Monday, January 18, 2016

PEL and PULS mean PUSH   Find lists of words using these roots at http://www.resourceroom.net/Comprehension/wordparts/14pel.html and http://www.english-for-students.com/puls.html

USGS Water-Quality Information Pages  http://water.usgs.gov/owq/

THICKENERS  To avoid lumps, mix the starch with an equal amount of cold liquid until it forms a paste, then whisk it into the liquid you're trying to thicken.  Once the thickener is added, cook it briefly to remove the starchy flavor.  Don't overcook--liquids thickened with some starches will thin again if cooked too long or at too high a temperature.  Cornstarch, arrowroot, and tapioca are the most popular starch thickeners.  If you want high gloss, choose tapioca or arrowroot.  If you want low gloss, choose cornstarch.  Cornstarch is the best choice for thickening dairy-based sauces.  Arrowroot becomes slimy when mixed with milk products.  Choose arrowroot if you're thickening an acidic liquid.  Cornstarch loses potency when mixed with acids.  Sauces made with cornstarch turn spongy when they're frozen.  If you plan to freeze a dish, use tapioca starch or arrowroot as a thickener.  Starch thickeners don't add much flavor to a dish, although they can impart a starchy flavor if they're undercooked.  If you worried that your thickener will mask delicate flavors in your dish, choose arrowroot.  It's the most neutral tasting of the starch thickeners.  Tapioca starch thickens quickly, and at a relatively low temperature.  It's a good choice if you want to correct a sauce just before serving it.  

Potato starch is most commonly called for in European recipes.  It’s easy to find in the baking ingredient aisle of East Coast markets, but in the rest of the country, look for it in the kosher section of the store.  Potato starch thickens quickly without a pronounced flavor that needs to be cooked off, which makes it great as a last minute fix for too-thin sauces.  Arrowroot powder comes from the root of a tropical plant of the same name.  Look for it in gourmet or health-food stores.  Arrowroot starch granules are very small and make sauces exceptionally smooth.  Like flour and cornstarch, it can withstand long cooking and higher temperatures, and like tapioca, it is remarkable for its clarity.  It’s a great choice for stir-fry sauces and any kind of fruit pie filling.
http://www.finecooking.com/articles/thickeners-food-science.aspx?pg=0  Potato starch is a good, powerful thickener, but its thickening power is quickly weakened by boiling.  Add at the end of cooking and avoid boiling.  In Chinese recipes, do not substitute for cornstarch where the coating is also the thickener for the sauce or you'll end up with far too much sauce.  Potato starch thickened sauces reheat better than cornstarch thickened, but don't bring to a full boil.  Potato starch is preferred for baking as it withstands higher temperatures.  http://www.clovegarden.com/ingred/starch.html  Potato starch recipes  http://cooking.nytimes.com/tag/potato%20starch

Jan (pronounced Yahn) Boyer Wahl (born April 1, 1933) is a prolific author, known primarily for his award-winning children's books, including Pleasant Fieldmouse and Humphrey's Bear.  Wahl sometimes refers to himself as "Dr. Mouse," a nickname given him by a young fan.  Find a list of awards and selected works at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Wahl  Wahl was never one to allow himself to be bored as he was growing up in Ohio.  He played piano on a weekly radio program, had a traveling puppet show and shadow-play theater, and performed his own magic act.  He made his first attempt at writing literature when he was in the fourth grade at DeVeaux School in Toledo, Ohio.  Wahl sat at his worn desk trying to work on the story that he already enjoyed a great deal.  The project was an attempt to take the classic tale of "Jack and the Beanstalk" and improve it.  It was with this venture that Wahl fell in love with writing.  It was at this time that Wahl began collecting films, which has become a lifelong interest.  His collection now includes everything from hand-colored films dating from 1893 to post World War II, both those in black and white movies and those in Technicolor.  Upon graduating from high school in 1950, Wahl attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1953.  Wahl was an author of a play called Paradiso!  Paradiso! while he was a student at Cornell.  The play was produced by the school in 1954.  Wahl enrolled in a creative writing class while he was at Cornell University.  The professor of the course was very encouraging.  He started writing original stories that he submitted to a number of magazines.  When he graduated from Cornell University, Wahl learned that he had been awarded the honor of being a Fulbright fellow in the area of Folklore and Folk Literature.  His new found scholastic status brought him to the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.  After completing his graduate studies at the University of Copenhagen, Wahl worked with Danish film director Carl T. Dreyer during the making of Dreyer's prize-winning film Ordet.  In 1957, Wahl returned to Denmark to take a position with the mystery writer Isak Dinesen, who was ill.  Dinesen dictated her novel Last Tales and Wahl recorded it for her.  Upon finishing his work with Ms. Dinesen, Wahl returned to the United States.  He attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor to complete his Master's Degree in arts in 1958.  Even with all this experience, Wahl struggled in his early attempts to publish his children's stories.  They were repeatedly rejected by editors until children's editor Ursula Nordstrom encouraged him.  Throughout Wahl's writing career, he has continued to concentrate the scope of his work on children.  He addresses themes like family relationships, physical handicaps, self-reliance, tolerance, and peace.  Besides collecting old films, Wahl enjoys collecting old toys like those relating to Felix the Cat, Mickey Mouse, and Betty Boop.  Wahl, who still lives in Toledo, Ohio, has published more than 100 books, many of which have been translated into foreign languages.  http://lookingglassreview.com/html/jan_wahl.html  Thank you, Muse reader! 

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a federal holiday observed annually on the third Monday in January.  It celebrates the life and legacy of the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. in honor of his birthday and achievements.  The day is also referred to as the Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday; MLK Day; Martin Luther King Day; the King Holiday; and the King Day of Service.  In 2016, this holiday is celebrated on January 18, and it marks the 30th anniversary of the first observance of King’s birthday as a federal holiday. This guide assists congressional offices with work related to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  On November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation making the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a legal public holiday to be observed on the third Monday of every January (P.L. 98-144).  When President Bill Clinton signed the King Holiday and Service Act on August 23, 1994 (P.L. 103-304), the holiday was designated as a day of community service, interracial cooperation, and youth anti-violence initiatives.   Find Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Speech Resources:  Fact Sheet containing links to legislation, CRS reports, sample speeches and remarks from the Congressional Record, presidential proclamations and remarks, and links to additional government web resources and selected educational, cultural, and advocacy organizations by Valerie S. Cervantes, Digital Services Librarian at https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44339.pdf

15th anniversary of Wikipedia  Ward Cunningham designed the wiki, the first internet platform that allowed many people to work on a document at the same time.  He named it ‘wiki,’ a Hawaiian word that means ‘quick.’  Wikipedia became one of the top 10 websites in the world in 2007.  Wikipedians (people who work on Wikipedia) keep lists of controversies andhoaxes on Wikipedia.  https://15.wikipedia.org/history.html  See also On Wikipedia's 15th Anniversary, A Look At The Most-Edited Entries  at http://www.npr.org/2016/01/15/463224123/on-wikipedias-15th-anniversary-a-look-at-the-most-edited-entries  Other areas of Wikipedia:  Community portal – Bulletin board, projects, resources and activities covering a wide range of Wikipedia areas; Help desk – Ask questions about using Wikipedia; Local embassy – For Wikipedia-related communication in languages other than English; Reference desk – Serving as virtual librarians, Wikipedia volunteers tackle your questions on a wide range of subjects; Site news – Announcements, updates, articles and press releases on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation; Village pump – For discussions about Wikipedia itself, including areas for technical issues and policies.

Follow-up to inuksuit, figures made of piled stones.  Find Dancing Man and other sculptures at


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1410  January 18, 2016  On this date in 1778, James Cook was the first known European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he named the "Sandwich Islands".  On this date in 1944, the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City hosted a jazz concert for the first time.  The performers were Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden.

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