Bahn Bao: Hot Steamed Buns

Bahn Bao fresh from the steamer

I love knishes, empanadas, ravioli, and bahn bao (Vietnamese bao, A.K.A. steamed buns).  Essentially if you wrap something tasty in dough and cook it, I'm a happy camper.

Until spending Christmas with my in-laws, the only one of that list I didn't know how to make was bahn bao, Vietnamese steamed buns.

The recipe is surprisingly easy - it took us less than an hour to make 12 giant fluffy buns filled with tasty things.

I can't wait to experiment with the fillings!

Dough

1 bag of steamed bun flour

1 cup of water or milk

1/2 cup of sugar

1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

 

Filling

1 pound ground pork

1 green onion, chopped

1/2 cup green peas

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

2 chinese sausages, each cut into 12 round slices (24 slices total)

3 boiled eggs, each cut into 4 pieces (12 pieces total)

 

Tools

12 small squares of clean paper

Rolling pin

Steamer

 

Mix and knead dough and set aside for 15-30 minutes

While dough is resting, combine pork with green onions, salt, and pepper, then divide into 12 equal portions.

Knead dough for another 5 minutes and divide into 12 equal portions on a floured counter.

 

With a rolling pin, or by hand, press a dough portion into a 5"-6" diameter circle, place pork, an egg slice, two sausage slices, and several peas into the center.

Pinch the sides up to make a pouch, place on a piece of paper in a steamer tray.

Bahn bao with filling, ready for pinching

Repeat for all 12 dough balls, then steam the buns for 20 minutes or until pork is fully cooked.

Bahn Bao cooked (left) and raw (right)

3D Printer Cage Match

Sometimes I have dreams. Crazy dreams of my friends and me throwing a huge 3D printing dance party at a club packed with partygoers.

And sometimes those dreams come true.



Thanks to:

• Chris and Mary for helping me organize things
• Jim and Patrick for being amazing announcers
• Colin, Josh, and Brittany for judging
• Adam for dropping beats all night long
• Sara for the super cool sci-fi lighting
• Beauty Bar for hosting this ridiculous party
• SeeMeCNC, Inventables, Awesome Foundation, and SPEstes for sponsoring a hugely fun party
• Pumping Station: One for letting me borrow a car load of tables and power strips without asking questions
• Everyone who showed up - you are the people who actually made this a party, I certainly hope you had a good time

Everything is Broken

Broken plate, ca. 1890

My favorite thing to do is to fix something that has broken.  I love saving something from the discard pile and breathing new life into it. Even better is watching it trundle off to make someone else's life better.

This has been on my mind because everything seems to be breaking lately.  The water main, my laptop, the fence, and now even the water heater needs attention.

When I was a kid, my little brother and sister would receive cheap electric toys that broke almost immediately. So I started collecting wire, batteries, and motors from older broken toys and using them to fix the latest batch of broken toys.

Over at FreeGeek Chicago, I take apart old computers, replace worn parts, and install new operating systems, and then I get to see those repaired old machines help out the neighborhood, close the digital divide, and reduce electronic waste.

When I lived in Madison, WI, I stumbled onto how easy it is to find and repair broken propane and charcoal grills and then sell them on Craigslist. I did that in my spare time one summer and those grills paid for my February Mexican vacation that year.

The View From a Trench

I am completely underground

It's 21F and snowing. I have a runny nose, but aside from that, I'm not feeling the cold at all - I've stripped off my heavy jacket and am considering removing my fleece, I've only got a white tee shirt on underneath.

I'm standing in my trench. It's about 15 feet long and it's deep enough that I'm standing below ground level.

I say it's my trench because well, I've paid for it, in money, stress, and sweat. Earlier this fall, the city decided to replace the 1890s-era (lead) water main and sewage pipes in my neighbourhood. The problem is that the pipe that connects my house to the water main is also lead, and is also from the 1890s. Old lead pipes get brittle, and if not treated gently (by city workers laying new water mains, for example), they break, like mine has. And need to be replaced, just like mine.  This is going to be extremely expensive, but I don't want to pay my very expensive (but very good) plumbers to dig a hole in the ground.

Yesterday, I hired two day laborers to dig the trench where my plumber told me the pipe should be.

Hiring someone to dig for you is an interesting experience.  You're literally paying for someone's labor in a direct way.  I've never done that before.  And they did a decent job, but there were a few wrinkles. First: the pipe wasn't where we all thought it would be, wasting a lot of digging in the wrong spot. Second: the pipe wasn't straight - it wandered around, making it difficult to find and follow. Finally and worst of all: last night, the trench walls collapsed inward, expanding the hole by almost 50%.  That's a lot of dirt sitting inside my nice new trench this morning.

It's a cloudy, windy, cold Sunday morning and there's snow in the forecast, so I'm unable able to find anyone interested in digging for me, and this trench needs to be ready for the plumber on Monday.

So here I am.  Digging out a trench.

Adventures with Pi and Lapdocks

I'm just starting to use my Raspberry Pi (I have a cool project that I'll discuss later), and the easiest, most portable, coolest looking solution for programming on and using a Raspberry Pi has got to be the Motorola Atrix Lapdock.

The Atrix Lapdock is an accessory for the atrix mobile phone that essentially turns your phone into a laptop.  It looks cool, but was very expensive ($500!), so no one bought them.  It's basically a slick looking high definition display, chiclet keyboard, trackpad, and a battery - a laptop with no brains, it has HDMI and USB inputs and two USB ports for other peripherals.

When AT&T and others started dumping Atrix lapdocks for under $50, someone turned an Atrix lapdock and a Raspberry Pi into this.

When I recently looked into doing the same thing, I found that the prices of Atrix lapdocks had risen due to the limited supply (they're discontinued) and fresh demand from Raspi owners.

But, I found and purchased a Lapdock 100 for $40. Cheap price, not cool looking, but it has similar specs so it should work, right?

Look Ma, New Feet!

Update3: The store for these feet and my upgraded feet for Ikea Gilbert Chairs is over here.

Update2: look at the bottom of this post - due to popular demand, we're now selling these!

Update: thanks to Ikea Hacker for the love!

I was refinishing a six Ikea Gilbert chairs with fresh paint and polycrylic when I noticed that I was missing a few feet - they must have popped off over the years.

I went to my local Ikea, but they don't sell these chairs anymore, so the replacement parts are sadly no longer available! ...until I created a 3D model and printed up a batch of fresh chair feet.

They are a little tighter than the originals, which I'm hoping means that the replacements will be less prone to popping off.

Next, I need to paint the replacement feet with a touch of black paint.  ... or, one could just print them in black ABS, or go for a splash of color instead.

I published the design to YouMagine (an object design repository) for anyone else who wants to repair these awesome modern chairs.

Purchase these chair feet right over here!

7661 miles in 5 days

As I mentioned earlier, I recently purchased a FlashForge Creator 3D Printer.

I believe this is the most under-reported story in the 3D printing world - a Chinese company picked up an abandoned open source design, made changes, simplifications, and improvements, and their printer has been amongst the best selling 3D Printers on Amazon for months - it's currently ranked #2 (behind the $299 printrbot Simple DIY kit) and is holding a five star review average - out of 81 reviews!

This story's not all sunshine and rainbows - The FlashForge company doesn't appear to respect the original design's Creative Commons Attribution / Share-Alike licensing.  I don't see anything other than a vague "based on open source" mention in their documentation, and there are reports that they consider their design files "confidential." So they're not attributing or sharing alike. This is pretty silly considering that their printer really is a Replicator - the changes they made are pretty easy to spot on a side-by-side comparison, and some branding aside, my printer does look startlingly similar to the original Replicator Dual.

Maybe a year ago this would have bothered me, but a lot has happened since then - MakerBot abandoned this design, chose to go closed source, and join Shapeways.  Now FlashForge is the only company manufacturing this design, so if you want it, they're the only people making it.

Here are my impressions after using the FlashForge for a few days:

So far the experience has been really promising - 5 days after ordering the printer, it was at my house. Compared to most other competing 3D printers, this is amazing - a three+ week lead time is completely normal in this sector of the market.