Tea Time

For my tea time sandwiches I use crackers. Each is dabbed with cream cheese, and then one of three sandwiches are made:

A single mint leaf with a slice of cucumber.

A sprig of dill with a slice of cucumber.

Or my favorite: Steam some asparagus, and then chill it and slice it into lengths appropriate to the cracker. Put some ground black pepper on the cream cheese and cracker. Then put a dab of dijon mustard on a slice of prosciutto, and wrap this around the asparagus. That goes on top of the cracker.

I am out of prosciutto and asparagus, unfortunately. Today we'll try deviled eggs (made with sour cream rather than mayonnaise) for tea time. But soon, lunch: an Italian style sandwich (three or four kinds of Italian meats, with lettuce, tomato, red onion, mustard, mayonnaise, and a slice of provolone).

VORTEX2 begins

Thursday morning, 7 May, bright and early, four Penn State students and I packed up a minivan and left State College, Pennsylvania. Our destination was Norman, Oklahoma, where we would be joining with the largest and most ambitious tornado research project in history: VORTEX2.

Joplin, Missouri, hosted us the first night of our travels. At 7 am, one of my colleagues woke me with good reason: the sky was green and hailing. Our first taste of severe weather, and the project had not yet started! We were at the apex of a derecho, a straight-line wind event that tore across the country. A tornado warning had been declared for the northern book-end vortex, and as the bow echo passed a mesovortex spun up and earned another tornado warning. With awe we watched the hurricane-force winds threaten to uproot the trees. I found the event especially wonderful because I'd wanted to experience a derecho for the past few years, but knew we would not be chasing any.

The tornado sirens sounded some thirty minutes after the danger had passed. Hotel patrons huddling on the first floor were relieved when I informed them of who I was and why they could believe me that they were completely safe.

With the power knocked out of the hotel, we decided to leave a few hours earlier than planned. We made Norman by about 1pm.

The next two days were filled with trainings and meetings.

And today, VORTEX2 officially began. But alas! A ridge to the west, cold air all around...no supercells for us. Which was fine: today we were able to work out some of the technical difficulties in our brand new equipment and software.

And that's about all I can say.

I'll conclude with some pictures of our hotel parking lot. These hardly do justice to the spectacle of seeing all of the vehicles together. Doesn't help that half of the vehicles are missing.

I drive the van labeled "Probe 7." Click on pictures for full-size images.

improvised stir fry sauce

Last night was a sauce experiment. Neither an abject failure nor a stunning success, this experiment provided me with an exciting new canvas for my second favorite form of creative play.

The meal had four components: Steamed greens and rutabegas; a stir-fried mirepoix with garlic and ginger; tofu coated in potato flour and deep fried at 350 degrees; all on a bed of rice.

The steamed vegetables and rice should be straightforward. For the tofu, I simply sliced it and, still wet, coated each piece with potato flour. Then into the deep frier! (I got a Cool Daddy in a holiday gift-exchange, so now I have a cover, a handy basket for lowering food in, and best of all: temperature control!)

For the stir fry, the ginger splashed in the hot oil first, shortly followed by garlic. When it had browned, both were removed. Then a mixture of coarsely chopped (half inch chunks) onions, carrots and celery, with light soy sauce. The ginger and garlic were added back into the mix for a few minutes, then the entire mixture removed.

Now, the sauce. On the side, I had mixed together a paste of about equal parts potato flour and water. The first step for making the sauce involved flavoring the already-flavored oil with dried and crushed (and deseeded!) serrano peppers. Let them sizzle for just a minute (and try not to choke as the blast of pepper gas meets your lungs--this is what democracy looks like!) and then pour in: about two tablespoons dark soy sauce, an equal amount of cooking sherry, a tablespoon or less of honey, and a splash of sesame oil. Use the potato flour paste to thicken the sauce after it has cooked for a few minutes.

Actually, don't do that, because it didn't turn out so well. Cooking sherry always has salt added, so the entire mixture turned out way too salty. Next time I will use either port or mirin. Either of those will also mean less honey. I also added too much sesame oil--next time I will carefully measure out less than a teaspoon. But, as I said, this did show promise as a rich, thick syrup that could go well with future stir fries.

Over the next few days, I will be making, in succession: 12 quarts of beef stock, 8 of which will then immediately go into sauce espagnole, with the other four to be later added to the sauce espagnole and further reduced to yield five quarts of demi-glace. These will be ladelled into two-cup mason jars and frozen for future use. The entire process should take about 12-15 hours, and will constitute something of a weekend for myself after I meet with my advisor on Monday.

I have not been keeping up with the weather, so I have nothing to say about that. My apologies.