Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Farm Ship
Oceans cover some 75% of the earth's surface. Most of the oceans are, in biological terms, a vast desert. The nutrition for plant growth to start off the biological cycles has for the most part sunk to the bottom. Near the shores, though the opposite problem happens, as farm runoff arrives in the ocean, triggering a vast bloom of algae, which quickly turns into a suffocating oxygenless muck. The sun shines upon the ocean making rain, some of which powers the land-based photosynthesis with water, but most of which falls back into the ocean again. The availability of sun and water suddenly gave me an interesting idea.
We take a discarded cargo ship, and convert the large surface area to a vast farm. Equipment is installed beneath the ship to suck up water and desalinate it, and have it bubble up beneath the dirt at the surface. The ship sails around the world, slowly growing tons and tons of food. Periodically the ship arrives at harbors where food prices are highest to sell the food, buy fertilizer, and change crews. (The laboring farmers would be mostly employees, and this system could hopefully offer some nice wages, enough for a plane ride back home every so often.)
If there's any runoff from this, there would be a temporary bloom running behind the ship's wake, but not severe enough to cause any sort of red tide or harmful eutrophication, and this causes a temporary fish spawning point. The benefits of ocean feeding occur provided the ship remains in motion at all times.
In addition, the ship could remain in constant spring or summer by constantly sailing back and forth between the northern and southern hemispheres, maintaining beneficial conditions for the crops at all times.
This would take on the large scale a considerable amount of energy. For best results, this should be done after fusion power is available, which would allow for the boat to operate pollution free. In practice, though, the boats would probably be coal fired, or diesel driven, with all the problems that attend that.
For feeding an increasingly hungry world, this might make at least a small difference.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
More Automated Farming
I love the idea of automated farming. An ever growing population requires an ever increasing amount of food, and I can easily see the day that sunlit space is at a premium. So when a reader of Hack a day produced a small closet, lit with electric lights, watered by drip, and controlled to optimal conditions by an Arduino, I was all in favor.
Specifically, our traditional farming is labor intensive, powered solely by the sun, and we're rapidly running out of arable space. Uncontrollable events like weather, wild animals (both of the mammal and insect varieties), and soil conditions can make or break a farm. If there's no rain, well, no more plants. If insects or deer eat up the crops, then, well, the farmer is starving this year. Or, alternatively, if insects pollinate the plants, then fertility is improved. Worms can aerate soil, mix fertility chemicals into much needed positions, and distribute bacteria. Lightning could burn the crops down...or fix the nitrogen that the soil badly needs.
With this closet, everything is under control and certain. It may use more energy and be extra complex to set up, but I'm convinced that projects to produce unmeterably cheap energy are just around the corner, and increasing automation will make this project grow cheaper over time. By the time we need it, the distant descendant of this product will be ensuring that the teaming trillions of hungry humans can still afford food.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Artificial Plant Environment
A coalition of studies between biologists and marijuana junkies have given me something that several of my previous posts have relied upon -- a way to grow plants without the sun. Biologists have the same interests that I do, growing more food and in more places to feed an ever growing population. The marijuana people are mostly trying to conceal the fact that they have any, as it is highly illegal. Either way, the light needs of plants have been discovered, allowing some previously impossible biology feats to occur, and increasing the potential efficiency of farming.
Plants need mostly red light, with a small amount of blue. The studies showed that the best ratio is 90% red, 8% blue, and 2% ultraviolet and other colors. Without the blue light, growth becomes misshapen, and seed production also malfunctions. Without red light, the plant starves. Since LEDs can be made to efficiency manufacture light of a certain color, if somewhat dimly, plants can be grown in a box that has a ceiling covered in LEDs, which are mostly red, with an occasional blue or ultraviolet LED. The total electricity use for a square meter is about the same as running an incandescent bulb, but the plant functions so much better.
The only way this could get more efficient is if some sort of artificial plant that can directly knit together a nutritious nectar from air and electrical energy could be invented, and I'm pretty sure that if I ever invented that, people would refuse to eat the nectar and constantly protest it as an unnatural abomination.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
History of the Chicken
Which came first, the chicken or the egg, asks a famous riddle. After all, the primary source of chicken eggs are chickens, and the primary source of chickens are those same eggs. To a casual observer, this would seem to be an endless regress, hence the question. The egg came first, and was first laid in India.
In the jungles of Thailand, Cambodia, and Burma lives an animal called the Red Junglefowl. It is a tree dwelling bird, distantly related to the Pheasants that European aristocracy hunted for sport. Animal traders brought captured birds to India, where it was hybridized with the Grey Junglefowl, producing the modern chicken. The ancient Indian birdkeepers noted that the birds were easily cared for, enjoyed eating insects (and so were very useful to farmers), and were delicious with the right spices. Over time, Indians lost interest in eating the eggs, but those not prohibited from eating meat for religious reasons continue to enjoy eating the chickens themselves.
Over the years, the chicken was spread by trade through Persia, eventually reaching Greece and Europe. The ancient Greeks and even Romans thought of the chicken as a very exotic bird, as their only supply was through the Persians, and relations between the Greek city-states and the Persian empire were often frosty. However, centuries of trade quickly populated the bird throughout Europe.
Colonists to "The new world" of North and South America often brought domestic animals with them, and the expansion of the chicken eventually reached the Pacific Islands in the 1800s. Chickens are now found worldwide except Antarctica (where they occasionally arrive dead in the form of food).
In the jungles of Thailand, Cambodia, and Burma lives an animal called the Red Junglefowl. It is a tree dwelling bird, distantly related to the Pheasants that European aristocracy hunted for sport. Animal traders brought captured birds to India, where it was hybridized with the Grey Junglefowl, producing the modern chicken. The ancient Indian birdkeepers noted that the birds were easily cared for, enjoyed eating insects (and so were very useful to farmers), and were delicious with the right spices. Over time, Indians lost interest in eating the eggs, but those not prohibited from eating meat for religious reasons continue to enjoy eating the chickens themselves.
Over the years, the chicken was spread by trade through Persia, eventually reaching Greece and Europe. The ancient Greeks and even Romans thought of the chicken as a very exotic bird, as their only supply was through the Persians, and relations between the Greek city-states and the Persian empire were often frosty. However, centuries of trade quickly populated the bird throughout Europe.
Colonists to "The new world" of North and South America often brought domestic animals with them, and the expansion of the chicken eventually reached the Pacific Islands in the 1800s. Chickens are now found worldwide except Antarctica (where they occasionally arrive dead in the form of food).
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Continuous flow coffee computer
Electronics make a lot of heat, because heat is entropic energy. The act of flipping the state of electronics irreversibly converts some of the electrical energy powering the chip into heat. This heat then has to be carried away. This entropy can be converted to good use.
One of the most treasured machines at my company is the coffee maker. The company has to keep going at all times, 24/7, and an energized worker is a not sucking at his job worker, usually. The coffee maker deliberately converts electricity to heat, which it applies to water, and runs over ground coffee beans to produce coffee. This is caught in thermal jars so that the workers can enjoy it hours later, still hot. I try and keep this making coffee at all times, as it makes my surlier coworkers far more pleasant to be around.
This also gave me an idea of an interesting cooling system. Start with a water cooled computer, except instead of water, cool it with industrial refrigerant. This is piped to the chamber below, where it is intensely compressed, and water is continuously poured over it from a faucet supply. This water is quickly boiled from the heat, and compressed, slightly below room temperature refrigerant is brought back to the computer. Just before it hits the electronics, the refrigerant goes through an expansion valve. This makes it intensely cold, and better suited to take the heat off the computer components. So far, this is essentially a refrigerator.
Now with the hot water, we pump this up out of the chamber, and over to another area, in which there is a "switch" pipe that allows it to fall into one of four carafe's, each of which below contains a thermal jar. A scale below the thermal jar determines how full the jar is, and when the jar is full, the system instantly switches to the next carafe over. Full jars should be taken away (and distributed with cups, creamer, and sugar) with an empty jar put in its place. Also, the carafe will need fresh grounds and filter on a periodic basis. This would occur in two hour cycles, and could quickly be changed to capacity in a five minute break.
Assuming that this system is kept supplied, it would produce coffee continuously, which would clearly be a good thing for my company, which is constantly growing and getting thirstier for coffee by the day.
One of the most treasured machines at my company is the coffee maker. The company has to keep going at all times, 24/7, and an energized worker is a not sucking at his job worker, usually. The coffee maker deliberately converts electricity to heat, which it applies to water, and runs over ground coffee beans to produce coffee. This is caught in thermal jars so that the workers can enjoy it hours later, still hot. I try and keep this making coffee at all times, as it makes my surlier coworkers far more pleasant to be around.
This also gave me an idea of an interesting cooling system. Start with a water cooled computer, except instead of water, cool it with industrial refrigerant. This is piped to the chamber below, where it is intensely compressed, and water is continuously poured over it from a faucet supply. This water is quickly boiled from the heat, and compressed, slightly below room temperature refrigerant is brought back to the computer. Just before it hits the electronics, the refrigerant goes through an expansion valve. This makes it intensely cold, and better suited to take the heat off the computer components. So far, this is essentially a refrigerator.
Now with the hot water, we pump this up out of the chamber, and over to another area, in which there is a "switch" pipe that allows it to fall into one of four carafe's, each of which below contains a thermal jar. A scale below the thermal jar determines how full the jar is, and when the jar is full, the system instantly switches to the next carafe over. Full jars should be taken away (and distributed with cups, creamer, and sugar) with an empty jar put in its place. Also, the carafe will need fresh grounds and filter on a periodic basis. This would occur in two hour cycles, and could quickly be changed to capacity in a five minute break.
Assuming that this system is kept supplied, it would produce coffee continuously, which would clearly be a good thing for my company, which is constantly growing and getting thirstier for coffee by the day.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Carbonated Fruit
At Hack A Day, I've learned of a new and impractical but fun snack: fizzy fruit.
The mechanism takes water-rich fruit, such as citrus fruits or, if scaled up, watermelon, and carbonates them in a method similar to the way that sodas are carbonated. High pressure carbon dioxide is diffused through the fruit, producing a fruit that fizzes when eaten like a soda.
Even better, all of the parts for this are available in a regular hardware store. A water-filter casing holds the fruit. Tubes lead to a CO2 canister, which can be bought at all kinds of places. (Apparently paintball guns have a good CO2 source and aren't terribly expensive.) Fruit's cheap in the United States, and all but the poorest houses have refrigerators to keep it cold.
The only way this could be better is if there was some way of refilling the CO2 yourself, but that probably requires a factory....
The mechanism takes water-rich fruit, such as citrus fruits or, if scaled up, watermelon, and carbonates them in a method similar to the way that sodas are carbonated. High pressure carbon dioxide is diffused through the fruit, producing a fruit that fizzes when eaten like a soda.
Even better, all of the parts for this are available in a regular hardware store. A water-filter casing holds the fruit. Tubes lead to a CO2 canister, which can be bought at all kinds of places. (Apparently paintball guns have a good CO2 source and aren't terribly expensive.) Fruit's cheap in the United States, and all but the poorest houses have refrigerators to keep it cold.
The only way this could be better is if there was some way of refilling the CO2 yourself, but that probably requires a factory....
Monday, December 20, 2010
Emergency Pie Vault
One of the funnier, if slightly dark, things in the comic FreeFall is the emergency pie vault. FreeFall takes place on a terraformed extrasolar planet, and one precaution taken when the planet was terraformed was an emergency food supply in case local agriculture failed. The emergency food supply takes the form of several jillion varieties of pie. FreeFall being what it is, you learn about it when some of the main characters get into a massive irrational pie fight using a tiny portion of its pies.
However, an emergency food supply strikes me as an excellent preparation. One can make a large amount of food in times of plenty, and have it immediately ready in case of disaster. South Korea recently had a major disaster in which heavy rains wiped out the local cabbage crop. Cabbage is the main ingredient in the national dish, Kimchi. Accordingly, the price of Kimchi skyrocketed, and all hell promptly broke loose. The difference has been made up with American cabbage, resulting in some slightly bizarre kimchi. If South Korea had a vault full of kimchi (which is fairly easy to pull off, kimchi is pickled and has a long shelf life), then this wouldn't have happened -- kimchi would be extracted from the vault and replenished next time to much cabbage was farmed.
This would have a secondary benefit of stabilizing crop prices, to the relief of farmers everywhere. In times that the crop is plenty, farmers sell their surplus to the vault. In times of famine, the vault is drawn upon, keeping consumers from starving. Everyone wins. Especially if the vault is in space that wouldn't otherwise be useful, like the bottom of an abandoned mine.
The stored food should be of high nutritional value and have a very long shelf life. Pie fails the first criteria.
However, an emergency food supply strikes me as an excellent preparation. One can make a large amount of food in times of plenty, and have it immediately ready in case of disaster. South Korea recently had a major disaster in which heavy rains wiped out the local cabbage crop. Cabbage is the main ingredient in the national dish, Kimchi. Accordingly, the price of Kimchi skyrocketed, and all hell promptly broke loose. The difference has been made up with American cabbage, resulting in some slightly bizarre kimchi. If South Korea had a vault full of kimchi (which is fairly easy to pull off, kimchi is pickled and has a long shelf life), then this wouldn't have happened -- kimchi would be extracted from the vault and replenished next time to much cabbage was farmed.
This would have a secondary benefit of stabilizing crop prices, to the relief of farmers everywhere. In times that the crop is plenty, farmers sell their surplus to the vault. In times of famine, the vault is drawn upon, keeping consumers from starving. Everyone wins. Especially if the vault is in space that wouldn't otherwise be useful, like the bottom of an abandoned mine.
The stored food should be of high nutritional value and have a very long shelf life. Pie fails the first criteria.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Incremental Cooking Automation
A long time ago, I proposed automated cooking, which quite a few people expressed interest in. It's a tricky task, one that I think we'll have to do with incremental evolution, the way that Wright brother's bicycle-like plane that flew slower than I can walk evolved into the supersonic jet. one step at a time.
Some things are more automated now than before. Hand-mixing has mostly given way to mixing machines. Tortillas used to be rolled out by hand, but are now mostly made with a massive metal contraption that rolls them evenly flat, tosses them into a heated area for baking, and produces a picture perfect tortilla every single time. There are bread machines that kneed, rise, and bake the bread, requiring the consumer to add the ingredients and plug it in. These steps are the increments. They do one thing perfectly well. When one of these exists for everything, then the automated kitchen that I described can be made. By integrating one of everything.
Take the tortilla-maker. If I have a food nozzle, a sauce nozzle, a cheese dispenser, and a folding machine, I can combine all of these into a machine that grinds out tortillas and enchiladas. Food factories already have such things, but they don't run all the time. People like a variety of foods, so only so many burritos and so many enchiladas are made, and then those things go back into storage while the factory is set up for something completely different, like chicken pot pie, or crab bisque, or borsch. These are often also at least semi-automated, because the machines work faster and cheaper than humans.
Since I don't work in the food industry, I could not tell you what still needs automation. More complicated dishes, probably. I have yet to hear of a automated risotto machine, or a souffle maker. This is probably due to low demand. Anyone who really wants a souffle is generally willing to hire a professional chef to do so.
I think in the meantime, machines that can do some simple things could be installed in the kitchen and made to cook for you every day, if you really don't like cooking and don't mind having a limited number of things to eat. A limit that goes up every time a new technology is developed and installed.
Some things are more automated now than before. Hand-mixing has mostly given way to mixing machines. Tortillas used to be rolled out by hand, but are now mostly made with a massive metal contraption that rolls them evenly flat, tosses them into a heated area for baking, and produces a picture perfect tortilla every single time. There are bread machines that kneed, rise, and bake the bread, requiring the consumer to add the ingredients and plug it in. These steps are the increments. They do one thing perfectly well. When one of these exists for everything, then the automated kitchen that I described can be made. By integrating one of everything.
Take the tortilla-maker. If I have a food nozzle, a sauce nozzle, a cheese dispenser, and a folding machine, I can combine all of these into a machine that grinds out tortillas and enchiladas. Food factories already have such things, but they don't run all the time. People like a variety of foods, so only so many burritos and so many enchiladas are made, and then those things go back into storage while the factory is set up for something completely different, like chicken pot pie, or crab bisque, or borsch. These are often also at least semi-automated, because the machines work faster and cheaper than humans.
Since I don't work in the food industry, I could not tell you what still needs automation. More complicated dishes, probably. I have yet to hear of a automated risotto machine, or a souffle maker. This is probably due to low demand. Anyone who really wants a souffle is generally willing to hire a professional chef to do so.
I think in the meantime, machines that can do some simple things could be installed in the kitchen and made to cook for you every day, if you really don't like cooking and don't mind having a limited number of things to eat. A limit that goes up every time a new technology is developed and installed.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Diet Donut
You know what everyone wants? To eat sugary fatty donuts and not exercise and still somehow lose weight. And while we're dreaming, I'd like a trillion dollars and an elaborate laboratory on Mars. Under a glass dome, filled with trees.
Back in reality, most "junk food" that people eat could be made way healthier. I'm imagining a donut made with vitamin enriched flour, with a blend of sugar-alcohols for sweetener, so it's actively good for your teeth, plus won't give you the runs. (Such a combination technically exists, but is hard to manage.) The jelly inside in made of a rich apple pectin, giving it a gooey consistency that still cleans your insides like an apple. Several important minerals are also provided (in trace amounts so it doesn't affect the flavor.) Eating this donut is surprisingly good for you.
If you replace half the food in each of your meals with one of these donuts, maybe you could lose weight.
Back in reality, most "junk food" that people eat could be made way healthier. I'm imagining a donut made with vitamin enriched flour, with a blend of sugar-alcohols for sweetener, so it's actively good for your teeth, plus won't give you the runs. (Such a combination technically exists, but is hard to manage.) The jelly inside in made of a rich apple pectin, giving it a gooey consistency that still cleans your insides like an apple. Several important minerals are also provided (in trace amounts so it doesn't affect the flavor.) Eating this donut is surprisingly good for you.
If you replace half the food in each of your meals with one of these donuts, maybe you could lose weight.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Omnidispenser
I'm thinking of a machine to dispense condements. All of them. Well, all of them that you eat. It would have many spigots with matching buttons, and pushing a button dispenses the product. Ketchup and mustard for meat products, sugar (with some water for delivery) for coffee, salt, vinegar, we've got it all.
You'd have to maybe replenish the internal stores once a month, but other than that, you'd never have to bother with sauces again.
The container would also be an artistic centerpiece for the kitchen table.
This cough syrup is great!
You'd have to maybe replenish the internal stores once a month, but other than that, you'd never have to bother with sauces again.
The container would also be an artistic centerpiece for the kitchen table.
This cough syrup is great!
Monday, August 23, 2010
Engine Cooking
I once had a dream in which I was taking a number of bizarre, illogical classes. Psychologists would probably blame this on me worrying about my schooling as I fell asleep. Anyway, most of them were stupid, impossible, or both. But one of them strikes me as potentially useful in the real world. It was called "Engine cooking."
In it, we would take a metal mold, fill it with ingredients, stash the mold in the engine compartment of a car, and then go drive around a bunch, then afterwards, we'd retrieve the mold, open it, and note the condition of the food. In the dream, you had to produce not just edible, but good looking food too. No one wants to eat a flat suffle, after all.
This is a potentially useful idea, because engines make a lot of heat. Heat that we currently discard into the atmosphere. Cooking, meanwhile, requires a controlled application of heat. Why not feed one into the other? Especially if you're driving somewhere where you'll need food on the other end, like a party. Bake your cake....by driving there.
Well, the biggest objections would be that engines are full of things that you don't want in your food, like dirt, sludge, motor oil, and insects. Heat transfer isn't ideal without doing something crazy like running the coolant through pipes on the outmost layer of the mold, which would make removal difficult. Also, engines might be hot, but the heat is quite uneven. Food needs to be evenly heated, or you'll have one raw side and one burnt side, neither of which is edible.
So, probably not practical in the real world, where things like physics and chemistry and basic logic apply.
In it, we would take a metal mold, fill it with ingredients, stash the mold in the engine compartment of a car, and then go drive around a bunch, then afterwards, we'd retrieve the mold, open it, and note the condition of the food. In the dream, you had to produce not just edible, but good looking food too. No one wants to eat a flat suffle, after all.
This is a potentially useful idea, because engines make a lot of heat. Heat that we currently discard into the atmosphere. Cooking, meanwhile, requires a controlled application of heat. Why not feed one into the other? Especially if you're driving somewhere where you'll need food on the other end, like a party. Bake your cake....by driving there.
Well, the biggest objections would be that engines are full of things that you don't want in your food, like dirt, sludge, motor oil, and insects. Heat transfer isn't ideal without doing something crazy like running the coolant through pipes on the outmost layer of the mold, which would make removal difficult. Also, engines might be hot, but the heat is quite uneven. Food needs to be evenly heated, or you'll have one raw side and one burnt side, neither of which is edible.
So, probably not practical in the real world, where things like physics and chemistry and basic logic apply.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Bread
Bread is humanity's first food-related invention. It turned blah-tasting seeds into a delicious foodstuff that lasted for a reasonable time before spoiling, was easy to handle and eat (unlike seeds, where you can easily end up dropping large portions of it if you're not careful), and more importantly, could also hold OTHER foods so you would never be bored eating it. (Stuff something into your bread. A filling? A dip?)
What could we do to improve bread? Quite possibly, a number of things.
Vitamin enrichment is a good start. A lot of bread is made of white flour, and much of the nutrition is lost in the refinement. So most of this has an "enrichment" process to put some back. This is why, when you read the ingridents list on your loaf of bread, it says "enriched white flour." Health food fans note that the enrichment is someone less than what was taken out, famously one compared it to being robbed of $25 and being refunded $0.99. So...deeper enriched bread.
Longer lasting bread has been invented hundreds of years ago in the form of hardtack, which I wrote about. Hardtack is typically crunchy, and most recipes of it don't taste very good. Mostly because that's the point: It's an emergency food for planning ahead for when no other food is available, and you eat it because no other food is available.
Also, a very hard bread has been invented by coal miners in New Zealand for not falling apart in the mine, and for being cheap enough that you can throw away the parts that inevitably get covered in coal dust.
I can imagine one improvement: Rapid baking bread. In less than five minutes of oven time, it goes from inedible batter to edible bread. I hope to get it down to less than two minutes, ultimately. The first means of accomplishing this will be a study of leavening agents, to determine the fastest acting one.
As a second idea, a hardtack vault. This would be an extremely large underground storage area, filled to the brim with hardtack. In the event of economic crisis, the vault would be opened, and hardtack passed around to the citizenry, ensuring their survival to better, more gourmet, times.
What could we do to improve bread? Quite possibly, a number of things.
Vitamin enrichment is a good start. A lot of bread is made of white flour, and much of the nutrition is lost in the refinement. So most of this has an "enrichment" process to put some back. This is why, when you read the ingridents list on your loaf of bread, it says "enriched white flour." Health food fans note that the enrichment is someone less than what was taken out, famously one compared it to being robbed of $25 and being refunded $0.99. So...deeper enriched bread.
Longer lasting bread has been invented hundreds of years ago in the form of hardtack, which I wrote about. Hardtack is typically crunchy, and most recipes of it don't taste very good. Mostly because that's the point: It's an emergency food for planning ahead for when no other food is available, and you eat it because no other food is available.
Also, a very hard bread has been invented by coal miners in New Zealand for not falling apart in the mine, and for being cheap enough that you can throw away the parts that inevitably get covered in coal dust.
I can imagine one improvement: Rapid baking bread. In less than five minutes of oven time, it goes from inedible batter to edible bread. I hope to get it down to less than two minutes, ultimately. The first means of accomplishing this will be a study of leavening agents, to determine the fastest acting one.
As a second idea, a hardtack vault. This would be an extremely large underground storage area, filled to the brim with hardtack. In the event of economic crisis, the vault would be opened, and hardtack passed around to the citizenry, ensuring their survival to better, more gourmet, times.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Edible Algae
I keep hearing about how food is going to be in short supply at some point in the future. It hasn't hit yet -- farmers are still working hard to market all of their crops, and food companies have every interest in getting you to eat as much as possible. Still, the human population is rapidly rising, and farmland isn't infinite.
I can postpone the problem with an edible algae. A green muck that can be processed into an edible foodstuff. It'll grow in the salt water of the ocean, with maybe a bit of fertilization on our part. What we don't harvest will probably be eaten by the ocean biosphere -- winding up as the fish and seabirds that people will want to eat first. Harvesting can be done via a fleet of ships.
The oceans contain large "deserts," regions devoid of life because the nutrition to sustain them just isn't there. Maybe just feeding that is enough to make it "bloom."
But another part of algae is for my space-experiments. Algae can be grown in little tubes of water, making it much easier to keep space-bourne than land-grown equivalents. Growing an orange tree would require an elaborate hydroponics system to keep it fed and watered (and remember, water leaking in zero g is a major problem), while the algae is easily kept within its tube until harvest time. (which we can do while rotating the ship for artificial gravity, or rotating the tube for artificial gravity within the tube.)
Yes, for long trips in space, you'd need to do farming in your shuttle. There's not enough room to store many years worth of food, and you'd choke to death on your own waste within the first year if you weren't actively recycling every last bit of it. Also, farming is one of the least gross ways to recycle. (Plants smell nice, sewage refinement centers, not so much.)
I can postpone the problem with an edible algae. A green muck that can be processed into an edible foodstuff. It'll grow in the salt water of the ocean, with maybe a bit of fertilization on our part. What we don't harvest will probably be eaten by the ocean biosphere -- winding up as the fish and seabirds that people will want to eat first. Harvesting can be done via a fleet of ships.
The oceans contain large "deserts," regions devoid of life because the nutrition to sustain them just isn't there. Maybe just feeding that is enough to make it "bloom."
But another part of algae is for my space-experiments. Algae can be grown in little tubes of water, making it much easier to keep space-bourne than land-grown equivalents. Growing an orange tree would require an elaborate hydroponics system to keep it fed and watered (and remember, water leaking in zero g is a major problem), while the algae is easily kept within its tube until harvest time. (which we can do while rotating the ship for artificial gravity, or rotating the tube for artificial gravity within the tube.)
Yes, for long trips in space, you'd need to do farming in your shuttle. There's not enough room to store many years worth of food, and you'd choke to death on your own waste within the first year if you weren't actively recycling every last bit of it. Also, farming is one of the least gross ways to recycle. (Plants smell nice, sewage refinement centers, not so much.)
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Weirder Pipelines
I feel weird that I pay so much for liquids. Food sauces, vinegar, gasoline, bleach, Cleaning fluids. And the biggest business I can name immediately is cola. Bottles and cans, by the trillions, of sweetened and carbonated and flavored water. (Okay, gasoline doesn't come in a container, but it's shipped by truck to a tank at the gas station, which is a weird way to do it.)
When I use up the liquid, I still have the container sitting around. Typically, I end up throwing it away. Sometimes I wash it out and reuse it, but usually I don't bother. That's a waste.
I suppose that instead I could have pipelines into my house. Turn on the vinegar tap for the salad, turn it off when I have enough. Steak sauce from the tap for the steak. I have a guest, and he wants a coke? Fresh from the pipeline, fizzed at serving time. At laundry time, I squirt a bit of beach and detergent from the respective lines. At the end of the month, I get bills from the pipeline, which I promptly pay lest I lose service. (God forbid I have to do without vinaigrette!)
Nah, that's too insane. Each house would have hundreds of pipelines going to it and digging would be impossible. Not to mention all the kinds of hell that would break lose if one of the pipes clogged or ruptured.
When I use up the liquid, I still have the container sitting around. Typically, I end up throwing it away. Sometimes I wash it out and reuse it, but usually I don't bother. That's a waste.
I suppose that instead I could have pipelines into my house. Turn on the vinegar tap for the salad, turn it off when I have enough. Steak sauce from the tap for the steak. I have a guest, and he wants a coke? Fresh from the pipeline, fizzed at serving time. At laundry time, I squirt a bit of beach and detergent from the respective lines. At the end of the month, I get bills from the pipeline, which I promptly pay lest I lose service. (God forbid I have to do without vinaigrette!)
Nah, that's too insane. Each house would have hundreds of pipelines going to it and digging would be impossible. Not to mention all the kinds of hell that would break lose if one of the pipes clogged or ruptured.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Synthetic Meat
Meat is a big industry. Millions of dollars of meat are sold hourly worldwide. Meat costs more than vegetables, and there is a big environmental cost too.
So a big drive in biology right now is to grow meat in a test tube. This could automate the feeding and waste elimination, and the meat would never be aware of its state. There would be fewer waste issues, less loss to disease, it would cost less. One big problem:
Cells live upon an extracellular matrix of carbohydrates and proteins. Outside an animal, cells tend to fill one layer, and then stop growing. Only cancerous cells can grow arbitrarily large, and no one wants to eat cancer-burgers. (Except me, and I'm only debatably sane. I also wanted to eat artificial food, which most people would find abhorrent.)
It is possible to grow many single layers and grind them into burger, but I think people will be the most satisfied if an artificial matrix can be developed. This way it could grow entire steaks and chops. We'd need a new matrix for each one. This makes it more expensive than traditional animal rearing, until it gets automated.
Whether this counts as vegetarian or vegan is debatable. Cells can be extracted without harming an animal, which is the traditional objection to meat-eating. It still has an animal origin, which would freak out most existing vegans.
I look forward to cheap steaks cloned from a cow's cheek cells.
So a big drive in biology right now is to grow meat in a test tube. This could automate the feeding and waste elimination, and the meat would never be aware of its state. There would be fewer waste issues, less loss to disease, it would cost less. One big problem:
Cells live upon an extracellular matrix of carbohydrates and proteins. Outside an animal, cells tend to fill one layer, and then stop growing. Only cancerous cells can grow arbitrarily large, and no one wants to eat cancer-burgers. (Except me, and I'm only debatably sane. I also wanted to eat artificial food, which most people would find abhorrent.)
It is possible to grow many single layers and grind them into burger, but I think people will be the most satisfied if an artificial matrix can be developed. This way it could grow entire steaks and chops. We'd need a new matrix for each one. This makes it more expensive than traditional animal rearing, until it gets automated.
Whether this counts as vegetarian or vegan is debatable. Cells can be extracted without harming an animal, which is the traditional objection to meat-eating. It still has an animal origin, which would freak out most existing vegans.
I look forward to cheap steaks cloned from a cow's cheek cells.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Hardtack
Hardtack is the world's first MRE, invented so that it could be carried on boats or quartermaster's backpacks for miles and miles for years and years without rotting. I want to feed the hungry, so I made myself a batch.
This was supposedly a naval recipe, and despite all the complaints I've read in historical records about how it tastes horrible and "oh god I'd rather shoot myself in the face then eat that again," I think it tastes pretty good. Probably the sailor's were complaining about how this was all they had to eat, because I can see how this would get real old, real fast. Especially when it's been a year and it's starting to develop weevils and other nasty things.
Here's the recipe, thanks to Ken Anderson:
I had to make a few substitutions. I didn't have buttermilk, so I substituted whole. There wasn't any honey in the house, but there was agave nectar. I didn't have any bacon drippings, so I substituted coconut oil. And I don't think I managed to roll it thin enough. Also, I don't own a wire rack, so I balanced the pan on my sink. Still, delicious. I wouldn't mind eating it for a few days. Reminds me of KFC's biscuits, actually.
The next part of my project will be to give this food to a starving person somewhere in the world. It will last for between one and three years without refrigerating, so I can mail it to whoever needs it the most. If you know such a person, please notify me by comment, email, or some other means.
LATER EDIT: Wow, that photo's worse than I thought. I have a crappy camera. It came in washed out, and I tried to fix it. Key word being "tried."
Still later in August: I left them in the refrigerator overnight and now they taste kinda bad. That's a failure for them: they're too sensitive to the cold.
This was supposedly a naval recipe, and despite all the complaints I've read in historical records about how it tastes horrible and "oh god I'd rather shoot myself in the face then eat that again," I think it tastes pretty good. Probably the sailor's were complaining about how this was all they had to eat, because I can see how this would get real old, real fast. Especially when it's been a year and it's starting to develop weevils and other nasty things.
Here's the recipe, thanks to Ken Anderson:
A Sailor's Diet
- 2 1/2 cups old-fashioned or quick oats.
- 3 cups unbleached flour.
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt.
- 1 teaspoon baking soda.
In a separate container, mix:
- 1 1/2 cups buttermilk.
- 3 tablespoons honey.
- 1/2 cup melted bacon drippings or shortening.
Combine the two sets of ingredients. When the dough is thoroughly mixed, roll it out on a floured board to a thickness of about a quarter inch. Cut out circles of dough with a large drinking glass dipped in flour and put them on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake for about 5 1/2 minutes at 450° F. Let the hardtack cool on a wire rack before serving with jam or jelly.
I had to make a few substitutions. I didn't have buttermilk, so I substituted whole. There wasn't any honey in the house, but there was agave nectar. I didn't have any bacon drippings, so I substituted coconut oil. And I don't think I managed to roll it thin enough. Also, I don't own a wire rack, so I balanced the pan on my sink. Still, delicious. I wouldn't mind eating it for a few days. Reminds me of KFC's biscuits, actually.
The next part of my project will be to give this food to a starving person somewhere in the world. It will last for between one and three years without refrigerating, so I can mail it to whoever needs it the most. If you know such a person, please notify me by comment, email, or some other means.
LATER EDIT: Wow, that photo's worse than I thought. I have a crappy camera. It came in washed out, and I tried to fix it. Key word being "tried."
Still later in August: I left them in the refrigerator overnight and now they taste kinda bad. That's a failure for them: they're too sensitive to the cold.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Edible Yardscape
All of us want to have a nice looking yard, and to look different. How about a yard...that feeds you?
Many plants produce edible parts and look pretty good too. Apricot, peach, and apple are all beautiful trees, as are bananas (although bananas will not grow fruit in the continental united states without the intervention of you and a plastic bag.)
If shrubs are more the need if your household, blueberry, cranberry, and gooseberry are all excellent choices.
If you'd prefer a small flowering plant in a little space, you can't go wrong with strawberries, and potatoes look pretty interesting too.
Aside from looking nice, if you can't get to the store for whatever reason (hurricane, civil collapse, car will not start), you can still get food. Also, it offsets carbon, since your food is in walking distance.
Many plants produce edible parts and look pretty good too. Apricot, peach, and apple are all beautiful trees, as are bananas (although bananas will not grow fruit in the continental united states without the intervention of you and a plastic bag.)
If shrubs are more the need if your household, blueberry, cranberry, and gooseberry are all excellent choices.
If you'd prefer a small flowering plant in a little space, you can't go wrong with strawberries, and potatoes look pretty interesting too.
Aside from looking nice, if you can't get to the store for whatever reason (hurricane, civil collapse, car will not start), you can still get food. Also, it offsets carbon, since your food is in walking distance.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Farm Bill
We Americans tend to be kind of fat. A lot of this has to do with the the way we eat. Money also has a lot to do with this -- cheap food tends to be full of fat and devoid of nutrition, making us want more and more before we feel satisfied.
The actions of the government have a lot to do with the cost of food. Every year, a farm bill is written by congress, determining which foods are subsidized, making them cheap, and which foods are taxed, making them more expensive. Current farm bills have favored corn. Our representatives seem to prefer the idea of producing vast amounts of biofuel to reduce the current dependency on oil, and corn oil is one of the easier ways to do that.
It's time now for the 2009 bill. I think we should ask for subsidies on the following:
* Broccoli
* Lettuce
* Asparagus
* Carrots
* Squash
* Pumpkin
* Tomatoes
* Brussel Sprouts
* Blueberries
These foods are all low-calorie, nutrition dense fruits and vegetables. Post-subsidy, they will be plentiful and cheap. In addition, the sheer variety will make it hard for pests to establish, the way it has with corn mono-cultures.
If there are any foods that are inherently unhealthy, we can tax them. I can't think of any offhand. Sure, an excess of corn has lead to high fructose corn syrup, but corn by itself isn't inherently unhealthy.
We should definitely tax tobacco, however. It doesn't make sense that we're paying people to grow it, and then turn around and encourage people not to use it.
The actions of the government have a lot to do with the cost of food. Every year, a farm bill is written by congress, determining which foods are subsidized, making them cheap, and which foods are taxed, making them more expensive. Current farm bills have favored corn. Our representatives seem to prefer the idea of producing vast amounts of biofuel to reduce the current dependency on oil, and corn oil is one of the easier ways to do that.
It's time now for the 2009 bill. I think we should ask for subsidies on the following:
* Broccoli
* Lettuce
* Asparagus
* Carrots
* Squash
* Pumpkin
* Tomatoes
* Brussel Sprouts
* Blueberries
These foods are all low-calorie, nutrition dense fruits and vegetables. Post-subsidy, they will be plentiful and cheap. In addition, the sheer variety will make it hard for pests to establish, the way it has with corn mono-cultures.
If there are any foods that are inherently unhealthy, we can tax them. I can't think of any offhand. Sure, an excess of corn has lead to high fructose corn syrup, but corn by itself isn't inherently unhealthy.
We should definitely tax tobacco, however. It doesn't make sense that we're paying people to grow it, and then turn around and encourage people not to use it.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Energy Paradox
On one hand, I keep hearing about the need for cheap energy, and a shortage of good materials to get it from.
On the other hand, there's things like This Is Why You're Fat, a cornucopia of calorie-dense, self-indulgent, carnival-type food.
The efficiency's not great, even if we tossed the carnie food straight into the reactor, but if there was some way of making extracting energy from people fun? Like, say, a stationary bicycle that was part video-game. Or that blood-sugar-extracting system?
Also, it frightens me how much of the food on "This is Why You're Fat" seems oddly delicious to me. Clearly must not lead myself into temptation.
On the other hand, there's things like This Is Why You're Fat, a cornucopia of calorie-dense, self-indulgent, carnival-type food.
The efficiency's not great, even if we tossed the carnie food straight into the reactor, but if there was some way of making extracting energy from people fun? Like, say, a stationary bicycle that was part video-game. Or that blood-sugar-extracting system?
Also, it frightens me how much of the food on "This is Why You're Fat" seems oddly delicious to me. Clearly must not lead myself into temptation.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Automated Cooking
In medieval times in the west, cooking involved stirring things together and baking them. It was slow work, done by hand. Many bakers worked, because it wasn't practical for the average person to spend 6 hours a day stirring bowls of bread dough and shoving it in an oven. (Yes, there were other cooks that made things that weren't bread, pastry, and cake, but these were the big staples. A very large number of people could barely afford bread, pastry, and cake on holidays.)
Today, there are still bakers, but many of them have been replaced with mixing machines and food processors, because paying someone else to cook your food is expensive and annoying. We don't mind the slight loss of unemployment, because being a medieval baker sucked. Being a modern baker is significantly more fun, because now you can create loads and loads of food that many people will eat, instead of working 12 hours a day just to feed one village.
What else could be done to help out in the kitchen? Certainly more than the existing works, which help prepare the food, but can't help anymore once the heat is applied.
Let's start with ingredient selection. Raw ingredients can be kept in pneumatic tubes and delivered from a signal. Ingredients that should be stored cold would start in a refrigerated area, of course.
An auto-stirring device would be appreciated, I reason from my own experience. Many foods need significant stirring as to not burn on the bottom of the pan and cook evenly. I can't use most chemistry solutions to this, such as magnetic rods spun by a second magnet below attached to a motor, because the heat would damage any magnet involved. In addition, many foods are acid and would absorb an excessive amount of iron.
I can, however, use the industrial solution of a rod attached to large "wings," and rotate the rod by small motor. I know that this can be made not to melt or dissolve in the food, because "wings" exist that can survive being plunged into molten metal. Stirring would be done by yanking the device down into the pot. A non-corrosive metal should be used, or at least one with favorable nutritional properties.
Ovens should have a temperature probe that it can insert into the food and read. It could display this on the front of the oven, for the chef's convenience, so that it is no longer necessary to open the oven to see if the food is ready. Also, it would help if they could automatically turn over some foods, such as meats, say with a fork-on-a-jointed-rod that could be stabbed in, and torqued to deftly turn the food over. This would, again, be controllable from outside the oven, or, for greater automation, computer signal.
Most chefs enjoy distributing and laying out the food, but automation is again possible. A turkey-baster like device could collect fixed portions of soup or other liquid foods, large meat-and-vegetable portions could be cut with knives and placed on a plate with a tong-like device, and semisolid foods such as mashed potatoes can be automatically scooped.
A cook's least favorite part of the meal is cleaning up afterwards. Most foods leave behind residues of food on everything they touch, and should this residue remain untouched, it would rot and stink up the whole kitchen. In the bad old days, one would have to get a tub of water and soap and scrub the food off with a cloth or brush. Sinks mildly improved things, and dishwashers majorly improved things. Restaurants even have industrial dishwashers that can continuously load plates, wash them, and unload the plates for the incoming customers. (Most restaurants do not need to run them perpetually, but they have that ability if needed.) My own dishwasher is terrible, requiring the user to do 99% of the washing before finishing the job, and would literally cook the food onto the plate if given a dirty one directly. I will replace it sometime in the foreseeable future with a more recent design (which doesn't do that), but what can be done about all the dirty pots, pans, and other things that can't fit in the dishwasher?
I could have a cleaning robot that, on signal, comes out of a hiding place, scrubs all unused food from the utensils, vacuums the debris into a holding chamber, and gives a quick wash, soap, rinse, and dry. It would then place the utensil back into place, dispose of the dirty liquids in the sink, and return to storage. I imagine it being spider-shaped, with many legs for stability, several strong manipulators so that it can pick up heavy pots, scrubbing arms with attached bristles, a soap dispenser, a vacuum tube, and a chemical "nose" trained to recognize scents of common cooked foods. It would seek to the source of "cooked food," lift the source with the manipulators, scrub on all sides with the scrubbers, vacuuming each surface before turning. (Although if it does spill anything, there are four models of mopping robots on the market.) It would then apply a small amount of water, soap, scrub, more water, vacuum. It can rub a cloth on a utensil to dry it, then put it down. When it cannot find "cooked food," it should walk to the sink, which I assume can respond to a signal with another one, helping it find it, and eject the vacuum chamber's contents down the disposal. It should also be able to activate the water-flow and disposal by signal, stopping when the grinding reaches a certain tone. (The disposal sounds different when working empty and when grinding food.) It should then return to storage, where it can clean out the vacuum chamber with a wash or something, refill the water and soap, and possibly have the pads and cloth changed.
A somewhat larger robot spider could collect plates, and place them in the dishwasher. The dishwasher could be automatically run at certain times.
If all of these are computer controllable, one is now never too tired to cook, because now one can have preprogrammed recipes made for you with no effort on your part. Chefs that enjoy cooking can have their least favorite parts automated and manually do the rest.
The market for pre-packed food, (Better known as "TV Dinners" because they were invented when TV was new and therefore anything related was clearly a must-have thing made of pure awesomeness), would now be limited to people who genuinely like the way it tastes, and not the no-time-to-cook people or I-don't-know-how people that buy it now.
I also predict many interfaces for this, using a front end and a back end. The back end would actually direct the machines according to prepared instructions. The front end would have a nice user interface familiar to the user, and would list choices. There would be many front ends. A windows user unfamiliar with computers would have a DINNER icon on their desktop that they would double click, and it would provide a list of buttons with large pictures of the food. They would click the one that interested them. An adventurous UNIX user's front end would be a command-line script with a "-random" option that selected a random cuisine, which they would run daily from cron at maybe 5pm daily so that they could sit down to a new dinner every night by 6pm. (cron is a UNIX program that allows you to run programs at certain times, such as "6pm every day," or "every saturday at 12pm," or even "once a minute.")
Today, there are still bakers, but many of them have been replaced with mixing machines and food processors, because paying someone else to cook your food is expensive and annoying. We don't mind the slight loss of unemployment, because being a medieval baker sucked. Being a modern baker is significantly more fun, because now you can create loads and loads of food that many people will eat, instead of working 12 hours a day just to feed one village.
What else could be done to help out in the kitchen? Certainly more than the existing works, which help prepare the food, but can't help anymore once the heat is applied.
Let's start with ingredient selection. Raw ingredients can be kept in pneumatic tubes and delivered from a signal. Ingredients that should be stored cold would start in a refrigerated area, of course.
An auto-stirring device would be appreciated, I reason from my own experience. Many foods need significant stirring as to not burn on the bottom of the pan and cook evenly. I can't use most chemistry solutions to this, such as magnetic rods spun by a second magnet below attached to a motor, because the heat would damage any magnet involved. In addition, many foods are acid and would absorb an excessive amount of iron.
I can, however, use the industrial solution of a rod attached to large "wings," and rotate the rod by small motor. I know that this can be made not to melt or dissolve in the food, because "wings" exist that can survive being plunged into molten metal. Stirring would be done by yanking the device down into the pot. A non-corrosive metal should be used, or at least one with favorable nutritional properties.
Ovens should have a temperature probe that it can insert into the food and read. It could display this on the front of the oven, for the chef's convenience, so that it is no longer necessary to open the oven to see if the food is ready. Also, it would help if they could automatically turn over some foods, such as meats, say with a fork-on-a-jointed-rod that could be stabbed in, and torqued to deftly turn the food over. This would, again, be controllable from outside the oven, or, for greater automation, computer signal.
Most chefs enjoy distributing and laying out the food, but automation is again possible. A turkey-baster like device could collect fixed portions of soup or other liquid foods, large meat-and-vegetable portions could be cut with knives and placed on a plate with a tong-like device, and semisolid foods such as mashed potatoes can be automatically scooped.
A cook's least favorite part of the meal is cleaning up afterwards. Most foods leave behind residues of food on everything they touch, and should this residue remain untouched, it would rot and stink up the whole kitchen. In the bad old days, one would have to get a tub of water and soap and scrub the food off with a cloth or brush. Sinks mildly improved things, and dishwashers majorly improved things. Restaurants even have industrial dishwashers that can continuously load plates, wash them, and unload the plates for the incoming customers. (Most restaurants do not need to run them perpetually, but they have that ability if needed.) My own dishwasher is terrible, requiring the user to do 99% of the washing before finishing the job, and would literally cook the food onto the plate if given a dirty one directly. I will replace it sometime in the foreseeable future with a more recent design (which doesn't do that), but what can be done about all the dirty pots, pans, and other things that can't fit in the dishwasher?
I could have a cleaning robot that, on signal, comes out of a hiding place, scrubs all unused food from the utensils, vacuums the debris into a holding chamber, and gives a quick wash, soap, rinse, and dry. It would then place the utensil back into place, dispose of the dirty liquids in the sink, and return to storage. I imagine it being spider-shaped, with many legs for stability, several strong manipulators so that it can pick up heavy pots, scrubbing arms with attached bristles, a soap dispenser, a vacuum tube, and a chemical "nose" trained to recognize scents of common cooked foods. It would seek to the source of "cooked food," lift the source with the manipulators, scrub on all sides with the scrubbers, vacuuming each surface before turning. (Although if it does spill anything, there are four models of mopping robots on the market.) It would then apply a small amount of water, soap, scrub, more water, vacuum. It can rub a cloth on a utensil to dry it, then put it down. When it cannot find "cooked food," it should walk to the sink, which I assume can respond to a signal with another one, helping it find it, and eject the vacuum chamber's contents down the disposal. It should also be able to activate the water-flow and disposal by signal, stopping when the grinding reaches a certain tone. (The disposal sounds different when working empty and when grinding food.) It should then return to storage, where it can clean out the vacuum chamber with a wash or something, refill the water and soap, and possibly have the pads and cloth changed.
A somewhat larger robot spider could collect plates, and place them in the dishwasher. The dishwasher could be automatically run at certain times.
If all of these are computer controllable, one is now never too tired to cook, because now one can have preprogrammed recipes made for you with no effort on your part. Chefs that enjoy cooking can have their least favorite parts automated and manually do the rest.
The market for pre-packed food, (Better known as "TV Dinners" because they were invented when TV was new and therefore anything related was clearly a must-have thing made of pure awesomeness), would now be limited to people who genuinely like the way it tastes, and not the no-time-to-cook people or I-don't-know-how people that buy it now.
I also predict many interfaces for this, using a front end and a back end. The back end would actually direct the machines according to prepared instructions. The front end would have a nice user interface familiar to the user, and would list choices. There would be many front ends. A windows user unfamiliar with computers would have a DINNER icon on their desktop that they would double click, and it would provide a list of buttons with large pictures of the food. They would click the one that interested them. An adventurous UNIX user's front end would be a command-line script with a "-random" option that selected a random cuisine, which they would run daily from cron at maybe 5pm daily so that they could sit down to a new dinner every night by 6pm. (cron is a UNIX program that allows you to run programs at certain times, such as "6pm every day," or "every saturday at 12pm," or even "once a minute.")
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