Mussels for Dinner?

Hi there!

Based on the previous post, I had an interesting question (tongue-in-cheek I'm sure) from an old friend who wanted to remain anonymous. It went something like this...

"Do you have any recipes for the mussels that we get out of our sea water cooling system? They seem to like to grow in the tubes where [for them, I suppose] it's nice and warm in the summer. They are a strange shape (look like mini-cigars) but by the time we clean them out, they're already steamed!"

Well Buck, I have to say that if they're already steamed, the choices are rather limited. I suspect if you put them in the refrigerator for a while and then served them on fresh lettuce with horseradish and mayonaise, they could be delicious. At least as long as you didn't have any HC leaks into the cooling water!

Another choice, albeit not so traditional, would be to serve them up in an icecream glass with a little lettuce for decoration and the American shrimp cocktail sauce - ketchup, horseradish, Worcester sauce, and lemon juice.

Any other ideas? :-) Bon appetite!

Craig

Happy 1st of July

Most Americans are not aware that the country just to the north of the US - Canada - has it's national day, Dominion Day, on the 1st of July. For all of those who are "north of the border", congratulations on your special day. It also happens to be the birthday of my step-daughter, Kristina, who lives and works near Hamburg. Happy Birthday Tina! No, I won't say how many years! :-) (but she is a good-looking natural blonde!)

There is not much technical stuff to report on at this point in time. As you can or will see, I have added a few more "bells and whistles" to the blog. I hope you enjoy them!

My wife and I are "enjoying" the weather in central Italy as we prepare to sell our B&B here. "Enjoy" is relative, it's been 32-35°C (lower-to-upper 90's Fahrenheit) every day for the last two weeks - great for relaxing at the pool, but not so great for clean-up, spruce-up type work! Yesterday afternoon, we had a thunderstorm that helped cool us off, at least for a few hours.

As always, I stand ready to answer, or at least comment on, any questions that you might have. One interesting area for this time of year is how to keep your vacuum stable when the temperatures (ambient air and cooling water) climb. A second centers around scaling and corrosion and animal/plant growth in cooling water systems for vacuum-producing equipment. Anybody want to start off?

Ciao for now,

Craig