DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

The PV array had a good day yesterday: 2430 watts DC is 97.2% of the Sunnyboy inverter’s theoretical maximum of 2500 watts.

We were pumping 2100 watts of surplus power into the grid — a personal record, as far as I’ve seen. Note the minus sign in front of the 2.1 figure. “-2.1 kW” means 2100 watts of surplus power are leaving our premises and feeding the neighborhood grid.

The inverter’s max output of 2500 watts can only be achieved with a specific combination of conditions:

• the sun must be directly overhead, so that the panels are perpendicular to the sun’s rays
• the panels must be clean
• the ambient temperature must be cool, because heat affects panel efficiency

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will testify in public under oath before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as long as the panel seeks no further public testimony from White House officials, the administration said Tuesday.

Why is the Bush Administration making deals with the 9/11 commission? Didn’t Bush set up the 9/11 commission?

No, he didn’t. (The memory is the first to go — or is it eyesight that’s the first to go? Hmm, I can’t remember that either. But then, my eyesight is already gone.) I was all set to write about the Bush Administration’s flip-flop on this investigation, but I’m happy to report that Bush & Co. have been completely consistent in their efforts to block it.

“President Bush initially opposed the creation of such a panel.” (April 1, 2003) Then, after the 9/11 families insisted on its creation, “Leaders of [the] commission … complained .. that the Bush administration had been too slow to provide access to key documents and was intimidating witnesses by insisting that CIA and FBI ‘minders’ attend sensitive interviews.” (July 9, 2003) Bush & Co. continued the delays; “the chairman of the federal commission … said the White House was continuing to withhold several highly classified intelligence documents from the panel.” (Oct. 26, 2003) The commission made some headway but was again derailed by the Bush/Cheney obfuscation machine; “President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have placed strict limits on the private interviews they will grant to the [commission], saying they will meet only with the panel’s top two officials and that Bush will submit to only a single hour of questioning.” (Feb. 26, 2004)

And finally, Condoleezza Rice refused to testify before the commission. You have to appreciate her game face. She would make a formidable poker opponent. I think she could outstare a person with no eyelids.

So, anyway, it’s not as inscrutable as I thought when I wrote the title of this piece. It all makes perfect sense: if you don’t want the answers to be found, delay the investigation.

We finally had that fallen fir tree cut down. The arborist did a great job of not smashing the fence.

The tree was 120 feet tall. Now it’s in about 20 pieces, staked to the banks of the creek into which the pieces fell as they were cut.

I was right about the rigging. The arborist had tied himself to a nearby tree and shaved off all the branches on the near side, in case he would have to Tarzan over to it if the one he was cutting gave way. There was some risk that as he lopped the top off, the base of the tree would stand back up, catapulting him across the back yard. Note how the trunk is tied off.

There was a nontrivial risk of dismemberment in this project. That’s one of my criteria for outsourcing house- and yardwork: “Can I lose a limb? If yes, call a contractor.”

For you visual learners, Joe Stump created this handy flowchart. I’m wishing there were some cute iconographic representations of severed limbs on there. Does anyone on alt.tasteless make a clip-art collection?

Two articles in today’s Chron give an overview of environmental toxins. The more interesting of the two is written by a woman who participated in a “body burden” study — a rigorous test to measure the presence of foreign chemicals in her body. The results are (of course) pretty scary; for example, they detected something called Mirex, an “organochlorine pesticide,” which was banned 26 years ago. That’s what they mean by “persistent:” this stuff doesn’t go away.

Worse, some of these compounds can be passed to fetuses and children. So if you think you’re doing your newborn a favor by breast-feeding, you might instead be condemning him or her to a lifetime of disease due to the various toxins you’ve been exposed to.

What’s fascinating about this article is that the author lives what I would consider a healthy, eco-conscious lifestyle. As she writes,

I haven’t worked in factories or lived in heavily industrial areas; I’ve had access to good, organic food; I’m well educated and knowledgeable about the dangers of pesticides and have made a point of not keeping them in my house.

You might read that and conclude that there’s no point trying to be healthy, because you’ll accumulate toxins even when you try to avoid them. You may even be right.

I wish they’d tested some people who live a traditional, semi-poisonous American lifestyle: genetically-engineered, chemically flavored junk foods, salmonella-infused poultry and dairy products, mercury-laced tuna, etc. Maybe lifestyle choices really don’t make a difference — maybe we are all equally doomed. After all, how far away is the nearest Superfund site? Probably not that far. (You can look it up at Scorecard.org.)

Here’s the article: Toxic America: Tracking the hazardous chemicals that seep stealthily into our bodies

My recent pizza articles generated mail from readers with questions about the mechanics of pizza-making. (Most of the following tips and tools apply to bread-making too.)

There are deep pizza-industry secrets employed by successful pizzarias across the planet. I won’t share those with you because they’re all about cutting costs, e.g. reusing yesterday’s leftover cheese. You can make better pizza in your own kitchen.

First you’ll need a great dough recipe. Pizza toppings are important, but if the crust is below par, the best toppings in the world won’t rescue your finished pie from mediocrity.

The best pizza-dough recipe I’ve ever made is Peter Reinhart’s delayed-fermentation recipe, which appears in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. I’ve used that recipe since the book came out, and it has never let me down. As an alternative, you can use any dough recipe that calls for nothing more than flour, water, yeast, salt, and (optionally) olive oil, but I’d recommend you cut the specificed yeast amount in half, double the rise time, and make the dough the day before (leaving it to spend the night in the refrigerator).

To make Reinhart’s dough recipe, you won’t need to knead, but you will need a mixer. I use and recommend a 325-watt, 5-quart KitchenAid “Artisan Series” mixer. KitchenAid makes smaller models but they’re not suited to bread-making; in fact this model is actually a bit undersized if you plan to entertain. At a recent pizza dinner for six, I made two batches of dough; given a bigger mixer I could have simply doubled the recipe and saved half the time.

The mixer I lust for is the 525-watt, 6-quart KitchenAid “Professional Series” model. It’s big enough to handle about 90% of my needs in a single batch.

Quick mixer-mishap story: I found the limits of my mixer when making a batch of focaccia. The dough was a bit too stiff. The resistance against the dough hook must have been huge, for the torque ripped the welded metal tab off the side of the mixing bowl. I had to take the bowl to a local machine shop to have the tab welded back on.

Now that you have dough, you’ll need to bake it. There are three essential tools for this stage.

The first is inexpensive but no less critical for its low cost: kitchen parchment. I build pizzas directly on (unbleached) parchment paper. The paper makes it easy to transfer pizzas into the oven, because it’s easy to lift an edge and slide the raw pizza onto a peel or sheetpan. Parchment paper is coated with silicon, which will release the dough after reaching a certain temperature.

I use parchment for bread-baking, too; in fact I wouldn’t want to bake bread or pizza without it. The only alternative I know is to use mounds of semolina or cornmeal, which like tiny ball-bearings can prevent dough from sticking to whatever surface you want it not to stick to. But this makes a mess on the floor and in the oven. Parchment is superior.

Moving one step closer to the oven, you’ll need a pizza peel. If you have a sheetpan with no edges, you can use it instead, but you’ll find the peel easier because of the handle.

Finally, inside the oven you’ll need a pizza stone. I use and recommend Old Stone Oven brand because the stones are thicker than others. Thicker stones retain more heat, which is entirely the point of using stones at all. Old Stone makes a 16-inch round pizza stone and a rectangular 14x16 inch stone. The rectangular is great for baking multiple loaves of bread at once. Either shape is suitable for pizza.

The last essential tool for successful pizza making: a suitable cutter. Cook’s Illustrated recently conducted a 5-way test and concluded (as I recall) that big wheels and handles are the two critical elements to a useful cutter. Amazon offers a wide selection of pizza cutters.

Conspicuously absent: I don’t recommend any sort of pan because I don’t use them. Bake the pizzas directly on the stone (using parchment to ease handling).

Then, when the pizza comes out of the oven, set it on a wire rack for a minute or two. This helps prevent the crust from becoming soggy. I use and recommend Calphalon nonstick cooling racks because they’re sturdy, they’re large enough for a 12''-13'' pizza, and they don’t have clumsy collapsible legs that require two hands to operate.