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Starting off slow...
Feb. 8th, 2010 09:02 amIn the "better living through biology" department, I tried making a batch of natto yesterday, using one of my remaining commercial packages of the stuff. The idea is to mix the package of commercial natto with a larger amount of thoroughly cooked soybeans, and then let the mixture incubate at 100-104°F for about 24 hours. It's like yogurt, but with soybeans and (I'm told) a lot less forgiving.
It turns out the lowest temperature our electric oven will maintain is 170°F, so I had to figure out a way to heat the natto-bean mixture, and I decided to see how warm the oven would stay with just the over light turned on, which didn't seem to be enough (94-95°F), then I put a small lamp with a 40-W bulb in, too, and that was too hot (114°F), which hopefully wasn't the case for too long, else the natto bacilli got cooked. I figured a slightly lower temperture was better than an excessively high temperature, so I went back to the oven-light "heater," and the temperature has been varying between 94°F and 98°F. We'll see what turns out.
In other news, I've been spoiling myself rotten with freshly squeezed orange juice these past mornings, the side-effect of a sale on bags of oranges at the local grocery. I was using the mechanized juicer I got in Texas during my latest jaunt, and was not happy to see a bunch of very wet pulp remain in the screen, so I decided to break out the "power juicer" that Galina and I bought some time ago (and have never really used) to see how much juice was being left behind.
It turns out the "old fashioned" juicer (and its completely manual cousins) leave about 30%-40% of the juice behind. The downside of using the power juicer - aside from the task of cleaning the blessed thing - is that the product comes out highly aerated, so it doesn't taste the same (specifically, as sweet) as the old-fasioned product. Ah, well...
Finally, the chunk of work I sent last night weighed in at about 11,000 target words, and I'm not at all sure I polished it enough. I've spent some time this morning cropping and printing out the remaining 80 or so pages of the source PDF, which is not usable in its "native" format, and I'm finally ready to get down to work. I would really like to get the remaining part of the job done by COB Thursday.
To work!
Cheers...
It turns out the lowest temperature our electric oven will maintain is 170°F, so I had to figure out a way to heat the natto-bean mixture, and I decided to see how warm the oven would stay with just the over light turned on, which didn't seem to be enough (94-95°F), then I put a small lamp with a 40-W bulb in, too, and that was too hot (114°F), which hopefully wasn't the case for too long, else the natto bacilli got cooked. I figured a slightly lower temperture was better than an excessively high temperature, so I went back to the oven-light "heater," and the temperature has been varying between 94°F and 98°F. We'll see what turns out.
In other news, I've been spoiling myself rotten with freshly squeezed orange juice these past mornings, the side-effect of a sale on bags of oranges at the local grocery. I was using the mechanized juicer I got in Texas during my latest jaunt, and was not happy to see a bunch of very wet pulp remain in the screen, so I decided to break out the "power juicer" that Galina and I bought some time ago (and have never really used) to see how much juice was being left behind.
It turns out the "old fashioned" juicer (and its completely manual cousins) leave about 30%-40% of the juice behind. The downside of using the power juicer - aside from the task of cleaning the blessed thing - is that the product comes out highly aerated, so it doesn't taste the same (specifically, as sweet) as the old-fasioned product. Ah, well...
Finally, the chunk of work I sent last night weighed in at about 11,000 target words, and I'm not at all sure I polished it enough. I've spent some time this morning cropping and printing out the remaining 80 or so pages of the source PDF, which is not usable in its "native" format, and I'm finally ready to get down to work. I would really like to get the remaining part of the job done by COB Thursday.
To work!
Cheers...
