A Thanksgiving with SCIENCE!
Today was full of science in ways both big and small.
This year I was asked to make my homemade creamed corn gluten-free because of a couple of guests who can't have gluten. Yesterday I posted on Facebook about this and got various suggestions. The only thing I needed to replace in the recipe was 1/4 cup of Wondra flour. I ended up using cornstarch because I could find some amid all the disarray in the kitchen area.
While watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (yay, I got to see the UMass Minuteman Band on national TV!), I thought of Comet ISON and its close encounter with the Sun. I was lucky enough to find the NASA Google+ Hangout devoted to the Sun-grazing. I'm not sure the comet survived, and scientists aren't either, but it was certainly interesting to follow along as the creamed corn cooked itself in the crock-pot. (And, of course, I thought of how excited Pedro would have been.)
Finally, even though I've been criticizing the big-box stores for opening on Thanksgiving Day, I raced home from my Thanksgiving at T.H.'s after dessert so I could do a Skype interview with an engineering professor in Melbourne, Australia (which is 16 hours ahead of us right now). Hey, when you're a writer interviewing people all over the planet, you usually have to get them when they are available. So she and I (notice I said "she") had a nice chat about optical wireless communications.
I hope everybody in the U.S. had a great Thanksgiving!
This entry was originally posted at http://luscious-purple.dreamwidth.org/139008.html. Please feel free to comment either here or there.
This year I was asked to make my homemade creamed corn gluten-free because of a couple of guests who can't have gluten. Yesterday I posted on Facebook about this and got various suggestions. The only thing I needed to replace in the recipe was 1/4 cup of Wondra flour. I ended up using cornstarch because I could find some amid all the disarray in the kitchen area.
While watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (yay, I got to see the UMass Minuteman Band on national TV!), I thought of Comet ISON and its close encounter with the Sun. I was lucky enough to find the NASA Google+ Hangout devoted to the Sun-grazing. I'm not sure the comet survived, and scientists aren't either, but it was certainly interesting to follow along as the creamed corn cooked itself in the crock-pot. (And, of course, I thought of how excited Pedro would have been.)
Finally, even though I've been criticizing the big-box stores for opening on Thanksgiving Day, I raced home from my Thanksgiving at T.H.'s after dessert so I could do a Skype interview with an engineering professor in Melbourne, Australia (which is 16 hours ahead of us right now). Hey, when you're a writer interviewing people all over the planet, you usually have to get them when they are available. So she and I (notice I said "she") had a nice chat about optical wireless communications.
I hope everybody in the U.S. had a great Thanksgiving!
This entry was originally posted at http://luscious-purple.dreamwidth.org/139008.html. Please feel free to comment either here or there.