Apple Dumplings Again

  In the Fall I try to make apple dumplings at least once. I watch for the fresh apple crop to begin showing up and then I plan a baking day. I made a pan of six yesterday for our Saturday morning card game. Here they are coming out of the oven.

 I have to say that these were  not nearly as pretty as other years. Initially the dough was far too dry and I added milk twice and eventually got it too soft. So I worked a bit more flour into it, at least so it could be rolled out to the proper size. Tom said the pan looked more like apple crisp. In any case,  the taste was quite good and in line with what Mom used to make when we were kids.

 I've written about making them before and the recipe is posted here.

 A few in-progress pictures might be helpful for those who haven't made them before ...

 Here's the dough after the margarine was "cut in". It's of a crumbly texture.

 And the sheet of dough cut into six equal size squares. Well, somewhat!

 I pile the apple chunks atop the dough and then add sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and a small square of margarine.

 I fold them a bit roughly and I don't have much pride in how the final dumplings look. But the taste is truly wonderful. The best that can be said is that they look homemade.

 Here's the pan just out of the oven. When the dumplings are served I place them in a dessert bowl and spoon extra sauce atop them. I like the dough to get a little "dry" in the oven, at least on the tops. I check the dough for doneness by pushing a toothpick into several pieces of dough and make sure it comes up clean.

 So Saturday morning cards went well. We had a fresh baked good, tea and coffee, and dumplings. And maybe best of all, I won the game.

Captured a Meteor on Video

[Clipart]

  I had not reviewed all the video I saved from the Wyze cam on the night of 09/02/21. I posted a clip here but I've never reviewed the captured footage from the rest of the night. When a friend of mine in Arkansas made a nice capture of a meteor last night, I thought it wise to check my recordings.

 Turns out the Wyze captured a number of meteors, This one was the best. It was recorded at 3:41 AM and the meteor can be see entering the frame from the upper right at the 17 second mark.

 This proves that the camera can capture a meteor quote well and should be of great use during a meteor shower..

 I reviewed all four hours of the footage I saved (though I had the camera running all through the night) and found other streaks of light but none so clear as this one. There were also a great many satellites. At one point there were two almost on each other's tail That was probably part of SpaceX's Starlink Internet service. Those satellites are launched in batches and cluster together until they're spread out.

 I also noted a number of airplanes. They're unmistakable by their steadily flashing white and red lights.

Later: I have just reviewed the final hour of the recording (from 4 AM - 5 AM) and I've counted 10 meteors in  that time frame. I'll post them here:

Meteor at 04:00:51

Meteors at 04:07:30 and 04:07:33

Meteor at 04:08:54

Meteor at 04:13:53

Meteor at 04:25:39

Meteor at 04:34:53 - The Best of the lot?

Meteor at 04:47:10

Meteor at 04:53:29

Meteor at 04:55:56

NBC again!

  For a week or two I've watched the Night Blooming Cereus sets buds and prepare to bloom. One bud aborted but three carried through to gorgeous blossoms.

 First 09/11/21:

And now 09/12/21:

 Each night Tom and I would go outside between 9 PM and 10 PM and look through the porch window. The plant is indoors but the blooms have naturally faced outward.

 There's no getting used to the flowers the NBC produces. And it's always a surprise. At least the surprises are no longer a decade in the making as Mom thought.

Wyze at Night

  I've continued experimenting with my Wyze V3 at night. Yesterday I saw that the International Space Station (ISS) would make a pass just to my north beginning at 5:45 AM. That sounded like a good test: it would be high enough in the northern sky (44°) to be easily visible and it would be too early for me to get out of bed.

 So I set the Wyze up in the back yard before I hit the sack.

 I took Mom's wooden stool that she kept on the back porch and sat the camera atop it. I held the camera down with a small piece of wood across the camera's base, weighted down with a brick (in case the wind blew). I ran an extension cord from the garage to the camera and placed the connection and transformer inside a plastic bag (in case it rained). In other words, this was one high class experiment.

 From behind, the camera was angled high enough to see from NW to NE. The frame is wide enough  (130°) that the edge of the garage shows up in the videos (on the right). To avoid that I'd have had to use a longer extension cord and placed the camera farther afield. This was just to be a quick experiment so I didn't want to bother with it.

So, how did it do? Well, my first goal was to catch the ISS. The camera caught it beautifully. The clock is on the lower right and that is the local time. At 5:47:19 you'll see the ISS pass just under Polaris.

 For a $38 camera, it does a pretty good job. The view is a bit "noisy" but it's entirely good enough for this sort of thing. The camera is certainly not designed for this use.

 I also set the camera up to record a time lapse from 9 PM (09/09/21) to 7 AM (09/10/21). It was supposed to be a clear night but obviously it wasn't in the early hours. Nevertheless, the stars can be seen circling Polaris, rotating counter-clockwise.

 This time lapse was set to record one frame per minute. It ran for 10 hours so it recorded 600 frames. At a playback speed of 30 fps, the video runs 20 seconds.

 Can this idea be used for a meteor shower? Will the quick flash be enough to trigger a motion event? I would think so because headlights quickly flashing across the trees in this shot did cause such an event to be recorded.

 I think a winter night would be even better. We had enough clouds that the sky wasn't as clear as it might have been. But the result is plenty good for an experiment.

Time Lapse

  I've been experimenting with time lapse a bit. Our Wyze cameras that we use for security have that capability built in and I've thought about trying it many times but never got around to it.

 I tried the V3 a few days ago but I left the default setting of grabbing a frame at 3 seconds. That's far too often and my first test from 8 AM to 8 PM resulted in a whopping 1.3 gigabyte file. That's useless for most things since it can't easily be shared. And because it's "almost" normal time, the time lapse effect is mostly thrown away.

 So yesterday I set up one of the V2's from 9 AM to 8 PM and set the capture rate as once per minute. That's more like it. The 60 frames/hour, played back at 30 fps, compress an hour to 2 seconds. And the entire file runs just 22 seconds and uses just under 49 megabytes.

 Here it is:

 That seems a reasonable number to use in the future. It creates a true time lapse effect and the file size is manageable.

 Next I'd like to try this at night and probably aim the camera towards Polaris and see the effect of stars rotating on a circular path. The V3 has what Wyze calls a "Starlight sensor". It does record the night sky reasonably well. There's quite a bit of noise but I think as we approach winter, colder nights should settle that down.

 Click on the above image for a higher resolution view. This gives some idea of the magnitude of stars that are visible with this camera.

 I'd run a time lapse on our Night Blooming Cereus but, since it blooms in the dark, there wouldn't be much to see, and right when you'd want to see it the most. But flowers opening is an idea.

Too Many of Our Goals ... [quote]

 

Lemon Zucchini Bread

  The garden avalanche continues so I've been on the lookout for recipes that make use of some of the zucchini. I'm partial to sweets so a recipe posted on Facebook caught my eye.

 There are a number of recipes available but I chose the one credited to "Lemon Tree Dwelling. The recipe is available here.

 

 I'd have preferred making two loaves (I certainly have enough zucchini) but I figured this one-loaf recipe was a smart test until I found it whether I liked it. I do!

 Anyone who reads my blog entries that involve recipes quickly realize that I seldom follow directions. There's simply no sense in combining the dry ingredients in one bowl and other ingredients in another. My philosophy is to use one bowl and mix the wet ingredients first. I added the shredded zucchini first and then added everything except the flour. This makes it easier to mix thoroughly. The picture above is after I added the flour and was ready to pour the batter into the baking pan.
 By the way, when  the lemon is added the mixture foams a bit. It settles down when the flour is added.

 Here is the single baking pan with the batter added. It's a pretty yellow and the kitchen sure had a wonderful lemony smell.

 The competed loaf. At 50 minutes I tested it and it was done. I suppose this depends on the "wetness" of the zucchini. The instructions call for not squeezing or drying the shredded zucchini and that's unlike many recipes I've used. The zucchini (along with the vegetable oil and lemon juice) supply the moisture here so it's necessary to have it "wet". But the extra five minutes baking time might be necessary for some.

 I took the loaf out of the pan as soon as it began to cool (I don't have a wire rack). It's just about perfect. As soon as it had mostly cooled I made the glaze and applied it. Note: I place the cooled loaf back in the pan for this step. It contains the glaze and makes everything less messy.

 The glaze is perhaps the best part. It is tart and sweet at the same time and delicious! The instructions allow for doubling the glaze. That's a god idea if you have dessert lovers.

 This recipe is a keeper. It's a novel turn on the basic zucchini quick bread recipe.