Taste Sensations

MEAN GREEN: I've been threatening to make a kale smoothie (it's all the rage) for days now. This morning, we finally got 'round to it.

It looked so pretty sitting there in the food processor, with the bright red berries, creamy Greek yogurt and crunchy green kale. We gave it a good spin, and I poured the concoction into three cups.

I tasted it first, with my back to the kids, as I didn't want to pollute their palates. Good thing my back was to them, as I'm sure I grimaced. Not deterred, I gave them a hard sell, telling them to drink up the glorious elixir. 

Here's Annabelle's face at first taste.

And CJ looked like this. 

Sorry the photo is blurry. He was shuddering violently. Once he could talk, CJ spat out, ""Oh my, this tastes bad. What kind of abomination is this?"

And so, our first foray into the world of drinking your kale was a rather miserable failure. I will not be deterred. Stay tuned for Round 2.

TO THE MOON: On this day in history (July 16), Apollo 11 lifted off from Cape Canaveral. A towering craft at 363-feet tall, it was the summer of '69 and on board were astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., (you can call him Buzz). 

(credit:NASA-KSC)

(credit:NASA-KSC)

Four days later, Neil and Buzz were walking on the moon. 

RED PLANET POETRY: A couple weeks back, the kids and I got in on a NASA promotion to have our names on board their MAVEN spacecraft, which will be Mars-bound after its launch this November. However, getting our names on board came with a catch. We had to submit a Mars-inspired haiku, as well. 

Here's Annabelle's:

Fourth in our system
The red one floats in orbit
We come to explore

And CJ's:

Do you have life there?
That is what I wonder now
We cannot stop here

And mine: 

Mysterious Mars
Our rusty, dusty neighbor
Enchanting you are

Now, the public can vote on their favorite haikus. (You can vote for us by clicking on the embedded links with our names, above). There were nearly 30,000 haikus submitted, so I'm pretty sure John Q. Public isn't going to read all of them. Or even 100 of them. They'll probably read a page or two of them, and cast a couple votes. Our haikus are very near the last of thousands of pages, and we're not social media gurus, so we're not thinking we're going to win that contest. ;) But the way I see it, we've already won, as our names will be rocketing toward Mars come fall. (Incidentally, our names are already ON Mars, as we participated in a get your name on board program for Mars Science Laboratory ("Curiosity"), as well.

And speaking of Mars, right now Curiosity is on a Red Planet road trip. It started on July 4 is heading for Mount Sharp, a Martian mountain that rises 3.4 miles high (about the same as Mt. Rainier). The rover isn't going to set any land speed records as its top speed is just .09 MPH (.14 KM/H). As of July 9, MSL has a total odometer reading of 325 feet since it touched down in early August of 2012. Mission managers estimate it will take Curiosity nearly a year to make the 5-mile trek to the mountain.

This image from NASA/JPL-Caltech shows the turret of tools at the end of Curiosity's robotic arm. The rover's rock-sampling drill in the lower left corner of the image. You can see the lower slopes of Mount Sharp at the top of the photo.

TASTE TEST: As previously mentioned, we've started our "Science of Gastronomy" course through Coursera. One of our Week 1 assignments was doing an experiment that involved a 'taste map' of our tongues.

We were to use cotton swabs to apply four different mixtures (sweet, salty, bitter [cocoa powder], sour [vinegar]) to four different regions of our tongues and then chart the intensity of the taste. 

It was a fun exercise, but it's not an exact science. In fact, the 'fact' that different sections of the tongue are exclusively responsible for registering different basic tastes has been debunked in recent years.