In search of umami


Dingle, County Kerry, Ireland, where I’ve had some wonderful meals and long for more.

As I recall, I encountered the idea of umami a few years ago, but I didn’t pay much attention because I assumed that it was not for real. But this week, while having an email conversation with a friend (thanks, Dean) about my post on Scotch broth, I realized that the idea of umami as a “fifth taste” is very real. The concept of umami also explains some major mysteries in the kitchen.

First, so that I don’t have to repeat the basics about what umami is and what kind of foods contain it, here are links to a couple of articles. The first is the Wikipedia article, and the second is a Wall Street Journal article from 2007.

Aha! Now I know why that sneaky, barely noticeable dash of ketchup wakes up certain dishes. Now I know why I can’t reproduce Scotch broth without sheep bones. Now I understand why it’s difficult to reproduce Asian cooking at home. Now I know why I look longingly at that bottle of tamari (soy sauce) in the refrigerator door but avert my eyes for fear of adding too much salt. Now I understand why miso is so addictive.

And now that we understand umami, what are we going to do about it, especially those of us who tend toward vegetarianism?

For one, it may be time to rethink our demonization of MSG (monosodium glutamate). Though the chemical name sounds scary, it’s actually made from natural fermentation, and it seems that no studies have confirmed its bad rap. So I think that on my next trip to Whole Foods, I’ll see if they carry some form of MSG that is guaranteed to be naturally fermented rather than synthesized. And though I’m no great fan of the taste of seaweed, I also will get some kombu and see what I can do with it.

The theory of umami also explains a mystery about the British Isles that I’ve puzzled over for a long time. Why does English and Welsh cooking tend to be so bland and Irish and Scottish cooking so savory? Solution: The Irish understand umami — in particular the arts of broth-making and sauce-making. Umami probably has to do with why Christopher Kimball, editor of Cook’s Illustrated, says that cooking isn’t easy. You can get cooking 99 percent right, but without that tiny kick of umami, food fails to be thrilling.

eBay'ing from China: Does it work?

I like to play with electronics, so I order a lot of electronic parts. For a long time, new items have been for sale on eBay for amazing prices, but the seller is in China. I avoided those deals, afraid that neither the seller nor the shipping could be trusted. But when I needed a hard-to-find circuit board and saw what I needed in China for $2.43 plus $1.00 shipping, I figured it was worth a try.

They shipped the board immediately, and it arrived in the mail 13 days later, nicely packaged, and in perfect working order.

As always on eBay, sellers vary, so check their feedback. But if you’re looking for things like smartphone accessories, you might find some good bargains from Chinese sellers.

What a January!


The stream below the abbey

I like wild weather, and around here we’ve had our share of it this January. Yesterday we were under four watches — a flash flood watch, a severe wind watch, a severe thunderstorm watch, and then just after nightfall a tornado watch. When the front hit, it was brief but intense, with rain lashing the windows and the wind roaring. The storm left another 1.6 inches of rain, bringing the total rainfall for January to 10.15 inches. That is real rain, and most of it fell slowly enough to load the aquifer, which needed it badly. I’m just hoping that 2013 remains a good rain year, as 2012 was.

This morning colder air is blowing in. It was a beautiful morning for a winter walk. The storm left no damage other than a dustpan blown into the yard. The streams are gushing. And there is a mysterious hint of spring in the air, even though the low forecast for tomorrow is 18F.

Happiness is some woods, water rushing over rocks, healthy chickens, a rich garden, a snug little house, and not having to go anywhere: the way most Americans lived before we all took jobs and left the farm for, um, a better life. It’s fun to walk this place and pretend that it all never happened, that we never took that wrong turn. But we did. And it would be convenient to ignore the fact that forces much richer and more powerful than we are (see my previous post on the North Carolina General Assembly) are doing everything possible to continue to drag us under as fast as they can and to make it impossible to turn back.


Fiona, who works harder than I do, starts her busy day.


The daffodils are up much too early. I hope they don’t regret it.


Shiitake mushrooms like their weather cold and wet.


The abbey: sun to the front, garden and orchard to the right, woods to the left, and more woods in the back.

Idiots in charge


Raleigh News & Observer: Pat McCrory, newly elected governor of North Carolina, dedicated corporate servant

You would think, wouldn’t you, that if an anti-education red state governor wanted to say something stupid like the quote below about North Carolina’s university system, he’d first have one of his aides do a little fact-checking. Here’s the quote as given in the Raleigh News & Observer:

“If you want to take gender studies that’s fine, go to a private school and take it. But I don’t want to subsidize that if that’s not going to get someone a job…. Right now I’m looking for engineers, I’m looking for technicians, I’m looking for mechanics.”

You’d think that North Carolina’s university system is turning out a bunch of English majors and gender studies majors. Hardly, as the chart below shows. All the same, this false charge will be used to further degrade and corporatize North Carolina’s once strong education system. And by the way, I’d bet a nickel that that talking point about gender studies was written by ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) the out-of-state right-wing outfit which actually has written most of the legislation that these corporate-owned politicians are enacting — not just in North Carolina, but all over the country.

But McCrory doesn’t care about facts. He just believes in his gut that “education” is just trade school that ought to serve corporations, and he does not approve of liberal arts educations. It’s the same medieval mindset that caused the Republican Party of Texas to oppose the teaching of “higher order thinking skills.” Undermines parental authority, you know. These people don’t want us to think for ourselves. They want us dumb, so we’ll believe what we hear on TV, and so we’ll keep electing people like them.

Right-wingers now control the legislature and the governor’s office in North Carolina. Their agenda: to put private corporate profit above everything else; to decimate the state’s educational system, including letting for-profit outfits encroach on the public schools; to frack the state; to roll back clean energy initiatives; to shift the tax burden away from corporations and the rich onto the backs of working people; to make it harder for people they don’t like to vote.

North Carolina is screwed. The know-nothing white rural folk who voted in these clowns will be the people most hurt by what Raleigh is getting ready to do. But they won’t know what hit them, because they’re all sitting in front of the television watching Fox News.

Here’s the kind of graduates we actually have in North Carolina. Source: ƒ„Statistical Abstract of Higher Education in North Carolina, 2011-2012.

Postscript: And here’s the kind of guy this legislature has put in charge of ethics. The Senate chair of the Legislative Ethics Committee paid off his personal credit cards with campaign donations. This is the kind of people who want to educate us, to frack us, to tax us, while distracting us with blather about god and guns and jobs.

Update: Here’s an editorial in the Raleigh News & Observer on McCrory’s stupidity.

Update 2: An essay by the president of Macalester College.

How much coal to power our houses?


Duke Power’s Belews Creek Steam Station, Belews Creek, North Carolina

My post yesterday was about how many kilowatt hours of electricity the abbey uses on a cold winter day. Though I use about half as much energy as the average American, there are no grounds for boasting. When that energy use is translated into pounds of coal, it is substantial.

Here’s how we can do the math. Most of my electricity here probably comes from a coal-fired steam plant, because that’s the nearest generator. That’s Duke Power’s Belews Creek Steam Station. The Wikipedia article on the steam station gives some statistics on the station’s efficiency and tells us how many Btu’s of thermal energy are required at the station to generate a kilowatt hour of electricity. At Belews Creek, which is a pretty efficient steam plant, 9,023 Btu of heat is needed to generate 1 kWh of electricity.

Coal varies in its energy content, but a reasonable average for coal is 20 million Btu of heat per 2,000 pounds of coal. So one pound of coal releases 10,000 Btu of heat when it’s burned. Now we can do the math for roughly how much coal is required to supply the abbey’s electricity.

On the coldest day of January, I used 37 kWh of electricity. Translated to pounds of coal, that means that the abbey required 33 pounds of coal for heat, light, cooking, appliances, etc., on the coldest day of January. On the warmest day of January, it works out to 11 pounds of coal. For the month of December, I used 625 kWh of electricity. That works out to 563 pounds of coal for December. That doesn’t sound so good, does it? But at least my energy consumption is on the low side for an American.

In 2012, I used a total of 6,764 kilowatt hours of electricity. That means I’m responsible for burning just over 3 tons of coal in 2012. Now look at our sprawling suburbs, our bright lights, our wasteful buildings, and use your imagination.

If you’d like to do the math to roughly translate your own electrical consumption to an equivalent amount of coal, multiply the number of kilowatt hours on your electric bill by .9023. The .9023 number represents the coal-to-electricity ratio for North Carolina’s Belews Creek plant, but your local numbers probably don’t vary too much, and with a little Googling you may be able to localize your calculations.

Smart meters, and the cost of staying warm


The green bars show my daily electricity usage for January in kilowatt hours. Below: a smart meter.

A year or two ago, my electric company — a regional electric coop named Energy United — installed “smart meters.” The purpose of these meters is to save the power company money, because no one has to be sent around to read them. The meters call home over the electric lines, reporting data back to the power company. Not to mention letting the power company know if your power is out, and automatically tracking widespread outages.

But this calling home doesn’t happen just once a month. It’s a regular thing. This allows the power company to track daily usage of electricity and report it to their customers on their web site.

I’m almost obsessive in collecting data on my electricity usage. I keep records of the abbey’s electrical usage in a spreadsheet, going back to when the lights at the abbey first came on in June 2009. When the weather is exceptionally cold, as it has been at times this month, I like to see how many kilowatt hours it takes to get through a really cold day.

Yesterday, January 25, was such a day. The low was 16F when the day started, and 19F when the day ended. The temperature did not rise above freezing all day, and snow and ice pellets were falling. I used 37 kilowatt hours yesterday. That covered the heat pump’s usage, plus my normal electrical usage. My stove is electric. I baked bread and did a lot of cooking yesterday. I also kept water boiling in a kettle for part of the day to raise the humidity in the house. My electrical cost for the day was $2.82. If I look at kilowatt-hour usage for the lowest-usage day of January (when I used very little heat) and do the arithmetic on the difference, I calculate that my heating cost yesterday was $1.91, while the remaining $0.91 was for other electrical usage.

This blows my mind. Partly it’s that electricity rates are low in North Carolina compared with some other areas, and partly it’s that the abbey is a very efficient building and isn’t too big (1,250 square feet). Plus the heat pump, a Trane unit of the same age as the abbey, is pretty efficient. Heat pumps are by far the most energy-efficient source of heat, though they lose efficiency when the outdoor temperature is low. When the outdoor temperature is, say, 45 degrees, a heat pump is about four times more efficient than when the outdoor temperature is, say, 16 degrees. It is, after all, capturing heat from the outside air and pumping it into the house, so they don’t work as well in cold weather. All heat pumps, as far as I know, having heating coils that kick in if the outdoor compressor can’t produce enough heat. They really are quite amazing machines, and modern heat pumps are much more efficient than the heat pumps of 20 or 30 years ago. Modern heat pumps also use ozone-friendly gases. The old freon systems are getting old and are rapidly being replaced.

These calculations led me to a thought experiment. What if that heat had come from, say, gasoline rather than electricity. If the gasoline had cost $3.69 a gallon, then the $2.82 would have bought me three-quarters of a gallon of gas. The cost of the heating portion of my electricity equals half a gallon of gas. That means that I heated the abbey on the coldest day in January for the amount of energy (calculated according to cost) that it would take to drive an SUV about 8 or 9 miles! How the carbon load compares may tell a different story, but that’s a calculation for another day.

I plan to do a future post on how I’ve used my energy consumption data to roughly calculate my carbon footprint. We all should know what our carbon footprint is.

Note: The abbey has a propane fireplace, and I did use the fireplace some yesterday for the entertainment of myself and the cat. However, the BTU output of the fireplace is much less than the house’s heating system, and the fireplace is never used at night, when the heating system works hardest. Though the fireplace contributed some heat yesterday, the amount of that heat would be minor compared with the heat provided by the electric heat pump system.

Broiled tomatoes


Broiled tomato. Click on photo for larger version.

What are winter tomatoes good for? Not much.

But they are pretty good for one thing: broiling. The unnatural firmness of winter tomatoes actually becomes something of a virtue when the tomato is broiled, because the tomato holds up under the broiler and doesn’t collapse into a puddle. Broiled tomato adds a nice zing to a winter breakfast, not to mention a dose of potassium and lycopene.

Scotch broth (sort of)


Scotch broth. Click on image for larger version.

The best soup I ever had was a bowl of Scotch broth. That was in Edinburgh, in a second-floor restaurant where the waitress called me honey just like they do here.

Like all home cooking, there is no one way to make Scotch broth, and it varies widely. Some has peas, some not. Some uses a stock made from sheep bones. Some uses lamb and is almost a lamb stew. It pretty much always, I think, includes barley. And even though it’s called broth, it’s a thick soup.

I prefer Scotch broth with peas. Start with a good stock. Boil sheep bones if you want to, or some lamb. You want some onions, some celery, a turnip, some carrot, and of course some peas and barley. I have no idea how it’s done in Scotch home kitchens (maybe by simmering it all day?), but to thicken the soup I strain out about two-thirds of the solids, whiz it in the blender, and add it back to the soup. Even so, you’ll still need to simmer the soup for four to six hours or more, as slowly, slowly as possible. You can’t rush Scotch broth.

Though I don’t think it would be done in Scotland, where Scotch broth strictly involves winter vegetables, I like to add some tomato or even tomato paste.

Food photography at the abbey

I’m always looking to improve my photography, including my food photography. A new (actually used off eBay) camera a while back — a Nikon D1X — was a big step. I recently got a lighting kit for interior photography and food photography.

If you ever watched a professional photo shoot for food photos that are to be published, you know that food photography isn’t easy. I’ve been slouchy in the past for the sake of expediency. For example, holding the camera rather than using a tripod is a good way to reduce the quality of the photo. To prevent jiggling and blurring, a wide aperture must be used to shorten the exposure. A wide aperture means that the depth of field is very low. That is, the broiled tomato may be in focus, but the bacon an inch or two behind it on the plate will be out of focus. The way to correct this is to use a narrow aperture (f stop). A narrow aperture means that the exposure must be longer, hence a tripod. Even with good lighting, the exposure may need to be a full second or longer. So the tripod is essential.

Another important factor with food photography is color management. The color of light varies greatly according to its source. To get true colors, the camera must accurately know (or be able to estimate) the color of the light. Sometimes the color can be corrected by fiddling with the “white point” in Photoshop. But the easiest way to have foods be the right color in a photograph is to use artificial light that is daylight colored — special bulbs. Yippee. I now have such lighting apparatus, plus the white umbrellas that are used to diffuse the light.

Here’s an aside for all who’d like to improve their photography. You’d think, given the way that today’s point-and-shoot digital cameras are marketed, than the number of megapixels is all that matters — the more megapixels, the better the photo. That is completely wrong. Megapixels only matter if you want to print a photo really large — say, the size of a billboard. People who sell digital cameras would like for you to believe that when 8 megapixel cameras are available, 4 megapixel cameras are obsolete. And when 16 megapixel cameras are available, 8 megapixel cameras are obsolete. Totally wrong. All those extra megapixels do is waste storage space on your computer. In some cases, the extra megapixels may help you crop in on a small object in a photo, but chances are that that small object will be blurry, for a number of reasons including the quality of the lens, or focus that is not exact.

My Nikon D1X is 10 years old, and professional photographers have moved on and no longer use them much. But if you’re looking for a camera, you’ll be far better off with a high-quality used camera than with a new camera of lesser quality. The most important factor to the quality of your photos is technique. The second factor, I would say, is the quality of the lens. Another important factor is the internal attributes of the light-sensing and processing parts inside the camera. That gets too technical to go into here, nor do I claim to understand it all. But forget about megapixels.

At this point I’ll plug a book by a neighbor and friend, Jess Moore. The book is Great Pictures Made Simple: How to Make First-Rate Pictures With a Low-Cost Digital Camera or Cell Phone. The book is available on Amazon. Then, when you get good with a low-cost point-and-shoot camera, start shopping for a good camera with a set of good lenses.

Why I'll leave the chickens indoors this morning

Raptors are common here. Though usually they’re soaring overhead rather than perched in the trees facing the abbey. I’ll let the chickens out later this morning, when I’m sure the coast is clear.

Update: A friend on Facebook identifies this as a sharp shinned/Cooper’s hawk and says that they don’t normally go after chickens. Judging from a Wikipedia photo, I believe this is a young hawk.