Sunspots and cold weather

[altivo]

End of the week, thank goodness. Spaceweather anounced that a huge new sunspot has appeared over the sun's horizon. The solar flux is rising. We may be heading out of the sunspot doldrums at last. The sun has been pimple-free all summer, with attendant results of poor radio propagation. We are due for an increase in activity.

Going down into single digit temperatures again tonight, so we'll have the woodstove going all night to save electricity. The trouble with that is that you save electricity at the cost of air pollution. Either way there's a carbon penalty so I don't have an answer really.

Gary made a Moroccan tagine in the crock pot today and it was excellent. It's a slow-cooked stew with chicken, vegetables, fruit (yes, fruit), and spices (cinnamon and curry in this one) that you serve with couscous. It was very good, but I want to try a vegetarian version using eggplant or gigantes (Greek giant lima beans) instead of the chicken, and seasoned with cardamom and orange.

Gary also migrated fish around among our three aquariums today while he was cleaning. I've been wanting to get the remaining platies out of the 30 gallon tank and into the newer 20 gallon, but they proved very difficult to catch. While he had the water level lowered because he was replacing water, he managed to catch all three. We also got some new plastic plants that are very dense and serve as shelter for baby fish, so I'm hoping for another platyfish explosion. I plan to encourage things by adding some new blood to the tank in case ours have grown inbred. (They are about three generations down from the original four platies I had.) Currently the tank has 3 adults and one juvenile platy, and two zebra danios. I figure it could easily accommodate another 8 or 10 adult fish, but I'll probably go for half that. The 30 gallon tank now has only pearl danios, six of them. I'm probably going to add some tiger barbs to that next time I see them on sale for a good price.

OK, time to go fire up the stove. I need to think of a potluck dish to take to the spinning guild meeting tomorrow, too.

Comments

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

Great! We've finally got clear nights up here. A nice light show would be good for my soul and mind right now. It always makes me feel small, which is strangely comforting. Whenever I see those dancing sheets of light I think on how our ancestors must have felt, what they thought when they saw them. Their gods were real.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

We haven't seen a good aurora here in years. There have been a couple of displays but we missed them due to clouds in our area.

I'll certainly welcome improved radio propagation though, and that works even when it's cloudy.

[dragon-moon.livejournal.com]

That Moroccan stew sounds interesting! I made a Moroccan dish a number of years ago that my sister raved about, but it was a bit too hot for most of the family. lol. Any chance that you'd be able and willing to share the recipe? I'm willing to experiment again. ^___^

Our favorite potluck dish is Pot Perfect Salad, but it may not be good for all gatherings because it does have a bit of bacon and cheese in it. Basically it's broccoli and cauliflower, with a bit of bacon, mozzarella, mayo, vinegar and a touch of sugar for the dressing. We never get to take any of it home after a potluck, that's for sure!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'll get you the tagine recipe when Gary wakes up.

I make a salad similar to what you describe, and yes, it is popular. But I'd have to run out to the grocery to get the broccoli and cauliflower and I'm trying to avoid the extra trip. ;p I'll come up with something.

Moroccan Chicken Recipe

[altivo.livejournal.com]

This recipe is similar to one served by our departed and much missed friend Paul Samuelson, a world traveller, artist and food explorer.

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs (or 1-2 medium eggplant), cubed
2 Tbsp honey
1 1/2 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 Tbsp dried parsley
1/4 tsp ground cardamom
2 cinnamon sticks
1 (14-oz) can chicken broth

1 1/2 cups frozen pearl onions, thawed & drained
1/2 cup sliced dried apricots and/or prunes
1/3 cup sliced whole pitted dates
1 lemon, peeled, sectioned, and chopped OR 1 small can mandarin oranges, drained

1 (10-oz) package couscous, cooked
chopped fresh cilantro

Heat oil in skillet on medium-high heat; add chicken (or eggplant, dipped in flour) and cook 5-10 minutes or until browned. Place in 3- or 4-quart slow cooker. Mix next seven ingredients and stir in with chicken. Cover and cook on HIGH for 3 hours.

Add onions, apricots, dates, and lemon. Cover and cook on HIGH for 1 more hour.

Serve over couscous with chopped fresh cilantro. Yummy with hummus, Pita or Moroccan ksra bread, and Moroccan tomato-onion salad or Moroccan carrot salad. This slow-cooked stew is also known as a tagine for the traditional clay pot in which it is cooked.

Re: Moroccan Chicken Recipe

[dragon-moon.livejournal.com]

Mmm, that sounds delicious! Thank you (and Gary) so much for sharing. I appreciate it! ^___^

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

Burning wood has the same carbon footprint as burning any other biomass - it simply returns the CO2 to the atmosphere, that the tree or plant originally took from the atmosphere, in pretty much the same quantity as would happen as if the tree or plant died and rotted away. So it is not bad in the same way that burning too much fossil fuel is bad. It does accelerate the process though, and it may emit other gasses such as NO2 that are far worse greenhouse gasses than CO2.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Our electric geothermal system has limitations when the temperatures fall so low. In general, we can get by without burning wood if we put on extra sweaters and all that. The house temperatures fall into the lower 60s F. and the heat pump runs continuously. Even then, our electric bills are strikingly low.

My problem is a difficult one to solve because I worry about the impact of using the electricity. That impact is not local, because the power is generated far away from here, but it is still an impact. Our electricity comes from nuclear plants (which I don't find so terrible in concept as some folks do, but I do find that the realities of corporate management make them far worse than they should be) and from powerplants that do burn fossil fuel. So in a sense, it might actually be preferable for us to burn more wood if we do it in the most efficient way possible. It's very hard to weigh these things out and find a concrete answer. Everything is guess and compromise.

[alaskawolf.livejournal.com]

wood stoves are so nice to have :) lots of heat :D

[altivo.livejournal.com]

There are tradeoffs, though. You have to deal with ashes and soot and chimney cleaning, for instance. Keeping a wood supply is easy around here at the moment, but may not be so easy in a few more years as the sprawling development eats up all the land.

[felder.livejournal.com]

squirl bought a real clay tagine recently. We ended up having a moroccan style lamb dish with the proper spices. We'd bought both off a Moroccan stall/display in our local mall.
It was very tasty! But I have a wired thing where I believe meat n fruit do not mix ;)

So no fruit in our tagine ;)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

But even as you say that, you are admitting that it is just a belief. Because that is the only way you've ever tasted things, doesn't mean that it is the only way they can be done. :) I think you need to experiment a bit. Poultry is particularly amenable to mixture with fruits. Note that usually they are not sweet, but rather semisweet or tart fruits that are used. Pork, which probably doesn't appear in much Moroccan cooking, lends itself even to sweet flavors.

Myself, I have a problem with lamb. I don't believe it is edible at all. To me it smells so bad I can get no further with it. My father had the same reaction.

Asian cooking frequently combines tastes that Westerners find unexpected, such as hot with sour, or salt with sweet. I find that these combinations do work and are attractive once we get over our preconceptions that were drilled into us during childhood.

[swampy.livejournal.com]

Conditions on HF do seem to be better at the moment, and the sunspot number, and solar flux are up at last. This morning I have had 20m CW QSOs with stations in Sweden, Slovakia, Belarus and Finland, all 599x2 and little QSB! My favourite band, 30m, seems to be noise ridden recently. I get a constant S7 noise which is not local as I also get it at the works QTH...I think its just poor band conditions. Anyway, I hope we have now turned the corner and are entering the next solar cycle :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall that some "experts" were saying that the turnaround would come before the end of the year. Well, the year is nearly ended. ;p

[swampy.livejournal.com]

I heard some people saying that they thought we were heading into another Maunder minimum...50+ years of hardly any spots! I don't think that will be the case though...I think we are seeing the start of the next ordinary cycle, thank goodness.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I've always suspected that the Maunder minimum is partly an observational anomaly rather than a genuine decline in solar activity.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

If man's ability to observe sunspots first developed during the Maunder minimum itself, you might be justified in thinking so. But sunspots were well observed before the maunder minimum for at least 4 solar cycles. Galileo started watching them in 1610, and there were two other men who also started observing them at about that time. The big ones are not that hard to see. Have you tried observing sunspots?

BTW, Wikipedia is ridiculous when you go to it for information on this topic, because of the association of the Maunder Minimum with the Little Ice Age and climate change studies and thus drawing the interest of global warming deniers. So you have two groups each pointing out otherwise insignificant details, making it hard to see the big picture. Actually, most wiki entries are like that...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I have only tried the pinhole method, which works for the really big ones but not much else.

I find that skills and perceptions passed from one person to another do sometimes deteriorate even when they were working well in the prior generation or two. Consequently it seems quite possible to me that methods, equipment, or simply perception were not as good as they should have been at the tiem.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Hey we've got an actual Tagine cooking thingy, I'd send it but it wouldn't survive the trip.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever seen a real tagine.

Our friend Paul passed away several years ago. He was a professional artist who made beautiful watercolors, and he loved to travel and paint exotic places. After a trip to Morocco back in the 80s, he started cooking Moroccan style. He made his tagine type dishes in a turkey roaster, though.