Painless CI?

I recently started a new project and had the fun task of getting the build server up and running. Usually, I dislike the entire process -- creating a nant script, configuring cruisecontrol... so much xml... so little fun!

Since its a new project, first order of business -- rake for builds! Something we experimented with at Oxygen, but didn't add to our practice. If you have the options of putting ruby on your build server, switch to rake if you are not already using it. Its easy to read, easy to build projects and you can reuse code. Such a nice change from the copy and paste nightmare of nant.

After spending 1/2 a day working on cruisecontrol.net and trying to figure out what configuration I needed, I realized -- hey, you can use cruisecontrol.rb -- ruby is already on the build server and we're using rake.

I'd post directions on the extra steps or setup I needed to do, but the directions from the cruisecontrol.rb site left me with a working build -- imagine that?

More about → Painless CI?

Pandan & Coconut

What do you get when you pair off pandan leaves with coconut milk?

What comes right to my mind are: Nasi Lemak (rice cooked with coconut milk and pandan leaves), Kaya jam, Chendol and Pandan Chiffon cake. Do you know of other dishes which are created using these two ingredients?


To make a pandan chiffon cake has always been on my to-do list...in fact it is meant to be my first chiffon cake. I didn't get around to do it as most of the recipes call for the use of pandan juice, which you get by blending the pandan leaves with some water. Well, a blender is something that I do not have...and don't think I will buy one in the near future...as I know myself too well ...this piece of equipment will likely end up sitting in some dark corners in my kitchen cabinets.

With much encouragement and useful tips from my cyberfriend, vb, I managed to get around with the problem. The solution is this Koepoe Koepoe brand of pandan essence...with this, pandan juice is really not necessary.

Armed with the recipe shared by Baking Mum, I went about making my first pandan cake. Although her recipe is meant for a 18cm pan, I made the same amount for my my 16cm pan, and baked the remaining batter with muffin cups.


Hoping with greed to achieve a 'tall and mighty' cake, I filled my tiny pan almost 90% full! As a result, the cake surface erupted and cracked all over. The batter simply didn't have room to expand! Thanks to my equally tiny oven, I forgot to 'tent' the cake with a foil before it got burnt a little :(


The bottom or rather the top of the chiffon cake was much better...


except for the holes that I have made while trying to unmold it before it was completely cool off. You really need tonnes of patience with chiffon!

Other than the not too desirable appearance, the cake was moist, fluffy and 'springy',best described by the Chinese term "弹性". The 'sizzling" sound made while I was slicing it was very obvious. Yes, if you listen carefully, there is this sound produced when u slice a chiffon cake...not sure whether this is a good sign though? The pandan taste was not that apparently as I would expect...maybe it was because I only used 1/4 teaspoon of the pandan essence instead of recommended amount. I was advised by vb that too much of the essence, will make the colour of the cake looks like some science experiment went wrong, which I strongly agree!

As the recipe only used up 100ml of the coconut milk...I had to think of ways and means to use the balance 100ml...and so, I came up with this pandan loaf:

I fall back on this rather well received and reliable milk loaf recipe... I replaced the fresh milk with the remaining 100ml of coconut milk and top up with 50ml of water. Just like the chiffon cake, I only added in a 1/4 teaspoon of the pandan essence.

I played around a little with the shaping of the loaf bread...


I happened to come across this shaping method, which is actually meant for a bun, from a cookbook...after rolling out the dough into the shape of a large rectangle, I cut stripes on the shorter side of the dough, before rolling it up like a swiss roll. It was quite a futile effort as the stripes were not that prominent after the loaf was baked.


Once again, this recipe didn't fail me. I am not sure whether you will be convinced, just by looking at these photos, that the texture of this bread was almost comparable to it's chiffon counterpart.


It was light, soft and very airy. Although the pandan essence was very subtle in this loaf, but the overall taste was simply fabulous, especially with a generous spread of kaya jam. Another great way to combine pandan with coconut!

More about → Pandan & Coconut

Oscar-esque Bun

Here is another of my friend Hilary's daughters. Hilary is like me and gets bored with the same old thing. She watches for inspiration and she received some from Nicole Kidman at this years Academy Awards.

Pull the hair into a low ponytail at the nape of the neck.

Curl the hair in the ponytail.

Divide the ponytail in half.

Take one half and loosely twist it up above the ponytail and secure it with a bobby pin.

Do the same on the other side.

Piece out the ends and spray.

More about → Oscar-esque Bun

The French Paradox

According to the World Health Organization, 82 out of every 100,000 French men between ages 35 and 74 died as a result of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the year 2000. In that same year, 216 out of 100,000 men between the same ages in the U.S. succumbed to the same disease.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, during roughly the same time period, the average French person ate slightly more total fat and almost three times more animal fat than the average American. Animal fats came from dairy, lard, red meats, fish and poultry, and contributed to a much higher overall saturated fat intake in the French. This has been called the "French paradox", the paradox being that saturated fat is supposed to cause CVD.

Researchers have been scrambling to identify the factor that is protecting French hearts from the toxic onslaught of saturated fat. What could possibly be preventing the buttery sludge coursing through their arteries from killing them on the spot? One hypothesis is that wine is protective. Although the modern French don't actually drink much more alcohol than Americans on average, wine contains a number of molecules that are potentially protective.

One of these that has gotten a lot of attention is resveratrol, an activator of SIRT1, a deacetylase enzyme that is involved in stress resistance and lifespan regulation. But lo and behold, it turns out that there isn't enough of it in wine to be helpful. Now researchers are turning their attention to a class of molecules called procyanidins, but I suspect that this will turn up negative as well. The protective molecule is probably ethanol, but no one wants to hear that because it doesn't resolve the paradox.

As a person with a French background who has spent quite a bit of time in France, the notion of a French paradox is insulting. It implies that the French are eating an unhealthy diet, but are somehow miraculously protected by a compound they're ingesting by accident. Any French person will tell you there is no paradox. When you make a commitment to seek out the freshest, most delicious ingredients available and cook them yourself, your diet will be healthier than if you count the grams of this and that on your TV dinner.

There's more. Americans consume almost twice the amount of sugar as the average French person. I find this surprising, given the large amount of sugar I've seen on French tables, but I think it speaks to the huge amount of sugar we consume in the US. Much of it probably comes from the high-fructose corn syrup in soda. I'll save my rant about that for another time.

Another thing that stands out about French food habits is the absence of snacking. Mealtimes in France tend to be well-defined, and grazing is looked down upon. I think this is probably essential for maintaining adequate insulin sensitivity in the face of (delicious) refined carbohydrates like baguette.

And finally, the French enjoy their food more than the average nation. I wouldn't underestimate the value of this for health and overall well-being.

So what was the paradox again? I can't remember. Maybe a more parsimonious explanation of the data is that saturated fat isn't so bad after all, and enjoying wholesome food and limiting sugar is the true prescription for health.

Thanks to Gaetan Lee for the creative commons photo.

More about → The French Paradox

Real Food II: Vinaigrette

Store-bought salad dressing is a crime against humanity.

'Ranch', '1000 Island' and other industrial monstrosities are a good way to put yourself underground in a hurry. From bottom-rung oils to artificial preservatives, they contain some of the most frightening ingredients you're likely to see in a grocery store.

Homemade salad dressing is one of the simplest, tastiest and healthiest recipes I know. If made properly, it's creamy, light and flavorful. I consider it my civic duty to spread the word about homemade salad dressing, also known as vinaigrette.

For a medium-sized salad, put two tablespoons of vinegar into your empty salad bowl. Add a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of dijon mustard. Add three tablespoons of olive oil and stir until it's creamy and homogenous. That's it! Add your salad, toss and enjoy. The tossing is essential.

I always use extra-virgin olive oil. My favorite vinegar is unpasteurized, unfiltered apple cider vinegar. You may add garlic, tarragon, mint, basil, green onions or miso to your dressing for extra flavor.

More about → Real Food II: Vinaigrette

Channeling Our Inner Shirley

In my world, ringlets are synonomous with Shirley Temple or Nellie Oleson. Since Nellie doesn't evoke warm fuzzies, we are channeling Shirley today.

This past week both of my girls have wanted ringlets. When I do ringlets I still use my trusty flat-iron (love that thing). Instead of pulling it through fast like it says to in the demo, I run the hair through slow and make sure I keep the hair wrapped around the flat iron.


Spunky designed this hair do. I had to do the top part FOUR times to get it to her specifications.

Here is my "dirty" little secret. I only wash their hair every other day. The previous day she had a French Braid on the top of her hair. She left it in and the next morning she had waves up top but not on the bottom. So we worked with it and curled the ends. It was fun to have so much body to work with on the top.

More about → Channeling Our Inner Shirley

Superstimuli

During the 1940s and 50s, an Austrian psychologist named Konrad Lorenz studied the behavioral patterns of geese.

One of the things he observed was the egg-retrieving behavior of the greylag goose. When an egg rolls out of a goose's nest, it gently uses its bill to roll it back in. However, when Lorenz took an egg from the nest and placed it next to a larger round white object, the goose preferentially rolled the larger object back into its nest while ignoring the real egg. He called this larger object a superstimulus. It was an abnormally strong stimulus that was able to hijack the bird's normal behavioral pattern in a maladaptive way.

Our brains are wired to respond to the stimuli with which they evolved. For example, our natural taste preferences tell us that fruit is good. But what happens when we concentrate that sugar tenfold? We get a superstimulus. Our brains are not designed to process that amount of stimulation constructively, and it often leads to a loss of control over the will, or addiction.

It's a very similar process to drug addiction. Addictive drugs are able to plug directly into the brain's pleasure centers, stimulating them beyond their usual bounds. Food superstimuli do this less directly, by working through the body's taste reward pathways. In fact, sweet liquids are so addictive, rats prefer them to intravenous cocaine. You can't take just one hit of crack, and you can't have just one Hershey's kiss.

Our bodies are finely honed to seek out healthy food, but only in the context of what we knew when our tastes developed during evolution. If all that's available is grass-fed meat, pastured eggs, vegetables, fruit, and nuts, your appetite will naturally guide you to a healthy diet.

If you surround yourself with superstimuli such as sugars, refined grains and MSG, your body will not guide you to a healthy diet. It will take you straight into a nutritional rut because it's not adapted to dealing with unnatural foods.

Your brain is pretty simple in some ways. It has these very basic hard-wired associations, like "sweet is good" and "free glutamate is good". If your brain likes a little bit of sweet, then it really likes a lot of sweet. If it likes a little bit of glutamate from meat, then it really likes a flood of glutamate from MSG. Just like the graylag goose that prefers the big white ball over her own egg, your brain drives you to ignore normal stimuli in favor of more potent superstimuli.

This explains the partially true saying "Everything that tastes good is bad for you". Why would your body deliberately encourage you to damage your health? In our hunter-gatherer state, it didn't. In this age of processed food, our technology has outstripped our ability to adapt.

More about → Superstimuli