These are amazing skills, life skills that trip me up every once in a while. Sometimes, my life is just more colourful because of it. What have you got? 😉
Here’s to more life skills to enhance your week, peops!
November 21, 2015
Hello YOU!
Category: Blogging
Yes, hellooooooo! Now I can seeeeeee your gravatars when you click “Like” on my post because up until about a week or so ago, if you remember, all I had was the darn WTI Thumbs Up button. That WTI plugin only gave me numbers and is not connected to any WP users. Because of that, for a long time, I haven’t got a clue who the “likers”are. Very annoying.
But I made do with it because I’m self-hosted. That means, standard things such as the “like”, “re-blog”, “follow” buttons and a friendlier comment box which 200 million other wordpress.com users have – the most important things any blogger could ask for, are not native to wordpress.org. That means, I’ve got to settle for alternative plug-ins instead when I decided to go self-hosted 2 years ago. I just gave up trying to figure it out after spending unproductive time to figure it out; perhaps we hadn’t look at the right places.
Besides, I haven’t seen those buttons on any self-hosted sites I know, and if there are, I haven’t been paying attention. I decided that I was done mucking about with my site. I can’t be bothered to stay bothered.
Up until about 2 weeks ago. That was when I popped over at Faraday’s Candle and realised that hey! the sisters have managed to put in “Like” on their self-hosted site! They figured it out and I just have to know how! So, really, I’ll have to thank none other than Faraday and some support from WP for that! You have noooo idea how so very happy I am to be able to finally know that it can be done, because when I asked around about 2 years ago, I just could not find the answers!
Not only do I have the “Like” button, I also figured out how I can embed the native wordpress “Follow” button that should sit on my side-bar underneath my little about snippet. (It had worked for a couple of days until 2 days ago. Urrrgh!) Duh! You’d say; and never mind that I’m sounding like an idiotic moron, but for me, this is a major dumb-blonde-moment breakthrough! Only almost 2 years later!
Two tiny tweaks done over several days is a big deal, especially since I’m a tech idiot who also have very little patience to figure out the back-end and one who has given up trying to figure it all out.
So finally, finally, finally, I now have one of most offensive buttons in the blogging universe on a self-hosted site. And yes I’m saying it again that I am super, super happy that I now am finally able to see my Likers whom I haven’t been able to before! This is major and thank you, Faraday!
The only thing is, sometimes, it takes a while for the damn Like thing to load. And I mean a looooooooong while as it keeps on loading away, and soooooooo, I don’t always get to see who has clicked on the Like immediately. Very.Damn. Annoying. Not sure why that is, and I guess I’ll figure it out in time. I now also need to figure out how to embed the damn follow button again because the code generator now only works on a wordpress.com. Why! Oh why!
Still, it’s something. Annoying. But something. And I’m a little less stupid now. Here are the links in case you happen to also be in a rut on those offensive buttons if you are self-hosted:
- How to enable Likes for your self-hosted site: https://jetpack.me/support/likes/
- How to add the Follow button on your self-hosted site (will have to update this, because up until 2 days ago, this was working fine):
- You need to configure your own button as this is not built into Jetpack.
- Use the options on this page to generate the code for your WordPress.com Follow Button: https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/follow-button-creation/
- You can then add the generated code snippet to embed the Follow button in a Text Widget.
November 20, 2015
Fabulous Friday Flavours: Nihari Beef Stew
Category: Fabulous Friday Flavours
What happens when you let your husband run the kitchen for a day? In Grubbs ‘n Critters’ household, we got ourselves some home-made dishes of cashew nut rice, some stir fried vegetables and a dish of beef stew!
Not too shabby at all, I’d say. Not too shabby! Silver Bullet spent a great deal of time in the kitchen prepping those, letting the beef shank stew for a long, long time over a small fire.I think he stewed the meat for over 6 hours. Enough to allow the meat to fall off the bones. Don’t ask me what got into him. It was probably one of those days when he felt the pressing need to challenge himself to try something new. He even made his own masala spices! Beat that. I probably would not have bothered.
With Silver Bullet though, he doesn’t do the typical modification like I always do with my food, and instead, he follows the recipe to a T lest he screws up. But he did substituted a couple of ingredients and add another type of chilli: The Bhut Jolokiah! This dish is Indian-inspired and laden with spices, and like all curries, tasted better when left overnight.
Nihari Beef Stew
2015-11-14 04:32:20
Serves 4
A cook-ahead, heart dish. Best eaten after being left overnight.
Prep Time
30 min
Cook Time
6 hr 30 min
Total Time
7 min
Ingredients
- 1 kilo Beef shank
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 x 1" cinnamon sticks
- 1.5 tspn + 1.5 tspn ginger paste (fresh cloves of ginger were used)
- 4 cloves garlic (original recipe used garlic paste)
- 1 large onion, thinly sliced
- 1 tspn red chili powder
- 2.5 tspn Nihari Masala
- 1 tspn salt
- 2 tspn whole-wheat flour
- One 1-inch piece fresh ginger, julienned
- ¼ cup chopped cilantro
- 1 lemon, sliced
- A sprinkle of Bhut Jolokia powder (not in the original recipe)
Nihari Masala
- 2 tbsp fennel seeds
- 2 tbsp cumin seeds
- 4 green cardamom pods
- 1 black cardamom pods
- 8 cloves
- 15 whole black peppercorns
- 1 tspn ground ginger
- ¼ tspn nutmeg powder
- ¼ tspn cinnamon powder
- 1 bay leaf
Preparing Nihari Masala
- Grind all the spices to fine powder form in a grinder. Sift the powder through a fine sieve to remove any rough pieces and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. This can be kept for about a month.
Boiling the Shanks
- In a large pot add the beef shanks along with 1 ½ teaspoon of ginger paste, 1 ½ teaspoon of garlic paste, bay leaf, 1 cinnamon stick, 1 teaspoon of salt and 5 cups of water. Boil the shanks on low-medium heat till the meat is tender and well done, about 2-3 hours. (Make sure to add little more water if the water starts to dry out too fast; there should be enough water in the pot to cover the meat).
- Once the meat is done, carefully remove the meat from the liquid and keep aside. Measure the stock (liquid) and add water if needed to make it 4 cups, reserve. Discard the bay leaf and cinnamon. You can do this step up to 2 days in advance. Let the meat and stock stay together while you store them in refrigerator, remove the meat from the stock just before you start to put the stew together.
Stew (Nihari)
- In a non-stick saucepan or a pot, heat oil over medium heat. When the oil gets hot, add the sliced onions and stir-fry constantly until they turn golden-brown in color. Don’t over fry or the onions will burn.
- Add the remaining 1½ teaspoon of ginger paste and 2 teaspoons of garlic paste and do a quick stir. Add 1 cup of the reserved stock to the pan, cover the pan and let everything cook on low heat for 5-6 minutes until the liquid starts to dry out and the onions turn very soft.
- Add the beef shanks to the pan along with the chili powder and Nihari Masala. Sauté gently for 2-3 minutes, and try to avoid the meat from breaking down.
- Add 3 cups of remaining stock (if the stock is less than 3 cups add water). Give everything a gentle stir and cover the pan. Let it simmer on low heat for 10 minutes.
- In the meantime, in a small bowl, combine the flour with ½ cup of water. Stir well.
- After the stew has simmered for 10 minutes, add the flour mixture to the pan, stirring gently. Cover the pan and let it simmer for another 10-15 minutes on low heat. Check it once or twice to make sure the gravy is not drying out.
- Remove the pan from the heat and let it stand for 10 minutes with its lid on before serving. Sprinkle soem But Jolokiah
- When ready to serve, add salt to taste and garnish the stew with the ginger, cilantro and lemon juice and serve hot with pita, naan or any bread of your choice.
Notes
- This recipe is pretty much taken off the original website of Rasa Malaysia and it has been a great find!
Adapted from Rasa Malaysia
Adapted from Rasa Malaysia
Grubbs n Critters https://grubbsncritters.com/