Many people assume perfect normal distributions when looking at data, but this is not always the case. An example data set is shown below where the data is clearly non normal and both the normal and non parametric tolerance intervals and means are shown. The mean is obviously the same but the 99% tolerance intervals show some key distinction. The normal tolerance intervals overestimates and unrealistically goes to -1.907 because it assumes a normal distribution and “equal” datapoints on both sides of the mean. This is not the case and the non parametric tolerance interval is obviously more accurate as it takes into account the “Real” aspect of the data.
I know many people just default to always assuming their distributions are normal but this is not always true and wrong assumptions tend to backfire when it comes to statistics.
Brussels Sprouts, Bacon & Gruyère, a match made in heaven. A perfect balance of seared vegetables, cured meats and intermingled cheese. I use this as a quick and easy recipe that really doesn’t need much explanation. Key notes are that the Brussels sprouts need to be properly seared not lazily boiled and the cheese needs to be added while everything is warm so it softens up. Different cheeses could be used but gruyère is a good fit as it is a firm aged cheese with character.
Now that its strawberry season it is fairly easy and cheap to get large quantities of strawberries at the farmers market but this won’t last long so its time to “make hay while the suns out”. My personal method for converting large amounts of strawberries to shelf stable snacks is strawberry “Chips” where 5mm cut strawberries are dehydrated at 135F for ~12hrs. This makes a good snack for the rest of the year and due to its very low moisture content once its done it is shelf stable.
Unfortunately Canada does not have much of a variety of mushrooms at any large or specialty grocery stores so I was fairly fortunate to get my hands on fresh morrell mushrooms. I don’t have much of a recipe as a good mushroom can be just slow fried in butter and tossed with fresh made pasta.
These weren’t my favourite mushroom (Chanterelle #1) but were a refreshing enough change for the regularly available mushrooms.
In the past I thought the the typical way of measuring a materials density is to measure its volume and then weigh it. As there are obvious difficulties and flaws (fluids can evaporate during measurements, volume size errors) a different way is to use a refractometer which uses a fluids index of refraction to estimate it’s density/etc. These all have to be calibrated for the particular working fluid and I have one made for ethanol. It is a good tool and a non destructive small sample way of finding the alcohol %.
After calibration at the low and high end I was able to measure the alcohol% in various drinks and found some that under deliver. One key thing to note is to never take measurements blindly as alcoholic beverages that have high sugar content can artificially change the alcohol% as it changes the fluid density.
After some software installs one of my PROXMOX virtual machines is running a bit low on space. More of a note for myself this is the process of provisioning more space pulled right form the official page.
Select the VM, Click on Hardware, Select the disk, and under disk action select the incremented increase.
I may lie and say that “a classic Moscow mule is a bit crude” being served in a copper mug and that is why I recommend an “elevated” version but in reality I just don’t want to buy copper mugs :(.
That being said this Moscow mule looks nothing like the classic but still carries that great punch. Serving this up in a coupe glass makes in a nice elegant sip and with crystallized ginger as a garnish it just brings it into another realm. I don’t have much preference to the vodka but “The Great Gentleman” ginger beer is my personal favourite in this (lime juice and homemade ginger syrup added as well :D) .
Not much to say, pretty simple and great. Not much variations but one absolute recommendation is a lime “twist”. Lemon just doesn’t have the same balance as a lime in this drink and there are some personal preferences to the tonic being used.
Being interested in tech, food and having a chemical engineering degree this is a personal favourite topic of mine (and may be a bit of a rant). Pasteurization is all about statistics and killin’ microbes.
Microbes aren’t smart. They don’t sit around waiting for the 165F safe internal temperature for chicken (as deemed by the FDA below) and die. The 165F chosen by the FDA is based on a bit of science and statistics and by using the same tricks you can actually go lower.
Microbe death follows a first order death equation dN = -k*N*dt where N is the size of the microbial population and k is the death rate. Where the factor k itself follows k = A*exp(-E/RT). Long story short, the decrease in a microbial population size is affected by time and temperature (different microbes behave differently).
This equation isn’t used too much in industry instead going with decimal reduction time z= (T2-T1)/[log(D1)-log(D2)] which defines the time required to reduce a microbial count by 90%.
What this all boils down to (great pun), is that the FDA safe internal temperatures values are based on the temperature at which we see a 7 log10 reduction in microbial content instantaneously. This is good for the government as their recommendation is very conservative and they can’t be blamed for anything other than dry chicken.
To cheat the system we can achieve the same 7 log10 reduction at a lower temperature but a longer time. There are curves for this but for example with chicken we can achieve this with 58c for 64 minutes meaning we can have both safe and juicy chicken (talk about having your cake and eating it too).
This is cool and all but the astute will note that a 7 log reduction is 99.99999% effective but not 0 and microbes just like cockroaches will multiply. If you leave one alive it will come back with more. For this the government uses a bit of statistics and for shell stable foods uses a 12 log reduction. Now a 12 log reduction also doesn’t guarantee 0 microbes but we get down to such small numbers that spoilage probability and economics take over. For a given set of starting microbes, a 12 log reduction and for R amount of containers you can estimate how many containers will have microbes out of a batch and if it an acceptable amount. So unfortunately the chances of buying processed food and having food poisoning are never 0 but are managed to safe levels.
Working in the food manufacturing industry, pasteurization is a critical step to ensure food safety. Now I don’t have any industrial ovens or equipment at home but I can get fairly close with home equipment. A follow up to my strawberry compote recipe https://adam-s.ca/strawberry-rhubarb-compote/ I decided to try pasteurizing the drink so I can extend its shelf life as I will be bringing these on a outdoor trip a week from now.
I will not get too deep into thermal death kinetics (but its a great topic for another time). But for pasteurization time and temperature matter most. I can use high temperature for a short time or lower temperature for a longer time. For this case I pasteurized at 90c for 1 hour (plus the startup time). I setup my sous vid for 194F (90c) and a probe along side it and put in my bottles and jars to be pasteurized (picture bellow). In industry I have used Datapaq at few different jobs to confirm the time at temperature which is critical to process and was able to emulate that with my own probe & logger. I was able to confirm exactly 1 hr at 90c and almost 2 hours at 80c which proves sufficient for pasteurization.
This was a fun project and I was very happy to see such a consistent temperature profile, now if only temperature profiles were so “text book” at work :D.
