century under both Russia and the U.S., Sitka was the capital. The Russians never fully colonized Alaska, and the colony was never very profitable. William H. Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State, negotiated the Alaskan purchase in 1867 for $7.2 million. Alaska was loosely governed by the military for years, and was unofficially a territory of the United States from 1884 on.

In the 1890s, gold rushes in Alaska and the nearby Yukon Territory brought thousands of miners and settlers to Alaska. Alaska was granted official territorial status in 1912. At this time the capital was moved to Juneau.

Geography
Alaska is the largest state in the United States, with 663,268 square miles (1,717,856 square kilometers) of total area. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, Canada to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the south. Alaska also shares a maritime boundary with Russia across the Bering Strait. Along with Hawaii, Alaska is one of two states that does not touch another state. Alaska is the northernmost and westernmost state, and also the easternmost, since the Aleutian Islands extend into the Eastern Hemisphere. Alaska has 34,000 miles (55,000 kilometers) of shoreline, the most of any state.

Alaska is home to Mount Denali, the tallest mountain in North America. The state is also home to more than 40 active volcanoes.

The climate of Alaska is classified as oceanic in the south and the southeast, subarctic oceanic in the north, and Arctic in the extreme north. Much of the land in Alaska is covered in permanently frozen soil called permafrost.

People
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 70% of single-race Alaska residents were Caucasian and 16% were Native American or Alaska Native. Multiracial/Mixed-Race people are the third largest group of people in the state, totaling 7% of the population.

86% of Alaska residents aged 5 and older speak English at home. The next most common languages are Spanish, Yupik, Tagalog, and Iñupiaq.

Famous Alaskans

 * Scott Gomez - first Hispanic player in the National Hockey League
 * Jewel - Pop/folk singer

State Symbols

 * The state is nicknamed The Last Frontier
 * The state's motto is "North to the Future"
 * The state bird is the willow ptarmigan.
 * The state dog is the Alaskan Malamute
 * The state fish is the king salmon
 * The state flower is the forget-me-not
 * The state insect is the four-spot skimmer dragonfly
 * The state land mammal is the moose
 * The state marine mammal is the bowhead whale
 * The state tree is the Sitka spruce.
 * The state fossil is the woolly mammoth.
 * The state gemstone is jade
 * The state mineral is gold.
 * The state song is "Alaska's Flag"
 * The state sport is dog mushing


text:
ACE+TAO Opensource Programming Notes

This book addresses issues related to TAO CORBA development and integration.

First, a word or two about the nature of open source projects. The main benefit of an open source project is that you get a working product you can use, complete with community support. This support often takes the form of user's support as well as developer support. Ideally, these support avenues also include documentation. Should the open source project in question lack some of the pieces mentioned above, its utility as an open source product (particularly as the product becomes more complex) is necessarily diminished.

ACE+TAO is a wonderful product which compares well to other open source products like Orbit or Mico. It encompasses much of the current standard and comes complete with all the services you would expect (and some extras too). Unfortunately, except for the most basic services (the naming service) there are precious few documented programming examples in their tutorial. While there are several source files in the examples directory, these are sadly not written with documented code (often without even a header describing the use for the example), and certainly not included in any web page explaining their code or use.

Object Computing, Inc. freely provides the Getting Started chapter of their TAO Developer's Guide (that can be purchased for around $20.00). This chapter is complete with code examples and walks the user through the steps needed to make a simple TAO client and server. The open-source TAO 1.4a distribution contains all examples referenced in the TAO Developer's Guide, while the FAQ contains some helpful information for beginners and experts alike.

Remedy IT provides freely the CORBA Programmers Guide.

Additionally, the [news:comp.soft-sys.ace comp.soft-sys.ace] and [news:comp.object.corba comp.object.corba] newsgroups are monitored by groups and individuals able to field questions related to both TAO and CORBA, and the TAO mailing lists are available for questions, discussion, and reporting bugs related to TAO.

The following sections should expand on the single example provided with ACE+TAO (the quoter example) with sections designed to help the user with the event service, the notification service, and other real-time issues. Those reading this page wishing to make contributions in explaining various pieces of the TAO project are encouraged to make contributions to this page.

Build Instructions

 * http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/DOCGroup/ATCD/blob/master/TAO/TAO-INSTALL.html
 * http://www.theaceorb.com/faq/index.html#HowToBuildACEandTAOonWindows

The only caveat is that you want to be careful with the "traditional build under a UNIX environment. It treats the install target dir as a sandbox it owns, so if you have chosen /usr/local, like you would with a typical automake project, understand that if there is a problem with the build, the last thing the traditional build env will do is to delete its sandbox (/usr/local).

On the other hand, if you like a no fuss option, Ken Sedgwick over at bonsai.com has provided pre-built RPMs or use the ones provided by Remedy IT from OpenSuSE Build Service (see http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/libraries:/ACE:/micro). The binaries provided aren't of the debug variety, so they don't take up the shocking amount of space an installation of ACE+TAO build with -g can. The bummer seems to be that the number of compiled in features seems to be a little light. That being said, its certainly a good way to get started, and will handle 90% of your applications.

Build Instructions on Linux
To make installing all of TAO easier use the following script. It will take a lot of time to build so using a script is a good option. The script can also be modified to compile only the necessary TAO features.

Things to check after install
After completing the bulding of the TAO it is important to check if everything is done correctly, Hence run the "tests" available in ACE and TAO to check. If the system is built in Linux then the Naming service is not available by default, but the functionality is provided by tao-cosnaming just like the IDL build is given by tao-idl. you can create a softlink for NamingService with tao_cosnaming by using

Steps
 * 1) Run the tests (ACE_wrappers/tests and ACE_wrappers/TAO/tests)
 * 2) check all the links for the binaries (tao_idl, tao_cosnaming.. etc)
 * 3) Start with the examples
 * Present in 2 locations just running then playing around with them is a great start
 * ACE_wrappers/TAO/DevGuideExamples/ and
 * ACE_wrappers/TAO/Examples/

Core Development Operations
In this section, the basic tasks which should allow the user to create most CORBA enabled applications are described.

 * Before you start
 * Create a server
 * Create a client
 * Dealing with IIOP Endpoints
 * Starting the basic services
 * Advertise your service on a naming service
 * Find a service on a naming server
 * A more useful client and server example
 * Attaching your applications to the core services
 * Configuring your app to work with an Implementation Repository
 * Create a process with both client and server
 * Create an event supplier
 * Create an event consumer
 * Create a notifier supplier
 * Create a notifier consumer

Services
The following sections describe the various services, their configuration, and, if not covered above, should include an example.

 * /Naming/
 * /Event/
 * /Real-Time Event/
 * /Time/
 * /Notification/
 * /Concurrency/
 * /Life Cycle/
 * /Load Balancing/
 * /Logging/
 * /Property/
 * /Scheduling/
 * /Security/
 * /SSLIOP Pluggable Protocol/

title: ACE+TAO Opensource Programming Notes


text:
ACE+TAO Opensource Programming Notes/Create a server

= Preface =

This section describes how to create a simple server similar to the quoter example in the TAO examples (ACE_wrappers/TAO/examples/Quoter). To get this to work, create the IDL file and run the tao_idl executable on that file. The command line looks like the following:

tao_idl -GI basic.idl

This generates a whole host of source files, only one or two of which you will be required to edit.

= Source File main.cpp =

= Source file basic.idl = Running the tao_idl program against the following source, generates all the files you'll need to generate a simple server. The actual command line should be 'tao_idl -GI basic.idl' The command line option '-GI' is to generate the server related interface file listed below. All you need to do is to implement this file (i.e. fill out some of the empty member functions) and you're off to the races.

= Generated Server Interface Source = Don't forget to implement the server's interface (basicI.cpp). I usually make this a trivial call out to some other class where all the fun stuff is.
 * 1) include "basicI.h"

// Implementation skeleton constructor My_Factory_i::My_Factory_i (void) { }

// Implementation skeleton destructor My_Factory_i::~My_Factory_i (void) { }

 * Widget_ptr My_Factory_i::get_widget (

const char * widget_name ) ACE_THROW_SPEC ((    ::CORBA::SystemException  )) {  // Add your implementation here }

// Implementation skeleton constructor Widget_i::Widget_i (void) { }

// Implementation skeleton destructor Widget_i::~Widget_i (void) { }

char * Widget_i::full_name ACE_THROW_SPEC (( ::CORBA::SystemException )) { return "Some widget name"; }

 * CORBA::Double Widget_i::price (

) ACE_THROW_SPEC ((    ::CORBA::SystemException  )) {  return 1.25; }


text:
A-level Chemistry/OCR (Salters)/Elements from the Sea

From Minerals to Elements is the third unit in the Salters Advanced Chemistry course.

Chemical Storylines sections

 * ES1: Why is the sea so salty? A story of smokers and solutions
 * ES2: The lowest point on Earth
 * ES3: An industrial case study - how best to manufacture chlorine?
 * ES4: From atomic bombs to safer drinking water
 * ES5: Hydrochloric acid - an industrial success
 * ES6: Treasures os the sea
 * ES7: Summary

Chemical Ideas sections

 * 5.1: Ions in solids and solutions
 * 9.1: Oxidation
 * 2.4: Electronic structure: sub-shells and orbitals
 * 11.4: The p-block: Group 7
 * 1.5: Concentrations of solutions
 * 8.1: Acid-base reactions
 * 5.2: Molecules and networks

Activities

 * M1.1: Solutions of ions
 * M1.2: Bromine production
 * M1.3: Halogens and their compounds
 * M1.4: This liquid is dangerous
 * M1.5: Manufacturing chlorine
 * M2.1: Mineral spotting
 * M2.2: Getting at the minerals
 * M2.3: Extracting copper
 * M2.4: Finding out how much acid there is in a solution
 * M2.5: The philosopher’s microbe?
 * M2.6: Molecules and networks
 * M3: Check your notes on From Minerals to Elements


text:
User talk:Maksimiljan

Come introduce yourself at the new users page. If you have any questions, you can ask there or contact me personally.

Thanks for your edits on Modern History, and welcome to Wikibooks! Andrew Watt 21:51, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:Maksimiljan


text:
User talk:Ecarew

Come introduce yourself at the new users page. If you have any questions, you can ask there or contact me personally.

Thanks for your contributions to computing textbooks. I hope you'll continue to make positive contributions to our work here for a long time to come! Andrew Watt 21:54, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:Ecarew


text:
How to Write a Research Paper in History/Organizing your work

One of the most critical parts of moving from your notes to a finished paper is Organization. This chapter will help you develop your notes into a first draft paper.

Outline
Once you have approximately 40% of your research completed, and you are sure of your topic, you should begin assembling an outline. How do you know when you have 40% of your research completed? Take the number of pages the final draft of the paper is supposed to be, and multiply that by 3.5. This represents the approximate number of paragraphs your paper should have in it. Each of those paragraphs needs at least two, and preferably three details in it. Those details must come from your research.

An outline's purpose is to determine where the individual pieces of research should go, and in what order. Ideally, related pieces of information should go together. If you are doing research on the history of seige warfare, you should not jump from the Persian seige of Amida to the seige of Vicksburg to the seige of Stalingrad and back again in the same paragraph. Instead, each of those major themes should be a separate group of paragraphs. Perhaps you will arrange them in historical order, with Amida coming first and Stalingrad last. Perhaps you will apply the lessons of Amida and Vicksburg to Stalingrad. Perhaps you will begin with Stalingrad before flashing back to Vicksburg and Amida.

You can always shuffle the different parts of your outline around, but it is helpful to have an idea of what details belong in which portion of the paper. The early drafts of your outline will also help you see where the research you have already done fits, and what portions of your paper are weak.

Details, Details
Details come in four basic types for many research papers. The first are date/event synchronicities: In 146 BCE, the Romans destroyed Carthage utterly.  The second type is a location/date/data synchronicity: By 100 CE, the Romans had stationed 15 legions along the Rhine.  The third type of detail is a definition: Latifundias were large slave-run plantations in Roman-ruled Italy.  The fourth type of detail is a direct quotation from one of your research sources, along with a date and location: In 46 BCE, Julius Caesar promised the Senate, "This will be the last year of confusion," when he instituted the Julian calendar.

Each of your details should be backed up with appropriate citations, whether these be footnotes, parenthetical notes, endnotes, or other attributions, from the source materials you are using.

Defining a Narrative
Whether you use Harvard Notation or some other system for writing the outline of your paper, you should make some progress toward defining your narrative by the time you have 60% of your research completed. Research papers should have some kind of underlying story they wish to tell, whether that be the results of the War of the Spanish Succession, or the consequences of the Treaty of Westphalia.

Your story should support the thesis, but you will impress your history teacher, and likely earn a higher grade, if you are doing more than merely reciting a laundry list of facts and figures.

Introducing Your Work
A research paper should open with an introduction. This is an extremely important part of your work. It provides the reader with some understanding of what will follow. Introductions help form perceptions of written texts, and most readers will think more highly of your work if it is well introduced.

This is the hardest part of your writing, though producing a good introduction is helped through having an understanding of what it should contain. Firstly, it should outline the parameters of your work, such as the dates of the period studied, the geographical remit of the paper, and the basic subject matter of what you will be studying. Secondly, and more importantly, you should briefly introduce your thesis. This should only be done in the broadest terms in the introduction, and will be developed further in the body of your work.

In terms of length, an introduction should be approximately 10% of the final length of the paper.

Quotation Files
Thanks to modern word processing tools on computers, it is possible to record your research notes directly into the same types of documents that you will use to write your paper. This can be an invaluable tool: for each source (book, magazine article, newspaper story, encyclopedia entry, or primary source), create a separate file, and copy useful quotations into the file, complete with pre-formatted citation. When it comes time to add the quotation to your paper, you can simply Copy/Paste the quotation into the document, along with its footnote. Maintain a directory of sources on your computer means that you always have a resource to return to for future projects and papers.

Careful selection of quotations in this manner will also create a summary of the article, book, or primary source in question.

Bibliographies
All good history papers should have a list of sources cited. This list is called a Bibliography, though these days it is likely to include as many periodical articles and websites, as it is to contain books. Bibliographies follow different formats at different institutions; it would be difficult to categorize them all. However, the general standard is to list primary sources first, in alphabetical order by author's name.

Secondary printed sources, such as periodical literature, is listed the same way, after all the primary sources are accounted for.

Tertiary sources, such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauruses, and textbooks, would be listed next in high school-level research papers. However, tertiary sources in general should usually be avoided for research papers written in college or graduate school (although magisterial works such as the Oxford English Dictionary might be cited in order to nail down the intended meaning of an unusual word in an older primary source.)

Websites should be listed last. It is ironic on Wikibooks that we must caution against the prominent bibliographic placement of websites, but your grades are at stake here. While there are reliable websites available on the Internet, it is very difficult to determine their general usefulness or staying power as historical sources; the website author may suffer bandwidth crunch, and take down the site. The transcript of a purported "pioneer's diary" from 1853 on his site may be nothing more than a fiction. If you have questions about the suitability of a website, check with your instructor, and be prepared.

Annotated Bibliographies
One useful tool for developing a bibliography for a specific paper is to keep a running word processing file in your computer's hard drive of all the books you have read or in which you have searched, along with a sentence-or-two description of the content. In this way, you develop a lengthy list of materials that you have consulted as a scholar and as a reader, and you also have a handy reference guide for future papers. Some students keep separate bibliographies in separate subjects; you might have an American history bibliography file, a German history file, an Asian history file, and so on. Keeping a separate directory of these files allows you to develop a comprehensive background for future research.

Bibliographical Format
There are numerous standards for formatting your bibliography. Every institution often has its own standards, and many professors choose one standard over another. The MLA has one standard; a woman named Kate Turabian came up with another standard. Both are available in book form at libraries and bookstores.

Here are some simple standards to get you started. In each case, you provide the name of the creator of the work, followed by the name of the resource set apart by underlines or quotations of some sorts. Then you indicate when the work was produced, and where, and by whom.

 * For a book:
 * Last name, first name. Title. Place published: Publisher, year.
 * Broad, William J. The Oracle New York: Penguin Press, 2006.

 * For a newspaper:
 * Last name, first name. "Article Title" in Newspaper name, published in Day Month Year, on page #.

 * For a magazine:
 * Last name, first name. "Article Title" in Magazine name, Vol. #, Week of Day Month Year. Place Published.

 * For a Website:
 * Last name of creator, first name. URL:  http://www.websitename.com/directory/subdir/page.html  Date of last revision: day month year.  Date of Inquiry: day month year.

Due Dates for Bibliographies
Get your bibliography done early. Begin adding items in the proper format to a computer file within 24 hours of being assigned the paper. Expect to have at least one source in your bibliography for each page in length that the final paper is expected to be, if you are still in high school. If you are in college or graduate school, expect that you will need two to four sources in your bibliography for each page in the final paper's length.

Ideally, if your teacher does not set a deadline for completion of the bibliography, set your own deadline. Pick a day that is no more than one-quarter of the way through the time you have to write the paper. If you have four weeks to write the paper, you should have a more or less complete list of books in your bibliography by Friday of the first week. If you only have a week, have your bibliography complete by noon the day after it is assigned.

Deadlines
Your instructor has set a specific due date for the paper. It may be that she has even set a specific hour of the day. It is unwise to assume you will be able to get an extension. Teachers have vacations, too; they set deadlines for their convenience. Plan to meet that deadline with time to spare.

There are several ways to make sure you are not stressed and worried that you can get across campus and turn in your paper on time.

Silver Rule
Do it more than once ahead of time. This is the silver rule: do a rough draft bibliography, a middle draft bibliography, and a final draft; Organize your paper according to several outlines, to find the one that suits your research best; find more information than you need, in more sources than you think are necessary; write and revise your final paper several times; have more than one back-up copy.

Procrastination
Avoid procrastination. Saunter from class to the library, the day the paper's assigned. Check out a book, and photocopy one article. Note both down in your bibliography. Create your quotations file and your paper file on your computer's word processor. Get it set up with templates for quotations and footnotes and page numbers. Get at least a few things typed into every file.

Look! You've gotten started! It's a lot harder to procrastinate once you realize the book you check out of the library only has ten relevant facts, and the article is not as useful as it looked at first glance.

Major Personal Due Dates
Set some personal due dates even if your instructor does not. Here are your critical due dates; note them down in your calendar or planning book, and put a sign up in your room:

 * Complete bibliography by mm/dd/yy
 * Four sources researched by mm/dd/yy
 * Ten sources researched by mm/dd/yy (more of these are optional, but a good idea)
 * Outline drafted by mm/dd/yy
 * Writing begun by mm/dd/yy
 * Revised Outline by mm/dd/yy
 * Revising begun by mm/dd/yy
 * Consult with classmates/colleagues/instructors by mm/dd/yy
 * Print final draft by mm/dd/yy and hh:mm (leave yourself an hour to get across campus, and deal with technical challenges)

Next section: ../Writing the paper/


text:
Talk:Swedish/Lesson 2

Uhm, this is Wikibooks, not Wikitravel... /81.170.235.234 23:08, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed. This page is of no value at all for someone studying Swedish, save the incomplete vocabulary. --84.239.157.217 13:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I were the one who added the grammar-section while not logged in, so if you have any question about it, feel free to send me a message. > Koneke (talk) 11:06, 24 August 2010 (UTC) <

title: Talk:Swedish/Lesson 2


text:
Entry Level PHP Web Application Development

This is an entry-level introduction to writing web applications in the PHP programming language. It focuses in providing the reader with all of the information that they need to know to get started with web development, without covering “advanced” programming concepts. This book is not a reference work: it is intended to teach web application development, as well as PHP, to the reader.

This book covers PHP 5, and makes use of the features of PHP 5 that are not present in previous major releases of PHP, such as PHP 3 or 4. PHP 5 has been out for long enough that nearly every serious hosting provider should have made the upgrade to it by this point in time. PHP 5 has features that simplify the development process for web applications, and it is recommended.

This book makes use of information in Wikipedia as well as on the Internet. As much neutral, objective information as possible is used to allow the reader to perform their own independent research and learning outside of the text of this book as necessary or desired. The goal of this book is to be an extremely high-quality work and to stand on as much pre-published information as available. Citations of, and references to other works should be considered to be normal, and encouraged.

To readers new to Wikibooks
There is no “Errata” document published for this book. This book is an evolving work, and any errors are likely to be fixed when pointed out or otherwise found. If there is a possible error to investigate, use the discussion link at the top of the page with questionable information so that it can be investigated. If any information in this book contradicts official documentation or specifications, the reader may make the assumption that the official documentation is correct, unless there is documented, verifiable proof to the contrary.

Structure of This Book
This book is structured to be read from “front” to “back” — from top to bottom in the Table of Contents. This book attempts to build on previously presented topics, so as to allow for logical presentation of content. There are also tasks for the reader to work on, presented throughout the text of the book, with probable solutions presented in appendices to the book. The reader is encouraged to work on the examples, and then compare what they have come up with to what is presented by the book.

Programming Examples
It should go without saying that programming examples included with this book are released under the GNU Free Documentation License. Each example is intended to stand independently to demonstrate the immediate concept at hand, and examples should be heavily commented (more than “usual” code) to illustrate the how and why things are done.

Examples should also be tested, and cleanly work when copied and pasted for use. No warnings should be emitted, and examples should be kept up-to-date with current best practices and stadards, when possible. Any depreciated code should be clearly marked as such, when demonstrating historical methods.

Prior Experience
The reader is assumed to have no prior experience with writing programs in any language. This is an entry-level work, and so it is intended to be more verbose with regard to the basics than an intermediate or advanced level text on web application programming.

Covered Topics
This book covers all of the topics that are necessary for entry-level web application programming. There is information on the following subjects within this book:

 * HTML
 * XHTML (At this time, cursory; this book uses HTML 4.01 throughout, due to issues with XHTML proper and Microsoft Internet Explorer.)
 * CSS
 * JavaScript
 * PHP 5 (PHP Manual)
 * And more.

Table of Contents

 * 1) /What is Programming? Why Write for the Web?/
 * 2) /PHP Web Application Development Environments/
 * 3) /Our First Programs: Hello, World!/
 * 4) /HTML and CSS: Presentation to the User/
 * 5) /PHP: Performing (Relatively) Simple IO (Input-Output)/