Cloud Like Biscuit Recipe

Never have I been so pleased with a biscuit recipe

I bake a lot. I bake for holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, picnics, bar mitzvahs, weddings, special occasions, and on. I also bake for me. When Im out of whatever, or sick of eating whole wheat pita, oatmeal, and wild rice I like to bake up some carb-heavy, gluten nasty flat bread, zucchini bread, cake, cookies. I am adding this biscuit recipe today (and Ive made a lot of biscuit recipes) to that list of quick breads.

The batch you see above is the 4th Ive made since January, and all have been a success out of the gate. My cloud-like, fluffy, cant do anything but rise biscuit recipe is adapted from Gregs Southern Biscuits, which I found on Allrecipes.com. The main difference is mine dont have lard or bacon drippings, but only because I dont have that food in my kitchen. You bet Id make them with good lard if I had good lard. Also, this is a great recipe for using up leftover, extra buttermilk.

Cloud-Like Biscuits

1/2 tsp butter
2 cups flour
3/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
(I use Bakewells which I order from the King Arthur Catalog)
5 1/2 tblsp cold butter
1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Grease a baking sheet with 1/2 tsp butter. Mix flour, salt, soda, and powder in a medium bowl. Cut butter into 1/4 inch chunks and add to dry ingredients. Blend butter in by pinching and rubbing with your hands. Butter should resemble a fine meal when ready. Make a well in the mixture and pour buttermilk in. Mix with your hands lightly until just combine.

Lightly fold and turn the biscuit dough to build layers

Scrap the dough, its a little sticky, out on to a floured work area. Pat dough out about an inch with your hands. Fold the dough in half, turn 90 degrees, pat gently, and fold again. Repeat 3 more times. This builds the biscuit layers up. Now pat or roll the dough out to one inch. Cut biscuits with a 2 1/2 inch round cutter. Its important to push the cutter straight down and lift straigh up. Turning the cutter will seal the edges preventing the biscuits from rising. Use a spatula to move the cut biscuits to the buttered baking tray. You should have 6-8 biscuits.

Now you are supposed to pop those in the hot oven and get baking, while ignoring the rest of the dough. The more you handle the dough the tougher it gets. I simply can not bring myself to do trash the dough. Readers with lots of biscuit experience, what do you do with that excess dough from the first cut? Maybe Im cutting my biscuits wrong. I squish and re-pat the dough one or maybe two more times to maximize the dough. Serve the virgin first cut biscuits to good company and hoard the second and third batches for yourself.

Bake all the biscuits for 15-18 minutes. Biscuits are ready when theyre so light they nearly fly out of the oven, and have beautiful browned bottoms. Move to a cooling rack immediately. Serve with a hunk of butter on top for breakfast, lunch, tea, or dinner.

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Xiaomi TVBox Mini in Chicago

Date:  May 23, 2015

This is my Xiaomi TVbox Mini.  It is a small box.  Easy to packed in luggage.  Have HDMI cable, Xiaomi TVBox Mini adapter, and remote control.  I just bring the whole box.

When I reached IVY boutiqu Hotel in Chicago.  I unpacked the box, and plug it into the electrical outlet.  PRETTY NEAT!

Now, in order to get it to work with the Hotel Internet.  You need to enable this option which is under the WiFi Network option in Settings.

This options allow the box to display POP UP web authentication page.  This is a new feature from Xiaomi.

And as soon as I enable the above feature, the IVY hotel WiFi login page is displayed.  Key in the hotel WiFi login password.

Let’s check the network.  And it works!  See that white HDMI cable line?  That connects to my Xiaomi TVbox Mini.

Depends on where you are, some of the TV Movies App may not work.  For me in Chicago, most of the Geo Locked App does not work.

One of the App that I am sure it will work is “Cartoon HD” app.  Although it carries a “Cartoon” word in its name, but it has all the latest TV and Movies show.

And playing the show has no lag or buffering too.  It is fantastic!

I watch “The Flash” and the “Arrows” in Chicago.  (latest episode of course).

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Ditmas Park CSA Week 12

Its been a solid month since Ive picked up my share due to vacation! I missed my vegetables, and when I returned the predictable cucumber, pepper, tomato, onion, kale, melon, and corn (would you believe its the first corn of the season for me?) combo were still waiting for me. Broccoli is here now too, a hint that cool weather is on its way, and different set of vegetables are growing.

Ditmas Park CSA Week 12

7 large tomatoes
3 cucumbers
3 small zucchini
1 red onion
1 white onion
1 bunch kale
1 egg plant
1 bag wax beans
1 head broccoli
1 watermelon
2 peppers
4 ears of corn
6 eggs

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Home Made Bread Recipe

Date:  May 6, 2015

In one of the blog entry, I show you the very simply way of making home made bread.

Bread Making Machine:  (click here) http://miniliew.blogspot.sg/2015/04/bread-making-machine.html

Let’s talk more about home made bread.

 

It is usually very healthy.  As you know better what ingredients you put inside.

Look at this bread.  This bread consist of spinach and cheese.

The little dried green dots are the spinach.  The yellowish strips are the cheese.

Very tasty and delicious.

This is another kind of veggie bread.

So, why it is so important to us?  Because Kay Kay don’t like to eat veggies.  So, we have to tell him that this is “Seaweed” bread.  He loves seaweed.  And he eats it every day.

It is delicious.  And guaranteed no preservatives or additives or other chemicals.

This is the recipe.

You can place all kinds of fruits in there.  This is the raisin bread.

Looks great and taste very good with ham and avocado.

Where do I get all these recipe?

Buy it from bookstores lah!

This one is specially using veggies and fruits as ingredients.

Not too expensive.  I bought it just last week as member has 20% off.

This is the table of content page.  Basically you can make bread with spinach, veggie, corn, gobou, beans, mushroom, sweet potato, potato, red capsicum, cauliflower, and so on. 

There are a lot more bread they will teach you to make.

Every day you can make different kind of home made bread.

It is great book to have.

This is the spinach bread recipe.

This is the mushroom bread recipe.

Mushroom bread looks like this.

How about a red capsicum bread.  Have you seen this sort of bread before?

This is another book you can get.

It is also from Kinokuniya.  And I got it for 20% lesser.

This is the sample page from this book.

The different kind of bread you can make from the first book.

Another Table of Content.

This is a third book.

This is the table of content for that book.

This one is interesting.  They add rice into the bread.

See, they make bread using rice + flour.

Yummy.

Eating home made bread will make you healthier.

Your body has lesser addictive and preservatives.

Your kids will eat it as it is tasty without knowing there are so much veggies inside.  (you can lie to them, say it is a seaweed bread)

You can try and make all kinds of bread.

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Intel Compute Stick I Like it!

Date:  June 6, 2015

[Latest updates of the blog is way below]

It cost about US$150.  

It is very small.  

It is like a huge thumb drive.

It is a PC.

Running Windows 8.1.

Oh ya, Starhub offer it too.  But too bad, Starhub is not ViewQwest.  So, a lot of things might not work without VPN.  i.e. May not be able to run Netflix, Hulu, PPTV, BBC iPlayer (on Web Browser, because of GeoLock).

It runs Quad-core Intel Atom processor.  These are the specifications.

Basically, it can be plugged into any TV with HDMI port and turn your TV into a big monitor for the PC.

Let’s unbox it now.

Comes in a very small box.

Power button, a micro USB for power input, a USB port.

a Micro SD card slot for additional storage.  Some ventilation holes.

The HDMI port.

Underneath the compartment, very messy.  Typical “don’t care about packaging” messy.

It has a HDMI extension cable.  For those who cannot plug in properly the Intel Compute Stick (cannot plug vertically or horizontally).

The MicroUSB cable for the Power.

Comes with this.  Anti-Virus software.

Wow.  Free 1 year.  But it is not pre-loaded on the Compute Stick.  Strange.  Very unfriendly.

Power adapter.  5V-2A output.

With different countries adapter head.

Ugly.

Seems complicated instructions sets.  hahaha 

Hey, that’s new.  It also have a Ubuntu version.  But that will ship at the later date.  After June, I think.

And it is $40 cheaper too. 

You can connect a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

Or you can connect your keyboard and mouse via a USB Dongle.  hmmm… 

Interesting.  Very confusing.  Because there is only 1 USB port.  So, if you have two Bluetooth or Wifi devices?  Then, how are you going to connect?

So very likely, you going to use a USB hub.

So for me, I use a Wifi Dongle with keyboard and touchpad together. 

Very ugly, not elegant at all.  Just imagine, if you plug another USB hub and make it looks even ugly.

Let’s power it up and connect it up to the TV.

Let’s set it up.  Takes about 10-15 minutes to setup.

Wow… Now I am impressed.

Remember, it is only 32GB storage.  So, hook it up to your OneDrive, you will be fine.

Just in case, I need to install any software.  I plug in a Micro SD card.  16GB more storage.

Depends on how big is your TV and how far is your TV from where you work from, you might want to increase the font a little bit bigger.

I tried to install a few Apps.  Such as Facebook, Hulu Plus, Netflix, but I failed to make it run.  I am not sure why these Apps does not run.  Then, I tried to download other Apps from the App Store, and it does not run too.  I tried some of the stock Apps such as Weather, Money, they too does not run.  

So far, only Google Chrome web browser are successfully run on the Intel Compute Stick.

Not sure why.  But I guess the Apps needed to be updated to run on a Atom processor.  May be.

So, I used Web Browser to do everything. 

In fact, that is one of the recommended way of using Intel Compute Stick.

Everything from web browser, everything from the Clouds.

Let’s test out BBC iPlayer.

Take Note!  I am using ViewQwest 600Mbps with Freedom VPN.  It supported BBC iPlayer (breaking the GeoLock).

You can zoom out the video to full screen, and surprisingly, the video quality is excellent.  

This live TV streaming is from BBC iPlayer, and it run smoothly without buggering.  And in HD too.

I can use the touchpad or mouse to navigate.  And choose the channel I want to watch.  BBC parliament.  And is clear and HD too.

Next thing to try out is Toggle from MediaCorp.  Hey!  They have 11 SEA Games channel, running live TV streams.  This is the Boxing Channel.

The Interface is lousy.  But with patient, you can select channels you want to watch.

MediaCorp Channel 5.

Running facebook without problem.

Running Facebook video and Youtube video without problem.

Netflix.

Running Hulu Plus.

It is a PC Stick.  So it is not powerful to run full game apps.

But should have no problem running HTML5 games ports.

I setup all my email accounts using the Mail app that comes with windows 8.1.

I run Office Online too.

You don’t have to install Microsoft Office. 

I can easily edit my document in OneDrive or Dropbox.

I can also use the online version of Pages, Keynotes and Numbers too from the iCloud.com website.

In summary.

1.  I like it.  Because it is just a small thum drive stick.

2.  It is very portable and you can carry it around. 

3.  It is lighter than a laptop.  But you need to carry the power adapter plus the accessories.

4.  It has enough power and fast enough to do everything online.  Editing document, creating presentations, reading emails.

5.  As long as you do everything on the clouds, it should be OK.

6.  I use it as a IPTV too.  I so far running everything from the Web Browser.  BTW, I am using Google Chrome.

7.  So, my future project is to slowly explore its capability, and find more IPTV, etc.

8.  Imagine that you going to oversea, you simply bring the Intel Compute Stick to oversea and plug it into the TV HDMI port.

9.  Imagine you go office, you can also bring the stick along anywhere.

10.  I am not a heavy users.  So, In my opinion, for people like me, it is sufficient.  I like it!

 

Updated on June 25, 2015:

I complaint about the Windows 8.1 running on the Intel Compute Stick does not run most of the Apps properly.  It seems that Intel picked it up, and some one from Intel or Intel marketing team kindly send me an email to guide me how to get the bug solved.

 

So, I downloaded the patch.

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/stck1a32wfc/sb/CS-035620.htm?wapkw=compute+stick+app

Follow the instructions on it.  And I managed to run Facebook, Netflix, Hulu windows apps successfully.  

My Intel Compute sticks rocks again! 

Please take note, that you will need to run the patch as Administrator.  You cannot skip that step.  Enjoy!

 

Updated on June 7, 2015:

A friend from the facebook reminded me that I can install TVAPP.So on it.

They have an app for Windows 8.1 PC.

After installed, you can launch the TVAPP.So in full screen.  It’s HD quality is impressive.

you control the channel by using keyboard and touchpad.

The android App of TVApp.So does not work on Xiaomi or any android box.  But the PC version can be run on Intel Compute Stick.

And when this is hooked up to your 65” LG TV, it looks so nice.  

Now, I have TVAPP.So in my living room.

I will continue to post updates in this blog whenever I found a good app or good practise to use the Intel Compute Stick.

Updated on June 8, 2015:

One of my friend on a forum asked me to install Kodi.

 

I installed Kodi and some of the video streams.  And it works well on Intel Stick.

It seems to run pretty well for 1080p.

I downloaded a video file to test out 1080p performance.

Made a mistake of running it of the MicroSD card installed on the stick.  It is slower, the video is a bit jerky.  The CPU is doing a lot of work.  I am guessing it is reading from a slower storage.

Then, I copy the files to the internal drive, and run the same video file from there.  The performance is much better.  And can always achieve > 24fps.  Video is much smoother.

OK.  Now it is doing its first Windows Updates.

Stay tunes….

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