Hops!

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by Lisa

I ordered some hop plants from Great Lakes Hops — these are awesome. They ship actual plants, which are much more robust looking than the rhizomes I ordered years ago when we started growing hops. They came packed in what looks like wheat chaff – I assume it was moistened when they shipped the plants, but it was quite dry by the time I opened the box. The plants were a little wilted, but they perked right up when I got them into temporary pots with some more dirt and watered them. I love that the packing material can all be composted!

The best part? A free plant 🙂

We’ve added Triumph, a multiheaded Neomexicana that I knew as Medusa from a beer kit, and our freebie Sterling.

Bare Cupboards

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by Lisa

I loathe how Trump is interviewed. Reporters let him blather on, throwing blame for our current situation without clarifying facts. David Muir interviewed Trump on the news tonight. Trump claims to have come into the office with the cupboards bare — in a really bad position, with broken tests, blah blah blah. And Muir pushed back a little — it’s the third year of Trump’s presidency … if he knew there were massive gaps in our preparedness, shouldn’t he have filled them by now?

Which is a decent question, The Trump administration’s own budget request from Feb 2020 (i.e. the budget submitted after reasonable people realized this virus was going to be a problem) didn’t ask for any increase in funding for the strategic national stockpile.

But the line of questioning doesn’t address the omitted facts from Trump’s original claim. Firstly, Obama didn’t leave Trump a stockpile of functional SARS-CoV-2 tests because the virus had not been encountered in humans yet. There are probably millions of viruses we’ve not yet encountered, and Obama didn’t use his vast psychic powers to order the Time Force to travel into the future and bring back a few million tests (and, really, I think Obama was clever enough he’d probably have ordered them to travel farther into the future and bring back a vaccine and manufacturing instructions). That’s an outright silly assertion.

There were supplies that the national stockpile lacked. Why? The Obama administration asked for 65 million dollars to increase the stock. Didn’t get it. Equipment was used during the swine flu outbreak, and Obama wanted a 10% budget increase to replenish the supply. Didn’t get it. There was a Republican push to reduce budgets across the board — remember the tea party? The CDC had budget increases due to biosecurity concerns after 9/11, so they were an obvious target. The cut-budgets-or-sequestration debt ceiling debacle — with the predictable result that no agreement could be made on targeted budget cuts — farther reduced CDC funding. While it’s technically true that the Obama administration reduced funding for the CDC, there’s a lot of duress that’s glossed over. And it’s not like the Republicans were sidelined as a minority screaming about how we needed to spend this money.

Alas, to Trump’s benefit and the detriment of politics in general … there’s very little interest in diving into the details. Democrats assume Trump is some combination of incompetent and dishonest, Republicans assume Trump’s right and it’s all Obama’s fault.

Ink Chromatography Experiment

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by Lisa

Materials:

  • Glass vessels – glass cup, graduated cylinder, etc
  • Coffee filter
  • Scissors
  • Shish kabob skewers
  • Water
  • Colored markers – ideally include a few black markers from different companies

Process

  1. Cut the coffee filter into strips
  2. About 1” from the bottom of the strip, put a dot using one of the markers
  3. Skewer the strip at the top and hang over a glass of water
  4. Hang the strip over the glass
  5. Carefully fill the glass with water until it just touches the bottom of the coffee filter strip.
  6. It will take a few minutes for the water to move up the strip. Once the water has finished moving up the strip, take the skewer and strip off the glass. Empty the glass of water, then place the strip and skewer back on the glass to dry.
  7. Notice how different inks are made of different color combinations. Notice different inks carry different distances up the filter strip.

 

Biosecurity and a return to normal

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by Lisa

I’ve been hearing a lot, lately, about the “return to normal” — what do you most want to do when we return to normal, when do you think we’ll be returning to normal, what changes do you think they’ll need to make before we can return to normal. And the questions strike me as wrong-footed. Especially as Trump and Pompeo talk about SARS-CoV-2 coming from a lab. Now “came from a lab” doesn’t necessitate malicious intent. The fundamental, longstanding problem I’ve had with gain of function research (the reason I wasn’t at all upset when the Obama administration put thought into the cost and benefits of this research and subsequently dropped government funding for this research and I didn’t think it was a stellar idea to resume funding) is that biosecurity is so difficult. And the spread of this virus highlights how vulnerable we were.

Sure, nation-states have forsworn biological warfare … but that’s not everyone. This release was probably accidental. I don’t say that because of any insider knowledge, but if I wanted to release an infectious disease … I’d have done a better job of infecting people. Get some infectious people at the Super Bowl – eating and drinking downtown, riding the public transit system, walking around the stadium. Or send people to ride mass transit in a few major cities – spend a day riding trains through Waterloo station, a day milling around Grand Central. If there are suicide bombers willing to literally blow themselves up for the cause … it seems like they’d be equally willing to inject themselves with some infectious disease. And the border agents can search whatever they want — the easiest thing in the world to ‘smuggle’ into a country is your own bloodstream. No explosive or drug sniffing dog is going to notice, no aeroport scanner will see anything because there’s basically nothing to find. Unless this is malicious intent with the forethought to make it look accidental (or a different actor framing the ‘obvious’ culprit) … it’s accidental.

The fact no one has done it yet is rather amazing. We’ve demonstrated our susceptibility to biological attack. We’re in the middle of demonstrating our unwillingness to take actions to prevent the spread of a disease. I absolutely believe this is an attack vector that will be exploited in the future. So why would we want to return to the previous “normal”?!

Energy Usage – Update

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by Lisa

We’ve been tracking the energy draw of our various appliances since getting our geothermal system a few years ago. It was great to see the diminished usage with the geothermal system, but I’d like to reduce our usage farther. Not just to save money on our bill and reduce our impact, but reducing our draw will reduce the number of solar panels we’ll need to support our home.

The items we’ve audited so far account for 88.46% of our energy usage in the past year — the oven, cook-top, microwave, bathroom exhaust fan/heater, lighting (we installed LED bulbs several years ago), and misc small plug-in devices (tools, small appliances, laptops/tablets, phones) are 11.54% of our usage. While I’ll certainly make improvements wherever possible … I’ll see a bigger savings cutting the septic aerator usage in half than completely eliminating the untracked draw. The biggest savings comes from investigating the top of the list.

HVAC is still our biggest draw. We’ve dropped the temperature rather significantly in winter without seeing much decrease in usage, so just changing the thermostat isn’t a big win. I’ll be building a thermal imaging camera with a MLX90640 IR sensor — it’s a cool toy, and I’d be able to identify thermal leaks. Unfortunately, I picked a really bad time to look for thermal imaging bits. All of the temp checks we’re seeing to identify coronavirus infections? Thermal imaging everything is on backorder. I put my order in, so I’ve got a place in the queue.

The water heater … I’m going to spend more time investigating why our desuperheater doesn’t seem to do much. We’ve seen savings in the winter — when I’d expect to see the least benefit from the desuperheater — and nothing in the summer. I want to research insulating some of the water pipes and installing heat traps. And we’ll finally purchase the “smart” controller that hooks up to the WiFi and lets you drop the set-point on a schedule.

Next largest draw is an old refrigerator — that’s an easy change. We’ve got a newer unit that needs some repair. One year of energy savings will just about pay for the part, so it makes sense to retire the old fridge and bring the broken one back into service.

Those changes, plus fully shutting down the old server, should reduce our power consumption by about 4,500 kWh/year — a 450$ savings, and a significant reduction in solar system sizing.

Item kWh/year
HVAC 4932
Septic 4668
Water heater 2676
White refrigerator (1989) 2250
Car charging 1164
Black refrigerator 1134
New server 1103
Dryer 245
Family Room TV 144
Dishwasher 118
Bedroom air filter 61
Water pump 53
Washing Machine 30
Downstairs bedroom TV 12
Raven charging 7

And, hopefully, we’ll finally hit the ‘efficient neighbors’ line 🙂

Unmasked

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by Lisa

So … Gov DeWine dropped the requirement that customers wear masks when going into retail stores because people didn’t like it. Does that mean we can get rid of speed limits?

Also, how do people not get the irony of traveling to a mass gathering where people are not wearing masks to protest … not being allowed to travel, congregate, and avoid wearing masks!? I get that a lot of the protest centers around the “back to work” part of congregating … but on the face, protesters are doing exactly what they claim to not be permitted to do.

Cinnamon Rolls

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by Lisa
Cinnamon Rolls
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Cinnamon Rolls

Recipe by LisaCourse: Breakfast, DessertCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Medium
Servings

12

servings
Prep time

1

hour 

30

minutes
Cooking time

30

minutes

Sweet rolls with cinnamon, brown sugar, and currants.

Ingredients

  • Dough

  • 2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast

  • 1 cup warm water

  • 1 tsp sugar

  • 3 tbsp softened butter

  • 1/2 cup sugar

  • 1 cup warm water

  • 1 teaspoon salt

  • 1 egg

  • 2 cups whole wheat flour

  • 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

  • Cinnamon Filling

  • 1/4 cup softened butter

  • 1 tbsp cinnamon

  • 3/4 cup brown sugar

  • 1/2 cup currants

Method

  • Combine yeast and 1 tsp sugar in 1 cup warm water. Let set 5-10 minutes until frothy.
  • Put additional 1 cup warm water into stand mixer. Add 3 tbsp butter, 1/2 c sugar, and salt. Mix to combine.
  • Add eggs and yeast mixture to bowl.
  • Slowly add in flour and knead with bread hook for about five minutes. Add additional water or flour to make a slightly sticky dough.
  • Allow dough to rise for 30-60 minutes.
  • Flour a silicone mat and roll dough into a rectangle.
  • Spread 1/4 cup butter over dough.
  • Sprinkle cinnamon evenly over dough.
  • Sprinkle brown sugar over dough, then dot with currants
  • Using the long side of the rectangle, begin rolling the dough into a log. Using a sharp knife, cut the log into slices.
  • Butter your pan(s). Place rolls into pans, leaving an inch or two between rolls
  • Allow to rise for 60 minutes.
  • Preheat oven to 350F.
  • Bake for 20-30 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool.
  • Drizzle with topping — I used maple glaze, but a caramel sauce or maple syrup is good.

Curried Red Lentils

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by Lisa

Curried Red Lentils

Recipe by LisaCourse: MainCuisine: IndianDifficulty: Easy
Servings

6

servings
Prep time

15

minutes
Cooking time

40

minutes

Red lentils in a tomato and coconut milk curry sauce

Ingredients

  • Cooked Lentils

  • 1.5 cups split red lentils

  • 3 cups water

  • Curry Sauce

  • 1 medium onion, diced

  • 2 cloves garlic

  • 1 Tbsp butter

  • 1 tsp garam masala

  • 1/2 tsp ground ginger

  • 1 Tbsp hot curry powder

  • 1 tsp sweet curry powder

  • 28 oz diced tomatoes, purĂ©ed

  • 14 oz can coconut milk, solids

Method

  • Boil water. Add lentils and cook for 5 minutes. Drain and set aside.
  • Melt butter in pan over medium heat. Add onions and garlic. SautĂ© for a few minute, until onions become translucent.
  • Add spices and heat until fragrant.
  • Stir in tomato purĂ©e and simmer for 20 minutes to reduce.
  • Stir in coconut milk solids and simmer for 5 minutes
  • Add lentils and simmer for five minutes.
  • Serve over jasmine rice.

Air Popper

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by Lisa

We got a air popper to make popcorn (we’d made some really good caramel corn a few night previously, and really want to make some more … plus it’s just easier to use an air popper than to pop the kernels on the stove). Picked Presto’s 04820 (which is cheaper and , evidently, the same as the 04821 but without the popcorn company’s logo on it) – a 1475 Watt air popper). It works well,  but there’s a strange design decision — no on/off switch. Obviously, we can unplug the thing and plug it in again when we’re ready to use it. I expect a majority of the use cases involve the popper being put into a cupboard somewhere when not in use anyway — so the machine is going to be unplugged after each use.

I expect this is a trend we’ll see in small appliances — it’s a component cost the company saved, reduced assembly time, and a point of failure is eliminated.