Strangely-Normal.com

Since moving in October for my job, I have found myself driving a significant distance daily. My commute often involves stops at whatever fast food joint is on my way, as the evening drive starts at 5:30, just when I’m really hungry. I rarely feel like waiting until a quarter to seven when I get home to even start making dinner. As such, and more importantly due to my sedentary lifestyle, I have found that I’ve packed on a significant number of pounds onto my already too-large frame.

Which brings me to my newest project. I have found a number of great recipe sharing sites, and a number of terrible diet-tracking sites, but nothing that mixes the two ideas together into one package. The ultimate goal is for me to have the ultimate dietary database.

The features I would like to ultimately include are:

• Recipes, with nutritional information, scalability with regards to serving sizes and a rating system
• Food Journal, to keep track of previous day’s eating
• Menu Planning, with requirements for a week or what have you
• Shopping Lists, from the pre-planned menus

I’m starting with one of the smaller and simpler modules, recipes. I will be using symfony as a development framework. We use symfony at work and I have been quite impressed by its versatility and want to do something that is all my own with it.

Today I spent a couple of hours setting up a development environment on my home server. Downloaded and installed postgres 8.3, php5, symfony, and some development applications. I have a database model in my head and want to get it down on paper shortly. Will post the table definitions when I blog next.

Comments and suggestions are always appreciated.

Last weekend Alan, Matt, Fran and I went to see Spencer Gorge/Webster’s Falls Conservation Area in Dundas, ON. It was a very nice, warm day, and it was very pretty. Some photos are attached

To recap the weekend:

• clean out car - yep, I cleaned my car.
• go grocery shopping - yeah, I totally did that
• go swimming - no swimming. I did have a bath, but it’s not exactly the same
• read - indeed, I am literate. Currently reading Arthur C. Clarke’s The City And The Stars
• find something fun to do in Hamilton - We totally went to the recycling drop off. It was sorta fun.
• get rid of at least 2 monitors - as of last night, we got rid of all three
• clean computer room - well, we got rid of monitors… that sort of counts
• take over the world - yeah, I wasted a lot of time doing so… must remove this game
• cook something awesome - we made chicken lasagna which was great, a chili that was good, and some cookies that were pretty good.

8 out of 9 aint bad. Alan also let me win at Scrabble

Slightly modified from Karen’s recipe

INGREDIENTS:
lasagna noodles
2 cups cottage cheese, creamed
3 cups diced, cooked chicken meat
2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 medium-sized onion, chopped
1 chopped green bell pepper
2 cups sliced mushrooms
4 tablespoons butter
2 (10.75 ounce) cans Campbell’s cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup milk

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add lasagna and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain. (or use oven-ready)
3. In a saucepan melt the butter and saute the onions, green peppers, mushrooms. Add chicken, chicken soup and milk; cook until smooth.
4. In a 9×13 inch baking dish, layer noodles, soup mixture and cheeses. Alternate until gone. Bake in a preheated oven for 45 minutes.