Mountain Views News, Pasadena Edition [Sierra Madre] Saturday, August 4, 2018

8

FOOD & DRINK

Mountain Views-News Saturday, August 4, 2018 


TABLE FOR TWO by Peter Dills

thechefknows@yahoo.com

MR. MANNERS


Must admit with all the past political non-sense and trivial trivia, I almost 
missed out on National Nachos Day and National Cappuccino Day, and 
what type of foodie would I be, but fear not friends, I did partake in a 
Margarita and a plate of Nachos. I have to take my Andy Rooney Card out 
again and give you my fellow diners the rules of Etiquette 101. I love my 
daughter, and some of my friends kids. But here goes.

 I am asked frequently asked about etiquette and table manners, so I 
compiled this simple list based on the most common questions.

- Your napkin goes in your lap, folded in half, as soon as you sit down. Many 
people wait until the food arrives, but the proper form is to be prepared.

- If you leave the table, place the napkin to the left of your plate, loosely 
draped.

- A napkin is never for blowing your noise or wiping your mouth. Use it to 
dab at the corners of your mouth or your fingertips. If you need to cleanse 
further, leave the table and use the appropriate products in the restroom.

- In formal dining, a charger will be under the place setting. It remains there 
during the starter course and is removed at the main course.

- Your eating utensils go in the order of use, starting from the outside 
(furthest from the plate) and working their way in. Forks go on the left; 
knives and spoons on the right, as you face the plate. Dessert utensils are 
placed at the top of the plate, sideways.

- The bread and butter plate goes to the left, above the forks.

- The water glass goes above the knives (behind the wine goblet, if there is 
one).

- Food should be passed counter-clockwise.

- It is considered impolite to start eating before everyone is seated and served, including your host.

- Only the meal settings and food belong on the table. Do not place your elbows, eyeglasses, notebook, pen or other objects 
on the table.

- Cut no more than two bites of any item at a time. When it comes to bread, tear off one bite at a time and butter it, rather than 
buttering a whole roll.

- Do not season your food until you have tasted it.

- It is permissible to use a piece of bread to wipe up excess gravy, as long as you use your fork and not your fingers.

- If you need to leave the table, place your utensils on the edge of your plate so that the tips point to the plate’s center, in a 
V-shape. To signal when you are finished, lay your utensils side by side diagonally on the plate.

 Listen live to Dining with Dills at 5 PM Sundays KLAA AM 830. 

Julie's Family Recipes

SHREDDED CABBAGE AND CARROT COLESLAW

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons honey 

2 tablespoons whole grain mustard

A little cayenne pepper

1/2 cup thinly sliced scallions 

1/2 small head red cabbage (4 cups) , cored and shredded 

1 pound shredded or spiralized carrots

 Kosher salt

DIRECTIONS

1. Combine vinegar, honey, mustard ,and cayenne in a bowl. Toss together vegetables in a large bowl; season with 
salt. Drizzle with dressing; toss. Refrigerate at least 1 hour and up to 4 hours before serving.


TWENTY YEARS OF PLANETARY DEFENSE:

NASA’S CENTER FOR NEAR-EARTH OBJECT STUDIES ENTERS THIRD DECADE

On March 11, 1998, asteroid astronomers around 
the world received an ominous message: new 
observational data on the recently discovered 
asteroid 1997 XF11 suggested there was a chance 
that the half-mile-wide object could hit Earth in 
2028.

 The message came from the Minor Planet Center, 
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the worldwide 
repository for such observations and initial 
determination of asteroid orbits. And although 
it was intended to alert only the very small 
astronomical community that hunts and tracks 
asteroids to call for more observations, the news 
spread quickly.

 Most media outlets did not know what to make of 
the announcement, and mistakenly highlighted the 
prospect that Earth was doomed.

 Fortunately, it turned out that Earth was never in 
danger from 1997 XF11. After performing a more 
thorough orbit analysis with the available asteroid 
observations, Don Yeomans, then the leader of the 
Solar System Dynamics group at JPL, along with 
his colleague Paul Chodas, concluded otherwise. 
“The 2028 impact was essentially impossible,” said 
Chodas, who is now director of NASA’s Center for 
Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), located at 
JPL.

 “To this day we still get queries on the chances 
of XF11 impacting in 2028,” Chodas said. “There 
is simply no chance of XF11 impacting our planet 
that year, or for the next 200 years.”

 Chodas knows this thanks to CNEOS’ precise 
orbit calculations using observation data submitted 
to the Minor Planet Center by observatories all 
over the world that detect and track the motion 
of asteroids and comets. For the past two decades, 
CNEOS calculations have enabled NASA to 
become the world leader in these efforts, keeping 
close watch on all nearby asteroids and comets—
especially those that can cross Earth’s orbit.

 “We compute high-precision orbits for all 
asteroids and comets and map their positions in 
the solar system, both forward in time to detect 
potential impacts, and backward to see where 
they’ve been in the sky,” Chodas said. “We provide 
the best map of orbits for all known small bodies in 
the solar system.”

 Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids and 
comets in orbits that bring them into the inner solar 
system, within 121 million miles of the Sun, and 
also within roughly 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit 
around the Sun.

 NASA’s original intent was to fulfill a 1998 
Congressional request to detect and catalogue 
at least 90 percent of all NEOs larger than one 
kilometer in size (roughly two-thirds of a mile) 
within 10 years. 

 A CNEOS system called “Sentry” searches ahead 
for all potential future Earth impact possibilities 
over the next hundred years—for every known 
NEO. Sentry’s impact monitoring runs continually 
using the latest CNEOS-generated orbit models, 
and the results are stored online. In most cases so 
far, the probabilities of any potential impacts are 
extremely small, and in other cases, the objects 
themselves are so small—less than 66 feet across— 
that they would almost certainly disintegrate even if 
they did enter Earth’s atmosphere.

 More recently, CNEOS also developed a system 
called Scout to provide more immediate and 
automatic trajectory analyses for the most recently 
discovered objects, even before independent 
observatories confirm their discovery. Operating 
around the clock, the Scout system identifies the 
highest priority objects to be watched.

 You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@
MtnViewsNews.com.

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