Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Scrumdiddley a.k.a Cheaters Chicken Pasta Bake


This is a recipe that was inspired by something my grand aunt Abby gave me one night.

She spent many years in the US, so I am sure that she picked up some tips there.

Time to prepare: 20 mins

Time to finish: 60 mins




Ingredients:

1 x Cooked Chicken.

(You can buy a cooked chicken or cook one yourself.
I often boil a chicken which also gives a great stock that can be used.)

2 x tins of Campbell's Cream of Chicken Soup (you can substitute this for something less calorific)

500g Pasta of you choice. (I prefer penne or quills myself.)

Pasta/Parmesan cheese. (I often use one of those packets of pasta cheese, as they are easy.)

2-4 packets of mozzarella.

Method.

Turn on the oven to about 200 degrees centigrade.

Fill the kettle and put it on to boil.

Empty the 2 cans of chicken soup into a large oven proof dish/saucepan with a cover. (I have a large La Creuset pan which is just the job.)

Heat slowly with a can full of water or stock.

When the kettle boils put it into another pan and get the pasta cooking.
I put a good spoonful of salt in the water.

Make sure that the water is boiling vigorously before putting the pasta in.
Boil vigorously until the pasta is 'al dente', having a slight bite.
If it is soft, then you are shagged.

In the meantime, remove all the chicken meat from the cooked chicken.
You can also boil the remains to make a nice stock.

At this stage, we have hot soupy sauce, chicken meat removed and pasta almost cooked.

Cool.... Have a quick drink of beer.

Put the chicken into the sauce.

Add the pasta/Parmesan cheese and mix.

Add some stock or water so that it is thick and creamy.

Add the pasta and mix again.

Take the mozzarella cheese and tear it and place it over the top reasonably evenly.

Ready ??? not quite.

Adjust Seasoning





Have a taste of the gloop and adjust for salt and/or pepper. Quite important. The cheese is salty, which should be enough. Check, because it is easy, to see if it is to your taste. I would suggest using white pepper, as black pepper leaves black bits, which some patrons may not appreciate.


Next

Bung in the oven for 30 mins. Check after 20 mins, in case things are too hot. My last check, was that after 20 mins it was 76C.

After that remove the cover and crank up the heat to the max.


After about 10 mins, it should be nicely browned.
If it is not browned, you can leave it for a few minutes until you are happy.

Done.

I prefer to leave it for about 30 minutes before serving it.
It is boiling hot when you remove it, about 200 + degrees, so unless you want a burnt mouth, wait.

Enjoy. Its nice with a fresh salad.
Gherkins are nice. Crusty bread. Garlic bread.


Top Tips

I have tried garlic, which is nice, but it is not for everyone.
Chili would also be good.

It is best eaten freshly cooked.

It is also great eaten the next day for lunch at work or whatever.

I make it for my family and it is usually eaten this way.

I usually eat for lunch the next day.

I like it best at room temperature or warmed.


Saturday, November 17, 2012

How to get the best burger in Mc Donalds

To get the best burger, it must be freshly made.

Order one minus one of the ingredients. That have to cook it specially.

My favourite is the Double Cheese Burger. Costs €2. I order it without ketchup. I haven't liked ketchup since I was a kid. I think it was around the time I began to like mayonnaise. It has some pickles in it. Nice

Anyway, the have to cook it then and there. It takes a few minutes but but it's a great product. Much better then the normal stuff, which could be five minutes old.

I have often thought about the 'Secret McDonalds Menu'. Check it out.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

PogoPlug Cheap NAS


I wrote previously about http://blog.thegiblins.com/2012/07/pogoplug-cheap-deal-and-hack.html , a good deal from Pogoplug.

I was really intersted in that there was a Sata port on the inside and it had a Gigabit Ethernet port.

I explored the options available to connect and power a sata drive. I eventually found a "NEON SSD/HDD Stand-alone Duplicator and Docking Station (USB2.0 - eSATA)" on MemoryC.com. Just under €32 and free shipping. What could possibly go wrong? It turns out to be a fairly good product, with USB and eSata ports plus external power. Fits 2.5 and 3.5 inch drives.

OK, so crack open the PogoPlug, easy. 

Warning: The power board is on the right of the picture. It has exposed 220V and this can kill. Be afraid. Be very afraid, and careful.

I ordered a Sata to eSata cable from eBay. I am probably going to have to drill a hole in the side of the case to allow the cable to fit properly and exit the case.

I plugged in the Sata side of the cable into the PogoPlug Sata port.

 Connected the eSata side of the cable to the Docking Station. I had an old 80Gb drive that I used for testing. Power the Docking Station on and then the PogoPlug.
 The happy marrige, PogoPlug meets Docking Station.
When I first turned it all on, it wouldn't boot. Feck I thought. Dr Google was no help.

I thought about it for a while and I thought that perhaps the Sata drives were being initialised first, becoming /dev/sda1. The system was configured to boot from a USB stick as /dev/sda1.

Test 1: Set-up to boot from Hard Disk /dev/sda1

I plugged the USB stick and Docking Station into my trusty Linux Laptop, identified the devices, which were /dev/sdb = Docking Station and /dev/sdc which was the USB drive.

I ran:

[root@wideboy ~]# dd bs=1M if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sdb
7498+1 records in
7498+1 records out
7862353920 bytes (7.9 GB) copied, 506.336 s, 15.5 MB/s


Cool so far. I plugged out the Docking Station and back in again.

I then ran 'fdisk -l' and got

[snip]
Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes, 156301488 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd9bd8d6f

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1              21     7827203     3913591+  83  Linux

So, I had an 80Gb disk with a tinchy partition. 

Time to crank up fdisk again.

[root@wideboy ~]# fdisk /dev/sdb
Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.22.1).

Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.


Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes, 156301488 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd9bd8d6f

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1              21     7827203     3913591+  83  Linux

Command (m for help): n
Partition type:
   p   primary (1 primary, 0 extended, 3 free)
   e   extended
Select (default p): p
Partition number (1-4, default 2):
Using default value 2
First sector (7827204-156301487, default 7827456):
Using default value 7827456
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (7827456-156301487, default 156301487):
Using default value 156301487
Partition 2 of type Linux and of size 70.8 GiB is set

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes, 156301488 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd9bd8d6f

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1              21     7827203     3913591+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb2         7827456   156301487    74237016   83  Linux

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.


All good again.

Create the new file system:

 [root@wideboy ~]# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb2
mke2fs 1.42.5 (29-Jul-2012)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
4644864 inodes, 18559254 blocks
927962 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=4294967296
567 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8192 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
    32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
    4096000, 7962624, 11239424

Allocating group tables: done                          
Writing inode tables: done                          
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done   


I then mounted the partitions to check that everything looked OK. It did.

I then connected the Docking Station to the PogoPlug and powered everything on.

Note: the PogoPlug does not have the USB drive attached.

Low and behold, everything booted. The PogoPlug was booting from the eSata attached hard disk. Woo Hoo! Better then I had originally expected.

Test 2: Crack open a cold brew and blow the froth of it

Kick back and watch you favourite movie. You earned it

Love Linux. Love Arch Linux. Love Arch Linux Arm.

Low power computing. Save the world.

What will I use it for? I am going to try OwnCloud and see if it can run in 128Mb of ram. At least I should be able to run Samba and NFS on it.