My Jade plant kept leaning towards the window, so I decided to do something about it. I made a solar powered rotating plant stand out of K’nex. Since it is solar powered, it only rotates when the sun is completely out; I am hoping that this still helps the plant not lean. It has only been rotating for a day, so I don’t have any results to share yet. Check the video out below of it in action:

Edit:  I let this rotate for a week, but then it started squeaking from the plastic pieces rubbing on each other, so I stopped it.  The picture below the plants are leaning to the left, but after the one week time period they were straight up and down.

I saw this recipe - Pepperoni Bread - last year and I thought it was a great idea. I made something similar to it using my Basic White Bread recipe. All I did was roll out the dough, top it with my favorite ingredients and roll it back up and bake it at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. The one thing I would change would be to put less cheese on it, and let the dough rise for 20-30 minutes after being rolled back up.  Letting it rise again may make it not get so flat after baking.  It tastes great, but is more of a novelty thing.

Cocoa Brownies
From: Betty Crocker’s Cooky Book

1/2 C. shortening

1 C. sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

2/3 C. all-purpose flour

1/2 C. cocoa

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 C. chopped walnuts

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Mix shortening, sugar, eggs and vanilla until well blended. Blend dry ingredients; mix in. Stir in nuts. Spread in a well-greased 8×8x2 inch pan. Bake about 30 min.

Brownie Recipe From an Unknown Source
From: Me, who carefully measured the ingredients from a layered mix jar.

1/2 C. cocoa powder

2/3 C. white sugar

1/2 C. brown sugar

1 C. flour

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 C. chocolate chips

3 eggs

1/2 C. melted butter (1 stick)

1/2 tsp. vanilla

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter in the microwave or over stove. Mix everything together. Spread in a well-greased 9 inch square pan. Bake about 35-40 minutes - stick a toothpick in the brownies, and if it comes out almost clean they are done.

Comments: After making both of these recipes twice, I prefer the second recipe. The Betty Crocker recipe is too sweet for my taste.

Yesterday I baked my basic white bread recipe. I only needed 1 loaf of white bread, so I decided that something needs to be done with the other. I happened to have cinnamon, sugar and raisins around.

Cinnamon Raisin Bread
Makes: 2 loafs

Basic white bread dough

0.5 cups sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp. butter or margarine

Raisins.

1. Prepare the Basic White Bread recipe and stop after rolling the dough out in direction 16.

2. After rolling take 1 tablespoon of the butter or margarine and spread it evenly over all but 1-2 inches of the end. This non buttered area is what will help to seal the roll up later.

3. Now stir up your sugar and cinnamon, and take a quarter cup of the mixture and spread it all over the dough. At this time you also add your raisins. Be careful not to get it on the 1-2 inches that is going to be used to seal the roll. You can see on the right side of the image the extra bit I left.

4. Tightly roll up the dough starting at the sugary side and work your way to the edge you saved. The saved edge will help the dough from unrolling and make it easier for you to pinch closed. See direction 18 of the white bread recipe.

5. Place seam side down in your bread pan.

6. Repeat for second loaf if desired.

7. Let rise for 60 minutes.

8. Bake both loafs at 400F. for 25-30 minutes. Pull them out when the tops are golden brown, and when you tap on them it makes a hollow sound.

9. Cut open and taste:

Basic White Bread:

Makes: 2 Loafs.

1/2 cup milk

3 tbsp. sugar

2 tsp. salt

3 tbsp. butter

4.5 tsp. active drive yeast (2 packages)

1.5 cups warm water (105F.-115F.)

5-6 cups all-purpose flour

1. Add milk, sugar, salt, and butter to a pan.

2. Melt down over low heat. Let cool until just warm.

3. Now prepare for dissolving the yeast by pre-heating your mixing bowl. I used hot water. We don’t want the bowl to cool down the warm water that you will be adding.

4. Get your 1.5 cups of 105-115F. water and dump it into the pre-heated mixing bowl. If the water is too hot it will kill the yeast, to cold and the reaction won’t take place or will be slow.

5. Add yeast and stir.

6. Wait until yeast is dissolved ~ 5 minutes. The yeast will begin to bubble to the top.

7. Add melted butter and sugar solution.

8. Add 4.5 cups of flour.

9. Knead the dough. If you have a large mixer like mine then knead for a minute. If you are kneading by hand, then knead for about 7 minutes on a floured surface with floured hands, then let rest for 5, and then repeat. Exact times aren’t important, but when kneading by hand the rest time will help the dough to build up gluten, and at the same time give you a chance to relax.

10. Add .5 cups more flour at a time until the dough starts pulling away from the sides of the mixer. Don’t go over the 6 cups, or the resulting white bread will be dry and not moist.

11. The white bread dough is finished. Pull it out of the mixing bowl.

12. Place the dough ball in a greased bowl. Turn dough to coat all sides.

13. Let the dough rise in a draft-free warm location for one hour. This time, I placed the dough in the oven with a bowl of hot water below it. Before, I have let the dough rise on the counter covered with a damp cloth that was hanging above and around the bowl. Both methods work nicely.

14. The dough has risen nicely:

15. Punch the dough down.

16. Cut the dough in half and roll it out into a rectangle. You want the width of the rectangle to be the same size as the bread pan you will bake the white bread in. The rolling will get out air pockets — we want this to happen.

17. Tightly roll the dough up. Pinch the the long seam shut. Then pinch the ends shut. See the picture for reference.

18. Place the rolled-up dough seam side down in a bread pan and then place back into the draft-free warm location for another 1 hour, or until you feel the dough has risen enough above the edge of the bread pan.

19. After 1 hour it is now time to bake the dough. Bake at 400F. for 25-30 minute. Pull out when the top is golden brown, and when you tap the top of the loaf it sounds hollow. Let the loaf cool on a wire rack or out on the counter. Don’t immediately bag it up.

20. Cut your fresh white bread open and taste the goodness you baked yourself!

This is the first time that I have baked this particular recipe for white bread. I was very happy with the end results. The bread was moist and it didn’t taste too salty or too sugary. It also had a nice crust — it was just right. I will definitely use this recipe in the future when I’m looking for sandwich white bread or a base for variations. With the second loaf that this recipe made, I made it into a cinnamon raisin bread — see my next post for pictures of the results. I also have plans to use this recipe to make a pizza roll up.

Post a comment with your results if you decide to bake this white bread recipe up. I’m curious if you have the same success as I did.

I was at Cub Foods today looking for some fruit for the week.  The apples and oranges I passed up because the price per pound was too high.  I saw a small section of Honey Tangerines for $.58/pound.  That’s a pretty good deal considering apples are $1.5/pound+ same with oranges.   They taste super great, nice and sweet and they had a good texture — but there are a lot of seeds, but that just makes one enjoy them longer.  After checking the internet, “Honey Tangerines” is actually the brand name that Murcott Oranges are normally sold under.  This link has a nice description of them.  I’ll definately buy these in the future.

This is my workspace. Left monitor for reference documents. Middle and right for writing my programs, and surfing the web ect. The desk is heavy-duty and somewhat old. All three monitors are lifted up by things, so they are at a more ergonomic level - left monitor propped up by dead powersupplies and a 75lb granite slab and an old shipping box, right monitor has a wooden stand.

For my Individual Study I’m making myself make a Java drawing program.  Java has an amazing amount of built-in graphics options if one uses Java2d, so this would normally be straightforward.  The catch is that for my Individual study I’m concentrating on how to do all of the graphics myself.  This would include all of the antialiasing, layers, line and brush algorithms.   Below you can checkout where I am at this moment.  Right now I’m able to draw to the raster layer pixels, and I’m doing line drawings.  I need to get a better line drawing algorithm and I need to make all the color choosers ect.

Drawing Applet

I have been programming some MPI programs in C, and I needed to learn how to do 2 dimensional arrays in C. I thought I’d would share with the World the simple sample program I made up.

/*
This is an example program that I wrote
when learning about how to make dynamically allocated
2 dimmensional arrays in c.  I looked at
a bunch of websites, but the best site that I
found that actually showed and explained the
different methods was http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/c-faq/c-2.html

(c)2008 Adam J Bavier all rights reserved
*/
#include 

int main( int argc, char** argv)
{
 //Initialize variables
 int i,j,k,				//Values for for loops
 	nrows,
 	ncolumns;
 int *array1,**array2,**array3;

	if(argc != 3){
 	printf("Usage twodimarrayallocating.exe rows columns\n");
 	return 0;
 }
 //Get the number of rows and then the columns
 nrows = atoi(argv[1]);  //rows
 ncolumns = atoi(argv[2]); //columns

	//Simulate a two dimmensional array with a single,
 // dynamically-allocated one-dimensional array
 //  Note subscript calculations must be performed by you.
 //  i row, j column is array1[i*ncolumns+j] not array1[i][j]
 array1 = (int *)malloc( nrows * ncolumns * sizeof(int));
 if(array1 == NULL){
 	printf("Out of memory");
 }

	//Method 2:
 //  Allocate an array of pointers.
 //  Then initialize each pointer to a dynamically
 //  allocated row.
 array2 = (int **) malloc( nrows * sizeof(int*));
 if( array2 == NULL){
 	printf("Out of memory");
 }
 for(i = 0; i < nrows; i++){
 	array2[i] = (int * )malloc(ncolumns * sizeof(int));
 }

	//Method 3;
 //	Using explicit pointer arithmetic
 //  the array's contents can be kept contiguous
 array3 = (int **)malloc(nrows * sizeof(int *));
 array3[0] = (int *)malloc(nrows * ncolumns * sizeof(int));
 for(i = 1; i < nrows; i++){
 	array3[i] = array3[0] + i * ncolumns;
 }

	//Put some values into array1
 for (i=0; i<nrows; i++){
 	for (j=0; j=j)? i : j;
 	}
 }
 //Put some values into array2 and array3
 for (i=0; i<nrows; i++){
 	for (j=0; j=j)? i : j;
 		array3[i][j]= (i>=j)? i : j;
 	}
 }
 printf("array1.\n");
 for (i=0; i<nrows; i++) {
 	printf("\n");
 	for (j=0; j<ncolumns; j++){
 		printf("%6d   ", array1[i*ncolumns+j]);
 	}
 }
 printf("\n\n");
 printf("array2.\n");
 for (i=0; i<nrows; i++) {
 	printf("\n");
 	for (j=0; j<ncolumns; j++){
 		printf("%6d   ", array2[i][j]);
 	}
 }
 printf ("\n\n");
 printf("array3.\n");
 for (i=0; i<nrows; i++) {
 	printf("\n");
 	for (j=0; j<ncolumns; j++){
 		printf("%6d   ", array3[i][j]);
 	}
 }
 printf ("\n\n");

	//Free memory
 printf("Free array1\n");
 free(array1);
 //Iterate through array2 and array3
 //  and free the rows
 printf("Free array2\n");
 for(i=0;i<nrows;i++){

		free(array2[i]);
 }
 printf("Free array3\n");
 free(array3[0]);

	//then free the array of pointers
 printf("Free array of pointers array2\n");
 free(array2);
 printf("Free array of pointers array3\n");
 free(array3);
 printf("Done.\n");
 return 0;
}

Output

array1.              0        1        2        3        4

     1        1        2        3        4

     2        2        2        3        4

     3        3        3        3        4

     4        4        4        4        4

array2.

     0        1        2        3        4

     1        1        2        3        4

     2        2        2        3        4

     3        3        3        3        4

     4        4        4        4        4

array3.

     0        1        2        3        4

     1        1        2        3        4

     2        2        2        3        4

     3        3        3        3        4

     4        4        4        4        4

Free array1

Free array2

Free array3

Free array of pointers array2

Free array of pointers array3

Monster Cookies are a delicious concoction of oatmeal, peanut butter, M & M’s, and chocolates chips. They have no flour so if you are on a gluten-free (GF) diet then you can eat these - as long as you make sure you don’t pick up any of those silly chocolate chips that have gluten products added to them (Edit: A commenter tells me that to be truly GF you need to also use special GF oats. Thanks for the comments!).

My father says:

Recipe from Tala Bavier (not sure where it came from originally), and published in the 1990 Bavier’s Family Tree Cookbook. With seven kids in the family, this made a monster batch of cookies (at least 5 dozen of the size shown), and each time they were different, depending on what type of M&M’s, chocolate chips or peanut butter was used. Experiment with larger and smaller chips, mint, swirl, etc. for your own unique and delicious cookie!

Monster Cookies:

From: Tala Bavier Makes: 5 doz.

6 eggs

2 cups brown sugar

4 tsp. baking soda

1 cup margaring (half butter)

3 cups peanut butter (28 oz. creamy, or crunchy can be used)

2 tsp. vanilla

2 cups white sugar

2 tsp corn syrup

9 cups oatmeal

12 oz. bag chocolate chips (2 cups)

2 cups M & M’s

Beat eggs. Add sugars and mix well. Add rest of ingredients. Mix well. Stir in chips and M & M’s . Drop on cookie sheets (ungreased). Bake at 350 degrees just until puffy and the tops are slightly browned, but the cooke is still slightly soft. This time will depend on how large you make the cookies — see notes on photos below. Let cool on cookie sheets. P.S. That’s right - there’s no flour in these .

Images:

Getting ready to mix the brown sugar into the mixed eggs.

All the starting ingredients are mixed in. Now get out a big bowl…

Put the oatmeal and chips and M & M’s in the big bowl.

With a spatula, put the mixed ingredients into the large bowl, and then mix thoroughly. making sure all the oatmeal is thoroughly mixed in.

Use those muscles. A sturdy wooden spoon would also work well for the mixing. Monster cookies are now mixed, and ready for placing on cookie sheets.

Monster cookies (12-on) an ungreased cookie sheet (photo shows 2 cookie sheets stacked together, but only one was used during the baking process).

Close-up of the amazingness that is the Monster Cookie! Both jumbo and small M & M’s were used in this batch along with the chocolate chips.

Finished cookies after 17 minutes at temperature on recipe. If you make smaller cookies, adjust the time so that the tops are slightly browned, but the cookie is still somewhat soft. Leave the cookies to continue baking on the pan for about 15 minutes before removing. (This photo is from a different time, so look is slightly different because of the M&M’s used.). We mix all sorts of different chocolate things in - use whatever you have on hand. We often mix in dark chocolate M & M’s, mini and jumbo M & M’s, chocolate chunks etc.

Gluten-free, no flour (Edit: Per the comments, you also need to use special GF oats — though my Mother is needs a GF diet and these have not bothered her). Delicious right out of the oven, or straight from the freezer. One cookie will definitely make you want to have another!