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Meal in a Box

Diposting oleh good reading on Senin, 27 April 2009

Here's yet another post on our weekday lunch express...meal in a box.


I got the idea of making these Tuna Sandwich Rolls from a Chinese cookbook. These rolls are perfect to bring along to a picnic as they are nicely wrapped in clear plastic sheets (I cut out sheets from my cookie bags.)


I served the sandwich rolls with a simple salad...a combination of Japanese cucumbers, celery, Fuji apples, raisins and some cherry tomatoes. A cup of homemade strawberries smoothies (simply blend some strawberries with yogurt) completes the meal. I borrowed a blender from a close one recently, and we had been making smoothies every other day!


Besides tuna (I used black pepper flavour), I added some thinly sliced cucumbers to give the rolls the extra crunch. These sandwich rolls are really easy to prepare, all you need to do is:
  1. trim off the crust of a slice of bread, flattened it with a rolling pin (I simply flattened it with my fingers),
  2. spread the bread with some butter or mayonnaise,
  3. place some tuna and cucumber slices (optional) horizontally across the centre of the bread,
  4. roll up and wrap it with plastic sheets, twist and seal the ends
It was a joy to watch my kids enjoying their food. I love this delicious lunch-in-a-box too :)
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CHERRY BLOSSOM CUPCAKES

Diposting oleh good reading on Sabtu, 25 April 2009

Have you ever swum in a pile of freshly fallen cherry blossoms?
it's cool.
you oughta try it.
My little girls love spring in Vancouver when the whole city is bursting with blossoms. Our favourite bunch of Cherry Trees are located at Queen Elizabeth Park and there is a little triangle of land that has the hugest blossoms and the thickest tree trunks I've ever seen. Every spring, since they were born, we take a whole bunch of pictures of the girls with the same blossoming cherry trees. It's kind of neat to see the girls growing up with that kind of backdrop.
And what do cherry blossoms have to do with cupcakes? Well, the cherry blossom colours inspired me to bake some for a recent staff potluck. I made mini chocolate cupcakes using my favourite recipe. I used the whole recipe and found myself with 96 mini cupcakes. That's a lot of cupcakes, folks. I swirled pink buttercream and kept it simple.
I took 2 of these trays to the potluck

What's with the bird?

This is Ariel--not named for the Disney mermaid. I would never be so cheesy so as to do that. I thought of this name long before Disney did! He's named after a character from a Shakespearean play of course! How else would an English teacher name her pets?

Well, he has nothing to do with spring or cupcakes. However, he does love spring. And he gets all excited when he sees buttercream. Hey. He's omnivorous. Hey, it's okay. It's not as if he's eating a whole cupcake. The mini ones are twice the size of his head! He just licks my finger.

Ariel is a Green-Cheeked Conure from Bolivia. Actually, he's from Mission, B.C. He was born in a local aviary and I got him when he was a wee little birdie and had to feed him with a syringe. He doesn't know how to fly really. His wings have atrophied. I haven't clipped him in years. Actually, he can fly if he wants to, but he chooses not to. I leave his cage door open and he walks wherever he wants. I've never had to leave his big cage door closed. He just doesn't have the personality to leave the nest. He's happy as a clam climbing around using his feet and his beak.

Before I had kids, I used to let him walk all around my kitchen table while I did things like marking. He'd chew the corners of essays and sometimes pooped on kids' papers when I wasn't looking. The poop was kind of hard to explain to the students, but he's not exactly a big bird so fortunately his poops are tiny. He is "potty trained" however, and could "shake a claw" for treats. He even could say in a raspy voice "pretty bird"... kinda. My previous Green-Cheek was talkative, funny, smart, curious and had a wicked temper! He was a good flyer too. Ariel on the other hand is like a little baby and kind of "chicken" about trying lots of things.

Except buttercream. And ice cream. He's a sucker for desserts but I usually don't give him anything so don't worry. He won't lose his girlish figure. I actually don't know if Ariel's a "he" in fact because with conures you can't tell unless you have them tested. Ariel could be a "she". I wouldn't be surprised given Ariel's nature.

Anyway, it's spring. Birds are chirpin', flowers are bloomin' and it's time for cupcakes! Here's a few pics from Queen Elizabeth Park by the way. It's one of the best views in Vancouver.Since the Parks Board decided to top the trees, the city is way more visible than before. In fact, none of these buildings could be seen before. All you could see were the mountains.

The North Shore mountains in the background, Burrard Inlet and just peeking behind the tree tops is Science World (the glass ball).
Downtown Vancouver with its skyscrapers and in near the bottom centre, BC Place Stadium (with its puffy white roof)
In this pic (above) I aimed the lens towards East Vancouver, where I grew up. Beyond is Burnaby.
I grew up in a waterfront house which was perched on a cliff in the East Side, overlooking the North Shore mountains. We could hear tug boats lowing and trains shunting; we could smell salt air from the Burrard Inlet and see seagulls and eagles on a daily basis. On a clear day in the winter, with binoculars, you could see little people skiing down Grouse Mountain...and even make out the colours they were wearing! To the west, you could see the downtown waterfront. I miss that environment and don't think I'll ever forget the sensory beauty of living near the sea.

Do come and visit! We have great food too!
The Cherry Blossom Cupcakes were frosted with a Wilton 1M tip.
the cupcakes were so tiny you could pop one in your mouth...fleeting beauty and joy...much like Cherry Blossoms.
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Nutrition and Infectious Disease

Diposting oleh good reading on Jumat, 24 April 2009

Dr. Edward Mellanby's book Nutrition and Disease contains a chapter titled "Nutrition and Infection". It begins:
There is general agreement among medical men that the susceptibility of mankind to many types of infection is closely related to the state of nutrition. The difficulty arises, when closer examination is given to this general proposition, as to what constitutes good and bad nutrition, and the problem is not rendered easier by recent advances in nutritional science.
Dr. Mellanby was primarily concerned with the effect of fat-soluble vitamins on infectious disease, particularly vitamins A and D. One of his earliest observations was that butter protected against pneumonia in his laboratory dogs. He eventually identified vitamin A as the primary protective factor. He found that by placing rats on a diet deficient in vitamin A, they developed numerous infectious lesions, most often in the urogenital tract, the eyes, the intestine, the middle ear and the lungs. This was prevented by adding vitamin A or cabbage (a source of beta-carotene, which the rats converted to vitamin A) to the diet. Mellanby and his colleagues subsequently dubbed vitamin A the "anti-infective vitamin".

Dr. Mellanby was unsure whether the animal results would apply to humans, due to "the difficulty in believing that diets even of poor people were as deficient in vitamin A and carotene as the experimental diets." However, their colleagues had previously noted marked differences in the infection rate of largely vegetarian African tribes versus their carnivorous counterparts. The following quote from Nutrition and Disease refers to two tribes which, by coincidence, Dr. Weston Price also described in Nutrition and Physical Degeneration:
The high incidence of bronchitis, pneumonia, tropical ulcers and phthisis among the Kikuyu tribe who live on a diet mainly of cereals as compared with the low incidence of these diseases among their neighbours the Masai who live on meat, milk and raw blood (Orr and Gilks), probably has a similar or related nutritional explanation. The differences in distribution of infective disease found by these workers in the two tribes are most impressive. Thus in the cereal-eating tribe, bronchitis and pneumonia accounted for 31 per cent of all cases of sickness, tropical ulcers for 33 per cent, and phthisis for 6 per cent. The corresponding figures for the meat, milk and raw blood tribe were 4 per cent, 3 per cent and 1 per cent.
So they set out to test the theory under controlled conditions. Their first target: puerperal sepsis. This is an infection of the uterus that occurs after childbirth. They divided 550 women into two groups: one received vitamins A and D during the last month of pregnancy, and the other received nothing. Neither group was given instructions to change diet, and neither group was given vitamins during their hospital stay. The result, quoted from Nutrition and Disease:
The morbidity rate in the puerperium using the [British Medical Association] standard was 1.1 per cent in the vitamin group and 4.7 in the control group, a difference of 3.6 per cent which is twice the standard error (1.4), and therefore statistically significant.
This experiment didn't differentiate between the effects of vitamin A and D, but it did establish that fat-soluble vitamins are important for resistance to bacterial infection. The next experiment Dr. Mellanby undertook was a more difficult one. This time, he targeted puerperal septicemia. This is a more advanced stage of puerperal sepsis, in which the infection spreads into the bloodstream. In this experiment, he treated women who had already contracted the infection. This trial was not as tightly controlled as the previous one. Here's a description of the intervention, from Nutrition and Disease:
...all patients received when possible a diet rich not only in vitamin A but also of high biological quality. This diet included much milk, eggs, green vegetables, etc., as well as the vitamin A supplement. For controls we had to use the cases treated in previous years by the same obstetricians and gynecologists as the test cases.
In the two years prior to this investigation, the mortality rate for puerperal septicemia in 18 patients was 92%. In 1929, Dr. Mellanby fed 18 patients in the same hospital his special diet, and the mortality rate was 22%. This is a remarkable treatment for an infection that was almost invariably fatal at the time.

Dr. Mellanby was a man with a lot of perspective. He was not a reductionist; he knew that a good diet is more than the sum of its parts. Here's another quote from Nutrition and Disease:
It is probable that, as in the case of vitamin D and rickets, the question is not simple and that it will ultimately be found that vitamin A works in harmony with some dietetic factors, such as milk proteins and other proteins of high biological value, to promote resistance of mucous membranes and epithelial cells to invasion by micro-organisms, while other factors such as cereals, antagonise its influence. The effect of increasing the green vegetable and reducing the cereal intake on the resistance of herbivorous animals to infection is undoubted (Glenny and Allen, Boock and Trevan) and may well indicate a reaction in which the increased carotene of the vegetable plays only a part, but an important part.

P.S.- I have to apologize, I forgot to copy down the primary literature references for this post before returning the book to the library. So for the skeptics out there, you'll either have to take my word for it, or find a copy of the book yourself.
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CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA?

Diposting oleh good reading

vanilla?
or

chocolate?

If you had to decide between eating only Chocolate or Vanilla flavoured desserts for the rest of your life, which would you choose?

chocolate?
or


vanilla?

TAKE THE CHOCOLATE VS. VANILLA POLL ON THE SIDEBAR to voice your opinion!

I must confess that I'm a Chocoholic. I love dark chocolate and admit to being a bit of a snob at the candy counter and refuse to waste my hard-earned calorie allocation on milk chocolate or mass-produced candy bars you find at your grocer's. Of course, I do have my nostalgic favourites like Jersey Milk, Kit Kats and Coffee Crisps, but that's about it. I pass on the M&M's, Smarties, anything with nuts or nougats or chewy caramels. When the kids come back with a cornucopia of little treats from Hallowe'en, I'm not even tempted to sneak anything other than a Kit Kat or Coffee Crisp.

However, Vanilla isn't all that far behind when I'm baking. If I were to choose a flavour for cheesecake, it would be Vanilla Bean. If I wanted anything with a cream or a custard base in it, Vanilla Bean would be my choice. I just love real Vanilla Bean seeds and don't mind at all that "my dessert looks dirty"--I overheard this comment from a lady sitting at a nearby table at a local high-end restaurant. She had ordered a custard-based dessert and in a hoity-toity tone told her companion that if she was paying so much money for a dessert, the least the pastry chef could do was strain out the vanilla seeds!

I rolled my eyes.

She's better off eating Vanilla Ice Cream from those 4 gallon pails you can buy at Costco. With a wooden spoon. She don't know nothing!

I adapted the Chocolate Chiffon Recipe from CI


The Vanilla Chiffon is adapated from CI

There's a mini war going on in my household with the Chocolate and Vanilla flavours. Stomach and my mother like Vanilla cakes and Bebe, Bib and I like Chocolate. I kind of flip flop depending on the dessert type, but generally like Chocolate if I had to choose something to eat on a deserted island.

I made a Vanilla Chiffon a couple of weeks ago (yes, I do bake tons of stuff, but don't post it...shame on me! sorry, sorry...) Everyone inhaled it. It was gone in two days. It was so lovely in the crumb. It was moist and kept its tenderness even into the next day. Then, I made a Chocolate Chiffon. Bib, Bebe and I ate some the first day, but it didn't get touched by Stomach and mom. There wasn't anything wrong with it. Its texture was exactly like the Vanilla Chiffon. My mom commented that she liked the "eggy flavour" of the Vanilla and didn't like the bitterness of the chocolate. I didn't think it bitter, but I can eat really dark chocolate. The kids were okay with it. There's only so much cake I can eat and the kids don't really have the ability to do that either, so I had to take 1/3 of the chiffon to work. People at work seemed okay with that idea and scarfed down the cake.

So, the verdict between the Chiffons is the Vanilla. Though I yearn for a Chocolate Chiffon that is has a depth of chocolate flavour that can match the chiffon's airiness and moistness, I haven't found a recipe that satisfies me completely. The Vanilla Chiffon is the best and so it's a keeper.
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35 Shots of Claire Denis (and more)

Diposting oleh good reading on Kamis, 23 April 2009

Film Studies For Free's author is excitedly preparing to give a talk at the event 'Drifting: The Films of Claire Denis'. This is the first of an annual series of symposia on 'Modern Directors' to be held at the University of Sussex on May 2nd (programme here), and is organised by Rosalind Galt and Michael Lawrence.

Below are more than sixty links to freely-accessible, mostly scholarly (or otherwise top-notch) material about Denis's work that FSFF's author has found helpful for this and previous work on this filmmaker (HERE's a link to the text of her paper on Denis's 2002 film Vendredi soir). The lists will be added to (all suggestions welcome), so please bookmark this post (last updated June 1, 2009).

Audio and/or Visual Resources Online:

In English/or with subtitles:

In French:
Scholarly Articles and Chapters:

Relevant (and Informative) Book Reviews:

Excellent Items of Film Criticism:

Enlightening Interviews in English:

Unmissable Articles, Criticism, and Interviews in French:
Relevant Google Books Links (limited previews):

Open Access campaigning note:
(Film Studies For Free's hobby horse...)
There are, of course, many further, excellent Denis resources available 'for free' if one is a student or member of faculty at an educational institution with a well-supplied library or with relevant online subscriptions. But the above list indicates, if nothing else, that truly openly accessible, high-quality, and, indeed, essential resources for researchers in and outside the academy are plentiful nowadays, especially on contemporary topics.

A big thanks, then, to the authors, artists, editors and publishers of the above works who helped to ensure that their writings, recordings, or videos about Claire Denis's films were freely available to any reader or viewer on the internet.
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Fructose vs. Glucose Showdown

Diposting oleh good reading on Selasa, 21 April 2009

As you've probably noticed, I believe sugar is one of the primary players in the diseases of civilization. It's one of the "big three" that I focus on: sugar, industrial vegetable oil and white flour. It's becoming increasingly clear that fructose, which constitutes half of table sugar and typically 55% of high-fructose corn syrup, is the problem. A reader pointed me to a brand new study (free full text!), published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, comparing the effect of ingesting glucose vs. fructose.

The investigators divided 32 overweight men and women into two groups, and instructed each group to drink a sweetened beverage three times per day. They were told not to eat any other sugar. The drinks were designed to provide 25% of the participants' caloric intake. That might sound like a lot, but the average American actually gets about 25% of her calories from sugar! That's the average, so there are people who get a third or more of their calories from sugar. In one group, the drinks were sweetened with glucose, while in the other group they were sweetened with fructose.

After ten weeks, both groups had gained about three pounds. But they didn't gain it in the same place. The fructose group gained a disproportionate amount of visceral fat, which increased by 14%! Visceral fat is the most dangerous type; it's associated with and contributes to chronic disease, particularly metabolic syndrome, the quintessential modern metabolic disorder (see the end of the post for more information and references). You can bet their livers were fattening up too.

The good news doesn't end there. The fructose group saw a worsening of blood glucose control and insulin sensitivity. They also saw an increase in small, dense LDL particles and oxidized LDL, both factors that associate strongly with the risk of heart attack and may in fact contribute to it. Liver synthesis of fat after meals increased by 75%. If you look at table 4, it's clear that the fructose group experienced a major metabolic shift, and the glucose group didn't. Practically every parameter they measured in the fructose group changed significantly over the course of the 9 weeks. It's incredible.

25% of calories from fructose is a lot. The average American gets about 13%. But plenty of people exceed that, perhaps going up to 20% or more. Furthermore, the intervention was only 10 weeks. What would a lower intake of fructose, say 10% of calories, do to a person over a lifetime? Nothing good, in my opinion. Avoiding refined sugar is one of the best things you can do for your health.

U.S. Fructose Consumption Trends
Peripheral vs. Ectopic Fat
Visceral Fat
Visceral Fat and Dementia
How to Give a Rat Metabolic Syndrome
How to Fatten Your Liver
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Film Festival Studies Online

Diposting oleh good reading


As regular Film Studies For Free readers will know, this blog likes to flag up worthwhile examples of innovative online pedagogy in the film and media studies field (see previous related posts HERE, HERE, and HERE).

It was thrilled to hear, therefore, that internationally regarded film writer Adrian Martin, Senior Research Fellow in Film and Television Studies in Monash University's Faculty of Arts, is teaching part of a World Film Festivals unit more or less entirely online.

Martin introduces this excellent venture as follows:

This Monash University 2009 Unit aims to give an understanding of the contemporary phenomenon of the International Film Festival as an event within global circuits of film culture. It is not a Unit devoted to film analysis per se; but rather to the socio-cultural institutions of the Festival circuit – taking in issues of audience, economics, promotion, programming and curation, cultural and ideological agendas, etc, and the relationship to other circuits of film culture such as mainstream exhibition/distribution, cinémathèques and museums, etc.

FSFF very much recommends that you visit the World Film Festivals blog (here) and read the work produced by the Unit's four festival reporters (Lesley Chow, Farah Azalea Mohamed Al Amin, Alida Tomaszewski, and Nienke Huitenga). They have been posting on a variety of topics, to date, as follows: What Tongue? (Chow); Interview with Amir Muhammad (Azalea and Chow); Albert Serra’s Birdsong (Chow); Amir Muhammad's Malaysian Gods (Azalea); The [Audi Festival of German Films] Festival as a Cultural Meeting Point (Huitenga); Interview with Amos Gitai (Chow and Azalea); Reconstructed Homelands [on the Gitai mini-retrospective at the Singapore International Film Festival] (Chow); Singapore Panorama (Azalea); and Sprechen Ze Deutsche? [on audience development at the German Film festival] (Tomaszewski).

Film Studies For Free's author very much approves of Martin's teaching practice on this unit. (She established an undergraduate course on Film Programming a couple of years ago, which is still running, albeit under new management these days.)

So here, to celebrate Martin's work, are a few excellent online (and, of course) Open Access film festival-studies resources (on festival programming, politics, business and other matters) from FSFF's dusty reading-list archive (last updated June 17, 2009):

Also, further essential reading can always be found at Professor Dina Iordanova's brilliant blog DinaView: Film Culture Technology Money (see all her postings on Film Festivals and Film Programming).

Professor Iordanova is one the lead team members of the Dynamics of World Cinema research project undertaken by the Centre for Film Studies at the University of St Andrews and sponsored by The Leverhulme Trust. (Full disclosure note: Adrian Martin and FSFF's own author are both members of the International Advisory Board of this project). The project describes itself thus:

This two-and-a- half-year-long study will examine the patterns and cycles of various distinctly active circuits of contemporary film distribution and exhibition, and the dynamic patterns of complex interaction between them.

[Project attention] attention focuses predominantly in four areas of the global circulation of non-Hollywood cinema: the international penetration of international blockbusters mainstream distribution, the film festival circuit, the film circulation via diasporic channels, as well as the various Internet-enabled forms of dissemination. The project's distinctiveness is in the endeavour to correlate these diverse strands and foreground their dynamic interactions.

For updated news, as it happens, the Dynamics of World Cinema Blog can be found here.

Note added: This blog brought news (on June 17th) of the following great online resources:

Film Festival Workshop - Video Clips

During the Film Festival Workshop held on 4 April 2009 in St Andrews, our discussants talked about some of the most pressing issues that were concerned with the development of Film Festival Studies.

Click on the links below to hear what they said:

Clip 1

Michael Gubbins, former Editor, Screen International, UK

Clip 2

Richard Porton, Editor, Cineaste Magazine, USA

Clip 3

Nick Roddick (aka Mr. Busy), film journalist and critic, Sight & Sound, UK

Clip 4

Nick Roddick (aka Mr. Busy), film journalist and critic, Sight & Sound, UK

Clip 5

Stuart Cunningham, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Clip 6

Irene Bignardi, Filmitalia and former Locarno Festival Director, Italy

Clip 7

Núria Triana Toribio, University of Manchester, UK

Clip 8

Dina Iordanova, Director, Centre for Film Studies, University of St Andrews, Scotland


Also, please check out the Fipresci (international federation of film critics) website for an abundance of fascinating and useful material about film festivals.

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Werner Herzog Links inc YouTube Fest

Diposting oleh good reading on Senin, 20 April 2009

Film Studies For Free wanted to let academic fans of Werner Herzog know that (certainly in the UK, but most probably elsewhere, too, if no geoblocking) they can currently watch eight of his films on YouTube in their glorious entirety. This is thanks to the video distributor Starzmedia, one of the companies participating in YouTube's growing efforts to stream full-length films with the support of the movie companies who own the rights. Below, FSFF has embedded the trailers of seven of the Herzog films that are currently available. Click on the titles to visit the YouTube pages for the full-length films, which can be watched freely online in relatively good quality versions (Even YouTube Screens Started Small...). (Click HERE for The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser added later. The Starzmedia channel for Herzog is HERE).

And, if that weren't enough excitement for one FSFF day, beneath the video-trailers, at the foot of this post, are some other choice links to freely available Herzog material online.

Aguirre The Wrath Of God



My Best Fiend





Even Dwarfs Started Small





Fitzcarraldo





Lessons Of Darkness





Woyzeck





Little Dieter Needs To Fly





Scholarly online writing about Herzog:

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手做的幸福

Diposting oleh good reading on Minggu, 19 April 2009

在一个偶然的机会下, 我在一间不常去的图书馆, 从书架上找到德永久美子的這本书, '愛上做面包'。隨手拿起來翻了一翻，立刻如获至宝似的把它捧回家。沿途我一边翻阅一边幻想着，如果能学会制作那一款款的面包, 那将是多美好的事。单是想像滿室的面包香就觉得好幸福! 这真是一本好温馨的书。我也好羨慕作者有一个可爱的女兒当任她的小帮手。如果我家那两个臭小子有她一半任真的态度哪该多好!


把书借回家后, 第一个做的就是圆面包!


这都是手做的哦, 花了半小时才把面团搓好, 手都快断了! 所用的材料只有面粉, 糖, 盐, 酵母和水, 够简单吧! 可能有人又会认为这未免太单调了吧?! 可是我的理念还是: 简单就是美。越简单的材料越能突出面包本身的风味...相对的越难把它做好...因为没有其他材料(如,巧克力, 奶油, 牛奶, 鸡蛋)可以掩饰风味不足的面包。


面团发酵得很好, 虽然当天的天气不是很好, 可是, 不到一小时, 面团就膨胀了两倍。


看到小面团在烤箱里膨胀得那么圆圆滚滚可爱的模样, 不禁拿起相机, 按下快门!


我虽然没有作者不到一成的功力, 不过我还是相当满意自己亲手做的小面包 :)


你看, 它们一个个圆圆的型状是不是超可爱?!


面包的外皮酥脆, 里面松软却很有嚼劲, 就像一般欧式的面包, 有如那种用来配浓汤的面包。在热乎乎的面包涂上香浓的奶油, 简单的味道就是一种幸福...

这是第一次用中文书写, 有一点丢人现眼的感觉, 文笔不好请多多包涵 ;)

以所有爱上做面包的同好中人共勉之!

(For those of you who can't read Chinese, you may want to hop over here to read the not-so-accurate English translated version, I had a good laugh reading the translated version!! and I really didn't mean that my boys are smelly ;p )


White Bread Rolls

Ingredients
(makes about 12 mini-rolls)

300g bread flour
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 tablespoon caster sugar
1 teaspoon salt
200ml lukewarm water (about 30 degC)




Method:
  1. Stir bread flour, caster sugar, salt, and instant yeast in a mixing bowl.
  2. Add in water. Mix the ingredients with hand and slowly form into a dough.
  3. Transfer dough to a lightly floured work surface. Knead until the dough no longer sticks to your hand, becomes smooth and elastic. This should take about 20 to 30 mins. Do the window pane test: pinch a small piece of the dough, pull and stretch it. It should be elastic, and can be pulled away into a thin membrane without tearing/breaking apart.
  4. Place dough in a lightly greased (vegetable oil) mixing bowl, cover with cling wrap and let proof in room temperature (around 28 to 30 degC) for about one hour, or until double in bulk.
  5. Remove the dough from the bowl and give a few light kneading to press out the gas in the dough. Divide into 12 portion, about 35-40g each. Roll into rounds. Cover with a damp cloth or cling wrap and let the doughs rest for 10mins.
  6. Flatten each dough into a small disc and roll into rounds again. Place doughs on baking trays lined with parchment paper. Space out the dough to allow room for the dough to expand. Dust the surface of the dough with some flour. Cover with damp cloth or cling wrap and leave doughs to proof for the second time for about 40 ~ 50mins, or until double in size.
  7. Bake in pre-heated oven at 200 deg C for 12-13 mins or until golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool completely before storing in an airtight container. Note: This bread doesn't keep well, best eaten fresh within one day.
Recipe source: 爱上做面包, 德永久美子
More about → 手做的幸福
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A Testament to the Flexibility of the Human Mind

Diposting oleh good reading on Kamis, 16 April 2009

I'm sure you've heard that humans have five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. But we actually have far more senses than that. The canonical list doesn't include equilibrioception-- our sense of balance-- the result of fluid sloshing around in the inner ear. It also doesn't include proprioception, the ability to detect the position of our limbs using nerve endings in our tendons and muscles.

Furthermore, the sense of touch is actually several different senses, each detected and transmitted by its own special type of neuron. The sense of touch includes vibration sense, pressure sense, heat sense, cold sense and pain sense. The sense of smell can be divided into roughly 400 senses in humans, each one tuned in to a different class of airborne molecules. Vision can be divided into cells maximally responsive to four different wavelengths of light. I could go on but the rest are less exciting.

This brings me to what I really want to write about, the development (or perhaps refinement) of a new human sense: echolocation. Echolocation is the ability to gather sensory information about your surroundings by bouncing sounds off of objects and listening to the echo that returns. It's what bats use to hunt in the dark, and dolphins use to navigate muddy water and find food under the sand. There are a number of blind people who have developed the ability to use clicking sounds to "see" their surroundings, and it's remarkably effective. This represents a new use of the human mind, or at least a refinement of a rudimentary sense. Here are a few links if you'd like to watch/read more about it:

Human echolocation- Wikipedia
Daniel Kish- You Tube
The boy who sees without eyes- You Tube
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Queer Film and Theory Links In Memory of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Diposting oleh good reading

Image from Boys Don't Cry (Kimberly Peirce, 1999)

Film Studies For Free was very sad to hear of the death at 58 of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, one of the founders of the discourse of 'queer theory', and an inspirational teacher and critic.

Like many other film researchers, some of FSFF's author's own writing on queer films was deeply influenced by Sedgwick's brilliant exploration of the epistemology of the closet.

In memory of Sedgwick, FSFF has assembled a webliography, below, of links to pieces of high quality, freely accessible, scholarly writing (or recordings/videos) on the web on the topic of queer/glbt films and/or queer film theory, a number of which, unsurprisingly, employ her critical insights. Further links added since original post: last updated June 2, 2009.
P.S. Another set of must-reads from the Reverse Shot website - just click on the film-title links below for some great reading on queer cinema and television:

Reverse Shot - Proposition 24: Defining a New Queer Cinema

by MK and JR

Broken Sky by Michael Koresky

The Wire by Chris Wisniewski

Lan Yu by Andrew Chan

I Love You, Man and the Apatow Comedy Factory by Michael Joshua Rowin

Hairspray by Leo Goldsmith

Be Like Others by Joanne Nucho

Casino Royale and the new James Bond by Andrew Tracy

Brokeback Mountain, Milk, and the Queer Prestige Film by Matt Connolly

The House of Mirth by Jeff Reichert

Far from Heaven by Chris Wisniewski

Milk by Michael Koresky

More about → Queer Film and Theory Links In Memory of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
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