It's All About the Math

The aromatic adventures of composting

This traffic sign warns people that we are in the area

Our mission car at the grocery store

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And now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

Before we get to our main thesis today, I would like to insert a backup, auxiliary dissertation.

Last week, Sister Blickenstaff mentioned in her blog that we visited a place called the Giant’s Ring. We actually found a path that meandered around Middle Earth until it ended up on the riverbank of the River Lagan. We were delighted to find this path, although we did not see any actual giants or elves. On the way back up from the river, to the Giant’s Ring, we walked past a farmer who was getting ready to fertilise a field. Gulls were hanging around waiting for him to do something so we decided to wait and see what happened.

This turned out to be a serious mistake. His tractor was pulling a large tank. As we watched, he turned on a power dispenser contraption that spewed out some kind of brown liquid. As he drove along, spraying, the gulls descended on what he had just sprayed and were having quite a feast. After about 60 seconds of watching this, the prevailing wind brought the stench of his product and both of us instantly considering puking our guts out right there on the trail.

He was obviously spraying homemade liquid compost and it smelled like the wrong end of a 10-bum diarrhoea party. I am not making this up. We turned and quickly walked away. But it was not quick enough. This smell had already been burned into our brains, where it seared our respective olfactory bulbs so badly they both quit their jobs and moved out to another location on a different continent. My sense of smell was so overwhelmed I could not stand myself for the rest of the day. I swore I could smell that stuff on my clothes, in my hair, on my breath and in our flat. It was brilliant!

Now, stay with me as I smoothly segue right to the dinner table. As much of our daily routine involves the preparation, consumption and clean up of mass quantities of food, I feel inspired to give you more details than you desire.

We (by which, we mean, Sister Blickenstaff, also known as my Senior Companion, or formerly known as SWMBO - She Who Must Be Obeyed) frequently feed someone besides ourselves. This involves math. Attention those of you who said, “Math? When am I ever going to need math after I graduate from high school?” The answer is, “When you serve a mission with your spouse.”

If you are one of the sixty-two people who were lucky enough to graduate from San Juan High School, stay with me because it’s all about the math.

There are two types of recipes here in Northern Ireland.

1. American type recipes, which have to be converted from something called the Dewey Decimal System into what is called the Metric System.
2. Northern Irish recipes, which have to be converted from something called the Metric System into what is called the Dewey Decimal System.

One must be careful not to mix up the Dewey Decimal System with the duodecimal system, which is a base-12 numbering system that simplifies the computing of fractions. While you are at it, don’t get any of this confused with the duodenum, because, as any doctor can tell you, it can be very painful to get things mixed up there. Also, Frank Zappa wrote a song called Duodenum, which was definitely painful.

But I digress. To digress is an intransitive verb meaning to move off the central topic. In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb. Examples of intransitive verbs include to die and to sleep (both of which you experience quite a bit on your mission). Transitive verbs include to see and to give. The valency of a verb is a related concept. Where the transitivity of a verb only considers the objects, the valency of a verb considers all the arguments the verb takes, including both the subject of the verb and all of the objects (of which there are none for an intransitive verb). I could go on, but really – should I?

Anyway, this is about the math. Remember the math? This post is about the math. Regardless of which type of recipe we use, we have to use the math to convert the amount of each ingredient into something that we know how much that is. For example, we made pulled barbecue beef sandwiches for the 28 missionaries serving in the Belfast Zone. Our recipe called for 2.5 to 3 pounds of brisket to serve 6 − 8 people. We decided conservatively, that we needed about 12 pounds to serve the group. We did this calculation in our heads, because I am a human calculator, so to speak.

When we got to the butcher shop, I said we needed 4 roasts, each 3 kilograms in weight. The butcher, hearing our authentic non-Northern Irish accents, asked, “Do you mean pounds?”

“No,” I was most emphatic, “I mean kilos.”

He, being the good businessman who knows the customer is always right, sold us 12 kilograms of meat. As we were cooking it, it appeared to be quite a lot (or as my mother used to say, “It was quite a several”). In fact, it appeared to be so much meat, that I used an actual calculator to determine how much meat I purchased. It turns out that 12 kilograms amounts to about 26.5 pounds. So we had an awful lot of beef to shred, which after all the eating, turned out to be enough to send some home with half the mission.

The take home message here is that you can’t get your kilos mixed up with your pounds. It’s all about the math.

It is interesting that one of our most used iPad apps is a conversion utility that converts a bunch of stuff that we don’t understand into a bunch of other stuff that we used to understand but can no longer remember how. We not only have to convert teaspoons into millilitres and grams into ounces, but we also have to convert Fahrenheit into Celsius and Kelvin into Rankine. This is somewhat offset by the fact that we are not required to convert miles per hour into kilometres per hour because the speed of light is the same constant in both Northern Ireland and Heber City. Don’t get me started on knots. What a granny has to do with velocity is beyond me; you will need to ask a pilot, or a Boy Scout.

Anyway, about the math, my companion has twice calculated the precise maximum amount of liquid soup that she can hold in a giant pot on her lap while at the same time telling me how to avoid potholes and drive twice as slow as everyone else so we can transport the potage safely to the place of consumption. It’s all about the math.

I am so proud of my companion. I hope I am not divulging a family secret here, but she does not like to cook. And here she is, just whipping out Ratatouille (the soup, not the movie) like she is Julia Child and I’m Paul, only I’m sober. She has made all kinds of things, both savoury and sweet, that she has never made before. Whatever she makes gets eaten. She is a marvel and the YSA love her.

Last night, while we were in the kitchen at the Centre, cleaning up after she made real American soft tacos, one of our YSA came up behind us, put one arm around each of us and said, “Thanks to both of you for being as awesome as both of you are.”

It made our day, but really, it was all her. I’m just along for the food, and to do the math.

Elder Blickenstaff