Tea and yum

Running short on honey at home, my dad ventured into combining real maple syrup with green tea.  I did the same and it was wondiferous!  I realized maple syrup is a good seasonal choice (typically for early new-year/spring months), but if you ration it out, it can come to play just in time for oncoming colder weather as well.

I also noticed that baileys and tea might work well:  if people are pleased to try milk or cream with their tea, why not enjoy it with a bit of Irish cream?  Especially in the winter months, I think it makes sense--for those living in the temperate regions, the extra calories and fermented sweetness of an alcohol in a hot beverage are probably a welcome way to prepare for the colder months.

This may be a sacrilegious act, but I'll try it someday just to see what happens...

Microbiology and diagonal cuts

I've heard that cutting chile peppers at a 45 degree angle makes for more flavorful cooking because it releases more of the oils from the pepper.

For those of you who've had the privilege of using a microscope to look at plant cells--for example, cells in an onion skin--once in a while looks rather rectangular if not trapezoidal.

Onion cells under a microscope!  Image credit to Lu Yi's Blog for biology on sachina.org

In a round-the-corner way, this brings us to a recurring topic on this blog: sandwiches. With exception to purposes of utilitarian eating and/or convenient preparation, I'm an advocate for diagonal sandwich slices.


For one, the shape of a triangle makes it automatically enticing--with all those angles, sharp corners on triangles are sometimes associated with dangerous things (heck, even all that italicizing looks slightly dangerous)--and yet most of the sandwiches we eat are devoid of danger in the form of laceration (HOWEVER, you may need be lively and watch out for food poisoning, diabetes, and/or obesity).


Two, and this is relevant to our "microbiology" section of this post, a diagonal cut exposes more surface area of a sandwich's insides.  Let us examine the following exchange about sandwiches as an analog to our exploration of plant cells.

"The amount of crust on a sandwich, he says, does not change, no matter how you cut it. But the amount of surface area without crust can change, depending on how many times you cut it and in which direction.


If your bread is square, and if each side is 4 inches long, you have 16 inches of crust. Cut that bread down the middle, and you get 8 inches of crust-free surface. Cut that same bread diagonally, [Paul] Calter [emeritus professor of mathematics at Vermont Technical College], calculates, and you end up with almost 11 inches of crustless surface. That's a substantial increase."(You an behold more glorious things about the triangular cut in sandwiches here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120914097 )

Back to ruminations within this blog...
When cutting a pepper or any other plant cell, I suspect this has at least two advantages:


1. You're opening up more surface area per cell
2. You're more likely to cut open a cell from the get-go
3. (BONUS!!!) You've possibly made lots of little little little triangles if you assume most plant cells are somewhat rectangular due to their cell walls


Unfortunately, you've certainly killed a lot of cells, but that stuff happens when you're a heterotroph.  The best I can advise for this is to be respectful to your food and where/who/what it came from.




I hope I'll find my camera/a camera soon.  I finally started making foods worth photographing again.

Bailey's and Butter Pecan Ice Cream

Suburban micro-adventure:

Bailey's lightly drizzled over butter pecan ice cream works well.

No photos this time, sorry, but it did taste good!