Author: Lisa

Science Experiment: Soil Composition

We did a simple experiment today that shows the composition of soil — get a jar, dig down 6″ and get a scoop of the soil. Put the soil in your jar, add water, close the lid, shake it around, then let it sit for a day. Anya wanted to take samples from a few different locations to compare.

ID Location
1 Under pine trees
2 Garden
3 Deer path in woods
4 Front planter bed
5 Irises

The soil from the deer path, I expected to be almost all clay — between the rain and the deer running through it, the path is a sticky, mucky mess. It has clay, but not as much as I expected.

And the rest of the jars

Is it helping?

Schools in Ohio have been closed since 17 March (and a lot of districts stayed home on 16 March). Restaurants have been in delivery and carry-out mode for about the same length of time. We’ve been under a stay at home order since 24 March. And the important question is … is it helping? That’s a difficult question to answer because epidemiological predictions have very broad ranges because most of their inputs are so unknown … and the limited testing makes the data being compared wildly inaccurate. But we’ve only got the data we’ve got, so I thought I’d run some comparisons to see how Ohio is faring.

I selected the four states closest to Ohio in population — PA, IL, GA, and NC. Because these states all identified their first case well before Ohio, I added CT because the first case identified there was 08-Mar and Ohio’s first cases appear on 09-Mar.

State 1st Case Population
PA 6-Mar 12,801,989
IL pre 4-Mar 12,671,821
OH 9-Mar 11,689,100
GA pre 4-Mar 10,617,423
NC pre 4-Mar 10,488,084
CT 8-Mar 3,565,287

It looks like our curve is flattened — although North Carolina, where the first infection was identified earlier than Ohio and their their stay at home order was issued on on 27 March, has identified a thousand fewer cases as of yesterday.

Is proximity to NYC a major factor? CT and PA (as well as NJ, which has a relatively high number of cases) are all right there. But Georgia and Illinois are farther away from NYC than Ohio. Is the number of tests a factor in these case numbers? I’d expected a higher correlation between the number of identified cases and the number of tests administered. GA and CT have fewer total test reports (positive + negative tests) and have more infected people. NC has more reported tests, but fewer cases than OH. PA and IL have more reported tests and more infected people.

Cheesy Baked Cavatappi

Cheesy Baked Cavatappi
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Cheesy Baked Cavatappi

Recipe by LisaCourse: DinnerCuisine: ItalianDifficulty: Easy
Servings

6

servings
Prep time

20

minutes
Cooking time

30

minutes

Ingredients

  • 1 lb cavatappi

  • 1 package Beyond Meat sausage

  • 1 small onion, diced

  • 2 cloves garlic, sliced

  • 28 oz tin petite diced tomatoes

  • 9 oz frozen spinach

  • 1 cup ricotta

  • 1 tbsp sea salt

  • 1/2 tsp hot pepper flakes

  • 1 cup mozzarella

Method

  • Boil water and cook pasta for 10 minutes
  • In a separate pan, sauté sausage in a little olive oil
  • Add onion to pan and cook for a few minutes
  • Add garlic to pan and cook for a minute, until fragrant
  • Drain pasta, reserving 1 cup pasta cooking water. Put tinned tomatoes in pasta pot and cook over medium-high heat until most of the water evaporates.
  • Remove tomatoes from heat and stir in ricotta. Add sausage/onion/garlic mixture
  • Squeeze water from thawed frozen spinach and mix spinach into sauce.
  • Stir in 3/4 cup mozzarella cheese. Add pasta cooking water as needed to make a thick sauce.
  • Add noodles and gently stir to combine.
  • Sprinkle with remaining mozzarella and broil until cheese is browned and bubbling.

Red Lentil Coconut Stew Recipe

Red Lentil Coconut Stew Recipe

Recipe by LisaCourse: DinnerDifficulty: Easy
Servings

4

servings
Prep time

10

minutes
Cooking time

25

minutes

Ingredients

  • 2 T oil

  • 1/2 tsp sea salt

  • 1/2 large onion, diced

  • 1 Tbsp chili garlic sauce (adjust to taste)

  • 1 1/2 cups red lentils

  • 1 cup carrots, sliced

  • 1 can coconut milk

  • 2 cups vegetable stock

Method

  • Heat a 6 qt sauté pan over medium heat and add oil. Sprinkle salt over oil.
  • Sauté onion for three minutes, then add 1 teaspoon of chili garlic sauce
  • Stir in lentils and stir to coat with oil
  • Add carrots. Stir in stock and coconut milk.
  • Simmer for 15-20 minutes until lentils are soft. Add salt and chili garlic sauce as desired.

Notes

  • Serve over jasmine rice.

2020 Maple Syrup

Our taps are drying up — some of them were drilled on 03 February. The weather is getting warm; a few trees have leafed out. Our maple season is coming to a close. We’ve got more than five gallons of maple syrup canned:

18 Feb 2020 — 1st batch — ~3/4 gallon, a little scorched and used for cooking instead of canned
25 Feb 2020 — 2nd batch — 6 pints
10 Mar 2020 — 3rd batch — 24 pints
26 Mar 2020 — 4th batch — 10 pints
04 April 2020 — 5th batch — 2.75 pints

 

Olive Tapenade

Olive Tapenade

Recipe by LisaCourse: SidesCuisine: ItalianDifficulty: Easy
Prep time

15

minutes
Cooking time

1

hour 

Ingredients

  • 1 cup black olives, diced

  • 1 cup green olives, diced

  • 2 cloves garlic, diced finely

  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil

Method

  • Use a mortar and pestle to grind 1/4 of both black and green olives
  • Mix all ingredients together
  • Allow to sit for one hour

Focaccia Bread Recipe

Focaccia Bread Recipe

Difficulty: Easy
Prep time

25

hours 
Cooking time

30

minutes

Ingredients

  • 6¼ cups bread flour

  • ¼ teaspoon active dry yeast

  • 1 teaspoon sugar

  • 1 tablespoon sea salt

  • 3+3 tablespoons olive oil

  • ~2 cups water

Method

  • Combine yeast, sugar, and one cup of water. Wait until foamy on top.
  • Combine flour and sea salt, mix to combine.
  • Add yeast/water mixture and mix for a few minutes
  • Add 3 tablespoons olive oil and kneed until a shiny dough ball forms, adding water as needed
  • Let dough rise for 24 hours
  • Coat a half-sheet baking pan with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt
  • Spread dough over baking pan
  • Coat with 1 tablespoons olive oil
  • Allow to rise for 60 minutes
  • Preheat oven to 450
  • Coat with 1 tablespoon olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt
  • Bake for 25-35 minutes

School’s Out — Books

Well … it doesn’t look like school is going to resume until, possibly, August. Maybe not even then. Our district’s go at distance learning has been quite lacking — they’ve basically taken three weeks off to (hopefully) sort out some content to complete the year. I wanted to get Anya a bunch of books — she doesn’t enjoy e-books in spite of the fact we’ve got an endless supply from the local libraries. She likes physical books. I do not like blowing fifteen or twenty bucks on a book … so that’s not going to work out well 🙂

I remembered Book Outlet, where I got her Lucy and Andy books (they have a referral program – 10$ off your first order of 25$ or more and I get a bonus 10$) — I went through their entire collection of not-yet-teenager books and ordered 43 books for about 150$. That’s about 3.50$ per book, mostly hard covers. There are some reference books, drawing instruction books, science experiments, maker ideas, programming books, and a lot of fiction books to try out. I even found a book about urban animal rescue — she’s rather enticed with the idea of being a vet and rescuing wild animals. This will be a great supplement to whatever the school puts together for the remainder of the year. (I also picked up a 2nd and 3rd grade curriculum — additional work for the remainder of this year and something for the summer).

Science Experiment: Potato Powered

I came up with a bunch of science experiments for Anya’s covid not-a-break. Some are really straight-forward, some are open-ended design challenges, and some are pretty tricky. I thought the potato powered LED experiment was straight-forward. A list of materials, step-by-step instructions, and a clear visual product. Except … one potato generated like 0.8 volts. Cut the potato in half, get some extra clips, and we’re up to 1.6 volts.

I’d read about a research project where energy production was increased by using a boiled potato … I needed to make lunch anyway, so I boiled a bit of potato. I also microwaved another bit of the potato — so we’ve got two raw quarters, a boiled quarter, and a microwaved quarter. All four produced about 0.8 volts. In combination, this was enough to light up an LED.

Reading the article, it looks like Wh capacity is what is increasing … not output voltage. Connecting all four quarters (plus finding more pennies, nails, and clips) produced enough power to light up our LED. Now we’re seeing how long the potato-powered LED lasts. From 3PM on 24 March 2020 until … well, it needed to get cleaned up on 26 March as the potatoes started getting dodgy.