experimental soup

Cooking is like math, chemistry and art all put together.  And, as long as you don't have someone relying on your mastery of the dish to get them through today - it can be fun to experiment.  And of course, if you actually try to eat your failures.. or have someone who will (I have six hounds).

But, on that point, I also know I'm probably not too far off base when the hounds show up at my feet towards the end of the cooking.  They have expectant eyes and say: 'I smelled that from upstairs.  You're gonna share, right?'

Well, I might.  It really depends on how weird it is.
Their idea that something can be tried to be eaten three times (And come back up) before you count it as failed isn't something I want to trifle with.

On the other hand, I pretty much know my own taste buds and stomach aren't going to end up in a cleanup crew.

Yesterday's experimental soup was a pretty good success.  It wasn't too weird.  It was just green peas, onions and an addition of zante currants.  I ran it all through the blender after a good long slow boil, and it was pretty normal.  I couldn't really taste the currants.  But, for vitamins and minerals sake, I know it wasn't a bad idea at all.

Today, I got away with myself.

I thought - what else can I do with onions, to make it different?
We're in 'self-isolation' social distancing, so I can't just run to the store - I'm limited to what I find in my cupboards and refrigerator.

The dogs still showed up towards the end, but I think I'll reserve this one for my own eating!

Walnut Cherry onion soup

2 small onions, chopped
1 cube chicken boullion
water to 3/4 of the saucepan full
2 tbsp real buitter

I let that all simmer and boil together for a while - nothing special at all.. onion broth.  Then I  started with the spices.

celery seed, about twice what I normally do
black pepper, a good amount
some ground coriander, a little
some paprika, about 1/8 tsp (covers the opposite end of my actual soup spoon)
A shake of turmeric
some caraway seed (what was I thinking?)

taste it.. well not quite nice but not awful... verging on awful, probably wouldn't eat it on purpose.

So - what to do, what to do.. poke through the rest of the spices.. look at the canned vegetables.. taste the soup again, think about what could counterbalance the caraway seed....

Grab a handful of walnuts from the freezer, grind them up in the little grinder, add some broth, grind again, add to soup.  OK, that helped some, but not enough.  Add a tablespoon of walnut oil from the cupboard.  Still about the same, oilier.. still okay

THINK about everything else that I actually have on hand right now.
And then I found the unopened maraschino cherries in the fridge.  Good through 2021.  Well, it's about time to open them, isn't it?  I took out about seven cherries, de-stemmed them and chopped them up with my knife.  They went in the soup.

Let that all cook for a few minutes, taste the soup.  Getting there.
Take out my cup blender and run the entire soup through it (that is dangerous, btw, you have to do it bit by bit and be careful not to splash yourself with hot soup.. I don't recommend it for anyone who can't take extreme care... it's better than handling chemicals in chemistry class, though.. so I just run with it).

Taste the soup.
OKAY.
Look down at my knee.
Minerva has arrived.  She wants soup.
The smell of blending the last things together brought her trotting down the stairs.  She's still not getting  much...she got to lick the bowl.

there you have it, walnut cherry onion soup

and yes, that is one of the very weirdest things Ive cooked so far

if this social distancing thing goes on for more months, I'll probably even out-do this recipe.

It apparently is not all that abnormal.  Take a look at what other people have done with walnuts, cherries and onions. 

Walnut Cherry salsa with red onions

Cherry Walnut Quinoa salad

Savory cherry compote

AlphaAgriculture Minecraft Mod

We've finally posted it for download and playtest! Esme (who is eleven) has been working on this with me since the beginning of the year, at least.  We're proud to put it out there now for others to look over and have fun with!

 Download it at MCreator's website!

This mod is designed to be used with Vanilla Minecraft, not requiring any other mods to make it work.  It adds lots of new plants (which are farmable), biomes and resources.  Everything in the game is makeable in Survival Mode and on Peaceful.  Although, of course, you can use other mods, creative and monsters-on with all of it.

You can survive and build a big farm of food.  You can collect honeycombs from the wild and build yourself a thriving honey system.  You can milk cows and make cheese and cream.

All of the 'classic' southern farming crops are here - cotton, corn, peanuts, soybeans and rice.  Esme got to use her knowledge of the 'cotton gin' and threshers for the plant processing.

And because Esme suggested it, you can recycle the plant and tree fibers to make more cloth, mats, ropes and clothing!  There are new dyes and foods including marshmallows.

There is also a new chemistry system for making fertilizers (bone meal) and gunpowder from newly mined ores, instead of having to kill skeletons and creepers.  Leads can be made with cotton or jute grown and then processed. 

And we wanted the world to be interesting.  We loved 'Plenty of Biomes', but didn't want to have to include any other mod in ours to make the world fun to explore.  We added a lot of extra biomes, wood types, things to harvest and discover.  I made it a goal to make any of the woods biomes 'liveable', meaning you can make tools, minecraft tables and chests out of them.

We added fifteen new biomes in all.
Here are just that you might find:

Magic forest highland, where no monsters ever spawn

Merania ocean glass biome and Highland pines

Cherrywoods, Maple forest and Greywood swamp biomes

Come play :) and enjoy

Note : Yes, there are a few bugs, especially with the seeds.. but it seems to be par for the course with the editor we are using... but overall, this is a lot of fun!

Friday week 8

 Marker drawing - black swan and fish

 Painting a Crocodile getting an apple from a tree

9a    - 50x jumping jacks
    - writing: 4 sentences
9.45    - 30x 10lb bicurls, 20x situps
10a    - art (Black Swan) from Australia booklet
10.15    - break

11a    - art, continued
11.30    - chemistry: gunpowder prep, they made a fizzy smoke bomb type chemical experiment and it really worked.  They also pulled MSDS sheets on each item in the experiment and read them before working with them.
12.45    - break

4.45    - quadcopter flying
5p    - break

5.30p    - painting
6p    - video: life in cold blood, ep 2, amphibians
7.15    - painting
7.30p    - done

Tomorrow there is a participatory music event we are planning on going to.  I hope it is as cool as it sounds!  I asked for the day off last month.

Quote: // So Mom, do we know yet what humans are turning into, for the future?  Are the scientists thinking about that? I'm thinking about that. And I don't know what it is!

chemistry and rutabagas

I was playing with my chemistry ideas after doing some modules at Khan Academy, seeking out textbooks on the info that has been going round and round in my brain, and while waiting for our new toaster oven to work its slow magic on a rutabaga from the store.  Nice afternoon :)

This is a methane molecule.  I hope to do ethane and propane and make it a three piece set.

to think on...as we face the 'global economy'... is there a domestic economy anymore?

Is there, in the majority of United States households, such a thing as domestic economy anymore? How much of anything truly necessary for the running of the household is made by members of the household? Would they, if pressed, know how to make any of the products or raw materials of those items from the world around them?

From the most simple idea of crafts in making something practical for the house - like a quilt or a scarf etc... to the more complex ideas of raising food, keeping chickens. There were many productive farm activities that were once necessary functions of the household like making soap, vinegar, storing, grinding and using grains and other materials.... If money had no value, what could a family make that WAS of value? Could they make enough to trade for the things they truly needed to live in health and relative comfort?

There was a time when towns did not form around an area unless there were adequate resources, water, salt, wood, lime - something brought them there and kept them there because it was an important place with important resources. Now, cities pop up and grow and thrive on other factors, but if supply chains were not as easily procured of necessary items - the town would become a shell, unable to support such population. Other places would thrive as much as they have before, if the people remembered what brought settlement there in the first place.

Not that I am saying we need to go back to the time of the Old West, or even pre-colonization. But, it would be nice to know some of these things - to have them in our mental reference and to pass them on to the children as real and useful activities to learn. If such things are lost, and the entire 'developed' world becomes about how much currency one has to buy the things of life... can we, would we, lose the knowledge even about what our basic needs for a civilization are? Can we truly call that developed?

These are things that have been rattling in my brain - nixtamalziation of dent corn which makes hominy. This is easier to grind without modern equipment and also (surprisingly) breaks out the niacin from the inside of the structure which allows it to be digested. Without niacin, the corn is missing a major component of what it takes to keep a human being healthy. Other grains and what they provide, what they cannot, the history behind each of them... Beans also need to be mixed in the diet alongside the corn to create complete amino acid proteins, but some (particularily kidney beans) can be toxic if not soaked AND boiled the appropriate time periods to leach out the toxins naturally present in the dried form. Squash provides the vitamin A and vitamin C to keep populations healthy through the winter. 'Three sisters' planting where these three plants grow together taking up different tiers of the same growing space, each using different materials in the ground. Turnips and rutabagas and other root crops also providing vitamin C and folate for months in storage - looking ugly and awful on the outside and providing a sweet rich flesh on the inside, that once cooked, can provide much needed nutrients in the dead of winter.

And not just dietary, but there are other "natural chemistry" activities people did for thousands of years - leaching salt out of the groundwater and marshes in various ways far from any ocean source, leaching tannins out of wood and acorns to create turpentines, laquers, leather tanning and more. Using wood ashes to make soap and also to make the hominy corn... Making various vinegars out of apples and other items, for cleaning, preserving and also numerous other chemicals, waxes, oils, fibers... that used to be part of a working farm economy.

And all of these thoughts from growing and holding some beans and corn.... wondering - civilizations rose and fell around these essential things. What is 'essential' is rarely simple, but always necessary.

For the reader: What do you make? Do you know how to obtain essential nutrients, chemicals and materials without a checkbook or a credit card? Not everyone will know how to do every thing or process... but we must retain what we can of the knowledge. Some day, it may be necessary again. And, thoughts on pressing oil, collecting plant waxes, grinding corn... it is all very interesting to me. I think I have a bit of a natural chemist breaking out, growing right alongside the botanist.