Pea sized hail

Welcome to my patio here in Boulder, CO.  I hope you find this as amusing as I did at the time.  I was enjoying some insane cloud to ground lightning and made the decision not to save my plants due to risk of death via electrocution and it started hailing.  Listen to the video to hear my weather radio go off AS the hail is falling.  Luckily, my plants are fine!  I just think it's funny that the "warning" came too late to warn.  The amazing folks issuing the warnings are just two miles down the road, so I'm sure they had similar observations as me. 

Of course, going along with this, is the idea that the radar only sees the hail as it is hailing.  Since the hail started over me, I guess I don't get any warning, despite my best efforts.  It's also possible that the radar didn't catch the hail until it hit here because, well, there's mountains in my backyard.  Yay for live meteorology!  Lots of weather still kicking up in the area. 

Camera Purchasing Help!

Any suggestions on what direction to go when buying a new camera?  As you can tell from my regular food photos on this blog, my pictures are, well, poor.  I actually used to care about photography quite a bit, spending time in the dark room developing yearbook pictures back in high school.  Since loosing access to those amazing cameras, my photography skills are just awful!  I'll blame the camera, I'm sure there's something lacking on my end as well, but I want to improve, which is good enough for me.  My current camera is an old Sony.  It's my first digital camera since switching over from film ages ago.  My old Canon film camera was quite nice, but now useless. 

I originally thought I'd just upgrade my small hand-held digital camera since a lot of pictures that I take, I take while hiking, and I pay big bucks to have light gear.  I'm not going to hike in a huge camera everywhere I go.  Then I realized that I take tons of pictures that don't involve hiking!  Why not keep my current digital for the few times a year I go backpacking, then invest in a nice digital SLR for everything else? 

I guess my one limitation is price.  I wouldn't say I'm cheap, but I would say I have a fear of investing a large amount of money into any one thing.  I think this is because I've only been out of grad school for 2.5 years, I live with a grad student, and, well, I don't make much money, especially for the city I live in.  God forbid I ever need to buy a vehicle or a house! 

It's easy to take a cool picture with views like this and a good looking guy in the foreground, but when the view isn't so exciting, my camera is a failure.  This is Dave on Grays Peak (14,270 ft).  See more from this trip here:  http://lifeafterluckycharms.blogspot.com/2010/07/dave-and-i-had-little-freak-out-moment.html

Pretty things are easy to photograph, but I had to take 30 pictures to get two good ones with my current camera. 

Anyone have a camera that takes great pictures that I should know about?  Or any general camera advice?   I'm going to do my own investigation, but why not start with your suggestions?

Clouds and lightning

A quick note on lightning safety.  There's only two places that are safe to be during a lightning storm, your car (with your limbs inside), or in a building with plumbing.  That means that tents, pavilions, fields, biking, boating, golfing, swimming, hiking, and especially under a tree are places that you will be in BIG trouble, should lightning strike.  You'd be surprised how many golfers have been killed by lightning.  It can be awkward to stop a social event to go sit in your car while the storm goes over, but it is the right thing to do.  Several people die each year due to lightning strikes.  It's not rare, like most people make it out to be! 

Should you be around when someone is struck by lightning, it's perfectly safe to touch them immediately afterwards.  Feel for a pulse.  If there is none, start CPR right away while you instruct others to call 911 and direct the ambulance to the victim.  If you don't know CPR, all you have to do is sing to yourself the Beegees' "Staying Alive" and push on the person's breast plate for each beat until help comes.

A sign that you are about to be struck by lightning is that your hair starts to stand up, or you hear clicking noises due to a static build up.  If you get this sensation, you need to stop, squat, put your hands on your head and your elbows on your knees, and maintain this position, putting your weight on your toes. After this sensation goes away (maybe lightning will strike the tree nearest you, dissipating the voltage/potential/buildup), run for cover inside the nearest car or building.  This position is your best option if you are stuck outdoors with no cover nearby.  Stay decently far from trees, and take on this squatting position until the storm goes over.  There is a picture out there of people who thought it would be cool to photograph their hair standing on end.  One of them is dead and the other paralyzed from being struck.  Don't be silly!  Stay safe!
Thunderstorm season has finally come to Boulder and I've gotten a few pics of fun clouds this past week.  Yesterday, Dave and I were outside and I heard some rumbling.  I looked up and saw these lovely mammatus clouds below.  I was super giddy and ran for the camera before they disappeared.  The other night I heard some noise coming from outside, turned off the fans so I could hear better, then ran out and realized it was hailing.  It didn't do any damage because the hail was so small, but I was able to pull a few tomato plants under the overhang just in case.  The lightning show was quite enjoyable.  We just don't get that here enough.  I remember spending a lot of time in my parents' living room with views in three directions, and enjoying lightning shows all spring and summer long.  Here it happens a only a handful of times each year.

Mammatus Clouds, which form on the underside of the cumulonimbus anvil. 

 

This cumulus cloud will soon be a cumulonimbus cloud, but the reason for photographing it is the pileus cloud capping it.  See the sort of thin, whispy thing almost near the tip top of the storm? 

Have a safe and happy 4th of July!  Remember, no fireworks in Boulder due to fire danger!  We can still enjoy the big shows, though!

CSA Week 3

This week from my CSA we got baby salad greens, bag of spinach, baby dill, green onions, radishes, kale, and garlic scapes.  I just checked next week's list and they are the things I am the most sick of eating.  Great.  Here's what I made this week:

Sauteed Kale-- Bobby Flay's recipe helped me use up all Kale except a small baggie I saved for Dave to make a super green shake, a shake he enjoyed at a Phish concert in southern Cali a while back, which also uses spinach and dates.  The sauteed kale was super good.  I wouldn't mind making more of it!

Spinach and garlic scape Risotto-- This used up my green onions, garlic scapes (green things that come out the top of the garlic bulb), and half of my spinach.  It was mighty tasty!  I just made standard risotto with white cooking wine and parmesan and used the green onions and garlic scapes in place of the usual white onion then added the veggies later on.  Whenever I make risotto, I wonder if that dude from Hell's Kitchen would yell at me, but I think I've nailed the texture. 

Cucumber salad-- I couldn't get dill without making my favorite cucumber salad!  1 huge cucumber, 1/2 a small white or yellow onion, 1/2 cup sugar dissolved in 1 cup heated up white vinegar and a bunch of dill.  Chop everything and pour the vinegar mixture over it, then let it sit overnight.  I think you could add more sugar if you'd like, mine's a bit intense.  This is a perfect idea for your 4th of July parties on Monday! 

Veggie bags-- got rid of my radishes.  If you're going to fire up the grill for meat, you should make some tin-foil bags and fill them with onions, potatoes, peppers, and garlic.  I added chopped radishes.  My radishes were extremely poor quality!  I don't know if it was because they sat in my fridge for 2 days and maybe my humidity setting wasn't right or if they were bad before I got them, but the radishes were soft and hard to cut when I chopped them up and they didn't get any better after cooking.  Ah well.

I still have lettuce left from last week, so we're still trying to scarf down salads left and right.  I hope we can catch up before this week's load.  At least it's keeping well because it's so fresh.  I've never had to clean my lettuce this much before.  There are chunks of dirt in my bunches.  I'm spending a ton of water to clean.


Anyway, I also made a flourless chocolate cake, which has nothing to do with veggies, but hey, why not? 
A friend made this flourless chocolate cake for a party I attended a while back  How sweet is she!?!?!  This cake is so delicious. The creamy topping seems odd (sour cream based), but it really adds just what you need to make this thing perfect. It's a little bitter as is, which is perfect for dark chocolate lovers.  If you prefer semi-sweet, try using that instead!

Flourless Chocolate Cake

Cucumber Salad

Lastly, if you're looking for something to bring to that 4th of July party on Monday, here's my favorite potluck recipes for Mexican Caviar. 

Dr. Carl Sagan

The Varieties of Scientific Experience, A Personal View of the Search for God by Carl Sagan is my latest read.  Carl Sagan's last book, published by his wife a few years after he died, includes lectures that he gave on this topic.  This is one of a few of his books that I keep on my shelf including Cosmos and Demon-Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark.  I can't remember if I've discussed these on the blog before, but for those of you utterly lost, Carl Sagan wrote Contact, which became a Blockbuster staring Jodi Foster.  He starred in his own TV series Cosmos, popularized science, and was a professor of astrophysics at Cornell. There's no one I admire more.  Although I am somewhat interested in astrophysics, and I plan to learn more about this topic in the near future, I am most interested in Dr. Sagan as a scientist and his scientific views on society, skeptical inquiry, and the scientific method.  This includes his commentary on the silliness of pseudoscience and people's focus on many pseudoscientifc things, when there are many more interesting scientific things to be talking about.  I'm also very interested in his views on religion and God, which was the focus of this book.  I became interested in his views on religion when I fell in love with one of his quotes, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." 

Through some of my favorite chapters, titled "Nature and Wonder:  A Reconnaissance of Heaven," "The Organic Universe," "Extraterrestrial Intelligence," and "The God Hypothesis" he takes us on a journey through the universe and evolution and shows us the lack of evidence for the existence of God, the way God is defined in western religions.  In his Q&A at the end of the book, he states, "And I hope it is clear that the fact that I do not see evidence of such a God's existence does not mean that I then derive from that fact that I know that God does not exist.  That's quite a different remark.  Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  Neither is it evidence of presence."  As I teach on the first day of my science class, "Is there a God?" is not a scientific hypothesis because it does not follow the principle of falsifiability.  It cannot be proven wrong, so it is not a valid question to ask in the sciences.  There's no experiment for "Is there a God?" so it's not a place for science.  Having said that, there is also no evidence that God exists and it takes a leap of faith to believe in something with no proof of existence.

This large spiral galaxy is only about 2 million light years away, making it the closest one to our own Milky Way.  the flattened rotating disk of stars and clouds of gas and dust is about 200,000 light years across and contains several hundred billion solar systems.  (Andromeda Galaxy)

Great book, great man.  Here's a few quotes from the book, which will be spoilers if you plan on reading it.  

"Since the times are so extraordinary (spoken in 1985), since they are unprecedented, it is in no way clear that ancient prescriptions retain perfect validity today.  That means that we must have a willingness to consider a wide variety of new alternatives, some of which have never been thought of before, others of which have, but have been summarily rejected by one culture or another.  We run the danger of fighting to the death on ideological pretexts (much of his book worries about nuclear war).

We kill each other, or threaten to kill each other, in part, I think, because we are afraid we might not ourselves know the truth, that someone else with a different doctrine might have a closer approximation to the truth.  Our history is in part a battle to the death of inadequate myths.

'If I can't convince you, I must kill you.  That will change your mind.  You are a threat to my version of the truth.  The thought that I may have dedicated my life to a lie, that I might have accepted a conventional wisdom that is no longer, if it ever did, corresponds to the external reality that is a very painful realization.  I will tend to resist it to the last.  I will go to almost any lengths to prevent myself from seeing that the worldview that I have dedicated my life to is inadequate.'

I'm trying to describe a psychological dynamic that I think exists, and it's important and worrisome!

Instead of this, what we need is a honing of the skills of explication, of dialogue, of what used to be called logic and rhetoric and what used to be essential to every college education, a honing of the skills of compassion, which, just like intellectual abilities, need practice to be perfected.  If we are to understand another's belief, then we must also understand the deficiencies and inadequacies of our own.  And those deficiencies and inadequacies are very major.  This is true whichever political or ideological or ethnic or cultural tradition we come from.  In a complex universe, in a society undergoing unprecedented change, how can we find the truth if we are not willing to question everything and to give a fair hearing to everything?  There is a worldwide closed-mindedness that imperils the species.  It was always with us, but the risks weren't as grave, because weapons of mass destruction were not then available.  Why is there not a commandment exhorting us to learn?  "Thou shalt understand the world.  Figure things out."  Very few religions urge us to enhance our understanding of the natural world.  I think it is striking how poorly religions, by and large, have accommodated to the truths that have emerged in the last few centuries. 

Let's think together for a moment about the prevailing scientific wisdom on where we come from.  (Knowing that he said this when I was 3 years old and 26 years later, people still are denying this makes me very, very depressed.).  The idea that nearly 15,000 million years ago the universe, or at least its present incarnation, was formed in the big bang, that for some 5,000 million years thereafter even the Milky Way Galaxy was not formed; that for some 5,000 million years after that the Sun and the planets and the Earth were not formed; that 5,000 million years ago, on an Earth not identical by any means to the one we know today, a large-scale production of complex organic molecules occurred that led to a molecular system capable of  self replication, and therefore began the long, tortuous, and exquisitely beautiful evolutionary sequence that led from those first organisms, barely able to make vague copies of themselves, to the magnificent diversity and subtlety of life that graces our small planet today.
...
I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed.  I think this search does not lead to a complacent satisfaction that we know the answer, not an arrogant sense that the answer is before us and we need do only one more experiment to find it out.  It goes with a courageous intent to greet the universe as it really is, not to foist our emotional predispositions on it but to courageously accept what our explorations tell us."

A great quotable on natural selection:

"Many animals have codes of behavior.  Altruism, incest taboos, compassion for the young, you find in all sorts of animals.  Nile crocodiles carry their eggs in their mouths for enormous distances to protect the young.  They could make omelet out of it, but they choose not to do so.  Why not?  Because those crocodiles who enjoy eating the eggs of their young leave no offspring.  And after a while all you have is crocodiles who know how to take care of the young.  It is very easy to see.  And yet we have a sense of thinking of that as being somehow ethical behavior.  I'm not against taking care of children; I'm strongly for it.  All I'm saying is, it does not follow if we are powerfully motivated to take care of our young or the young of everybody on the planet, that God made us do it.  Natural selection can make us do it, and almost surely has."

On using God to explain what we don't yet understand

"Both in classic and in medieval times, it was prominently speculated that gods or angels propelled the planets, gave them a twirl every now and then.  The Newtonian gravitational superstructure replaced angels with GMm/r^2 (my students always forget to square this), which is a little more abstract.  And in the course of that transformation, the gods and angels were relegated to more remote times and more distant causality skeins.  The history of science in the last five centuries has done that repeatedly, a lot of walking away from divine microintervention in early affairs.

So as science advances, there seems to be less and less for God to do.  It's a big universe, of course, so He, She, or It could be profitably employed in many places.  But what has clearly been happening is that evolving before our eyes has been a God of the Gaps; that is, whatever it is we cannot explain lately is attributed to God.  And then after a while, we explain it, and so that's no longer God's realm.  The theologians give that one up and it walks over to the science side of the duty roster."

On evolution

"Suppose your father walked into this room at the ordinary human pace of walking.  And suppose just behind him was his father and just behind him was his father.  How long would we have to wait before the ancestor who enters the now-open door is a creature who normally walked on all fours?  The answer is a week.  Our quadruped ancestors are, after all, only tens of millions of years ago, and that's 1% of geologic time." 

Book Reports

Although I've finished a few books, I have two worth reporting to you about since setting my reading goals here.

Let's start with the first one.  I finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver a while ago and I can't stop thinking about it.  In fact, I went and got one of her novels Prodigal Summer, maybe?  I tried reading it, but it felt too much like a typical romance novel and I quit reading it and continued onto my nonfiction stack.  Anyway, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, will go down as one of my all time favorites.  The book is about her family's journey to eat local foods for a year.  In essence, she has a lot of land, planted insane amounts of food, bought chickens (eggs) and turkeys (meat), and frequently visited the farmer's market and her neighbors to get food.  She canned like crazy.  In doing so, she bonded with her two daughters over canning, making home made mozzarella while her husband made bread, weeding the garden, picking veggies, and raising the chickens and turkeys.  The book takes us through a year's worth of food and presents it in a way that my mouth was just watering for fresh veggies.  (Now that I'm in the thick of greens month at my CSA, I'm so over that craving!)  Reasons for eating local, as summarized by myself:

   1. supports your local economy,
   2. cuts down on greenhouse gases necessary to bring you your food from other states/countries,
   3. means that your food can be fresh off of the vine, and not bred to be hard enough to make a cross-country trip in a refrigerated semi trailer
   4. you'll know where your food came from and what was or wasn't sprayed on it,
   5. you'll appreciate your food more knowing the amount of effort that went into growing it,
   6. you'll learn how our grandmothers did things before the days of processed food, warehouse/grocery store ripened flavorless tomatoes, and watermelons available at in December.
   7. you'll eat things that are good for you
   8. you'll enjoy the challenge.

I find myself more aware of what I'm purchasing at the grocery store, and since I have my Community Supported Agriculture weekly now, I can do this really easily by avoiding the grocery store for veggies.  Of course there's a lot of improvement to be made on my part and the part of my grocery store.  This book was inspiring because she wasn't just preaching to the choir, she was inspiring me through her creative way of telling a story, not just listing out her year.  Plus, having never done a CSA before, and only having grown up knowing when strawberries, cherries, corn, and apples have their seasons, it was very enlightening to to get a biologist's wife's view of the veggies seasons and why we have greens, then colorful fruits, then roots.  I highly recommend that everyone read this book and a big thanks to my good friend Melissa for sending it my way! 

Let me share a few pictures of the latest state of the plants around here.  My tomatoes and basil are in flawless shape after fighting off a case of flea beetles.   

Peas!  I grew these!  The plant is up to my chest.  I'm so happy it grew!  They have a little filling in to do, then we are going to have peas galore!  Dave pointed out that last year, my peas grew about 6 inches, fell over, and that was the end of them.  This year I think I got them in early enough and that was key. 

Our fence that surrounds our tiny condo yard is covered in grape vines!  We had to intervene last weekend and keep the vines from taking over our plum tree as well as our entire yard.  I LOVE that this gives us privacy during the summer.

My care for this rosebush includes cutting it down every year because the branches are dead.  Then every year, new branches fly out of the ground and these beautiful roses bloom.  It's just getting started.  We also have a ton of sunflowers that are about to peek out along our walkway.  Whoever landscaped this area did such a great job!  We've had nonstop flowers since tulip season. 

Need Some Teaching Help

I teach this class that uses vector calculus to derive the equations of motion in the atmosphere.  Yeah, sounds like a blast, right?  That's why I need some help.  Maybe you can give me some advice?  I'm teaching this class for the second time this fall and am going through the motions of trying to improve it, but I think I need to take a step back and look at a few big picture teaching philosophy ideas first. 

1. What did your favorite math/science/engineering/derivation class teacher or professor do to keep you interested or at least not lost?
2. What are they teaching in high school teacher training these days that I could use in my class?  I'm thinking some of the cool tools that high school math teachers use, I could use.  
3. I've tried making digital notes that I can scroll through during class, then fill in the holes with example problems on the white board.  Any better ideas for presenting this material? Anyone else hate white boards with a passion?  Come to think of it, my white board is behind my projector screen, so this option won't even work in this classroom!  Maybe I can get a chalkboard mounted on a side wall. 
4. Lastly, I'm having a hard time organizing my materials for this course physically.  So I have a 5 inch binder of last year's notes, exams, homeworks, keys.  I have three textbooks that I use, an old notebook, a new notebook both filled with sample problems.  I usually organize digitally, but I'm not about to scan in a notebook's worth of sample problems.  Any organizational tips?  Is the 3-ring binder the way to go with those nice post-it tabs? 

I guess I just haven't mastered the upper level class yet.  I'm so used to my intro classes where I have colorful pictures, demos, labs, stories to go with every lesson.  It's hard not being good at this yet!  Help!

A little flavor of my current digital notes:

If I can't get anywhere with this class, I might just have to do live prep during the fall and switch to my next summer goal of creating computer labs.  Help!

Wisconsin Girl Makes Cheese at Home-- Queso Blanco

We've made paneer before, which is a cheese used in Indian cooking.  With my garden plans for this year of basil and tomatoes, I really want to learn to make fresh mozzarella before these veggies start coming in. Dave surprised me with a cheese making book and while I'm deciding what ingredients to order for the more complex cheeses, I thought I'd dry an easy recipe for Queso Blanco.  My immediate reaction to this process is that it was 90 degrees, we don't have air conditioning, I probably shouldn't have spent an hour over a hot stove making cheese.  Maybe it's more of a winter process?  I won't give up on my mozzarella dreams!

Before I show you the fun, why make your own cheese?  Frankly, because it's pretty darn cool.  The more hobbies I have, the better.  I don't need my mind rotting while I'm on "summer break."  Learning is fun.  Trying new things and succeeding makes a person feel good.  The flavors of cheeses made at home are going to be on par with the cheeses you might pay big bucks for at the grocery store, but will be infinitely better than the cheap cheeses you buy there.  I'm all for yummy cheese.  The ingredients for this cheese cost me about $12, mostly because the heavy whipping cream was so expensive (and Soopers didn't have regular old heavy cream, time to shop elsewhere for milk).  Keep in mind that I live in Colorado, where milk is not cheap.

Almost 2 gallons of milk, 3 cups of heavy cream, bring to 180 degrees F while stirring (BORING!)

Remove from heat and add a little over 1 cup of vinegar, stir for 10 minutes as curds form.  So cool!

Strain the whey from the curds using cheesecloth.  As you can see, I kept the whey because I attempted to make Ricotta with it afterwards with no luck.  This leads me to believe that the "whey" is not technically "whey" when you use vinegar.  Thoughts?  It's possible I didn't wait long enough for curd. 

Throw the curds back into the pot and stir in 0.9 oz. salt

Press.  Here's my ghetto cheese press.  Turns out, it didn't work very well and after letting it sit over night, I made another press in a cake pan and put 35lbs of weights ontop of it to try to get more whey to drain.  

Queso Blanco in a cake pan.  Apparently it's supposed to be hard, but it's not.  I will have to work on the pressing for my next batch, which will probably be more authentic and more complex.  You're supposed to serve it sauteed in butter.  It tastes really good, but I'm disappointed that I wasn't able to make it firm. 

Boulder Lefhand Canyon Maxwell Fire June 26, 2011

Lefthand Canyon from Fairview High School at 6:25 PM

From Fairview High School at 6:25 PM

From Fairview High School at 6:25 PM 

 

 

 

A 10 acre fire in the 4,000 block of Lefthand Canyon burns on a hot, dry, windy day in Boulder, Colorado.  Evacuation orders are in effect.  Stay up to date with the Daily Camera.  Comment on post if you'd like full resolution pics (or, you can click on them, I believe). 

Eating local Week 2

My CSA gave me rhubarb, spinach, cilantro, green onions, butter lettuce, red leaf lettuce, and radishes this past Tuesday.  I'm trying to be really efficient with the veggies so none go to waste, and so none carry over into the next week.  I've done a good job of planning, spending about an hour on Mondays to see what I have left, what I'm getting, and plan out a menu for the week.   That way I can grab a few groceries and spend some time on Tuesday cooking after I pick up the veggies (which I'm making myself run to instead of drive so I get in a nice work out since it is at the bottom of a huge ridge that I live on top of).  Somehow with about two hours of cooking on Tuesdays, I'm able to get set up for the week when I'm more busy.  I'm sure this will stop happening in the fall when school starts again, but for now it has worked pretty well. I'm sure you can tell that I love cooking, so this is fun for me.

Here's a list of what I made this week, and what ingredients it used up for me:
  spinach pesto-- spinach, parsley from last week, cilantro
  very green buttermilk salad dressing-- parsley, cilantro, spinach
  potato salad-- radishes and green onions
  strawberry rhubarb pie #2-- rhubarb
  salads-- leaf lettuce, butter lettuce

Spinach pesto is called Mando Bizzaro Sauce in the Moosewood cookbook.  Use one whole bunch of spinach in stead of basil in your pesto recipe, but add a few leaves of basil if you can.  Dave actually liked this better than regular pesto, but I prefer basil, which is why I have about 15 basil plants growing right now.

Very green buttermilk salad dressing was also from the Moosewood cookbook.  This was great, but next time I'll roast the garlic first to avoid garlic breath.

The potato salad came from a recipe I found online, here.  I love it!  Dave won't eat mustard (okay, that's putting it lightly, he actually won't even look at it, hates me when he sees it in our fridge, and I've witnessed him gag and nearly barf at a restaurant once when he tried some tartar sauce that had a dash of mustard in it) and he doesn't care for mayo.  He didn't even know what miracle whip was.  (I freaked him out by saying that it's not unheard of to make a Wonder Bread/miracle whip/bologna sandwiches in Wisconsin.)  So, I made this treat for myself and cut back on the number of potatoes.

Radishes, green onions, in potato salad

My pie this week used Bittman's Flaky Pie Crust recipe (don't tell my mom that I didn't have time to call her for her and aunt Darcy's mind-blowing pie crust recipe) and a gluten free oats crumble topping that I threw together after realizing Bittman didn't intend for the pie recipe to make a top and a bottom unless it was doubled.  I made the crust with Jules Gluten Free Flour and rolled it out between two pieces of plastic wrap, which made the process super easy and clean.  This week I had a significantly larger amount of rhubarb, but threw it all in the pie anyway.  It was definitely tarter, but good.  If I get more next week, I might try making jam instead. 

If you've ever tried making a gluten free pie crust, you might be tempted to give me an award for this one.

Tapioca is the best pie filling thickener.  Who knew?

Meanwhile, my garden has peas!  They will probably be ready to be picked next week.  I will have to share some pictures of my pea plant.  I've never seen anything like it, and since it's the first real thing I've grown without screwing something up, besides lettuce this spring and about 10 lonely cherry tomatoes last year, I have to gloat.