Question of the Day: What the Blazes are Smelling Salts and How do they Work?

So, I was working on my steam punk story, and the opportunity came up for the use of smelling salts. Who am I to say no to opportunity, but the question presented itself: What are smelling salts, and how do they work?

I came across my answer on Wise Geek

a website I heartily enjoy. To summarize, smelling salts, or sal volitale, are a mixture of ammonium carbonate and perfume. The unholy stink irritates mucous membranes of your nose, throat and lungs stimulating deeper breathing.

So, that's today's answer. Just don't go out playing with smelling salts because the fumes are toxic! 

Those Pesky Leftovers

One of the worst bits of cooking for two is the leftovers. It seems like no matter how carefully I plan, there are always leftovers. And if your guy is anything like mine, leftovers just don't fly. So what do you do with the bits and pieces from last night's meal? There's always lunch, but if you're the only one who will eat leftovers for lunch, that gets a tad old. So the other option is to incorporate leftovers into a new meal for the next dinner. That's where leftovers can get a bit fun. Here's a recipe that I came up with today that works handily for some common leftovers, and it's pretty tasty too!

• 2 cups cooked grains (I used leftover quinoa, but rice would do just as well. Really, whatever you made too much of last night can be used)
• 1/ cup chopped sweet vidalia onion
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• Vegetable oil, about 2 tbsp
• 1 16 oz can diced tomatoes with jalapeño.
• 1 8oz can of tomato sauce
• 1 cup of vegetables (frozen or leftover work equally well. I used frozen carrots, but the sky 's the limit)
• leftover meat, shredded (I had a single, lonely pork chop to get rid of. About a cup should do nicely, but use your tastes as a guide)
• 2 tbsp soup  base (a bullion cube can be substituted, but the gluten-free stuff I mentioned in an earlier post is my new fave)
• Shredded cheese of your choice. Enough to cover the top.

1. Preheat the oven to 350
2. Sauté celery and onions over medium-low heat until everything is nice and soft.
3. Combine everything except the cheese in a casserole dish. Pop it in the oven for about ten minutes.
4. Cover the casserole with cheesy goodness and cook until melted and noms.
5. Serve.

What I love about this recipe is that it's surprisingly tasty and absurdly easy to make on top of being very economical.

Question of the Day: Electromagnetic Pulses and You!

So it turns out that making a new resolution at the end of the semester, such as answering a question a day, is rather a stupid move. Go figure. At any rate, it's still a great project, and I'm going to put my hand to the task again.

Today's question is inspired by a story I'm writing right now. I thought it would be cool to give one of my characters an EMP weapon, so this is a two part question: What is an electromagnetic pulse?

According to the Division of Environmental Health, an Electromagnetic pulse is a pulse of energy that causes a powerful electromagnetic field. Most often, an EMP is a side effect of nuclear detonation, occurring when gamma  rays ionize the air.

To be honest, this answer raised more questions than it answered for me. I suppose this is a good thing as I need more questions to blog about.

Ciao, I'm off to swim and play a little D&D!

Question of the Day

And now for something entirely different. Yesterday on Lifehacker, I read an article called 366-days. or How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome

The article is by a guy by the name of Chris Strom, and it's definitely worth a read.
To summarize, Chris Strom asked and answered a question a day in his blog. He found at the end of the project that he had learned quite a bit and managed to get three books out of the exercise on technologies he knew nothing about. Cool, right?

So it got me to thinking, why can't I do that?
 And the answer is-----
No reason whatsoever.

So here it goes, the first in hopefully a daily installment of question of the day:

Why do polar bears look dark from a distance?


This question was posed to me in the writing class I teach. As part of the class, we have regular journaling sessions.  In past semesters, I just had students write their journals independently, but the product just wasn't as consistent as one would like, and the students tended to talk about personal matters. Nothing wrong with that, but college is here to expand horizons, so I decided to do in-class journals based off of TED talks. It turned out to be wildly popular. Anyway, during today's class we were watching Karen Bass's speech, "Unseen Footage, Untamed Nature." (Posted below if you want to give it a watch). The first clip was of Polar Bears making their way from their dens at the top of a steep clip. The bears looked unmistakeably not white. In fact, they nearly looked black. I had to admit, my student asked a great question, one to which I had no answer.

Well, my Polar Bears' oddly swarthy appearance turns out it has to do with two main issues, the first being skin. Underneath that shaggy coat, a polar bear's skin is, in fact, jet black. Jet black skin over four inches of blubber can keep a body warm in some pretty cold and nasty weather.

The second has to do with fur.

The Polar Bear's fur is not white.

You read that right.

Their fur is actually translucent with a hollow shaft. So, if you see the little boogers at one angle, they look white. From another angle they can look quite dark.

You learn something new every day.

Yummy! It's Soup Day!

For as long as I have been cooking, I have loved making my own recipes up like a good many cooks. I'm always on the lookout  for healthy recipes that don't involve too much fuss, and this whole gluten free lifestyle is causing me to go back to experimentation. Here is one of the gluten free recipes I concocted today.

Kielbasa and Pinto Bean Soup

• 4 cups of water
• 2 tbsp broth base (Orrington Farms Broth Base is both gluten free and tasty)
• 1/2 onion
• 5 small cloves garlic
•  4 carrots
• 2 stalks of celery
• 2 cups of pinto beans
• 1 16 oz can of crushed tomatoes with jalapeños

• 1 smoked turkey kielbasa (Jenny-O is what I used)

1.  Soak the pinto beans overnight. You can always use the canned stuff if you're in a time crunch, but dried beans are preferable because you can cook them to exactly the consistency you want them.
2. Drain and rinse the beans. Pop them in the soup pot with the water and the broth base. Cook over low heat while you do the rest of the prep.
3. Chop the onions, garlic, celery and carrots and add that.
4. Cut the kielbasa into bite sized chunks. Toss it into the pot.
5. Simmer over medium/low heat until the beans are soft enough for your taste. Add a little water if the soup cooks down too much. It took an hour to get the soup to where I liked it. 

I'd guess this soup serves about eight. I'm going to try freezing it to see how well it keeps. If you try my recipe, please let me know how it works for you.

Going Gluten Free

Recently a rash of family members on my Mother's side have been diagnosed with Celiac. For those of you not in the know, Celiac is an autoimmune disease that is triggered by gluten, the stuff in bread, beer, and a lot of other delicious foods that I love with all my heart. There are over 300 symptoms to Celiac, ranging from digestive woes to neurological problems, and it tends to take on average 8 to 11 years to get a diagnosis even if you are blessed with health insurance. (I'm not) As the only treatment for Celiac is giving up gluten and as I have a lot of the symptoms of the disease, I decided to go gluten free.

I've only been off gluten for three days so far, but I can already feel a difference. The early morning stomach cramps I've had ever since I can remember haven't reared their ugly head, my bowel doesn't hurt, and I have not had nearly the problems with constipation and diarrhea that I usually have.

The transition hasn't been easy so far. Giving up gluten means giving up most of the things I really enjoy, such as fresh bakery goods, real beer, breaded anything, salty pretzels, and so on. There are a lot of substitutes, some of them better than others, but there's a lot of re-learning to do. I also can't just run out for a day of errands any more and assume there'll be something to eat if I get ravenous. I can't go to a gallery opening and assume there'll be anything other than a few sad cheese cubes to nosh on. So there are social ramifications as well.

Here are some of the worst bits right now:

1) Bread: So far, not so good. I managed to find a bread that tastes tolerable. Firm emphasis on tolerable. Maybe that will change as I get used to the way different flours taste. I'm not counting on it. But I have yet to find a gluten free bread that is any good for sandwiches. It just all sort of crumbles at the slightest pressure. And the texture is just...not right. It's disappointing, and it makes me cranky.

2)Crackers and snacks: Rice crackers are just kind of odd. They taste OK, but the texture is odd, and I miss Doritos.

3) Beer: There is gluten free beer, and it is actually quite good, but there are so many regular beers that I am crazy for.

If anyone has any suggestions about products or how to cope with the social fallout from being on such a restricted diet, please let me know. In return, I'll post any info on recipes and good tasting snackies for those of you also on a gluten free diet.

A KIss to Build a Dream On: 1.4

Edward leaned back and lit the second cigarette of the conversation. The pungent yet not unpleasing smell of butane filled the private investigator's nostrils. It put him in mind of the times he had worked the middle watch, the men sleeping rough on the ground, the pregnant quiet, the waiting.

"I don't do cases like this. Not divorces. Not cheating dames. Not anything of the kind. It ain't personal. I just don't mess with matters of the heart. Period. Ain't worth the grief," He blew out a cloud of smoke, "It's the one kind of job that even if you give the client exactly what he wants, he still nurses a grudge."

David Thayer did not move. He stared at Edward Leer beneath heavily lidded eyes. The rattle of a nearby El and the groaning of the old water heater filled the detective's ears. Leer felt himself being weighed on the scales and found wanting. It was not a sensation he was accustomed to or particularly enjoyed.

"James Paulson. He's good. Discrete. We go way back. I'll give him a call first thing."

Thayer's lip twitched. "I'm not interested in Paulson. A great deal of care has been taken in your selection. A great deal. Whatever...inconveniences might be created by taking a case outside of your normal specialty, you would be more than adequately compensated."

Leer cleared his throat and was about to tell Thayer where he could shove his "compensation," gun or no gun, when Thayer wordlessly passed the detective another folder.

Leer looked at the folder in his hands and did not open it. He'd give the shrimp some credit. He was persistent. "It ain't a matter of money. Last case I took like this,  I got someone's ex wife shooting at me with one of them cute little lady's pistols. She couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. Still, I don't like getting shot at by cheating dames or getting screamed at about how I just ruined some sad bastard's life. You wanted me to track down employee fraud? I'm there. This? No. I don't care what you're offering. Comprende?"

"And does Mrs. Leer feel the same way?" Thayer said softly, "It seems to me she might have different thoughts on the matter." He looked meaningfully at the cot stashed in the corner of the room and then back at Leer.

"If you know what's good for you, you'll leave my family out of this." Leer's voice was monotone, his affect controlled. In his mind's eye, Thayer was bleeding on the floor.

Thayer laughed soundlessly. "Just read it. I think you will find my offer most...agreeable."

Leer flipped open the folders. Thayer hadn't been kidding. The compensation was good. Too good even for a public scandal. What was the catch? There had to sbe something the hotel magnate was hiding. Eddie Leer reflected on the gnawing pain in his gut and on his wife and decided he didn't care.

"Fine. I start when I see the advance wired to my account. Not a second sooner."

Thayer smiled once again, "Naturally."

Losing My Religion

I don't believe in God. It isn't a matter of choice. If one could have faith as a result of personal effort, I would certainly still believe in God. I have prayed, read my Bible over and over, and attended seemingly endless hours of church. I have observed fasts and celebrated feasts. I have contemplated the mysteries of faith and conversed with people for whom faith seems to come as second nature.

None of these things have helped.

And I am tired of pretending.

When I first met my husband, Robert, more years ago than I would care to admit I had been an atheist for years, albeit one conflicted about a great many issues. Things shifted in my life, and I decided to go back to the faith of my childhood. That journey turned out to be every bit as conflicted and beset by uncertainty as my journey as an atheist. After a lot of thinking, I realized that as much as I wished to the contrary, I no longer believed. And no amount of wishing can make it otherwise.

As to why I don't believe, I can only say that it's complicated. If I had to narrow it down, I would  have to attribute my loss of faith to the following:

1) Reason: Religion, even in its benign forms, kept asking me to push mine to one side in a whole host of ways from belief in the need for a scapegoat to take away my "sins" to the demand that I ignore everything I know about science because the Bible says something different. I hate to break it to you, but there's no magic that will undo my past actions. And I've dug up the fossils that prove Genesis is bunk.

2) The Problem of Evil: Most of the evil I've seen in the world can be lain squarely at the feet of humanity. Some days it seems like screwing one another over is a time honored sport. I don't need any fancy explanations about that kind of evil. Mostly we suffer because we're jerks. Period. But then there's the other bit. The kids born with serious birth defects. The terminal cancer. The good and decent people who try and fail to have children when the people two doors down abuse their children.

3) General Religious Nastiness: Homophobia, sexism, telling me my grandpa's in hell because he was Catholic, suicide bombing, financial chicanery, etc. (If you aren't hurting people, this bit doesn't apply to you. So don't get in a snit.)

I realized that what gives me solace is science and the liberal arts, neither of which require me to shut off any part of my mind, neither of which require ornate mental gymnastics to appreciate, neither of which strain my credence past the breaking point.

You will probably still see me in church fairly regularly. The relationships I have experienced within the church have been a real consolation to me. There are a lot of great human beings participating in church. You will also see me participating in most of the worship, save communion. We humans are not as fully rational as we would like to believe, and refusing to make allowances for that irrational side of my personality doesn't seem to be all that healthy.

So. There it is. For now, that's all I have to say.