And why do I live here?
Posted: April 23, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: minnesota, photo, weather Leave a comment »Where am I going to find the worm?
Nope, not what I have in mind for April?
Lentil and Cauliflower Curry
Posted: April 22, 2013 Filed under: food | Tags: cauliflower, curry, dinner, lentil, vegan, vegitarian Leave a comment »So since I am doing a lot more cooking around the house lately, I am always looking for something I have not made, but is easy to make. It needs to be easy because I am an engineer and engineers are generally lazy. But I do like very delicious food and I don’t like food that comes in a frozen box. Looking around the kitchen I realized that I had lentils, zucchini, frozen cauliflower and some mango chutney I canned last year (time to do that again – future post). The whole family enjoyed this curry and I have plenty to take with me for lunch this week.
Here is the recipe:
1 Onion, chopped 2 tablespoons of sweet curry powder 2 teaspoons of garlic powder 2 teaspoons of ginger (I used frozen crushed) 1 14oz can of diced tomatos 1 cup water ½ teaspoon salt ⅔ cup mango chutney 2 small cauliflower (I used 2 bags frozen) 1 zucchini halved and sliced 2 cups lentils (I used brown, but use what you have) 1 bay leaf
- Put 4 cups of water in a pan and add lentils and bay leaf, bring it to a boil cover and simmer for 25 minutes.
- While the lentils are cooking. Saute the onions and salt in deep pan or dutch oven until soft
- Add curry power and garlic and cook for about a minute
- Add tomatoes, water, ginger, chutney, cauliflower, zucchini bring to a boil and simmer.
- When lentils are done, drain, remove bay leef and add to the curry.
- Serve over rice with cashew sour cream
- Enjoy your meal
I will post the mango chutney recipe soon …
Cashew Sour Cream
Posted: April 22, 2013 Filed under: food | Tags: dairy free, food, recipe, vegan, vegitarian 1 Comment »We have two family members that can’t eat dairy in this house. But what do you do when you need a little sour cream to jazz up a dish? Say hello to simple cashew sour cream, there are a number of recipes out there that have you soak the cashews overnight, but I am lazy and would never remember to soak. The key to this recipe is a good blender that can handle small amounts, I happen to like the magic bullet. Here it goes.
1 cup raw unsalted cashews (I get mine from trader joes) 2 tablespoons lemon juice 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar ¼ teaspoon salt ¼ cup water (and maybe a bit more)
Put all the ingredients in the blender and crank it up, blend until smooth – not grainy. You may need to add a bit more water to get to the correct consistency.
Enjoy your vegan sour cream, much better the fake sour cream made with soy.
My 15+ years with Java … it has been a nice ride
Posted: November 23, 2011 Filed under: geek, programming, Software engineering, Uncategorized | Tags: groovy, java, linkedin, programming, ruby, software 2 Comments »I just realized today that I have been programming in Java for more than 15 years. I picked up Java when it was first released in 1995 and it is now 2011 and I am still using it as my primary language.
Java you have treated me well and I have become very comfortable with your idiosyncrasies, maybe a little too comfortable. The joy of writing on a JVM that truly runs on all the platforms I come across everyday cannot be overstated.
But java, you and I are showing our age, it is time to spice it up. I think that is why I am looking to move to Groovy and dabble in Ruby while adding a little Objective C on the side. It is not that I am abandoning you, I just think we need to see other people.
As often happens when you get a little to comfortable with any one language, you see all solutions through the lens of that language and those may not be the best solutions.
I am very confident in my ability to implement almost anything in Java, but that does not mean that java is the best solution. I am certainly a big fan of the JVM, it gives me my Mac/Windows/Linux portability.
I remember long ago when I moved from C to C++, it was very hard to break the habit of falling back on the standard C constructs when trying to get something done. This my be why so many developers have turned to Ruby, to break those chains. However, I think I may actually give it a go to build more in Groovy and leverage my extensive java experience.
For all of us software developers, in much the same way we look for better tools and processes to help manage our development, maybe if we have been using the same set of tools for quite a long time we need to look at the other tools that are available to solve some of the problems we aim to solve. I am pretty sure that I am not the only developer that occasionally gets in a tool rut.
Happy coding …
Letter to Gov. Dayton and Legislators
Posted: May 17, 2011 Filed under: politics | Tags: education, Politics 1 Comment »Dear Governor Dayton:
I am writing to you as a father and citizen to strongly urge you to block efforts at the capitol to shift school funding away from the central cities (St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Duluth) as it will adversely impact the children in those districts. As a parent of a first grade child in the St. Paul school district I have seen first hand the tough job that teachers face. In my son’s classroom he and five other children are reading at a 3rd grade level and doing advanced math, in the same classroom there are children for whom English is not their first language. The diversity within the school district is amazing and also challenging.
Because of the proposed cuts his first grade teacher won’t be in the classroom next year. This is a great loss and shows first hand the impact that continuous cuts to our education system can have. First grade classrooms will increase by 3 or 4 children per teacher. This is in first grade when children still require a lot of help in social interaction, and this is a time when kids can become excited about learning, given the right environment and teacher.
Schools in the urban cores educate the highest concentrations of poor, special education and non-English speaking students. The cost of teaching these students is much higher and they often require far more services. We need to strive to educate all children to the highest standard, and creating larger classrooms is not the way to do that. It is the individual attention that a teacher gives that can make all the difference and lead to a lifetime of learning.
We should also not forget that an equal education is written directly into the Minnesota Constitution:
ARTICLE XIII
Section 1. UNIFORM SYSTEM OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it is the duty of the legislature to establish a general and uniform system of public schools. The legislature shall make such provisions by taxation or otherwise as will secure a thorough and efficient system of public schools throughout the state.
Investment in the education of our children is the path to a strong economy and citizenry. Taking money away from the schools that educate our most vulnerable children destroys the promise that we have made to all of our children.
Sincerely,
Michael Herrmann
Posted: April 15, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »
There are days that you ride home on your bike (sorry tin can commuters) and even though the weather is cold and wet a smile comes to your face when a mom with a toddler waves at you and when you wave back there is great excitement and then further on a woman on her way to work stops to say hello to an elderly gentleman in the neighborhood … this is what make’s us human and what brings smiles to our faces. Gadgets, work, exercise and other things of our own desire can’t even begin to match the joy in seeing other enjoy life.
-15 F this morning for my commute
Posted: January 21, 2011 Filed under: bike | Tags: cold, insane, winter Leave a comment »
