Why all this Arctic air?


The dark blue area can expect cold weather through Dec. 19. Graph by NOAA Climate Prediction Center

Newspapers used to do a pretty good job of covering the weather. Today’s lazy, downsized local newspapers don’t bother much anymore. Even with the Internet today, you have to search long and hard to find out what might be causing unusual weather. Meteorologists on local television stations may provide more information, but I don’t watch television.

The cold snap that brought last night’s low here of 14 degrees is affecting a large area of the East Coast, from Florida up through Pennsylvania. I finally found a story in a Florida newspaper for which the reporter bothered to call someone at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

It seems the data is too scant to know for sure, but one theory is that this is caused by the melting of the Arctic ice, which leads to cold air being pushed farther south. It’s counterintuitive, isn’t it — the idea that global warming actually can cause colder weather under certain circumstances.

And, by the way, I can’t recommend the Climate Prediction Center too highly for those of you who are weather watchers. I find their 10-day, 14-day, 30-day and 90-day trend forecasts to be quite reliable.

A check from Blue Cross??

In the mailbox today I found an envelope from Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina. In red letters across the front were “Open Immediately.” This was terrifying. My health insurance is the biggest item in my monthly budget, even though I have one of those high-deductibule policies. I, like most people, am accustomed only to being knocked around by health insurance companies.

But inside was a a check for more than three hundred dollars. This refund was announced back in September, but I missed that news at the time. The insurance commissioner in North Carolina, it seems, did some math and found that North Carolina Blue Cross had overcharged some of its customers by $156 million. Blue Cross agreed to refund it before the end of the year. This USAToday story explains it.

Let’s hear it for regulations on corporations and regulators who do their jobs. That’s the only thing that protects us from gouging.

The regulators must still be watching, because my premium increase for next year is only about $6 a month.

Managing your heat pump

The low temperature last night was 14 degrees F. When it’s that cold, I obsess about how to keep the house decently warm as frugally as possible. I also obsess about wear and tear on my heat pump.

Heat pumps are an efficient source of heat — except when it’s very cold. Heat pumps don’t create heat. Rather, they extract heat from the outdoors air and move the heat into the house. When it’s relatively warm outside — say, when the temperature is in the 40s — this doesn’t take much work and thus doesn’t use much electricity. However, when it’s 14 degrees outside, there’s less heat in the outdoor air to move inside, so the heat pump must work much harder. All heat pump systems have a backup form of heat that kicks in when the outdoor unit can’t keep up with the indoor thermostat’s request for heat. Most heat pumps, like mine, have electrical coils that heat up (like a toaster) and provide this backup heat. This is called resistive heat.

If the temperature outside is in the 40s, then the heat pump is up to three times more efficient than resistive heat, an energy savings ratio of almost 3 to 1. If the temperature outside is 14, then the heat pump is no more efficient than its backup resistive heat, a ratio of 1 to 1. This relative efficiency is called the coefficient of performance. It can be graphed as a curve in which efficiency rises with the outdoor temperature. (See graph below.) At low outdoor temperatures, when the heat pump is no more efficient than its backup heating coils, then you might as well use the heating coils and save the wear and tear on the heat pump.

If you read some heat pump forums online, you’ll find lots of debate about how to manage your heat pump with this efficiency in mind. Most people will say that you should just set your thermostat lower at night but otherwise leave things alone. The heat pump’s control mechanism, they say, can decide for itself when to switch on its backup heat.

I disagree.

Last winter I followed this just-leave-it-alone advice. On a night when the outdoor temperature dropped to about 11 F, the heat pump ran almost all night. In the morning, its coils were covered with ice. This is regarded as normal. If the outdoor unit ices up, the heat pump will “reverse” periodically and melt the ice.

But I can’t help asking myself, why should I let my heat pump grind all night when it’s severely cold, and ice itself up, when at those temperatures the heat pump is no more efficient than its backup heating coils?

I’ve been experimenting. All heat pumps (at least the newer ones) have a position on the thermostat called “EMHEAT,” or emergency heat. The so-called emergency heat is the heat from the backup heating coils. But why should I think of it as emergency heat? It can be used as emergency heat, of course, if the outdoor unit fails and you’re waiting for repair. But why not think of it as heat to be used when it’s so cold that the outdoor unit’s efficiency drops to 1 to 1 (the same as the emergency heat)? There are clear advantages: The outdoor unit just stops — no wear and tear. A heat pump struggling to produce heat in severe cold will grind on and on, and the air coming out of the ducts will be barely warm. Whereas the “emergency heat” will be toasty warm and won’t have to run very much.

Last night, knowing that it was going to be really cold, I set both my thermostats to EMHEAT. I set the downstairs thermostat for as low as I could bear — 55. I set the upstairs thermostat (my bedroom is upstairs) for a bit warmer — 60. During the coldest part of the night, the heating system would start up about every 20 minutes or so, run for three to five minutes, then switch off. I found that much more acceptable than having my heat pump grind and blow cold air all night.

This morning, when the outdoor temperature climbed back to 26 degrees, I put the system back to normal. Right now, at 11 a.m., I’ve brought the temperature up to 65 degrees upstairs. It’s 59 degrees downstairs. I won’t bring the downstairs up to 65 degrees until later this afternoon, when the temperature is higher outside and providing heat is cheaper.

I have no doubt that the “experts” on the Internet forums would say that I’m diddling and that I should just let the system use its own logic. But the problem is, the system’s logic is very crude. It doesn’t even know what the outdoor temperature is. I don’t know what the system’s rules are for when to resort to the “emergency heat,” but it may be as simplistic as “if the thermostat is requesting heat, and if the temperature in the room is still dropping, then turn on the ’emergency heat.'”

I can imagine much smarter algorithms that would consider the outdoor temperature, the unit’s efficiency at that temperature, the difference between the outdoor and indoor temperature, the temperature of the air blowing through the ducts, the actual temperature of the room, and the temperature requested by the thermostat. This could produce a nice balance between the competing factors of efficiency, cost, and human comfort. I’m sure that large commercial systems do have more sophisticated control systems. But until residential systems do, I’m going to diddle with the controls.


The green line shows typical heat pump efficency as outdoor temperatures rise. Note that the heat pump isn’t significantly more efficient than resistive heat, or emergency heat, below about 25 F. The COP scale is the coefficient of performance, described above. Graph by Colorado Springs Utilities

Guess who's coming back…


Ken in Durham

Ken Ilgunas will soon return to Acorn Abbey. He’ll arrive on Dec. 17 or 18 and remain all through the next semester at Duke. He doesn’t have any classes next semester. He only has to write his thesis, and Acorn Abbey is a nice, quiet place for writing.

We’ll also have some outdoor projects to blog about. We’re planning a big vegetable garden next year, new wildflower patches, and we may even get started with beekeeping. The beekeeping project just depends on how much the start-up costs add up to. I’ve bought and read Beekeeping for Dummies, and frankly it all seems rather complicated. But Ken joined a beekeeping club at Duke and has gotten a bit of experience with bees. We’ll see.

Having company also is the only excuse I need to decorate the house for Christmas. And having just read his most recent post on his blog, it’s clear what I need to get him for Christmas — some laundry soap and extra clothespins.

Fixed-position cell phone service


The Telular SX5T fixed wireless terminal

Because I’m a communications nerd, and because of the problems that go with being well wired when you live in the sticks, the communications devices I use are not typical. Though I could get an ordinary land-line telephone easily enough, I’m too far from the central office to get DSL, so I figured, why bother getting a land line and putting up with yet another ditch across my yard if I can’t get Internet service on it?

I’m very happy with my 10-pound Motorola M800 digital bag phone. It’s on the Verizon network, and for more than two years it has been my only telephone. Its audio quality is almost as good as a land line, and with its external antenna, etc., it will get a strong signal where more portable cell phones fail. But a 10-pound cell phone is not exactly convenient as a home phone. I have to run up and down the stairs to answer it. I also wanted a telephone that visitors can use that behaves exactly like an ordinary telephone. For safety, in my opinion, visitors ought to be able to dial 911 from a familiar phone. And of course I’d like to have telephone extensions in the kitchen, bedroom, and radio room.

A company named Telular makes excellent products for this, and I knew that the Telular SX5T was what I needed. The concept of how it works is simple enough. It’s a cell phone, with a good transmitter and a proper external antenna, but there’s no handset and no buttons. Instead, you plug it into your house’s telephone wiring system. The Telular SX5T then puts a dial tone onto your house wiring, and any phone in the house can then make and receive calls. It works just like a regular phone. You can even use it with fax machines. You can have up to five telephone extensions on the house wiring that the device plugs into.

I’ve kept my Motorola bag phone active. I “added a line” to my Verizon service, so the bag phone and house phone share minutes on a Verizon family plan.

The retail price of the Telular unit is $700 or more. However, they often can be bought on eBay at a very steep discount.


My vintage, cinnabar-colored Bell System telephone, which I used for many years in San Francisco, is now working again. It doesn’t even know that it’s now a cell phone.

Chickens and grass

Every morning when I let the chickens out, they head straight for the grass and start grazing. I had never really thought of chickens as pasture-loving grazing animals — they’re scratchers. But they love to graze.

I tried to do some research on chickens and grass to try to understand how they can digest grass and what part grass plays in a natural chicken diet. Authoritative sources were scarce, but one source says that chickens will eat up to 30 percent of their calories in grass. They cannot, apparently, digest the cellulose in grass the way cows and other ruminants can. But if the grass is young enough and tender enough, then the chickens can get a lot of food value out of it. Obviously their gizzards grind the grass very effectively and their digestive systems break it down, because there is no sign of grass in the chicken poop.

Grass has a lot to do, it seems, with the nutritional superiority of eggs from pastured hens vs. commercial factory hens. According to Mother Earth News, eggs from pastured hens have much more vitamin D, 1/3 less cholesterol, twice as much omega-3, 2/3 more vitamin A, 1/4 less saturated fat, and 7 times more beta carotene.

I’m hoping that the winter rye grass I planted as a cover crop for the garden will supply the hens with greens for most of the winter.

Part of the miracle of farm ecology is the way farm animals can make human food out of things that are inedible by humans — cows make milk from grass, for example. But chickens, as long as they can run free, can work this magic as well. It’s nice to think about how some of the energy and nutrition in my eggs comes from the grass growing up the hill and not just from laying mash bought at the mill. Even in December, the chickens are still finding plenty of their own food inside the fence around the garden and orchard — about 10,000 square feet. Right now they eat only about half as much laying mash as they do if they’re kept in the coop. During the summer, when bugs were plentiful, the hens’ mash consumption dropped by probably three quarters. Clearly they’ll eat what they can find first and resort to laying mash only as necessary.

Homemade vegan sausages

I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who didn’t like sausage. It’s a miracle that someone figured out a way to make the nasty bits of pig taste good.

Lots of people don’t want to eat those nasty bits, though. Morningstar’s vegetarian sausages are very good. Like the real thing, I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who didn’t like them. But they’re also very expensive.

Many vegans make their own homemade sausages. If you Google for recipes, you’ll find many of them on the web. The ingredients vary a great deal and usually include a legume in some form mixed with wheat gluten (also called vital wheat gluten — same thing). I haven’t seen a recipe which, like mine, uses cooked soybeans.

Here’s how to do it. As usual, this is an outline, not a measured recipe. Improvise according to your own taste…

Cook some soybeans in a slow cooker until they’re soft and turn a medium brown. This probably will take 18 hours or more. Drain the beans and put them into a food processor. Don’t process them into a puree. Leave some texture. Mix your sausage spices into the beans. I prefer a breakfast sausage — sage, red and black pepper, dried garlic, dried onions, and other spices in smaller quantities. Add some salt and some olive oil. Stir all that really well. Then add the wheat gluten (it’s like a flour). Stir that well, then add water until the mixture is moist, like bread dough, and holds together pretty well. Mix it all very well. Today I used about 3 parts soybeans to about 2 parts gluten. Half of each would work fine.

Make logs of the mixture and put it on a square of aluminum foil. Wrap it up in a log shape and twist the ends of the foil. Then steam the logs for 30 or 40 minutes.

When the logs are cool, you can slice them into sausage patties and brown them gently in olive oil.

Chocolate applesauce cake

For more than 50 years, this has been my favorite cake. My mother first started making it when I was in grade school. I’ve had it as a birthday cake more times than I’d care to count. But since today is Thanksgiving and tomorrow is my birthday, that seemed like occasion enough to make a particularly sinful version of the cake.

I’ve found that this cake loves to have nutmeg, or cherries, or both, in the icing. So to the plain white icing (butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and soy milk) I added nutmeg. I also threw in some chocolate-covered cherry cordials and let the mixer chop the cherries and chocolate into the icing.

The remarkable thing about the cake itself is that it contains no eggs. The only liquid ingredient is applesauce. This makes a dense, hearty cake that stays moist for a long time and keeps well. My recipe is written in pencil on a very old piece of notebook paper. Here is the bare bones recipe. Experienced cooks will know what to do with it.

Cream together 1 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of butter (I use olive oil instead of butter). Add half a cup of cocoa and mix well. Then add 1 and 1/2 cups of applesauce and mix again. In a separate bowl, sift together two cups plain flour, 2 teaspoons of baking soda, some cinnamon, and some nutmeg. Fold the flour mixture into the other ingredients.

Put the batter into two 9-inch cake pans that have been buttered and dusted with flour. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 to 18 minutes, until a toothpick stuck into the center of the cake comes out clean.

Many years ago, in Sausalito across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, I won a Valentine’s Day chocolate contest with this cake. For the icing on that cake, I chopped lots of maraschino cherries into the icing and made the icing pink.

It’s also a vegan cake if you substitute olive oil for the butter. I’ve never tried it, but you probably could substitute coconut oil for the butter in the icing.

Kedgeree

I’ve mentioned before on this blog how much I’ve enjoyed the Two Fat Ladies cooking show, which I’ve been watching on DVD. Mostly their cooking is far too meaty and too heart-stoppingly rich for me to want to cook or eat. But I watch them for inspiration, and for insight into the roots of American cookery, much of which comes from the British Isles. The show also is a good travelogue, and good comedy. Their joy in cooking, and the cultural experience they bring to it, make the series a must-see, in my opinion.

They were in Yorkshire on one show, and they made kedgeree using smoked haddock bought in a village fish shop. The kedgeree actually looked quite good to me. I’ll not find smoked haddock around here, but those of us who live inland and who often use canned fish are always looking for new ways to use canned fish other than salmon cakes or tuna salad. In particular, now that we know that sardines are very good for us, it occurred to me that sardines would work nicely in kedgeree. There are a jillion ways to make kedgeree, but the defining ingredients are rice, smoked fish, onions, something green (such as fresh herbs) and boiled eggs. I left out the boiled eggs, having had an egg for breakfast. Chopped celery was the handiest green vegetable I had. I used lots of garlic.

The kedgeree was excellent. Those strong flavors love each other.


Sardines, onions, garlic, celery, and leftover rice