23. January 2010 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,
From 2010 01 23 Timmy’s Mickey Mouse 5th Birthday Cake

This is Timmy’s birthday cake (duh!). Due to a series of unfortunate events, Timmy’s birthday was reduced to having a friend over for cake and ice cream after dinner tonight. We were planning a trip to the local indoor water park with the same friend, but we have some behavior issues earlier this month and Timmy lost that privilege. We may go later this winter, just not as a birthday thing.

I was thrilled that this cake was made with materials I had in the house already, from the cake mix and powdered sugar for the icing, to the colors and cake pans. The weather has been so absolutely lousy, I’ve only been heading out for essential errands, such as taking the boys to/from school and picking up groceries about every 4 days. Non-essential shopping trips and visits to the gym have dwindled down to a minimum.

Click on the link underneath picture to see the full album that covers some of the steps taken to make this cake.

20. January 2010 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

As I said I’d planned to do in an earlier post, we attempted the Batter Blaster product to make waffles this past weekend. So here we go, the required supplies for morning waffles was nice and short. A waffle iron and the can of Batter Blaster!

From 2010 01 16 Batter Blaster WAFF-FAIL

(Actually, I have two waffle irons like this, I just got the 2nd one for Christmas).

So here we go — this is Dave putting the batter on the waffle iron in full Reddi Whip glory.

From 2010 01 16 Batter Blaster WAFF-FAIL

And after 3 minutes, this is what we got:

From 2010 01 16 Batter Blaster WAFF-FAIL

Sigh.

Very crispy:

From 2010 01 16 Batter Blaster WAFF-FAIL

So we figured, “Hey, perhaps we didn’t add enough batter…”

From 2010 01 16 Batter Blaster WAFF-FAIL

And THIS is what we got:

From 2010 01 16 Batter Blaster WAFF-FAIL

The camera lens steamed up and we got this lovely mess.

Really? When I add too much of my homemade waffle batter, I get a tall waffle — rather gooey — but I’d never experienced this volume of ooze before!

From 2010 01 16 Batter Blaster WAFF-FAIL

But this time we pulled the waffles off the iron nice and early…trimmed off the raw batter on the edges, and had something adequate (but not “great”) for the family to enjoy.

From 2010 01 16 Batter Blaster WAFF-FAIL

As for the overcooked ones, they were fine under a blanket of butter and Aunt Jemima.

From 2010 01 16 Batter Blaster WAFF-FAIL

Happy Breakfast!

16. January 2010 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Greetings from Norway, I mean, Nebraska!

On Thursday night, after a couple days of melting ice and cold nights, and after a weak cold front moved through, saturated air near the surface brought foggy conditions to our neighborhood. On Friday morning, I saw our trees covered in heavy frost.

From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost?

Pretty isn’t it?

Upon a closer look…

From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost?
From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost?

…I noticed the ice was forming into long needles, all oriented in one direction.

I had to trudge through knee-deep drifts that we still had in our front yard to get these pictures, but they’re definitely worth it.

My first thought was that this is rime icing, or rime-type frost. Defined in Wikipedia as “a type of frost that occurs quickly, often under conditions of heavily saturated air and windy conditions. Ships traveling through Arctic seas may accumulate rime on the rigging. Unlike hoar frost, which has a feathery appearance, rime generally has an icy solid appearance. In contrast to the formation of hoar frost, in which the water vapor condenses slowly and directly into icy feathers, Rime typically goes through a liquid phase where the surface is wet by condensation before freezing.”

The temperature range was right for rime ice, as were the saturation conditions and winds, which drive the direction of ice formation.

But Dave told me there were discussions as to whether this was a phenomena called “hoar frost”.

No, not “whore frost”. I don’t even want to go there.

Might this be “hoarfrost” or “hoar frost”, which is also mentioned in that Wikipedia link above? When hoar frost conditions have a slight breeze they can orient their formation in one particular direction. But according to the definition and pictures here, I’m less inclined to think so.

I think what we have is actually “soft rime”. What I saw and experienced fit all of these definitions, the thin, milky white needles, and the ease with which is fell off the trees in the slightest breeze.

The winds were from a northerly direction Thursday night, if there was a wind at all. So according to the definition, the needles should be pointing towards the north, and indeed they were.

So I think this is “soft rime”, but take a look at these other pictures and see what you think:

From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost?
From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost?
From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost?
From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost?
From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost?
From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost?
From 2010 01 15 Rime Ice or Hoar Frost?

UPDATE: On Saturday morning, the same conditions turned out even heavier rime, and I just took a few pictures and will add them momentarily.

13. January 2010 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

I was at Costco on Tuesday, mainly to pick up some laundry detergent, but as usual, I was sucked in to buying other things I didn’t need.

Such as this:

From 2010 01 13 Batter Blaster Pancakes

The product even has a cute little jingle. Turn up your speakers and give it a listen when this web site opens.

Anyway, I first saw this about 2 weeks ago at a trip to Super Target. It was $4.59 for one can. I thought to myself, “That’s the cost of 4 batches of homemade pancakes in my house!”, and left it alone.

But at Costco on Tuesday, there was a THREE PACK for $2.97. Really? Well golly! How could I refuse that? So I picked up a three pack.

This morning I made them for Timmy and me for breakfast. I’ll bypass the suspense and say that these pancakes weren’t bad, but they clearly weren’t homemade.

Enjoy some closeups of the can:

From 2010 01 13 Batter Blaster Pancakes

It’s even ORGANIC!

From 2010 01 13 Batter Blaster Pancakes

According to the directions, it’s just point and shoot onto a skillet or frying pan. They recommend a 400F degree surface, but I don’t. I played it safe and kept my electric skillet at 375F.

The initial presentation is quite shocking…although the can looks like Reddi Whip, I didn’t expect the batter to come out looking just like Reddi Whip!

From 2010 01 13 Batter Blaster Pancakes

After about 10 seconds, the batter will spread out, so be sure to account for this.

From 2010 01 13 Batter Blaster Pancakes

From 2010 01 13 Batter Blaster Pancakes

So on my 375F skillet surface, it didn’t take long for these pancakes to over brown. I didn’t get the tell tale bubbles, and it was tough to tell if the edges were cooking well…so upon first flip, this is what I was greeted with.

From 2010 01 13 Batter Blaster Pancakes

The flavor isn’t bad, it’s slightly sweet, which is how we prefer our pancakes here, but there’s a tell tale ever-so-slight chemical flavor that sends alarm bells through my head that this is NOT homemade. As for texture, these are flatter pancakes than I’m used to making, and they seemed to get leathery in a hurry if we didn’t eat them right away. I couldn’t cut them with a butter knife, and had to break out my kitchen shears to cut up Timmy’s.

But Timmy didn’t mind — he had 4 of them for breakfast!

From 2010 01 13 Batter Blaster Pancakes

One more thing, this product is also supposed to work on a waffle iron. I’ll have to try it later this week.

In conclusion, I will use the cans I have for the next several batches of pancakes and/or waffles (each can makes 28 4″ pancakes, so I’m guessing 18-20 6″ pancakes which is our preferred size). But that’s probably it. I have to admit it’s quicker and more convenient than beating the eggs and measuring out the flour and baking powder.

A billion years ago, in one of my meteorology classes, I was taught the temperature ranges at which snowflakes will form their different potential shapes. I remember getting tested on the information, too.

“At what temperature ranges will capped columns form?”

Heck if I know now, but I can now find out with the click of a button….

This is from Wikipedia’s entry on snow:

“The shape of the snowflake is determined broadly by the temperature and humidity at which it is formed.[12] The most common snow particles are visibly irregular. Planar crystals (thin and flat) grow in air between 0 °C (32 °F) and ?3 °C (27 °F). Between ?3 °C (27 °F) and ?8 °C (18 °F), the crystals will form needles or hollow columns or prisms (long thin pencil-like shapes). From ?8 °C (18 °F) to ?22 °C (?8 °F) the shape reverts back to plate-like, often with branched or dendritic features. At temperatures below ?22 °C (?8 °F), the crystal development becomes column-like, although many more complex growth patterns also form such as side-planes, bullet-rosettes and also planar types depending on the conditions and ice nuclei.[15][16][17] If a crystal has started forming in a column growth regime, at around ?5 °C (23 °F), and then falls into the warmer plate-like regime, then plate or dendritic crystals sprout at the end of the column, producing so called “capped columns.”[12]”

I found this description of this specific kind of dendrite from CalTech:

“Fernlike Stellar Dendrites. Sometimes the branches of stellar crystals have so many sidebranches they look a bit like ferns, so we call them fernlike stellar dendrites. These are the largest snow crystals, often falling to earth with diameters of 5 mm or more. In spite of their large size, these are single crystals of ice — the water molecules are lined up from one end to the other. Some snowfalls contain almost nothing but stellar dendrites and fernlike stellar dendrites. It can make quite a sight when they collect in vast numbers, covering everything in sight. The best powder snow, where you sink to your knees while skiing, is made of stellar dendrites. These crystals can be extremely thin and light, so they make a low density snowpack.”

Oh…I just found this picture that seems to sum it up pretty well:

Anyway, here are some pictures I took today from when the temperature was around 0F, and these are some of the prettiest dendrites I’ve seen with my own eyes (rather than in a book). I’m posting these pics nice and large so you can see the elaborate detail. Isn’t science beautiful?

04. January 2010 · Comments Off on Harvesting the Poop! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Around Halloween, it got cold enough in our basement that I had to bring my worm bin upstairs to the living room. I keep my house pretty cool, but for the past 2 months my worms seem happy enough. We have been giving them about a pound of food scraps per week.

Other than giving them food, I sort of neglected giving them additional “bedding materials” since Thanksgiving, and today when I opened the bin to toss in some banana peels, I was greeted with an, um, odor. It wasn’t a horrible odor, but it was certainly different than what I had been smelling, which was just the smell of dirt.

I decided an emergency “worm castings harvest” was in order. I hadn’t done this yet, so I had to refer to a technique I had read several months ago. I attempted another popular technique of pushing the older, more processed castings to one side of the container, filling the empty side with clean bedding and fresh food. This didn’t seem to make a difference for the worms, many of them went to the clean side, but websites seemed to indicate a mass exodus from the “old side” and this simply wasn’t the case for me.

So here we go — I dumped out the contents of the bin and immediately tossed the newer bedding and food scraps back into the bin. The black tray there is the bottom of Howie’s crate from when he was a puppy. He no longer uses a crate.

From 2010 01 03 Worm Casting Harvest

Note the light on the right. This light is used to “scare” the worms into the center of the pile.

This project took me two hours — to slowly pick at the castings. The clumps of castings went into the buckets, while worms, food scraps and obvious areas of shredded paper went back into the bin.

From 2010 01 03 Worm Casting Harvest

From 2010 01 03 Worm Casting Harvest

From 2010 01 03 Worm Casting Harvest

By the way, yes, those are margarita mixer buckets you see there. Great for gardening jobs!

So…as you can see, the pile works down pretty nicely, with a bit of patience.

From 2010 01 03 Worm Casting Harvest

I guess now’s a good time to mention that my castings were chock full of cocoons that I was attempting to save as well.

From 2010 01 03 Worm Casting Harvest

A view of a hunk of casting with worms and cocoons.

From 2010 01 03 Worm Casting Harvest

Now for the cool part — as I pick away at the castings, the worms are continuing further and further into the center of the pile to avoid the light. But at a certain point, the pile becomes nothing but worms!

From 2010 01 03 Worm Casting Harvest

From 2010 01 03 Worm Casting Harvest

From 2010 01 03 Worm Casting Harvest

From 2010 01 03 Worm Casting Harvest

Then, it’s easy to pick up the clump of worms and toss them back into the bin:

From 2010 01 03 Worm Casting Harvest

From 2010 01 03 Worm Casting Harvest

Jacob won’t touch the worms, but Timmy enjoys checking them out!

From 2010 01 03 Worm Casting Harvest

I filled both of these buckets with castings, I’d guess about 10-12 lbs. total! There are still a number of baby worms in the buckets, ones that I couldn’t easily pick out of the castings…I don’t know if they’ll survive in the basement, either from the cold or from the lack of food scraps. For now the buckets are simply in a giant Ziploc bag in the basement. It had been on my mind to toss the castings into my garden plot immediately (after all, wasn’t that the point of all this effort?), but it’s currently under about a foot of snow.

From 2010 01 03 Worm Casting Harvest

There you have it! I’ve successfully harvest castings from my worms! I’m so excited about that.

However, I’m not sure I like the two-hour-long pick-fest with the castings. I’m eyeing this apparatus for future use.