Mountain Pies

Here is my post with pictures!


Last weekend I went camping with four other friends.
'Twas my first time camping, so I found it quite exciting.
Some people said it was not real camping, though, because there was a little building nearby with flush toilets.
But despite possible contentions to the contrary, we called it camping.
Friend A has been camping many times before with her family.
So she organized us and our camp.
And built the fire.

She also had these amazingly nifty little irons. We made what we called "mountain pies" with them.

I don't have pictures of the irons heating in the coals, but that is what they did first.
Then we sprayed their insides with cooking oil.

This picture is of Friend A placing tomato sauce in the center of a flour tortilla which is sort of in/on top of one half of an iron.



Here it is again with cheese on top of the sauce. Some people added mushrooms or pepperoni to theirs.



Friend A is folding the tortilla so that the whole thing will fit inside the iron. You can see some pepperoni in this pie.



And here is the pie cooking. The second half of the iron is hooked onto the first and the entire thing is shoved into the coals.



I burned my tongue on my first one. But it was tasty nonetheless. The next night we used pieces of bread and cheese and roast beef or chicken. It was sort of like grilled cheese, only not really grilled.

New post

I have a new post coming just as soon I as get enough time to post it. And it even has pictures!

Broccoli Salad

Hurrah! We shall eat grilled cheese and leftover broccoli salad tonight!

Roommate M has done a good job at indoctrinating me since we have moved into the Giraffe (yes, that is the name of my new apartment - the Upside-down Giraffe, I might add). I go to bed by eleven every night and shower in the evening and carry water bottles with me all over the place.

And now I am raving about broccoli salad.

I tried it last night.

Ah! Broccoli salad!
You look so tasty in your greenness
Your golden raisins poke their heads
'Neath clustered trees of goodness
The seeds
they are roasted
and sunflower are the best
Put them all away lest
I eat it up
Especially that coleslaw dressing!

And thus ends my tale, which, if you are careful in observation,
you may find
the recipe to this tasty meal.

Mass Flux

Have you ever heard of flux?
Flux can be used to refer a number of different things, actually, as you can see here:

Flux:
1. a flowing or flow.
2. the flowing in of the tide.
3. continuous change, passage, or movement: His political views are in a state of flux.
4. Physics.
a. the rate of flow of fluid, particles, or energy.
b. a quantity expressing the strength of a field of force in a given area.
5. Chemistry, Metallurgy.
a. a substance used to refine metals by combining with impurities to form a molten mixture that can be readily removed.
b. a substance used to remove oxides from and prevent further oxidation of fused metal, as in soldering or hot-dip coating.
c. (in the refining of scrap or other metal) a salt or mixture of salts that combines with nonmetallic impurities, causing them to float or coagulate.
6. fusion.
–verb (used with object)
7. to melt; make fluid.
8. to fuse by the use of flux.
9. Obsolete. to purge.
–verb (used without object)
10. to flow.
(From dictionary.com)

But as you can see, it mostly has to do with things flowing. So mass flux has to do with flowing mass. To be more precise, mass flux is the mass that passes through a given area in a set period of time.
It's like if you had a pipe of water or refrigerant or some other fluidy-type substance. The pipe has a fixed cross-sectional area (the area of a circle). And then you measure how much mass of your fluidy-type substance is flowing through that area for a set length of time, say 1 second. And that would be your mass flux.


Here is a picture to help illustrate:All the red dots are supposedly the mass flowing through the cross-sectional area in one second.

Mass flux is symbolized by "G" in all the papers I have been reading. So of course I had to write about it.

Machining and Welding

Have you ever been machining?
'Tis grand fun.
I did some today.
I helped drill holes in an metal panel for an electrical enclosure.
We have a really neat drill to drill holes with.
But now I am all flecked with sparks of silver color.

Making thermocouples is also fun.
I learned how to make those last week.
Thermocouples are like temperature sensors made of two different kinds of metal welding together. The insulation is stripped from one end of the wire and the two pieces of metal are twisted together. Then they are welded to form a tiny bead on the end. The bead must not be too far from the edge of the insulation.

It is tricky getting the wires to weld together properly. But the satisfaction of seeing the little metal bead is always worth it.

Because it is difficult to weld them, we always prepare a ton of these wires. Then some go in the reject pile when they refuse to weld or the weld is wrong.

After welding, we calibrate the thermocouples. Then more of the couples end up in the reject pile because they will not measure temperature correctly.

The reject pile is nearly always larger than the acceptance pile.

Character Building

Summer break has come and I have moved to a new apartment and started work.
Roommate M and I moved from our old apartment which we shared with three other girls to a new apartment with just us. We are so happy with our new place because it is cozy but has a most beautiful living room. We are planning on hosting many things in it.

But we have also decided to go without internet for the summer. We said it just might build character in us, though we're not sure about that...
Anyway, posting may slack off 'cause I'll only be online if I'm on campus.

Yummy Yummy Chicken and Lost Umbrellas

Bother, I left my umbrella in the food court.

And of course it only occurred to me after I walked out of the mall with my friends and loudly declared my most favorite line in the movie was "I left my new torch in Narnia!"
And it started sprinkling on me.

Ah well. At least the teriyaki chicken we had for lunch just before the 12:20 showing was good. We were convinced into buying it by the funniest nice lady handing out samples.

She came over to us as we walk in. Handing friend H a sample, she says "Yummy yummy chicken! Have some yummy yummy chicken!"
Handing more around to all of us, she continued, "See? Look, combo 1? yummy yummy chicken? teriyaki chicken?"
We look up at the menu board. The young man behind the counters sees us and nods his head and says, "You want yummy yummy chicken?"
Friend H stalls for time and asks "Can we think about it?"
"Oh yes! Have some yummy yummy chicken!"
We huddle. We were going to get lunch anyway and we were hungry. The samples tasted good and besides, who could refuse yummy yummy chicken?
So we all ordered combo 1: teriyaki chicken with lo mein noodles and some vegetables and a drink. Then we watched as they fried up the chicken and prepared the lo mein noodles. And it was good, though there was a lot of it. But in the last rush, I left my umbrella hanging on the back of the chair I was sitting on.