How do I do it?

I've been asked to share my secret for getting CRON-O-Meter menus and nutritional reports into my blog. The answer probably won't be terribly helpful unless you already have more than a passing familiarity with coding HTML, and also have access to certain software programs. But here's how I do it:

Prerequisites:

• knowledge of HTML coding
• Excel (spreadsheet software)
• Dreamweaver (website development software; optional if you're willing to do all the html work old-school style in a text editor)
• You are using blogger or some similar blog software that uses its own "templates" (cascading style sheets--CSS--actually) to control the colors and layout of your blog

Steps:

1. Highlight and copy (ctrl-C) the day's menu entries, then paste (ctrl-V) into an Excel spreadsheet (this step is necessary because you can't paste the menu data directly into Dreamweaver; other HTML editors might behave differently). Leave this here for a minute, while you....
2. Output an HTML formatted nutrition report (using COM's report function) for the date in question, clicking the little diskette icon to save the report to somewhere you can find it afterward.
3. Open a blank HTML document in Dreamweaver, select and copy the menu from Excel, and paste it into the design panel of Dreamweaver (not the code panel!). You are now done with Excel, it was just a means to get the menu into table form for Dreamweaver.
4. Looking at the code panel of Dreamweaver (or viewing the raw HTML in a text editor like Notepad), you can see that the tags in the menu table are full of "width" and "height" attributes that are trying to control the way the table looks in a browser window. The beauty--even the purpose--of HTML is that you can let the browser do this work for you. Use less formatting, and your data will be properly viewable for more people, so you're better off omitting these attributes and letting the user's browser layout the table the way that best fits the user's browser window. So, using Dreamweaver's find/replace function (or deleting manually in a text editor), strip out the following:
   • "<col width="64" span="4" />" tags (the "64" and "4" might be other values for you); delete the entire tag.
   • "width" and "height" attributes from the <td> and <tr> tags; delete ONLY the attributes--not the tags themselves
5. Now, open your HTML nutrition report that you created earlier in Dreamweaver.
6. Looking at the code panel, you'll see all the <tr> tags have the "bgcolor" attribute. Strip this attribute out (but not the tags themselves!). Then, select and copy all the HTML for this report.

The next steps occur in your web browser, and involve creating and modifying a new post.

1. Create a new blog post, and open the Edit HTML window
2. Copy the HTML for the menu table you modified earlier in Dreamweaver and paste to the HTML editor in Blogger
3. Back in Dreamweaver, select and copy the HTML for the nutrition report, and paste this into the HTML editor in Blogger.
4. Switch to "Compose" view in Blogger, and you'll see your two tables there. Dress them up with whatever titles you want, and you can do some final formatting here if you like, before you....
5. ...submit your information for posting to your blog!

I know that seems like a lot of steps, but it's not really that hard--as long as you understand how HTML works. I've gotten really fast at doing all these steps, and it only takes me a few minutes to get my menu and nutrition report posted now. YMMV (your mileage may vary). It's good if more of us are posting our data for others to learn from, so If you try this and discover that I've omitted steps or made mistakes, please feel free to ask, and I'll do my best to correct these instructions and help you through any problems you have.

Peace!

Make yogurt at home

I like yogurt a lot, especially in my morning smoothie. I figured out how to make it from scratch, thereby giving me total control over the ingredients, and also saving me money.

1. I started by sterilizing everything I was working with. I accomplished this by taking a big pot, and boiling my utensils and the jar in it. I don't know how necessary this was--I presume the yogurt culture would out-compete any bad microbes, but being careful isn't a bad idea.
2. To make the yogurt, you need 1/2 cup of starter. I used plain, unsweetened yogurt from the store to make the first batch--but be sure to read the label, make sure it lists live, active cultures (the more varieties the better). Subsequent batches can be made with a 1/2 cup of the finished homemade yogurt as your starter.
3. Add the yogurt to a quart of milk of your choice. I used plain soy milk, which though plain, does contain added sugar. This is good because sugar takes the place of the lactose in dairy milk, giving the bacteria something to feed on and convert to lactic acid--which gives yogurt its tang. (Adding even more sugar might result in more lactic acid and therefore more tang--I plan to experiment.)
4. Keep this mixture at about 110-115 F. degrees (any hotter and you'll start killing the culturing organisms; colder, and you'll inhibit their growth) for about four hours. I mixed it in a one-quart mason jar, which I then set in a pot of warm water, and monitored the temperature with a candy thermometer. Whenever it cooled a few degrees, I removed some of the water, and replaced it with hotter water. You could probably set the pot on a heating pad and have an easier time of it. Or buy yourself a yogurt maker--but I'm all for doing it old-school.
5. After 4 hours fermenting at 110 F. degrees, it will look, smell and taste like yogurt. Longer fermenting makes more tart yogurt. Use it right away, or for better flavor, put the yogurt in the fridge for about 12 hours.
6. When you start running low, save a 1/2 cup of your homemade yogurt to use as a starter, and repeat the process.

Notes about soy: I'm trying to limit my dairy milk consumption, and my corner store sells decent soy milk for $1.50/quart. Soy milk yogurt has a thinner consistency than dairy, and is pourable. You can thicken it with agar, guar, whatever, but since I use it in smoothies, I don't bother. The flavor of soy milk yogurt is almost identical to dairy milk yogurt, in my opinion.