What Einstein Told His Cook

Behold. The egg.

A cook's best friend. With this ingredient, you can create any meal. It's natural. It's healthy. It's awesome.

In fact, what makes the egg so interesting is that you can do so many things with it. It's pretty amazing that people figured out all these different uses. Cooking, in general, is actually very complicated. It's an art. In order to get, say, egg whites to solidify, you need to do more than just whip the egg. Conditions have to be met.

What are these conditions, you ask? Well why don't you find out yourself?































Books like these make me happy (and it isn't just because eggs are on the covers of all three of them).

I feel like cooking has lost so much over the years. Especially here in America. You've noticed it too. Take, for instance, the cooking channel. What do you see? Shows about how to cook ~Fast and Easy Meals~ It's all over the internet, it's all over the television, it's all over our cookbooks and supermarkets... Everyone wants to know how they can get out of cooking for their family without looking bad. It's become less about having a nice meal and more about how to save time- Which is all fine and dandy, what with jobs and soccer practice taking priority over what's going in your body, but I feel like there's a lot not mentioned outside of nutrition labels.

I think more people would cook for their families if they could do it right. If they knew that you could put loads of lime and tomatoes and other liquidy things into avocado to make guacamole without making it get watery, I bet more people would make it. Especially if they knew that it tastes better than the dehydrated stuff they've been getting out of a sealed bag in the supermarket. If people knew that the reason they can't get egg whites to solidify is because their whipping it in a plastic bowl, maybe they'd make more chocolate mousse.

Not to mention that it's beneficial to know why saturated fats are bad for you. It shouldn't be enough to just know that they are. It's essential to know how ingredients react with each other, and how they react with your body, for a person to be a good cook. And a healthy cook. Kudos to the people who figured out that they could sell instant mashed potatoes in a pouch, but sometimes I wonder how many people consider the health implications of such products compared to the real thing.

At the very least, it's super cool to know about. Think of all the people you'll impress when you tell them exactly what went into their lightly toasted everything bagel.

Stuff of Happy

The best kind of happy is the kind you get from opening a can of cat food.

Soft, foamy peaks...

There should be a course just on whipping egg whites. This has to be the most challenging thing I've ever done with cooking. And that says something. I pride myself when it comes to things I cook, even though it's kind of hit-and-miss when it comes to edibility. Not being able to properly whip egg whites just makes me sad.

If you can make those fluffy peaks I'm always hearing about, then you are a god. And that's all there is to it.

(Insert Name Here)

When I made this, I planned on using it more. I haven't abandoned it or anything (not that I ever really started), but I probably won't start using it more frequently anytime soon. Oh well~

For this post, I feel compelled to talk about fishies.

Okay, well, that fish is a robot. I'm talking about real fish. Specifically the kind that live under thick sheets of ice for months at a time. Didn't you ever wonder how they don't die?

Here in sunny Florida, it's been roughly 35F-40F all week, which is quite the shock to those avid beach goers. The snowbirds are probably thinking that they should have stayed up North. Except we don't have any snow.

But back to the fish thing.

There are actually a bunch of different ways the little masterminds avoid becoming popsicles.

Suppose you have a freshwater lake. In this case, we'll focus on the Physics of it. Typically, things expand as you heat them and contract when you cool them. Water, however, likes to be special. It does this weird parabola thing when you change the temperature.

Basically, that graph says that water is most dense at 4C. So the water acts normally, getting more dense as it's cooled (why ice makes your water bottles stretch out). But it stops getting more dense at 4C. For the fish, this is a very good thing. Imagine, if you would, a lake.

With fish in it.
Now it starts to get colder. Say the lake is completely at a temperature of 5C in the beginning.
Fish are a little chilly, but hey, it's the burden of a fish life. Then that top layer of water gets cooled to 4C. What happens? It's denser than it was at 5C. So it sinks to the bottom.
(The fish know it's beginning)

SO the veeeery bottom of the lake is at 4C. This process keeps happening until the ENTIRE lake is at 4C. But then what? The top layer gets cooled to 3C. But since it's less dense than the rest of the water, according to our lovely parabola, that water stays up on top. Slooowly, that layer cools the next layer and that layer cools the next layer and so on. Then, once the top layer reaches 0C, the freezing point of water, the top of the lake freezes. At that point, though, the water at the bottom of the lake is still 4C.

And so the fish get to not freeze.

In places like the Artic, where the fish ARE swimming in water below freezing point (because salt water can do that and not freeze), different stuff happens. Apparently, some of these fish have natural anti-freeze in their blood. From what I understand, it's actually some protein (insert name here) covered in sugar.

Everything is manipulated to keep the fishies happy.

Yup. Trufax.

Popped Corn

Y'know... popcorn is really cool. It is.

No matter what field of study you're interested in, you can probably work popcorn into it.

Seriously. Let's try some experiments here.

Type 'popcorn' into google. Naturally, the first link we get is from wikipedia. Let's click on it.

"Popcorn or popping corn is a type of corn which explodes from the kernel and puffs up when heated." Things exploding and puffing up? Well that sounds like chemistry to me.

According to Wikipedia, it was discovered by Native Americans and didn't become a popular snack food until the great Depression. Historians, come hither!

"Some consider it to be a health food, while others caution against it for a variety of reasons." Medicine.

"Popcorn can also have non-food applications, ranging from holiday decorations to packaging materials." Designers.

"Some shipping companies have experimented with using popcorn as a biodegradable replacement for expanded polystyrene packing material." Business and such.

"The world's largest popcorn ball was unveiled in October 2006 in Lake Forest, Illinois." World Record Breakers.

With another trip to Google we find that there are even uses for this tasty snack in the technology field. People need to engineer this stuff. And hey, someone has to program that stuff, too. Which temperatures and styles create the best textures? Which toppings create the best flavors? Even lawyers get jobs out of popcorn. (Note: Engineers, do your job to prevent this.)

And going back to flavors? There's this company called Popcorn Universe. They have over 150 flavors of popcorn. I almost want to make it my life goal to try every one of the flavors...but then I think about watermelon popcorn and figure I have better things to do. Seriously though.

There's vinegar and salt, white cheddar, vanilla butternut, pumpkin spice, ranch, raspberry, rootbear, tangerine, taco, honey, honey mustard, cinnamon, ketchup, kettlecorn, maple, mint, mocha, CONFETTI (holy hell, the colors on that one), cookie dough, creme DeMenthe (whatever that is), caramel, chocolate toffee crunch, cinnamon toast, cola, poppycock, s'mores, passion fruit, nacho, peanut butter and jelly, pineapple, pizza, plain butter, peppermint, pistachio, dreamsicle, and, my favorite, the pregnancy mix. Dill pickle and ice cream. Yes, that's what I said. To quote their website:

"Don't knock it 'til you've tried it!"

No, I have never personally tried it, but y'know what? I love these people. I really, really do. They're awesome and creative and THEY OBVIOUSLY HAVE A PASSION FOR POPCORN. Anyone who is this in love with something definitely deserves some love in return. And better yet? They blame their wonderful discoveries and ideas on an alien invasion.

You can't look at this website and not smile. You just can't.

I think she might talk to me again sometime next week...

Yes. I've become one of those people.

I am a weiner!

This has very little to do with anything, but this problem made me cry on Friday in Physics class. And, no, I don't mean "Haha, I cried on the inside when I saw it." I mean I cried until my next class because I couldn't even start it and I was supposed to be able to finish it.

Since this is such a personal triumph for me, I feel the need to post it.

ClickforaBIGGERversion >D

That is all.