The after-party was the most fun I’ve had at a derby event in a long time. I managed to capture the highlight on video.

Ultimate Piggyback Battle from Mark Morga on Vimeo.

Geeze, I guess I need to save up for one of these soon.

Ingredients

• 2 skinless chicken breasts
• 2 large stems broccoli
• 1 onion
• 4 tbs soy sauce
• 1 tsp brown sugar
• 3 tsp cornstarch
• 2 tsp canola oil
• 1 or 2 tbs brandy
• pinch sugar
• pinch kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp ground chili piquin
• 1 serrano chili

Cut the chicken breasts into inch long slices more or less bite sized. Make the marinade for the chicken by mixing the soy sauce, brown sugar, corn starch, and oil (this was from my Chinese cook book). Combine with the cut up chicken and set aside for at least 30 minutes.

Cut the broccoli into flowerets. Cut the onion into bite size slices. Dice the serrano.

Heat a skillet to medium hot (it’s supposed to hot enough to make a drop of water evaporate immediately), add about 3 tbs of oil. When the oil is hot, toss in the broccoli and stir fry for 30 seconds or so. Sprinkle with a pinch or two of kosher salt and sugar, stir around for another minute then remove it from the skillet and cover it to keep it warn.

Throw the onions and serrano in the skillet and cook until tender. Add the brandy and the broccoli to the onions and heat for another minute. Remove from the skillet and cover to keep warm.

Heat the skillet up to medium hot again, add a little oil and the ground chili piquin, then add the chicken and marinade. Stir fry until cooked through.

Serve chicken and broccoli together with steamed rice.

Getting it Installed

For OS X and various Linux flavors, I recommend getting Ruby on Rails from the main Ruby on Rails site.

Rails development on Windows is a little more of a challenge, but you can get a reasonable start (at least enough to try things out) with InstantRails.

Editors

You can edit Ruby code with any text editor. I prefer TextMate on Mac OS X, but Komodo and JEdit are reasonable and work on Windows and Linux.

Online Tutorials

This is a little tough at the moment, because Rails 2.1 hasn’t had as many “getting started” tutorials written as the 1.2x versions of Rails had.

There is a long tutorial at Tutorials Point which looks like a good start.

The main Rails site has a page of tutorials and documentation links.

Screencasts

Screencasts are a fantastic way to learn Rails. There is a huge wealth of information here.

Railscasts are a series of over 100 screencasts about Rails.

Peepcode has a number of great quality screencasts for $9 each.

Books

The two books that I recommend most are:

Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers’ Guide by Dave Thomas, Chad Fowler and Andy Hunt, and The Rails Way by Obie Fernandez.

These two books are a great learning and reference combination for Ruby on Rails development.

What are you waiting for? Get learning!

I love the idea - shows how much I need a vacation - but I wonder if I’d have the guts to do it.