Chilling aka Refrigeration

Started reading the book How We Got To Now by Steven Johnson.  So far, it is like a more linear in-depth version of James Burke’s Connections. 

The first story was of silicon starting with a naturally formed piece of glass in the Libyan desert that was found in King Tut’s tomb.  From there it moved on to Turkish glass blowers moving to Venice to mirrors, lenses, glasses and telescopes to fiber optics and the world wide web.

The second story is presumably about refrigeration starting with the story of Frederic Tudor shipping ice from Boston to the Caribbean.  He started rich, went broke and then made fortune.

While casting about my mind for a topic tonight, I thought again of refrigeration. I was sure I had written about it before on my Gratitude blog.  With help from the magic of Google on Blogspot, I found a post from back in May of 2011 that covers a few of the miracles of refrigeration [back when I was still fighting with formatting issues in my first 100 Gratitude blog posts].

Modern refrigeration
Feeling lazy about cooking tonight, it was dinner from the freezer. Pulled sausage, corn, potatoes and an ice cream bar from the freezer. I usually nuke frozen food in the microwave. Tonight I went all out and used a steamer/double-boiler for the corn. It was not gourmet. The food was good enough and could hardly have been easier to make.
I tend to cook a hunk of meat (chicken, pork, beef or fish by frequency) and maybe have a salad with it for a meal. Tonight's dinner was reasonably well balanced for me.
Some day I will work more on that diet and exercise thing. Lord (and anyone who sees me) knows that I need it.
I am grateful for my refrigerator/freezer and the amazingly wonderful selection of meats, veggies, fruits and prepared foods at local grocers that I can stick in it.

                                                           
I am still grateful for the miracle of refrigeration and heat exchangers.  I will buy a bit better sliding door AC unit this summer than the one I got last summer with a closed cold air circulation cycle so it does not blow cold air outside and can sit outside making it a bit quieter in my bedroom.

No comments:

Post a Comment