Inaugural Post 2

As I was making dinner tonight, I think I came across a marine biology discovery. Yes, it sounds odd, and your furrowed eyebrows are completely valid. Here’s what happened:

I was making pasta. Mostaccioli, to be exact. Essentially, it’s the same thing as penne, which is a fancy name for round-tube-pasta. This is an important detail. I got the water boiling, then poured my pasta in. I stirred it once or twice to make sure the pasta wasn’t going to stick on the bottom and burn. Then I left for a while. When I returned, the pasta were making an effort to align themselves vertically. They didn’t all express this alignment, but there were enough that one could easily notice a general trend. Perhaps this is not unusual of your round-tube-pastas like rigatone (they’re all round-tube-pastas, why can’t they all have the same name?), but it seemed odd to me.

Naturally I sought an explanation for this behavior. My first theory was that air bubbles sought to travel from the bottom of the pan to the top of the pan so the air bubbles would over time push the pasta into an arrangement that would facilitate the most efficient transfer. My second theory relied on the fact that the pasta were expanding and alignment was a way to optimize the space in a pot of limited size.

I think my first idea was best, though, and watching the little tubes wave about reminded me of a coral reef. Perhaps in reefs things align themselves according to flow of gas bubbles.

Perhaps I’m reading into it too much. Anyway, it was good, aligned or not.

Haystacks

  • 1 tbsp peanut butter
  • 3 oz chow mein noodles (just a bunch of noodles. you adjust the amount as you mix.)
  • 16oz package of butterscotch chips.

Melt and mix the pb and butterscotch chips on medium low heat. Remove from heat. Add a bunch of the noodles. adjust recipe to taste. Drop spoonfulls of haystacks onto a cookie sheet and cool. Try to make them bite size, which can be fairly difficult.

 

Lemon Squares

350* 20 minutes

  • Crust:
    • 1 cup sifted all-purpose flour
    • 1/2 cup butter
    • 1/4 cup confectioner’s (powdered) sugar
  • Topping
    • 2 eggs
    • 1 cup granulated sugar
    • 1/2 tsp baking powder
    • 1/4 tsp salt
    • 2 tbsp lemon juice

Blend crust ingredients thoroughly. Press evenly in 8x8x2 square pan and bake for 20 minutes. Beat rest of ingredients together. Pour over crust and bake 20-25 minutes more. Do not overbake. The filling puffs during baking but flattens when cooled. When cooled, dust with confectioner’s sugar.

 

Chocolate Chip Cookies

375* 8-10 minutes

  • Mix together
    • 2 1/4 cups unsifted all-purpose flour
    • 1 tsp baking soda
    • 1 tsp salt
  • In a separate bowl:
    • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
    • 3/4 cup brown sugar packed
    • 2 eggs
    • 1 tsp vanilla
    • 1 cup butter, softened
    • 1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
    • 2 cups (12 oz) semi-sweet chocolate chips

Mix gradually mix the two together and drop rounded spoonfulls onto ungreased cookie sheets.

 

Rice Crispy Treats

  • 1/3 cup butter
  • 45 marshmallows
  • 5 1/2 cups rice crispy cereal.

In a large saucepan, over low heat, melt butter and marshmallows, stirring until melted. Remove from heat. Stir in rice crispy cereal. Using a buttered spatula, press mixture into a buttered 13×9 pan. cool.

 

Aunt Diana’s Pecan Pie

Diana Dunnington 11/2005

Preheat oven and bake at 300 F, 60 Minutes Place pie on center rack in oven

Combine:

  • 1 C dark brown C & H sugar (Don’t substitute sugar brands on this one. All other brands are white sugar with caramel added and change the flavor and consistency of the product)
  • 1C White corn syrup (Karo)
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 1 tsp real vanilla

Beat:

  • 3 whole eggs until very-very frothy

Stir: all above together. (set aside ½ cup of mixture as reserve)

Add: 1 ½ C pecans and stir (I use pecan pieces and don’t chop them up.)

Pour filling into a 9” raw single pie shell (You can purchase the shell in the frozen section of most grocery stores, or use a cook book for instructions)

Bake 60 min. Watch to make sure the top does not get to brown. I like to dress the top with a few ½ pecans to make it look extra special.

Cool, then refrigerate. Be sure to refrigerate left overs.

**I reserve a 1/2C of the egg mixture before adding the nuts and filling the pie shell. If I find I have room for any of the reserve mixture I add it before cooking. If there isn’t room, I dump it.

 

Apple Streudel

350* in a 13x9x2 pan for 45-50 minutes

  • Pour bready mix into pan, then spoon apple mix over it. It’ll displace the bread mix, not make layers.
    • Make apple mix: melt in large sauce pan on medium heat for 15 minutes or until thick
      • 1/2 cup butter
      • 8 cups apples (about a 5 pound bag)
      • 1 1/4 cups sugar
      • 1/4 cup bisquick
      • 1 tsp cinnamon
      • 2 tsp nutmeg
      • 1 tbsp lemon
    • Make bready mix: blend in bowl and pour evenly into pan
      • 2 tsp vanilla
      • 3 1/3 cups bisquick
      • 1 14 cups sugar
      • 2 cups milk
  • Make sprinkle mix: easiest to pour in shot glass, cover with hand, and shake. Then sprinkle over filled pan
    • 2 tbsp sugar
    • 1/2 tsp cinnamon

 

Banana Bread

350* until toothpick is clean (about 30-40 minutes)

  • Mix together
    • Mix together in one bowl
      • 3 1/2 cups flour
      • 1 tsp baking soda
      • 3 tsp baking powder
      • 1 1/2 tsp salt
      • 1 1/2 cups sugar
    • Mix together in separate bowl
      • 2 eggs
      • 2 cups bananas (about 4-6 bananas)
      • 1 cup milk

This makes a good banana bread. You can add walnuts if you have them. If the mix is too thin in the pan it’ll cook faster and get harder, so be careful.

 

OLD Personal Projects

In high school I played around in my basement bedroom a lot. I discovered some neat things, some things that I still can’t explain, and some very useful things.

One thing I worked on was a sound system. I found a couple speakers and a really old amplifier at Goodwill and rigged them together. The sound quality wasn’t professional, but it was more than enough to do what I wanted. It wasn’t even stereo, but I could get it loud. Then I took apart an alarm clock and rewired the speaker output into the sound system. Occasionally I would have the amplifier volume a little loud and I would wake up EVERYBODY in the house at 6am for school. Later I took my 386 computer apart and wired the internal speaker output to the amp. The computer didn’t have a sound card, so this was my only option.

Another thing I played with was input devices. I took a keyboard apart and tapped into the wires for the arrow keys. Then I took apart two pens and taped them so they were perpendicular to each other. I put a small piece of metal in each that would slide around easily. Then I taped paper clips on each end so that the pieces of metal would make two separate paper clips touch and complete a circuit. The circuit it would complete was the arrow key. I then attached this small contraption to a glove. The end result was a motion sensitive glove that could tell whether my hand was tilted forward, backwards, left, or right, and would send the appropriate arrow key through the keyboard to the computer. It was the cheapest glove ever.

One of my experiments involved plugging a socket into a bucket of water. Bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen appeared at the terminals. After a few days, so much of the wire had corroded that the tub was blue-green with copper. There wasn’t really a point to all of it, just the coolness of seeing science doing what it was supposed to.