Shake and Bake

We had an earthquake in the northeast yesterday…you may have heard. It was a little scary. Our friends in California are probably laughing at us since the earth shaking is pretty common there. This, however, was not my first earthquake. When I was teenager, there was an earthquake in Reading, PA, which is not that far from the Philadelphia row house in which I grew up. This earthquake occurred in the middle of the night and when the shaking woke me up, the first thing I saw was the statute of the BVM on my nightstand rattling…I thought I was being visited. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized it was nature speaking and not divine intervention.

That was a relief.

Anyway, I remember learning about faults, energy releases, etc… in school and I thought that a quick tectonic refresher would be helpful. The website UPSeis explains that “Earthquakes are usually caused when rock underground suddenly breaks along a fault. This sudden release of energy causes the seismic waves that make the ground shake. When two blocks of rock or two plates are rubbing against each other, they don’t slide smoothly because the surfaces are not smooth. The rocks are still pushing against each other, but not moving. After a while, the rocks break because of all the pressure that's built up. When the rocks break, the earthquake occurs.”

Hopefully, I'm not the only one that forgets stuff taught in grade school!

How long ago was that?

I baked Rocky Road cookies in honor of our seismic event. I will file these under “More-or-Less Homemade” since I used a Betty Crocker Chocolate Chunk cookie mix and added chopped walnuts and marshmallows.



Earthquake area image from Google images.