Global Warming...and Homemade Macadamia Nut Turtles

Supreme Overlord Gore

So last night Mitzi and I went out on a date to Chili's and I was reminded what a wonderful person my wife is to go out with. It was a great time! Then we decided to come home and have family home evening, which involved making a home video where the three of us sat on the couch and told baby Corbin about the events of his birth. It's crazy to think that home video cameras were just coming about when I was a baby - I don't remember seeing any video of me as a baby. Consequently, I thought it would be fun to get a video of baby Corbin that he could watch as an adult to see what a cute baby he was.

After that we popped in a video from Blockbuster, and based on the sad set of choices I ended up renting "An Inconvenient Truth." It was fun to see that a few of the critical thinking skills I had been required to develop in graduate school helped me to sift through some of Mr. Gore's information. So much of this stuff (however, not all of it) reminded me of the bad science of mistaking correlation for causation that is a cardinal sin of responsible science. One of the best examples I heard was given by one of my professors who said that if a scientist compiled 1000 studies showing that there is a .95 correlation (1.00 correlation being a "perfect" correlation) between people who holding hands and then getting pregnant, one could easily be tempted to conclude (if he/she didn't know any better) that holding hands creates babies. You could even have people look at that huge stack of studies that are all showing you the same, incontrovertible fact--that holding hands is an almost perfect predictor of pregnancy--and conclude, wrongly, that based on the overwhelming amount of information and sound scientific studies supporting the trend, that holding hands CAUSES pregnancy.

We all know that holding hands does not cause pregnancy, and yet it is easy to see how someone who didn't know any better, and who was presented with this mountain of evidence, could make that mistake. Such is the world of science, and it will be interesting to see how many incorrect conclusions have been drawn based on sound science incorrectly interpreted. Anyway, to enjoy the show we pulled out the jar of Macadamia nuts that Mitzi had bought me for Christmas that I was still working on. I don't remember who said what or what made me think of it, but I decided that it would be fun to make my own chocolate covered Macadamia nut turtles! Mitzi, as always when it comes to my culinary experimentation and resistance to following recipes, was skeptical. However, I just poured a bunch of milk chocolate chips in a small pot and melted it down on low heat. Then I dumped a bunch of Macadamia nuts in and mixed it all together.

Then I had a problem. What kind of mold would I use to shape my chocolaty, nutty concoction into something edible? The closest thing we had was a muffin tin, but that would have created tortoises rather than turtles. Then the light came on and I grabbed our old ice-cube tray. Genius! I poured the mixture in and threw them in the freezer, and by golly, they tasted just like the kind you buy in the store. Fantastic. Another successful kitchen experiment.

Jealous? I thought so.