4 MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS

4.1 RECIPES
4.2 A FEW USEFUL SITES ON THE WEB
GENERAL INTEREST
CHECKING A COMPANY
THE LATEX TEXT-FORMATTING LANGUAGE
MISCELLANEOUS COMPUTER TOPICS
OTHER TOPICS

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4.1 RECIPES

First, here are a few random facts:

I'm not close to being a gourmet cook, but this is the best place to put a small number of the recipes that I use.
I omit recipes that I got from copyrighted cookbooks.
Some of my recipes use measures whose precision is questionable: “lots,” “some,” and “a little.” That's my way of telling you to season the dish according to your taste.
McCormick says that “members of the red pepper family, including paprika and chili powder, will retain their color and remain fresher longer when stored in the refrigerator.”

PESTO SAUCE: This can be used for pasta, salad, fish, or chicken. Just mix the ingredients. Use lots of salt, basil, and olive oil. Use a little black pepper, parsley flakes (optional), minced onion (or chopped fresh onion), garlic powder (or ground garlic clove), and lemon juice. Some people use pine nuts, which I have never tried. For use as a salad dressing, I omit the garlic.

PESTO-COUSCOUS SALAD: This is good for bringing to potluck dinners. Use pesto sauce (described above), one serving of couscous, and a variety of vegetables. I use unflavored couscous; you can use flavored couscous if you are confident that the flavoring can coexist with pesto sauce. Use any combination and amounts of vegetables that you prefer. Some possibilities are lettuce (any variety, but I often use spring mix), cucumber, tomato, radish, carrot, green pepper, yellow or orange pepper, alfalfa, corn (frozen corn that has been cooked to soften it and then cooled), peas (prepared as the corn is), and mushrooms. Of course, anything that is heated before being cooled (couscous, corn, and peas) should be prepared first, to allow time for cooling. The couscous and olive oil tend to settle at the bottom, so I suggest stirring one last time shortly before serving.

TUNA CASSEROLE (2 servings): This simple classic probably has variations. Here's what I use:

2 2/3 oz. uncooked noodles
6 oz. canned tuna
10 3/4 oz. canned condensed cream of mushroom soup
2 servings peas, either microwaved or boiled
1/2 cup milk
a little black pepper

Cook the noodles according to the package directions, with salt if desired. Drain. Mix in the other ingredients; then heat (covered, stirring periodically) until the tuna and pieces of mushroom are warm.

VEGETARIAN CHILI (3 or 4 servings): This recipe is spicy; feel free to adjust the variety and amounts of the ingredients.

1 onion, chopped
1 whole hot pepper, chopped
some salt
15 oz. canned vegetarian chili
some black pepper
14.5 oz. canned whole tomatoes, broken into small pieces
a little cinnamon
some chili powder
a little coriander
a little ground red pepper
two servings of fresh tomato, chopped
some paprika
a little lemon juice

Sauté the onion and hot pepper until the onion is slightly browned. Mix all the ingredients in a pot, and cook (covered, stirring periodically) with low heat for whatever time you want.

FISH WITH STUFFING ON TOP:

fish fillets, rinsed
celery flakes or chopped fresh celery
1 onion, chopped.
3 slices of bread, cubed
a little salt
a little black pepper
a little sage
a little milk
a little lemon juice

1. Sauté the celery and onion. Add the bread, and continue cooking until the bread is lightly browned.
2. Pour the celery, onion, bread, spices, milk, and lemon juice into a bowl, mix them, and put them on top of the fish.
3. Bake at 350°F for 30 minutes.

SAUCES FOR FISH: I am not a connoisseur of fish; I just rinse the fillets, top them with a sauce, and bake at 350°F for 25 minutes. Here are some sauces:

Pesto sauce (described above)
10 3/4 oz. canned condensed cream of mushroom soup, paprika, and black pepper
Cajun sauce: lemon juice and Cajun seasoning
Plain sauce: lemon juice, salt, and pepper

SAUCES FOR CHICKEN: I just rinse the chicken breasts, top them with a sauce, and bake at 350°F for 55 minutes. The fish sauces can also be used for chicken.

SWEET AND SOUR MEATBALLS (4 servings): If the recipes above left you asking “where's the beef?,” here it is. Here “sweet and sour” does not mean Chinese. Here are the ingredients for the sauce:

14.5 oz. canned tomatoes, cut into small pieces
2 servings of fresh tomato, cut into small pieces
2 tbsp. sugar
some ketchup
a little salt
a little black pepper

Here are the ingredients for the meatballs:

1 lb. ground beef
some salt
some black pepper
2 slices of bread that have been soaked in water and then squeezed

1. Heat the sauce until boiling; then turn off the heat temporarily.
2. Chop the meatball ingredients together.
3. Resume heating the sauce, form the meatball ingredients into 16 meatballs, and drop them into the sauce.
4. Maintain a low boil, covered, for 50 minutes, stirring periodically.

THICK RICE PUDDING WITH NO EGGS OR ADDED SUGAR: The lack of eggs results in a rice pudding that is thicker than most. You can serve it warm or cold. Here are the ingredients (which you can vary):

1 cup instant rice (nobody has gotten this recipe to work well with regular rice)
2 1/8 cups milk
3/4 cup raisins
lots of cinnamon
a little salt
1 1/3 oz. vanilla
a little nutmeg

Mix everything except vanilla and nutmeg in a small pot. Heat it to boiling (uncovered, stirring periodically to avoid sticking). Preheat the oven to 350°F. Remove the mixture from the heat as soon as it starts to boil (otherwise it can boil over), add vanilla and nutmeg, pour it into a baking dish, and bake for 11 minutes (you can vary the time).

4.2 A FEW USEFUL SITES ON THE WEB

Besides sites that “everybody” knows or that I discuss elsewhere in my web site, here are a few more sites that I have found useful:

GENERAL INTEREST:

News (CNN)
Question-answering system
Time of day: Pick a U.S. time zone. After a few seconds, you should see the changing digits, and you can set your watch. You will also see a map that shows the current areas of daylight and areas of darkness across the globe. If you don't see the changing digits, click “Problems? Questions?”
Weather (weather.com)
ZIP code lookup

CHECKING A COMPANY:

Better Business Bureau
Charities: Search for charities that are eligible to receive tax-deductible charitable contributions, according to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
Securities and Exchange Commission: Among other things, you can verify that a mutual fund is registered.

THE LATEX TEXT-FORMATTING LANGUAGE:

LaTeX itself
MiKTeX implementation of LaTeX
Spell-checking for LaTeX and other formats

MISCELLANEOUS COMPUTER TOPICS:

Disk erasing, e.g., to delete private data before recycling
Internet tips for privacy and security
IP address and other things that might be learned by a web site to which you link
Validation of the markup of web documents that you created in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, MathML, etc.