Last Updated on September 6, 2020
We are told by our governments that in the current crisis the single most important action we can take is to stay at home. The repeated message is that everyone should minimise time spent outside the home. By following this directive, this will flatten the spread of the coronavirus, thereby protecting our health service, and saving lives.
A recent survey shows that about 15% of people find that staying at home and only leaving the house for very limited reasons to be very difficult. The lockdown is stressful on mental health. One way to help relieve the pressure is to occupy our time at home.
In this series, we look at a range of home activities where Linux can play its part, making the most of our time at home, keeping active and engaged. The change of lifestyle enforced by Covid-19 is an opportunity to expand our horizons, and spend more time on activities we have neglected in the past.
A good starting point is home cooking. It’s an activity that’s great for individuals as well as families, where we can teach our children the joy of creating freshly cooked home food. With restaurants closed, queuing systems prevalent at supermarkets, and online food shopping prioritized for the vulnerable in our society, what better time to improve our culinary prowess. Linux won’t help us become master chefs, but there’s free and open source software that helps us choose some great recipes to experiment with, and make sure we are eating a balanced and nutritional diet.
Here’s 3 gems for this purpose.
Recipes
Recipes is an easy-to-use application that will help you to discover what to cook each day.
The software helps you to plan. Knowing the amount of ingredients you’ll need is even more important given we’re directed to minimise the number of trips to buy groceries.
The program is beautifully presented with a clear and intuitive interface. What’s lacking is the range of recipes available. It really needs more people to contribute recipes.
Here’s an example of one of the recipes provided by the program, which explains the process to bake non-knead buns. Once you’ve tried homemade bread straight from the oven, you’ll never go back.
CRON-o-Meter
CRON-o-Meter is designed to track your nutrition. It offers nutritional information on over 8,000 goods. There’s a good editor for creating custom foods, and a recipe editor. We find it particularly useful for generating detailed reports of our nutritional information.
It’s important to make sure we maintain a healthy lifestyle given that we’re being told to limit ourselves to one form of exercise a day. CRON-o-Meter is really useful to make sure you’re eating a balanced and nutritional diet. The software lets us track and chart biometrics (weight, blood pressure, temperature and more).
Another program similar to CRON-o-Meter is NUT, although NUT’s developers recommend using CRON-o-Meter until they release a new version.
Gourmet Recipe Manager
Gourmet Recipe Manager is a manager, editor, and organizer for recipes. It doesn’t have any recipes supplied with the application. But it can import MealMaster and MasterCook files.
In addition to allowing you to edit, import, search and categorize recipes, Gourmet generates shopping lists sorted by category. It has a simple mechanism for allowing you to designate “pantry” items that you already have and don’t need to buy, which Gourmet will remember between sessions.
All articles in this series:
| Linux at Home | |
|---|---|
| Astronomy | Explore the universe from your garden |
| Brew Beer | Weave malt and hops and yeast together in unique combinations |
| Circuit Design | Learn to design electronic circuits |
| Collaborating | Edit documents collaboratively in real-time |
| Cooking | Home cooking is an activity that’s great for individuals and families |
| Creative Writing | Pen a classic novel or screenplay |
| Cross-stitching | A form of sewing and a popular form of counted-thread embroidery |
| Digital Art | Paint and draw directly onto a computer |
| Digital Music Production | Digital Audio Workstations |
| DOOM Gaming | Take a break and play classic DOOM |
| Embroidery | Craft of decorating fabric or other materials using a needle |
| Exercising | Keeping fit can be a challenge with lockdown |
| Gardening | Plan your perfect garden with these great tools |
| Genealogy | Research your family tree |
| Home Security | CCTV solutions to protect your home |
| Musical Instrument | Learn to play an instrument |
| RSI | Reduce and prevent repetitive strain injury |