Bill Farmer

Interesting Mash

This is similar to Vegetables cooked in olive oil, except mashed or whipped with a fork. Parsnips are difficult to grate, the softer outer part can be peeled off with a vegetable peeler, and the harder inner core sliced thinly.

Ingredients

• Sliced onions
• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Parsnips/Swede/Turnips
• Cabbage/Spinach
• Olive oil

Method

1. Cover the bottom of a medium saucepan with oil
2. Place a layer of sliced onions on the bottom
3. Layer grated carrot, grated parsnip/turnip/swede, cubed potato and chopped cabbage/spinach.
4. Put on a low heat for about 20 minutes with the lid on until the veg is cooked and the potatoes are soft.
5. Mash or whip with a fork until smooth or lumpy to taste.

Green Tomatoes

If you grow your own tomatoes outside you will end up with green ones that aren’t going to ripen up anytime soon. The classic method for using them up is to make Green Tomato Chutney, which is quite easy. If the skins are tough, use a blender to liquidise them.

Green Tomato Chutney

Ingredients

• 175g/6oz light brown sugar
• 150ml/5fl oz red wine vinegar
• 1 shallot or small onion, peeled, finely chopped
• 1 garlic clove, peeled, finely chopped
• 2cm/¾in piece fresh root ginger, peeled, finely grated
• 1 red chilli, finely chopped
• 125g/4½oz sultanas
• 600g/1lb 5oz green tomatoes, quartered

Method

1. Heat the sugar in a frying pan until the sugar melts and caramelises.
2. Add the white wine vinegar, shallot, garlic, ginger, chilli, sultanas and green tomatoes and bring the mixture to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 1 hour, or until the chutney has thickened and you can draw a wooden spoon across the base of the pan so that it leaves a channel behind it that does not immediately fill with liquid.
3. Spoon the chutney into sterilised jars.

They can also be used in recipes that require ripe tomatoes with the addition of some tomato puree, such as Catalan slow cooked chicken.

Create PDF Report

Introduction

As part of the Questionnaire Maker plugin it is necessary to create a pdf report. The best tool to do this appears to be TCPDF, which appears to be part of at least some Linux distributions as php-tcpdf. It is not included in WordPress.

Implementation

As both the plugin and TCPDF are hosted on GitHub, the best way to implement the plugin, and TCPDF if it is not available on the web server, is to clone the repositories and use symbolic links to provide the plugin and the library in the right places. The same method could be used to implement WordPress.

Questionnaire Maker

Introduction

Questionnaire Maker is a WordPress and Hugo plugin that asks a series of questions and produces a PDF report. The project is on Github.

Documentation

The plugin uses the shortcodes [questionnaire-questions] and [questionnaire-report], or {{< questionnaire-questions >}} and {{< questionnaire-report >}}. The shortcode will be replaced on the page with a series of panels containing the questions and options for the answers, or a panel with a preview of the report.

Smart Meters

CALMU

Smart meters are not a new idea. I was a member of a project in the early 1980s which designed and rolled out a prototype smart meter which was far ahead of it’s time. The unit was called a CALMU (Credit and Load Management Unit). It was capable of recording electricity consumption with several tariffs, gas consumption, with a connection to a suitable gas meter and water use, with a connection to a suitable water meter. It had a remote display panel with a vacuum fluorescent display which could be mounted in a suitable position.