Yeast Starter
Here’s a page with
information on how to create and maintain a yeast starter.
posted at: 17:12 |
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Even more on culturing yeast
This web
page is even better than the last one.
posted at: 17:02 |
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Yeast- crossing over into Colin’s beer territory
Speaking ofleavening, here’s
an article on how to keep and grow yeast cultures. I’d really like to get
over the mystique that I feel towards this critter and get into trying to
do some baking with it. Maybe this article will help.
posted at: 16:48 |
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What counts as cake?
The King
Arthur Flour Company also has nice page that discusses what counts as
a cake. Their definition: “A “traditional” cake contains flour and an
equal amount or more, by weight, not volume, of sugar with a little salt
to intensify flavor. From there, the variation in ingredients is
infinite.”
posted at: 16:36 |
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Old School Cake Recipes
I’m interested in baking mechanics, and also in how people baked things
before modern food inventions like baking soda. This article has a nice
amount of information in it about pre-baking soda cakes.
posted at: 16:33 |
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FAQ on Paleo Diet
As I do from time to time, I’ve delved back in to the dietary morass
because I’m trying to add more fiber to my diet. While doing some reading
on that, I came across this interesting FAQ on one
person’s version of ‘the paleo
diet’- a FAQ which, for once, seems to address many of the questions I
have had
about it, among them: Isn’t a high protein diet bad for your kidneys?
(Answer: possibly, if you already have kidney problems), Isn’t a paleo
diet unsustainable on a large scale? (Answer: Yes) and Isn’t there
evidence that pre-agriculture humans did in fact eat grains (Answer:
Maybe, they might have eaten them, but not in very many places or very
often).
The main thing I like about the version of the ‘paleo diet’ presented on
this website is that the person says basically “Realistically, you’re
going to buy your
food from grocery stores. Okay, how do you adapt that food so that it is
more in line with my ideas about good diet.” This makes much more sense
than some paleo diet sites that basically advocate getting some kind of
bird of prey and using it to kill pigeons and rabbits in your friendly
neighbourhood field.
posted at: 13:06 |
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Chemistry fun with nitrite
Yay chemistry! Here’s
still more info on the chemistry in a fish tank, including the atomic
weight of nitrogen, and some more information about how tests measure
nitrogen levels.
posted at: 11:28 |
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Yet more on the chemistry of nitrite and salt
Here’s
a link that has even more precise information. Yay chemistry.
posted at: 14:30 |
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More on salt for nitrite toxicity
Here’s some more details on
the chemistry, and why the chloride ion helps.
posted at: 14:15 |
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Salt water to counteract nitrite poisoning
We’re currently trying to establish a new tank without exposing our fish
to too much nitrite. The problem, as people who own fish tanks know, is
that you need a certain amount of nitrite in order to get nitrate
producing bacteria, which will then remove the nitrite for you. We’ve been
doing numerous water changes to keep the nitrite low, but at this point it
seems we’ve kept it so low that the nitrate bacteria can’t even get
started. It seems like we’re going to have to let the nitrite
shoot up at least a bit. Apparently, adding salt to the water can help
protect fish when this happens. Here’s a
nice page that talks about the chemistry involved, and how much salt you
actually need to add to help out.
posted at: 11:19 |
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Bruised Fruit
I’m on a fruit eating kick at the moment. I’m not generally a huge fan of
fruit eating, because in that area I’m kind of a picky eater. I realized
that the main reason for this is I don’t know if it’s okay to eat bruised
fruit. Is it okay, or bad for you, or what? According to Tuft’s
univerisity it
is perfectly okay. (This
scientific american article has a bit more of the chemistry). I also
came across this cute fruity faces website,
which makes cute inflatable containers to help cushion your fruit on the
way to school or work.
posted at: 20:35 |
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Or how about canoeing?
Of course, in addition to biking, I like canoeing. These
guys managed to canoe across Canada, although I don’t think I’d want
to do quite that much canoeing. Also, I can’t say that their description
of canoeing through 10 foot waves is that appealing to me. I didn’t think
that was even possible to do in a canoe. Other names also pop up- Ilya
Klvana, Joe
O’Blenis, Joanie
and Gary McGuffin, these Scottish folks (Abigail
Baldwin-Thomson and Duncan Thomson). And here’s
an interesting discussion group page on the topic with more information.
posted at: 22:04 |
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A trans canada trail book?
One good thing about waiting around for a while on this topic is that I
think they are finally going to have a book out on the trans canada trail.
Finally! here’s the page of the
author who spearheaded it. It looks like they still don’t have the whole
trail book together, but they have a bunch of provinces done up as
separate books.
posted at: 11:22 |
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Back to the biking
I’m just back from a lengthy trip to Halifax, where I did lots of things
and saw lots of people. Colin and I went out for good times with numerous
fun people (Hi Jay and Aimee! Hi Jen and Dave! Hi family! Hi
everyone else!) one of whom was my friend Ian (hi Ian!), who was in
Halifax for his sister’s wedding. While we were all out drinking tasty
beers at Maxwell’s Plum (I have much love for that place! Go there.), Ian
was discussing some of his future trip plans, which tend to involve, from
my perspective, a jeep and many potentially dangerous and war torn
countries. However, one of the side effects of this discussion was to
revive my ongoing dream of biking across Canada, which I first mentioned
in my blog 3 and a half years ago, here.
After all, I figure that Canada has no active civil wars, no animals with
poisonous fangs, and few air born or bug born or water born diseases or
parasites. How hard can it
be?
Now, of course, it is hard to say when such a trip could take
place, but the point was made that, without any planning, said trip could
*never* possibly take place. So my new goal is to get to the point where,
even if I don’t yet have the money or time components in place, I will at
least know what I would do should the money or time appear, and how much
time and money would then be required. With that in mind, a *vast* new
number of links on biking across Canada have appeared since 2004.
Apparently it is becoming quite the thing to do. Some people, like these people are doing it to
raise
money for various things. Other people are doing it for their own
reasons, like this
person. I’ll have to give it some thought.
posted at: 10:56 |
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All material copyrighted by Jen Schellinck. All rights reserved.