Microwave Oven

Over at Gizmodo, there's an article about calculating the speed of light by melting chocolate in your microwave oven. Basically, you remove the spinny-thing from your microwave and begin to melt some chocolate in it. Take out the chocolate, and measure the distance between the melty-points. This is the half the wavelength of the microwaves in your oven. Why half? Think of a sinusoidal wave. One of the melty spots is a peak and the next is a low point and the next is another peak. The wavelength is the distance from one peak to the next peak.

So, you measure the distance between two melty spots and multiply that by two. That's your wavelength. Oh. Measure it in meters. Be civilized.

Now multiply that by 2,450,000,000. This is the frequency (in hertz) of the microwaves used in microwave ovens.

Your result should be the speed of light.

(Well, not really. If you were doing this in a vacuum and measured really carefully, then it should be. With this method you should be vaguely in the ballpark, though. That's still cool, right?)

Why does this work?

Because I'm sleepy, I'll give you the oversimplified version:

When we say that 2,450,000,000 is your microwave's frequency, what we are saying is that that the wavelength crosses the space 2,450,000,000 per second. Wavelength is a unit of distance. If the microwave moves that distance 2,450,000,000 times each second, then that tells us its speed. The speed of microwaves (which are a sort of electromagnetic energy aka light).

Two observations:

1. I already know the speed of light. I do not, of the top of my head, generally know the frequency of microwaves used by my microwave oven. Why not use it to calculate that, instead.

2. Why waste good chocolate on this? Anything that melts (or browns in the microwave) should work.

via Serious Eats

I'm a big fan of popcorn. It is fast and simple to make. It is tasty. It can be eaten on its own or with a wide variety of flavorings. It's a versatile snack.

Image by Joelle Nebbe-MornodWhy has it been relegated to the realm of snackdom, though? Is there a reason we don't eat popcorn as an integral part of our meals?

I don't really know how Native Americans consumed popcorn before Europeans came to America, but I once read (on the internet! it must be true!) that early European settlers ate popcorn as a side dish. This seems reasonable, but popcorn has a remarkably low density. There is very little food in a large volume of popcorn when compared to other foods. Unless the popcorn is little more than a garnish, you'll generally need a separate bowl for it.

So maybe that's why we don't generally eat popcorns at mealtimes: lack of space. Still, I think popcorn could be used more frequently as a garnish... or even an ingredient. Caramel and chocolate are often used as binders to make popcorn balls. I don't know that I've ever seen a savory equivalent to such things, but it seems like a reasonable step to take. Perhaps in loaf form rather than a ball?

On a side note, I find it strange enough that grocery stores have huge sections devoted to popcorn. The last time I went to buy some, though, there was only one option if I wanted to buy ordinary popcorn kernels. Other than that and a small selection of Jiffy Pop, everything else was microwave popcorn. Weird. I won't buy microwave popcorn, but I have been known to make popcorn in the microwave. I use Alton Brown's method for microwave popcorn, which uses ordinary popcorn kernels and a brown paper lunch bag. Basically, you take between 1/4 and 1/3 cup of popcorn kernels, toss them in the bag, fold over the very top of the bag, staple it closed (use two staples), and microwave it on high for between two and three minuted (listen to the popcorn pop like normal). Top it with whatever you want.

Sourdough without the Starter
I'm intrigued by the idea. While I like the idea of keeping sourdough starter around, I've never done it. I'm not much of a baker. On the other hand, I do like sourdough...
from Fun Foods on a Budget!

Greek Nachos
Mark Bittman suggests a nachos variant using Greek ingredients: pita chips, a feta-yogurt topping, spiced lamb... The Greek restaurant that was a couple of blocks away from me (until it closed a few months back) made something very much like this. It was awesome.
from The New York Times

Sour milk
Many older recipes call for sour milk... Today, if we use them at all, we generally use fresh milk and add vinegar. The point of these recipes, though, was to use up milk that had gone bad...
from Frugal Hacks

...and some THINGS THAT SHOULD NOT BE

The Internet is full of things that should not be. If you aren't aware of this, you are sheltered... and fortunate.

My least favorite of late? The Beanzawave: A tiny desktop microwave oven that is powered by USB. It is branded to match Heinz's single-serving baked bean containers, which fit inside it. This is wrong.

My other annoyance? Twecipes. This is a made-up word used to refer to a heavily-abbreviated recipe sent via Twitter. Although I might very well reduce a recipe to its basics myself, I like comments and commentary with my recipes. Tell me what worked and what didn't... how many people it fed... how long it took to prep. A twecipe, to me, is little more useful than a note saying, "make some food."

Over on Slashfood yesterday, Sara Bonisteel wrote about Wylie Dufresne's use of the microwave oven. One of the world's top chefs embraces the use of the common microwave? Shocking?

Not really.

Image by hipsxxheartsAs I commented on Sara's article, I don't find this shocking at all. Personally, I don't like using the microwave oven to cook food. I'll use it on occasion to boil water or something, but I rarely use it if there's a chance of overheating whatever it is that I'm cooking. The microwave oven is a tool for applying heat to food, but it is not a tool that I feel like I have fine control over.

In part, this is due to the fact that the microwave ovens that I've used haven't been the highest quality in the world. Their power has varied. Sometimes they have hot spots. Part of it is also, certainly, due to the way that food in the microwave feels out of your control once you close the door (somehow more so than in a regular oven). The biggest part of it, though, is that microwave ovens are still new. Yes, we've had them for a few decades, but I can still remember the first microwave that my parents got back about thirty years ago.

Back then, the microwave was all about convenience. It would cook your food faster (and in a box!) than a conventional oven. It wasn't about subtlety; it was all about cooking things quickly. The microwave was the sledgehammer of kitchen tools.

That mentality is still with us. We don't think to learn how to use our microwaves. We just zap our food in it. When we eat it, we might realize that it isn't very good. We assume that the microwave can't be used to cook things in a nuanced and skillful manner. We assume it is only good for what we're capable of doing with it.

On the other hand, what do we do with it? We microwave on high for 10 minutes... or one minute... or something like that. If we used our ovens the same way that we use our microwave, we'd be cooking all our meals at 400° for an hour. We might think that the oven isn't a very good tool for cooking.

It shouldn't take someone like Wylie Dufresne or Harold McGee to tell us that a microwave is a tool like any other... and one that can be mastered.