Once in a blue moon

The blue moon from NASA

I've wondered about this expression once, sometime back. Blue moon? why blue? were there any instances where the moon appeared blue?

Today, I came across the answer in an unexpected manner. I was reading through a Physics book called "Absorption and scattering of light by small particles", which is quite nicely written I have to say.

Anyhow, the part about the blue moon....I think we are quite familiar with the reddening effect at sunrise and sunset, which is partly the result of light scattering from airborn particles. Ok I'll spare the scientific details......

Similarly there's a 'bluing' effect, but for this to take place the airborn particles must be within a narrow range of particle sizes, which is very hard to come by, hence the term 'once in a blue moon'.

However, there have been instances recorded in history where the sun and moon were observed to be blue, specially after the giant eruptions of the volcano Krakatoa and following huge forest fires in Canada.

If you'd like a more scientific explanation see here & here.

Mini Pizzas

Ok, so they are not exactly pizzas for they were made out of puff pastry. But they look pretty much like pizzas! So that's good enough to call them pizzas. and if you really love pizzas you can use the pizza dough instead of pastry dough.

Eeeeazy recipe, great for an afternoon snack, or any other time for that matter.

Just get a layer of puff pastry (yeah the frozen ones the that come all packed up for your convenience) cut out circles of the size you would like them to be. Well, if you are the very traditional kind of person with lots of time to spare, you can spend a few hours to make the dough, knead it and what not......as for me I've got other things to do.

So next apply a bit of tomato puree (or again if you want to go conservative, do it the traditional way) on the pastry. Top it with a slice of cheese, mozzarella preferred, but any cheese would do. And add bits and pieces of whatever you like. I used mushrooms, capsicum and tomato.

If you want to get the browned pastry effect just brush the pastry with some egg wash.

Then pop it in the oven (180 degrees Celsius) for about 15 minutes, when the pastry aroma begins to leak out into the kitchen, you'll know they are ready to be consumed!!