Weekend update
Oct. 27th, 2008 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plonqThis was a surprisingly busy and productive weekend. On Saturday we stopped at Memory Express and picked up one of these for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
atara. Her older Dell laptop will perform rings around this thing, but this one is about half the size, and a fraction of the weight.
While we were there, I enquired about replacement fluid for my water cooling system (which should be arriving back from the manufacturer sometime this week) and discovered that although Memory Express sells the cooling units, they do not sell the replacement fluid. The salesman took down my name and phone number and promised to see if it could be brought in for me. Some research this morning has confirmed what I had already suspected; the replacement coolant is just a mix of propylene glycol and water, with some UV-sensitive dye for effect. Wait, where have I heard of that before? Isn't that the stuff that circulates in my car's radiator?
I am thinking that a 75/25 mix of distilled water to antifreeze would probably be and effective, and cheaper alternative to the factory coolant. Does this sound like a reasonable option, or is this a BAD IDEA? Will my cooling system explode if I put this mixture into it? (I don't want a situation like the one where Richard Pryor was badly burned when he mixed whole milk with skim and dipped in a cookie.)
On Sunday the weather was a bit unpleasant, so we kept ourselves amused indoors.atara took care of laundry, while I tackled the sugar pumpkin that we picked up at the farmers' market. I used to peel the pumpkins after cooking them, but I have since learned that it is much easier to peel them first. I am becoming better at this with each attempt. I peeled and cored the pumpkin, cut it into 32 pieces and laid it out in our roasting pan with enough water to coat the bottom. I baked it for about 20 minutes at 425F, then uncovered it and let it cook for another 10 minutes before finishing it with a few more minutes under the broiler to caramelize some of the sugars. I have found that this last step does some wonderful things for the flavour of the pies.
I have experimented with a variety of pumpkin pie recipes, but I think that I have finally settled on a favourite. This Canadian Winter Pumpkin Pie recipe is fairly forgiving, and produces results that are consistently good. I tend to take liberties with every recipe I meet, and this one is no exception. I up all of the spices a bit (with the exception of the nutmeg, which I double) and where it calls for "clove or allspice", I add both. I am sure that the unaltered recipe would produce perfectly acceptable pie, but to paraphrase Emeril, I like to kick things up a notch.
On Saturday I made butter, which turned out well after a couple of attempts. On my first try, I poured it into the food processor and it worked beautifully up to the stage where it reached its maximum thickness as whipped cream. At this point the processor threw the thick whipped cream against the sides of the mixing container while the blades spun fruitlessly in the middle. After stopping to scrape the sides several times, I finally decided to dump the mixture into our stand mixer to see if it would do any better. I had been reluctant to use the stand mixer from the outset because I was afraid that it would splash everywhere.
The mixture was almost the consistency of paste at this point, and I was beginning to think that I may have actually passed the butter stage in the food processor and ended up whipping the butter back into the buttermilk again, creating a substance of greater scientific than culinary interest. Suddenly, just as my expectations were at their lowest, butter! The transition was amazingly fast; one moment the mixer was stirring around a pasty mess, and the next moment there was a clump of butter clinging to the paddle, splashing around in a soup of buttermilk. I pressed the new butter into a strainer to clear as much buttermilk as I could, and then folded in some salt (squeezing out a bit more buttermilk in the process).
On Sunday I used the buttermilk to make a batch of pancakes. I was halfway through mixing the dry ingredients when something caught my eye. Why does this recipe call for baking soda instead of baking powder? In the back of my mind, this little pragmatic voice kept saying, "If the recipe calls for baking soda, use baking soda. There is probably a good reason for that." Fortunately I remembered the reason for it, and I quickly reached for the baking powder. Typically when you make butter you want to let the cream ripen at room temperature for half a day. Two things that this will do for you is give the butter a richer flavour, and significantly raise the acid content of the buttermilk. I had used un-ripened cream for the butter because I wanted a lighter flavour, so my buttermilk had a very low acid content. If I hadn't been paying attention I'd have ended up with flatjacks.
atara. Her older Dell laptop will perform rings around this thing, but this one is about half the size, and a fraction of the weight.While we were there, I enquired about replacement fluid for my water cooling system (which should be arriving back from the manufacturer sometime this week) and discovered that although Memory Express sells the cooling units, they do not sell the replacement fluid. The salesman took down my name and phone number and promised to see if it could be brought in for me. Some research this morning has confirmed what I had already suspected; the replacement coolant is just a mix of propylene glycol and water, with some UV-sensitive dye for effect. Wait, where have I heard of that before? Isn't that the stuff that circulates in my car's radiator?
I am thinking that a 75/25 mix of distilled water to antifreeze would probably be and effective, and cheaper alternative to the factory coolant. Does this sound like a reasonable option, or is this a BAD IDEA? Will my cooling system explode if I put this mixture into it? (I don't want a situation like the one where Richard Pryor was badly burned when he mixed whole milk with skim and dipped in a cookie.)
On Sunday the weather was a bit unpleasant, so we kept ourselves amused indoors.
atara took care of laundry, while I tackled the sugar pumpkin that we picked up at the farmers' market. I used to peel the pumpkins after cooking them, but I have since learned that it is much easier to peel them first. I am becoming better at this with each attempt. I peeled and cored the pumpkin, cut it into 32 pieces and laid it out in our roasting pan with enough water to coat the bottom. I baked it for about 20 minutes at 425F, then uncovered it and let it cook for another 10 minutes before finishing it with a few more minutes under the broiler to caramelize some of the sugars. I have found that this last step does some wonderful things for the flavour of the pies.I have experimented with a variety of pumpkin pie recipes, but I think that I have finally settled on a favourite. This Canadian Winter Pumpkin Pie recipe is fairly forgiving, and produces results that are consistently good. I tend to take liberties with every recipe I meet, and this one is no exception. I up all of the spices a bit (with the exception of the nutmeg, which I double) and where it calls for "clove or allspice", I add both. I am sure that the unaltered recipe would produce perfectly acceptable pie, but to paraphrase Emeril, I like to kick things up a notch.
On Saturday I made butter, which turned out well after a couple of attempts. On my first try, I poured it into the food processor and it worked beautifully up to the stage where it reached its maximum thickness as whipped cream. At this point the processor threw the thick whipped cream against the sides of the mixing container while the blades spun fruitlessly in the middle. After stopping to scrape the sides several times, I finally decided to dump the mixture into our stand mixer to see if it would do any better. I had been reluctant to use the stand mixer from the outset because I was afraid that it would splash everywhere.
The mixture was almost the consistency of paste at this point, and I was beginning to think that I may have actually passed the butter stage in the food processor and ended up whipping the butter back into the buttermilk again, creating a substance of greater scientific than culinary interest. Suddenly, just as my expectations were at their lowest, butter! The transition was amazingly fast; one moment the mixer was stirring around a pasty mess, and the next moment there was a clump of butter clinging to the paddle, splashing around in a soup of buttermilk. I pressed the new butter into a strainer to clear as much buttermilk as I could, and then folded in some salt (squeezing out a bit more buttermilk in the process).
On Sunday I used the buttermilk to make a batch of pancakes. I was halfway through mixing the dry ingredients when something caught my eye. Why does this recipe call for baking soda instead of baking powder? In the back of my mind, this little pragmatic voice kept saying, "If the recipe calls for baking soda, use baking soda. There is probably a good reason for that." Fortunately I remembered the reason for it, and I quickly reached for the baking powder. Typically when you make butter you want to let the cream ripen at room temperature for half a day. Two things that this will do for you is give the butter a richer flavour, and significantly raise the acid content of the buttermilk. I had used un-ripened cream for the butter because I wanted a lighter flavour, so my buttermilk had a very low acid content. If I hadn't been paying attention I'd have ended up with flatjacks.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-27 06:46 pm (UTC)I'm not sure what the heat capacity of antifreeze is, but I suspect water's is better (just a guess!), but water boils at a lower temperature, too, so the more water you put in the more careful you have to be about your C's.
Lastly, I saw some mention of additives to prevent metal deterioration, which is a Big Deal. Not sure if that comes built into the anti-freeze or what, but it's worth looking into. Especially if you have several different metals in the system, you don't want any galvanic coupling, am I right?
ps: that pumpkin pie sounds like something my mom needs, her recipe using canned stuff always seems a little ... canned.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-27 07:46 pm (UTC)I'm about 95% sure that antifreeze contains the same additives to prevent corrosion. When you think about it, cooling an engine block isn't that different from cooling a computer (different metals, multiple couplings, etc). One of the things that is pushing me toward just buying antifreeze and distilled water is that the place where I was pricing out refills wants $25 a bottle for this stuff. >.<
no subject
Date: 2008-10-27 07:19 pm (UTC)My mom always cooked first, then peeled, so I don't have any experience peeling a raw pumpkin - but after suffering through peeling a raw butternut squash a couple years back, which was utter hell because the damn thing is nearly the consistency of granite, I am a little suspicious of peeling any form of raw squash!
The caramelizing of the pumpkin while cooking is a very good tip - I plan to make my own pumpkin for cooking this fall, so I'm interested to hear about these things!
B.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-27 07:54 pm (UTC)I cut the pumpkin into 16ths, then as I peeled each piece I halved it again before tossing it into the roasting pan. While the peel didn't exactly fall off, it wasn't too hard when I stood the pieces on the cutting board and sliced down through the peel. (It would have been even easier if I could motivate myself to take the knives in for sharpening one of these days.)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-27 08:02 pm (UTC)Well, I might just give it a try with a nice sharp knife and see what I think. If I decide that {danger of cuts from out-of-control knife use} < {danger of burns from hot squash flesh}, I may peel first. :)
B.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-27 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-28 02:01 pm (UTC)It's not the most common engine coolant, but there are propylene glycol formulations sold for use in engines and such products will have anticorrosive additives. The "RV antifreeze" type normally does not have these additives.
Ethylene and Propylene glycols are very similar except that Propylene is considered nontoxic, and is slightly less effective at carrying heat than Ethylene. Propylene glycol for engines is typically sold pre-mixed and ready to use. The "RV Antifreeze" type of PG is usually not premixed.
--N, who has RV and had to learn this stuff :P