Aria Stewart's Journal

12:22: Gluten-free Crullers

Boil 1 cup of water

Add 2 sticks of butter and let it melt completely

Remove the mixture from heat.

 

Add 1 cup of Glutino all-purpose gluten-free flour. Another mix with some bean flour might have better texture at the expense of flavor.

Add 1/2 teaspoon Xanthan Gum

Add 1 tablespoon tapioca flour

 

Beat and add three eggs, one at a time, incorporating completely.

The dough will start out the texture of mashed potatoes, but eventually become a soft, pliable consistency between dough and batter. Work the batter hard until it's completely smooth.

 

Heat oil for deep frying to 375 °F.

 

Fill a pastry bag with the dough, cut a 1/2" hole for the tip. Squeeze sticks or curls into the hot oil carefully. 

 

Fry until golden.

14:22: A great idea

From Patryk Zawadzki:

Here’s an idea for GNOME 3.x. Instead of showing a static wallpaper, start treating the wallpaper as an infinite plane. Basically instead of using a JPEG or PNG file as input, build a library that given a rectangle returns the image data (raster or even better vector) corresponding to the surface it covers. As monitors and workspaces come and go, the shell can expand and contract the background, calling the library as needed to build the missing parts.

Awesome! And parallax, multiple monitors. Great idea!

Mirrored from Aria's Blog.

12:54: Gluten-free, fruit-sweetened coconut-banana custard roll cake

Make the filling first. The cake has to be hot to roll around it.

Filling:

Blend 2 bananas, a can of coconut milk, 3 eggs, a little cinnamon and coriander.

Bake at 350 until set.

Cake:

Drop oven to 325.

Separate five eggs. Beat the whites into stiff peaks.

Blend three bananas, 2 tbsp coconut flour, 2 tbsp almond meal and the egg yolks until smooth.

Add 3/4 cup unsweetened coconut shred.

Fold the two parts together gently, trying not to destroy the loft of the egg whites

Pour onto a parchment lined sheet pan.

Bake until golden and egg has set.

Pull it out of the oven and immediately spread the custard over the surface, then roll the cake end over end. Put it seam side down on a tray. The cake will stay moist without any trouble or wrapping.

15:14: A fruit-sweetened ketchup recipe that will knock your socks off

1 teaspoon coconut oil
1 can tomato paste

Fry the paste in the oil, keeping it moving as it starts to caramelize

1 cup pineapple juice
1 teaspoon guar gum

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon clove
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon hot paprika

a few drops of smoke flavor

toast 1/2 teaspoon fenugreek seeds, grind and add.

Cook stirring constantly, caramelizing as much as possible.

Adjust the amount of juice to get the texture right for ketchup. Dip things in it and pretend you'll have enough left to save for later.

12:57: Mint-tomato sauce

1/4 cup peppermint leaves
1 small can diced tomatoes
1 small can tomato puree or crush.
1 tablespoon ras el hanout, or at least cumin, cinnamon and clove
salt and pepper to taste.

Cook in a pan greased with olive oil, letting it start to caramelize around the edges between stirs (it should look like "barely beginning to stick" each time, and have the pleasant hissing noise of fresh moisture hitting a hot pan as you stir.

Serve over cous-cous with meatballs.

12:55: Cold eggplant and mushroom relish

1 eggplant, cut in 1/2 inch cubes
5 or 6 mushrooms, small dice
1 shallot or 1/3 red onion, chopped fine
1 tablespoon ras el hanout spice mix
garlic to taste

Sautee in olive oil (rather a lot -- a quarter cup or more is awesome)

Add a half can of diced tomatoes, and salt to taste. Sautee until starting to dry again.

Serve cold.

12:49: Moroccan lamb meatballs

1 pound ground lamb, room temperature
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup almond meal (optional, and bread crumbs would be fine if you're not being gluten-free)
2 tablespoons dried parsley
2 tablespoons dried peppermint (I stole it out of my tea jar)
1 or 2 tablespoons ras el hanout spice mix. (See below)
the zest from one lemon, chopped fine
one tablespoon fresh ginger root, chopped fine

mix ingredients gently, trying not to overwork the meat.

Pan-fry in a couple tablespoons of olive oil on all sides (6-10 minutes total or so), then bake at 200°F for 20 minutes.


Ras el hanout
There's no one perfect recipe, but mine was approximately equal parts of:

fresh toasted cumin seed, ground afterward
fresh toasted coriander seed, ground afterward
cinnamon
garlic powder
ginger root powder
paprika
mustard seed, toasted and ground

plus pinches of turmeric, clove and allspice, and a grating of nutmeg.

11:13: Sea Vegetable and Garlic Dressing

1/2 cup canola oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 tablespoon ume plum vinegar
1 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon kelp granules
1 tablespoon dulse flakes
1-2 tablespoons brown rice syrup
4-5 cloves of garlic, chopped fine

Just mix and shake. The syrup and carageenan in the kelp together make a decent emulsifier, so this separates more slowly than other vinaigrettes.

19:24: Great. Video. Great. Idea.

Dr. Parkinson reimagines primary care

13:38: Spiffy game!

My friend pseudomammal made this spiffy game, Khromax, and I think it's excellent. I really love simple, addictive, clever games like this. Give it a try.

10:00: rpc.statd goes wild!

I came in to work today to find my mac workstation spinning running rpc.statd at 100% CPU.

A quick dtruss -n rpc.statc showed that it was looping trying to read its database in /var/db/statd.status

Removing the database solves the problem neatly.

0:09: Crustimony Proseed Cake

Inspired by Winnie The Pooh, by A. A. Milne

Make the vegan vanilla base cake recipe, and add toasted sesame seeds, toasted coconut, toasted poppyseeds, and whatever dried fruit you have handy. Bake as usual. Then turn out of the pan (upside-down), brush with honey or agave, and stick under the broiler briefly until a crisp crust develops.

23:59: Ann Swissdorf's Cocoa Cake (and a generally good vegan cake base recipe)

• 1 cup white flour
• ⅔ cup whole wheat flour
• ½ cup sugar
• ¼ cup cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup water
• ⅓ cup canola oil
• 1 teaspoon vinegar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix dry ingredients. Add the remaining and beat until well blended. Pour into a greased 8 or 9-inch pan and bake at 350 °F for 30 to 40 minutes.

You can make a white cake by omitting the cocoa and using double the vanilla.

Makes an excellent base to make gingerbread cake, banana cake, marble cake (mix half cocoa and white cake batter in the pan, leaving a swirl), and it's the base for my Crustimony Proseed Cake.

16:16: Useful Javascript

I just created a drop-down menu with an option to add your own entries. Feel free to use.

The skinny. Demo.

16:47:

I just asked my OpenSRS/Tucows domain reseller rep about AAAA (IPv6) glue records: They are planning to support them soon! In the mean time, they can configure them manually.

21:24: Syncing AOL contacts into Gmail (or other software)

Finally there's a way to sync contacts out of AOL and into something free. Since AOL Sync is based on Funambol, it uses SyncML, and the Funambol clients.

You'll need Java, and then:

1. Download the Funambol Google Plug-In. If you want to sync into Outlook, use the AOL Sync client, or look at the other Funambol plug-ins for other systems.
2. Extract it, and run it — look in the funambol, pug-ins, then bin folders. The file is called "runGoogle.cmd" on Windows, and "runGoogle.sh" for Unix systems.
3. Go to Edit, then Communication Settings
4. Put in http://m.sync.aol.com/sync for the Server URL. Fill in your AOL username and password, and your Gmail username and password.
5. Hit OK
6. Hit Synchronize

Voila, your contacts are in Gmail

Say good-bye to a provider that has until now worked very hard on locking your contacts in.

12:33: A tumble on social issues

Disability and class (Feministe), an excellent essay, starting off as personal touch and coming to some conclusions. The comments are good.

Presente is an organization, mostly latino, for immigration policy reform.

The Purity Myth (a book, read exerpt online with google). I'm inclined to agree that the notion of 'virginity' has to go away.

17:52: Caraway-Dill bread

Mix:

1 tablespoon yeast
2 tablespoons vital wheat gluten
1/4 cup buckwheat or rye flour
2 cups flour
2 cups water

Let sit 30 minutes

Add:

1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon dill weed, cut
1 tablespoon dill seed, whole
1 tablespoon caraway seed, whole
2 cups of flour, kneading the last bit in

Knead and add flour until a firm dough is formed

Let rise until double

Punch down and shape into loaves -- rounds and sandwich loaves both work great.

Let rise until they've increased halfway, then bake at 350 for 35 to 45 minutes.

11:59: GCC needs pluggable runtime support for Objective C

We've got four runtimes for Objective C now: Apple/NeXT's, Cocotron's, the GNU Objective C runtime, and Etoile's.

Every one requires a modified version of the compiler, meaning three sets of patches to the compiler, plus one included by default. The default runtime is arguably the most limited and antiquated of them all.

Time for a change, folks?

(Anyone want to help write a pluggable backend and simultaneously help me target GObject?)

20:37: Quick Greek Salad

Chop 1 head romaine lettuce
Add 350g feta cheese, crumbled
Add one cucumber, halved then sliced thin

Mix 150ml olive oil
a few good pinches of garlic powder and oregano leaf
Add a pinch of salt, a dash of black pepper
Add 100ml red wine vinegar

Stir and pour on salad, serve.

20:34: Miso Soup

1.5L water
squeeze of lime juice
50mL fish sauce
spoonful of dulse

Heat to simmer

Ladle a bit of broth on top of 150g miso, let sit

slice 2 carrots
½ small daikon
3 mushrooms
1/8 onion
6 brussels sprouts, halved

250g tofu, chunks

Add to broth and simmer until delicately done

Add miso mixture to soup, stir and serve.

20:28: Tamal en Elote

Beat 4 eggs, add:
1 can kernel corn
1 can creamed corn
1½ cup cornmeal
1¼ cup buttermilk
some oil (on the order of ½ cup)
green chiles
onion
garlic to taste
salt
cheese, half in, half on top

Bake 325⁰F for 1 hour or so, covered

20:27: Capresish Salad

4oz chopped pepperoni, fake if you like
4oz shredded parmesan
1 head finely shredded lettuce
8 mushrooms, halved then sliced

4oz olive oil
2oz balsamic vinegar
2 oz shredded or powdered parmesan
4 teaspoons basil
1 teaspoon oregano
½ teaspoon salt
a dash of pepper

21:08: Asian Fusion Salad

2 teaspoons five spice powder
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
Scramble and cook, chop up the pieces

Chop a head of lettuce
1 cucumber, thinly sliced or coarsely chopped

Hydrate 1-2 tablespoons hijiki

Sautee 10 mushrooms, sliced thick, with 2 tablespoons oil, 1 teaspoon mirin

Add the hijiki, a dash of ume plum vinegar, a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil, 2 tablespoons flaked dulse

Toss and serve, preferably cold.

12:26: How I stopped worrying and learned to love errno.h

I just spent 16 hours debugging a complicated, annoying and frustrating problem involving pages not loading in a database frontend, and being spontaneously logged out of a webmail application.

The culprit was the SQLite library (or its bindings to Ruby) being useless with error messages. An example:

#<SQLite3::CantOpenException: could not open database: unable to open database file>

This is not okay. First off, not saying what file is a little annoying, but thankfully, I can tell which file by context since this program only opens one database. Second, and most grievous, it doesn't say which system call failed (though I guess it's open(2))

and third, it doesn't say what error code. There's a reason errno.h exists, people! perror is your friend. A happy little "It didn't work" exception is no replacement for an exception that could read like this: #<SQLite3::CantOpenException: could not open database important.db: EMFILE: The process already has the maximum number of files open.></p>

I wouldn't be hacking about supposing it's a concurrency and locking issue. I'd be knowing that something's not closing files like it's supposed to, like I now know after stracing the process and seeing the real value of errno(3).

Don't do this, folks! Let exceptions carry the most information possible. If you code in C, use perror(3).

Now I get to see why my web framework isn't closing the database on a reload.