Scallops in Coconut Cream Sauce

It's been light posting for a while, but I'm taking vacation and I'm going to get caught up a little.

This recipe takes advantage of coconut cream to make a spicy sauce.

the rest is pretty straight forward veggies cooked in coconut oil.

Ingredient list:

Scallops - 5 large (huge?)
coconut cream
turmeric
ginger
cayenne
japanese sweet potato
purple potato
swiss chard
yellow squash


The scallops were broiled - 450 for about 12 minutes

Here's the cream sauce - about 1/4 cup of coconut cream.  Lots of spices.  Warmed it up and mixed it for about 2 minutes on low heat.

Veggies

Scallops

On the plate

Ghostly lamb stew

here's a pretty standard lamb stew, but this time with Ghost Pepper.  It also goes by the name Naga Bhut Jolokia.  Apparently, it was once thought to be the hottest pepper on earth.  Read more here.

All I can say is "be careful".  A small amount goes a long way with this stuff.  This is about 1/2 tsp for a whole pot.  Not sure how it's going to turn out, but better safe than sorry.

Standard stuff.. Lamb, bacon, onion, black pepper & cayenne

Veggie layer:  japanese sweet potato, yellow squash, asparagus

Oh, and brussel sprouts and tomato sauce

and 2 cups of coconut milk

And some aquatic grass... aka   wild rice

How Realistic is the Supercapacitor Powered Car?

Maybe you've seen this video about the Super Capacitor.  An amazing advance in energy storage technology.

The Super Capacitor

At about the 2:50 point in the video he says "... eventually we'll get to electric cars.... you'll pull into a charging station and within a minute you'd charge your car..."

Okay, so my distant memory from my electrical engineering degree kicked me when I heard that.  Power = volts * amps.  So, if you want to charge a car, you have to push volts/amps into the storage device.  The question becomes how much power is that?

According to How Stuff Works, one gallon of gas has enough energy to drive a 1500 watt heater for 24 hours.  Let's assume that we only need 10 gallons of gas equivalent for a "full tank" for our electric  car.   Let's also assume lossless transmission.  How much power or volts/amps is that?  Well, the answer is a TON, especially if delivered in a one minute time frame.

Let's assume we use 440V cables so we don't have to re-engineer the entire electrical grid. At that voltage, the system would need to push thousand of amps into the car's battery (assuming no losses).  

Here's the math:

power of the heater = 1500 watts = 120 volts * 12.5 amps (continuously for 24 hours)

1 gallon of gas = 1500 watts for 24 hours = 1500 * 86400 seconds = 129,600,000 W-s

129Megawatt-s * 10 gallons = full tank = Power needed (P = VI)

Keep in mind, we have to deliver that power in "... 60 seconds", not all day long in the case of the heater above.  However, let's set voltage at 440 and solve for amps:  I = P/V = 294,545 amps.  Now divide by our 60 seconds and we get 4909 amps.  

Hmmm..

Or, perhaps we go to high voltage systems and get the amps down.  Say 33KV like on local subtransmission lines.  Then we'd only need 65 amps.  Suffice it to say, that skinny little cable they showed in the video would be incapable of delivering that power.  And, how safe do you think a 33,000 volt, 65 amp fueling station would be?  Better wear your rubber boots!

It is difficult to get around the issue that the energy density of gasoline is very high, perhaps unmatched by any other substance on earth.  Delivering that amount of energy into a battery or any other form of storage requires a pretty robust solution.

So, charge a cell phone in 60 seconds?  How about that?  Well, a brief look at a common Lithium Ion battery shows it runs at 3.7 volts.  They also have an amperage measured in milliamp-hours, like this Motorola Razr.  It has 3300 mA - hours of power.  So, unpacking that:

P = 3.7V * 3.3amps * 60 minutes * 60 seconds = 43,956 W   that's a lot in a tiny package.

Now let's charge that in 60 seconds at 3.7 volts (P/V = I):  

44KW / 3.7V = 198 amps in one second, but if we have 60 seconds, then we only need 3.3 amps.  So, that is possible given the typical house's 15 amp circuits.   

Charge a cell phone in 60 seconds?  Sure.  Charge a car in 60 seconds, that is pure dreamery.  A physicist should know better than to talk like that.

One thing that should be abundantly clear is just how amazing gasoline is...  Batteries are never going to match it.

Massive Pot Roast

Here we go.  This is another in the pot roast series.  While the slow cooker is very handy, pot roast takes half the time and is just as tasty.

This week started with 2 strips of bacon and 1/2 of a red onion in the bottom of the pot.  Additional ingredients:

Golden Beet
Japanese Sweet potato
Cauliflower
Broccoli
Kale
Coconut milk
Tomato sauce
1 3/4 lb grass feed beef shoulder roast
black pepper
turmeric (do you say tuR mer ic   or Tu mer ic ???  I prefer the former, but maybe I'm wrong)
cayenne


Photo sequence:

Part 1:  Imagine the bacon and onions

The rest:

Veggie Layer

Add 1 cup coconut milk and a nice chunk of grass fed beef

Coated with Turmeric and Cayenne

Ready for the oven - 325 for about 3 hours

Attempting paleo banana bread

Here is an experiment.  I bought 7 lbs of coconut flour, and here is the first recipe.  I scanned the Internet for recipes, and then, of course, did something different.

First, I only had one banana instead of 3 recommended.  Second, there is absolutely no way I would add a full cup of brown sugar into a single loaf of bread.  Ridiculous!  Third, I had some Kefir, so I used that to help when mixing the dough.

Warning - this tastes pretty good, but is quite dense and maybe a little dry.  Next time, I may try it with 2 bananas.

Ingredients:
2 cups coconut flower
1/2 cup chopped cashews
1 banana
2-3 tbsp Cacao powder (which is a lot like cocoa powder)
3 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla (I forgot to add this)

Photo sequence:

Banana and brown sugar - about 3 tbsps

Add the eggs

Chopped cashews

Cacao powder

Adding Kefir

Grease the pan with coconut oil.

Ready for the oven - 350 for 25 - 30 minutes.

Eggs sticking to the side of the pan?

Do you ever have problems with eggs sticking to the side of the pan?  I've found the perfect solution:

Yet another use for Bacon!

Finished this in the oven.  Vermont raw milk cheddar.

Works with Bratwurst, too!