Cooking with a Cat

KITCHEN CHALLENGE: A couple of weeks back, an email from Food Network Magazine contained notice about a cooking contest for kids. It asked for recipes using King’s Hawaiian Original Hawaiian Sweet Rolls. 

So, we picked up a pack at the store a few days ago, and Annabelle mulled over ideas. She decided to make Loco Moco Mini sliders, a twist on a Hawaiian favorite food featuring a hamburger patty, gravy, and a fried egg that's usually served over rice. The Hawaiian rolls were the stand in for the starch.

She had to submit the recipe, a photo of the finished product and a portrait of the chef. 

Medium eggs were fried low and slow, in little cookie cutters so they'd fit on the little buns. 

She seasoned and fried up a pound of ground beef into six little patties, chopped up a pineapple, and made some brown gravy.

She split and toasted the Hawaiian rolls, put Japanese mayo on them, some broiled pineapple, the patty, the gravy and then topped it with the top bun. She sprinkled a little furikake on for fun and to spice things up.

It's a national contest and unlikely we'll hear anything about her entry, but it was a fun project and the kids and Christian got a nice lunch out of the endeavor.

IN THE WEEDS: We spent some time yesterday cleaning out our numerous deck planters to help get them ready for some of our vegetable starts. 

I was happy to see our rosemary is going gangbusters. Lots of blossoms and new growth.

PURRFECT GUEST: We have an extra critter on campus for a couple days this week. Kennedy went down to visit the Vegas family, so his cat Bexley is hanging out in our basement suite.

Bex is very photogenic.

I think I've taken more photos of him in the past two days than I have of our two dogs in the past two years.

GROUNDED: We've been waiting and watching for Ingenuity, the helicopter that hitched a ride with rover Perseverance, to make its first flight on Mars. Unfortunately, the maiden, historic voyage keeps getting delayed by NASA, which is a bit worrisome.

 

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter unlocked its rotor blades, allowing them to spin freely, on April 7, 2021, the 47th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. 

The latest update from NASA contained this news. ...

The Ingenuity team has identified a software solution for the command sequence issue identified on Sol 49 (April 9) during a planned high-speed spin-up test of the helicopter’s rotors. Over the weekend, the team considered and tested multiple potential solutions to this issue, concluding that minor modification and reinstallation of Ingenuity’s flight control software is the most robust path forward. This software update will modify the process by which the two flight controllers boot up, allowing the hardware and software to safely transition to the flight state. Modifications to the flight software are being independently reviewed and validated today and tomorrow in testbeds at JPL.

While the development of the new software change is straightforward, the process of validating it and completing its uplink to Ingenuity will take some time. A detailed timeline for rescheduling the high-speed spin-up test and first flight is still in process. 

Hopefully the fix works and Ingenuity will be flying high soon.