http://www.kitchendaily.com/2010/03/09/healthy-breakfast-recipe/
A Great way to learn how healthier food and cooking
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Untitled
Amplify’d from www.timeoutsingapore.com
Singapore's best cupcakes
Featured outlets: Oni Cupcakes, The Marmalade Pantry, Half Baked Ideas, C Cûp, Cupcake Momma
What is it about the cupcake that has captured the hearts and stomachs of so many around the globe? Why would seemingly sane people line up for hours for just a small bit of cake?
There must be something special about this sugary delight. A muffin may seem more sensible to some; you could have it for breakfast; it might have bran or nuts or fruit in it. A cupcake, on the other hand, is sexier, more flirtatious. There’s no semblance of functionality; rather, it’s pure, unadulterated decadence. There’s no room for wholesomeness or sensibly watching your calorie intake here. Instead, one may find sprinkles, bits of candy, and – its most seductive feature – as much creamy frosting as the baker dares to pile on top, in colours ranging from frivolous neon pink to a sultry, fudgy chocolate brown.
Nuts about you from Oni CupcakesSingapore, too, has proved susceptible to the charms of this cheeky dessert. Over the past few years, local shops have been stocking up on cupcakes with increasing frequency. Take one step inside Oni Cupcakes (#01-02 Far East Square, 26 China Street; Tel: 6557 0108, website), and the boutique bakery’s warm smell of freshly baked goodness hits you. The next step, a considerably more difficult one, is to decide what to order. One big draw of this tiny shop is its mix-and-match philosophy. When placing an order, you pick your cake flavour – Nutella, cinnamon walnut or raspberry chocolate, just to name a few – then match it with whatever butter-cream icing is calling your name – say banana, mandarin orange, or even durian. The number of possible combinations is intimidating, but have no fear, a more manageable list of recommended pairings is available too. Among the amusingly named options are the Healthy Bunny (carrot cake with cream-cheese icing), the Nuts About You (Nutella base topped with Nutella cream), or the Peek a Boo (peanut butter brownie cake topped with banana butter cream).
Fear not, the best-known cupcakes in Singapore are still being whipped up at The Marmalade Pantry (# B1-08-11, Palais Renaissance, 390 Orchard Road; Tel: 6734 2700), where eight paragons of cupcake deliciousness are being dished out. These include the Limonata, a lemon cake with vanilla icing; the Cloud Nine, a coconut cupcake with cream-cheese icing, sprinkled with either silver balls or rainbow chips; and the Nutella, chocolate cake topped by icing that’s flavoured by everybody’s favourite hazelnut spread. While they do often sell out before closing time, the clear benefit of this celebrated cupcake vendor is the immediate gratification – there’s no need to order in advance, just show up and dig in.
Happy hatch day from Half BakedAlong with making its way into Singapore’s ovens, the cupcake craze has also hit the web; in fact, it’s become an internet phenomenon of sorts. While there is the ‘look but can’t taste’ barrier when it comes to cyber-food, the online bakeries have the advantage of 24-hour service. There are a bewildering number of websites, bakeries and flavours out there for the cupcake connoisseur to explore – the only problem being that it’s become much more difficult to narrow down which cupcakes you’re going to order for your best friend’s birthday, or to satisfy your weekly frosting craving.
While their expertise ranges from biscotti to pavlova, Half Baked Ideas has flexed its baking muscle to create five signature cupcakes, and can be a great site to check out when you begin the search. The most popular, Berry Nice, is made from chocolate cake adorned with whipped cream and a raspberry. For a chocolate fix, try the Chocolate Ganache – chocolate cake loaded up with chocolate ganache and an elegant accent (fruits, nuts or chocolate-coated coffee beans). They will also add little flags with customised messages upon request. Additionally, the folks at Half Baked Ideas firmly believe that cupcakes can in fact be eaten for breakfast. Made with vanilla sponge, a dollop of whipped cream and a dash of raspberry jam, the Breakfast Cupcake can also be taken to a whole new level – the Big Breakfast version is filled with raspberry jam, which in my book is more appealing than the McDonald’s version of the Big Breakfast any day.
The cyber-cupcake search should continue at C Cûp. Fun not only because of the suggestive name, this bakery offers seven sassy flavour combinations that are sure to intrigue even the most jaded cake eater. The über-chic-looking confections have whimsical names, such as Isle Love You, which is a coconut cupcake made with real coconut, iced with cream-cheese frosting and topped by rainbow sprinkles. While they will take custom orders, it’s difficult to resist sampling their tried-and-tested favourites. Tempt Me Not – dark chocolate cake with maraschino cherries and milk chocolate chunks, frosted with dainty pink butter-cream posies – is sure to rope in the chocolate lovers, while Tickle Me Pink – strawberry cake, with a strawberry preserve centre, blush butter- cream frosting and a strawberry slice – will catch the eye of any fan of the juicy little red fruit.
Cupcake MommaWhile other bakers show off their ingenuity with clever flavour combinations or unusual ingredients, the sisters at Cupcake Momma focus on the icing. Their Halal cakes only come in three flavours (chocolate, vanilla and blueberry), but the variety of options for decoration is seemingly endless.
To scroll through their extensive Flickr.com site is to indulge in some seriously riveting icing porn. One of Cupcake Momma’s techniques is to group a dozen or so cupcakes on a tray with each cake decorated in a distinct fashion, all riffing on a single theme. The cakes may work together to spell out a message, or they may reveal the recipient’s love of a particular football team. Just pick from one of the many designs shown on the site or develop your own. Eager to please, this decorating duo was recently challenged to make a rather unusual custom design – 20 American diner-themed cupcakes. Without hesitation, they delivered a stunning tray of red, white and blue delicacies, including three cakes each topped with their own delicately crafted, sugary fast-food wonder: a tiny burger, a hot dog, and a pile of French fries with ketchup.
The long queues at local bake shops may be growing all the time, but at least we're not queuing in sub-zero temperatures. And remember, if the rain is pouring down, you can stay curled up at home and order from the comfort of your own living room.
Where to get your cupcakes:
- Oni Cupcakes (#01-02 Far East Square, 26 China Street; Tel: 6557 0108, website)
- The Marmalade Pantry (# B1-08-11, Palais Renaissance, 390 Orchard Road; Tel: 6734 2700)
- Half Baked Ideas
- C Cûp
- Cupcake Momma
Appeared as 'Bringing home the baking’ (Time Out Singapore June 2009)
Read more at www.timeoutsingapore.com
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Untitled
Amplify’d from sg.news.yahoo.com
Finger length predicts prostate cancer risk: study
PARIS (AFP) - – Men whose index fingers are longer than their ring, or fourth, fingers run a significantly lower risk of prostate cancer, according to a study published Wednesday in the British Journal of Cancer.
The chances of developing the disease drop by a third, and even more in younger men, the study found.
"Our results show that relative finger length could be used as a simple test for prostate cancer risk, particularly in men aged under 60," said Ros Eeles, a professor at the Institute of Cancer Research in Britain and co-author of the study.
Finger pattern could help identify which men should undergo regular screening, especially in combination with genetic testing or other risk factors such as a family history of the disease, she said.
From 1994 to 2009, Eeles and colleagues questioned more than 1,500 prostate cancer patients in Britain, along with 3,000 healthy control cases.
For more than half the men, the index was shorter than the ring finger. Compared to this group, men whose index and ring fingers were the same length -- 19 percent of the cohort -- had a similar prostate cancer risk.
But when the index finger was longer, the risk of developing the disease dropped by 33 percent.
Men under 60 were 87 percent less likely to be in the cancer group.
The relative length of the two fingers in question -- set before birth -- appears to be a marker of different levels of sex hormones to which a baby is exposed in the womb, with less testosterone correlating with a longer index finger.
Earlier research has shown that testosterone promotes the growth of prostate cancer.
Underlying the unexpected connection between digits and cancer are two genes, HOXA and HOXD, that control both finger length and the development of sex organs.
Other studies have found a link between exposure to hormones before birth and the development of other diseases, including breast cancer and osteoarthritis.
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Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Ten Steps to Better Web Research
Ten Steps to Better Web Research
Teaching the Ten Steps to Better Web Research is a Slideshare presentation created by Mark Moran and Shannon Firth at Dulcinea Media. Dulcinea Media is the producer of Sweet Search a search engine for students. The presentation includes some statistics about students' search strategies (or lack thereof) that all educators should be aware of. It's those statistics that lead into the ten steps for teaching students how to search effectively and how to analyze the results of their searches. View the presentation below. Teaching the Ten Steps to Better Web ResearchView more presentations from SweetSearch.
Wow: China's Free Bag Ban Reduced Consumption by 50 Percent
Amplify’d from www.good.is via Google Reader
Back in June of 2008, China made it illegal for stores to offer plastic bags for free. They had to charge customers for the bags. Store owners could set their own price for the bags—as long as it wasn't lower than the cost of the bag—and keep the profits themselves.
A student at the University of Gothenburg, Haoran He, recently studied the effect of this law on people's behavior and the results are remarkable.
Consumers in Beijing and Guiyang used an average of 21 new plastic bags weekly before the bag-fee ordinance was passed in June, 2008, and rarely used the same bag twice. But after the law was imposed, consumption dropped 49 percent and nearly half of the bags were re-used. While that represents a significant reduction, researchers say there is much room for improvement, especially when it comes to enforcement. Months after the law was enacted, the researchers say, nearly 60 percent of all plastic bags were still given away free.
So with even with very weak enforcement, China's ban has reduced the number of plastic bags people use by half. After its first year, The Guardian reported the ban had saved the country 40 billion plastic bags. By now the cumulative number of bags saved is probably more like 100 billion, and if the law were enforced well, it'd be a lot higher.
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Seven Ways to Build Your Own Educational Games
Amplify’d from www.freetech4teachers.com
There are hundreds of places to find educational games and quizzes on the Internet. That said, sometimes you still cannot find quite what you're looking for. In those cases you're better off creating your own games. Here are seven good tools you and your students can use for creating games.
Sharendipity makes it possible for students and teachers to quickly create and share simple video games. Sharendipity's drag and drop creation tools can be used to create a game in as few as four steps. For new Sharendipity users the tutorials provide clear directions and helpful game ideas. Games created on Sharendipity can be embedded in your blog or website.
ClassTools.net is a free service teachers can use to create their own educational games. Games made on ClassTools.net can be shared via email or embedded into a blog or website. (Yet another reason for having a class website or blog). ClassTools.net provides fifteen easy to use templates with which teachers can make educational games for their students. There are also pre-made games on ClassTools.net which teachers will find useful.
Purpose Games is a free service that allows users to create custom games, share games, and play games. There are two styles of games that you can create and play on Purpose Games. The simpler of the two styles is a fairly basic multiple choice game. The other style uses images and maps on which players have to name the places represented by placemarks on the image or map. For an example, try this game about the skeletal system. Purpose Games gives game creators the option to make their games public or private. If you select the private option, only the people to whom you send invitations will be able to play your game.
What 2 Learn is a website offering more than two thousand educational games for middle school and high school age students. If that library doesn't have what they're looking for, teachers can create custom games using twelve different templates provided by What 2 Learn. What 2 Learn also offers teachers the option to monitor their students' scores. What 2 Learn is a European based website so some of the games, particularly the math games where money is expressed as Euros and Pounds, may not be appropriate for US students. Aside from that most games are appropriate for use with US students.
YoYo Games hosts hundreds of relatively simple online games created by amateur and professional game developers. That's not why I'm pointing it out to you. I'm pointing it out because YoYo Games offers a free (for PC) game development tool called Game Maker 8. Game Maker 8 enables users to develop simple video games using a drag and drop editor. Game Maker 8 gives users the ability to customize backgrounds and actions throughout their games. For the first-time user YoYo Games offers a series of free Game Maker 8 tutorials.Jeopardy Labs is a free service you can use to create your own online Jeopardy game. Jeopardy Labs provides a blank template on which to build your game. You do not need to register in order to build your own game. However, if you want to be able to edit your game at a later point you will want to create a password before you create your game. When completed your game is given its one unique url. Post that url on your blog, wiki, or website and anyone can then play your game.
ProProfs Brain Games allows you to build interactive crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, word searches, hangman games, and sliding puzzle games. The games you create can be embedded into your blog or shared via email, Twitter, Facebook, or Myspace. If you don't want to take the time to create your own game, you can browse the gallery of games. All of the games in gallery can be embedded into your blog.
Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
35+ Educational Games
25 More Educational Games
32 Puzzles and Logic Games
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Three Ways to Cut, Mix, & Mash YouTube Videos
Amplify’d from www.freetech4teachers.com
Splicd is a service that lets users select and share a segment of a YouTube video. Splicd is a simple and easy service to use. To use Splicd all you have to do is select a video from YouTube, copy the video's url into Splicd, then enter the start and end times of the video segment you wish to watch. This service will be particularly useful for those times that you want to share only a part of a long video. Click here to see Splicd in action.
If you made mix tapes in the 80's, the concept of Drag On Tape will be familiar to you. Drag On Tape makes it easy to string together a series of YouTube videos and or sections of YouTube videos. Create your mix tape of videos just launch the Drag On Tape editor, enter a search term for videos, then drag videos on to the Drag On Tape timeline. You enter searches and drag videos as many times as you like. To trim video timings and string videos together just match them up on the timeline editor. Drag On Tape allows you to collaborate with others on a mix.
On a related note, if you have raw video footage that you want to edit or you have a collection of your own videos on YouTube that you want to edit, the YouTube video editor is quite easy to use. You can find the directions here.
Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
47 Alternatives to YouTube
Auto-captioning Available for YouTube Videos
Downloading Videos for Use in the Classroom
Free Guide - Making Videos on the Web
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Monday, November 22, 2010
A Quick Way to Make Everyday Bottles Display Worthy
Recycling !
Amplify’d from www.apartmenttherapy.com
A Quick Way to Make Everyday Bottles Display Worthy
Canadian House and Home
Oh, how I love a DIY that a) is inexpensive, b) takes almost no time and c) yields great results. When I came across this bottle makeover idea at Poppytalk, it not only fit my criteria, but almost felt a bit like cheating. How could something so easy look so great? And where do I find such fantastic bottles?
- After finding some bottles with great shape and detail, remove the labels, clean the inside and let them dry out completely.
- Next, pour a good size dollop of paint into the bottom of the bottle. The color options here are endless. This set is monochromatic, but a few bold contrasting pieces would be quite nice as well.
- With the paint in the bottle, you will have to slowly rotate the bottle to get the paint to coat the entire interior of the bottle. Depending on the opacity of the paint, this might require two coats. (Acrylic paint will work for this as it will adhere to the glass, but note that you shouldn't fill the bottle with water later.)
Read more at www.apartmenttherapy.com
- Let it dry thoroughly and you are all set.
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Sunday, November 21, 2010
rubric marking
FOR PEER RUBRIC MARKING : )
Taken from: http://www.scribd.com/doc/5581113/Blog-Scoring-Rubric
Taken from: http://www.scribd.com/doc/5581113/Blog-Scoring-Rubric
Saturday, November 20, 2010
more edu web 2.0 @ pBwiki
General Technology Integration
by Richard Byrne :)
FotoViewr. Stunning photo galleries for your Flickr photos. Flash slideshows for your online photos.
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