Pinch, punch
Small progress on the car. The cracks are all welded up, gussetted and painted. The bonnet frame and the radiator is in.
I started work on rewiring the fan, the start of the recent shenanigans and I came to remember how much I dislike un-insulated crimp connectors. I’m struggling to get a reliable crimp on the large diameter wire I’m using. I suspect I may have to resort to soldering.
A Little Context
My main problem with cooking (apart from a near phobia of handling raw meat) is the timing and sequencing really stresses me out. I worry constantly about getting it wrong and over/under-cooking some component. It takes any pleasure out of cooking. I see other people enjoy it but for me unless it is something I know really well, I’d rather sit an exam.
Sweet & Sour Sausage Stir Fry
Smooth Pineapple Sweet & Sour Sausage Stir-Fry
A rich, savoury-sweet stir-fry with a blitzed pineapple sauce that coats every slice of sausage and vegetable evenly.
Prep: 15 min | Cook: 20 min | Active: 22–26 min | Servings: 4
Timeline
gantt
title Cooking Timeline (serving at 19:00)
dateFormat HH:mm
axisFormat %H:%M
1. Blitz the Pineapple & Whisk the Sauce :s1, 18:34, 5m
2. Brown the Sausages :s2, 18:39, 10m
3. Sauté the Firm Vegetables :s3, 18:49, 5m
4. Add Mushrooms, Broccoli & Garlic :s4, 18:54, 3m
5. Simmer with Sauce & Bok Choi :s5, 18:57, 3m
Ingredients
- Base & Meat:
- 8 good-quality sausages (sliced into bite-sized coins)
- 1 tin pineapple chunks in juice (chunks AND juice blitzed smooth)
- 1 tbsp cooking oil
- Vegetable Mix:
- 1 onion (sliced)
- 1-2 bell peppers (sliced)
- 1 carrot (sliced into thin coins or matchsticks)
- 150g mushrooms (quartered or sliced)
- 100g tenderstem broccoli (halved lengthwise)
- 2 heads bok choi (stems sliced, leaves left large)
- 2 cloves garlic (minced)
- Smooth Sweet & Sour Sauce:
- Blitzed pineapple puree (from the entire tin)
- 2 tbsp tomato puree (tomato paste)
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 2.5 tbsp apple cider vinegar (or white vinegar)
- 2 tbsp brown sugar or honey (adjust slightly to taste)
- 1 tbsp cornstarch (slurried in 2 tbsp cold water)
Steps
- Blitz the Pineapple & Whisk the Sauce (5 min)
Start: T-26 to T-22 min before serving
Why My Bonnet Is In The Garden
(long post ahead)
A Roundabout Story
For a while now, my car gets grumpy when it gets hot. In stationary traffic it gets hot, the fan kicks in and it becomes a bit of a struggle to keep it running at idle as the engine goes lean. I assumed it was to do with the engine ingesting hot air coming out of the radiator as under bonnet temperatures get quite high when the fan is running1
Obsidian & Hugo
If you’re reading this, it worked :)
This site is generated by Hugo and controlled with Git. Whilst markdown is quite easy, I had grown attached to Obsidian at work (thanks Eva!) when I still had a job.
Anyway, here’s a picture of Oscar peeking out from the Fury bonnet in the garden. That will be the subject of another post once I’m sure pictures work.
Red, Blue or White Pill?
I’ve found a new gadget that I’m genuinely excited about. The Pill from Shelly is a tiny little USB powered thing that you can plug sensors into and advertise the values over BLE
A little bit of time travel
I have a Stupid Car
and I’ve always had trouble with temperatures under the bonnet.
Over the years I’ve tried to interface to DS18B20 sensors in various ways. It started with Raspberry Pi(s) which required a lot of effort not to kill with car voltages and shutdown.
VETuner Updates
It’s been a little quiet lately so I thought I better post an update. Since the last post there have been over 350 updates made to the software. A lot have focussed on reliability and robustness of the connection, but here are a few of my favourite ‘user facing’ changes.
Idle Advance Doctor
Kicking The Tyres Of VETuner
This is a walkthrough of what VETuner looks like, and what you can do with it.
Initial Connection
VETuner uses the WebSerial/WebUSB interfaces supported by the Chrome family of browsers. Typically WebSerial is used on laptops, WebUSB on phones and tablets. Generally it tries its best to find your ECU. For security reasons, you have to select the right device the first time you try to connect, but it will automatically connect from that point onwards.
VETuner is live at vetuner.co.uk
VETuner now has a proper home at vetuner.co.uk .
If you’ve been following along while I poked at parsers, dashboards, serial comms and all the other fun bits, this is the bit where it turns from “odd side project” into “real thing with an actual domain”. It may even result in “actual users” and “actual users who give me money”!
This was driven by me getting fed up with Android development for MSDroid. MSDroid is great, it’s just Google changing the requirements underneath it, taking phones from general purpose computing devices into ad impression generators. Ironically, it’s Google that makes the only browser with the Serial/USB APIs I need to talk to the ECUs, so I’m not completely done with them.