Fun with a bacterial process!

This Sunday we had some intrepid friends over to try our hand at making cheese.

We set our sights relatively low and figured we could successfully create a fresh mozzarella. And mozzarella we did create. It was awesome and pretty easy too.

The only unfortunate thing is the surprisingly small amount of cheese you get from 1 gallon of milk. We curdled with citric acid and rennet, drained whey and kneaded and stretched 1 gallon of milk per person - and each received about 3/4 of a pound of cheese for our trouble. On a side note, we saved 4 gallons of whey for use in other recipes (I came into work this morning and had a muffin that was made with the whey-just lovely).

Somewhere between batches three and four pizza dough was tossed onto a couple of cookie sheets and we used our first runnings to make some fresh mozzarella, pesto, black olive, roasted garlic and artichoke heart pizzas. YUM!

You are entering a new dimension of time and space

I always feel a little like it's the twilight zone when there is no traffic during the daily commute. Do not misunderstand me. I hate commuting by car, I hate traffic, I especially hate being trapped on the Freemont bridge (apparently I have a lot of hate). But I feel as though something is lurking around the corner to punish me when I can make it from work to home without having spent enough time in the car to listen to 7 or 8 Tool songs.

Business as usual

As always, I have gotten excited about Spring before it was excited about me.

We started seedlings, I got some spring shoes to replace my 10 year old winter clogs, we tried some new seasonal beers, marveled at the daffodils and even discussed taking the flannel sheets off the bed.

Ah...too soon. I scraped ICE off the car this morning and said a silent thank you, to no one in particular, for not letting me get dirt and plant outside yet.

And once again I wonder why Spring is fucking with me.



In other (more exciting) notes, we will be ushering in the month of May in the City of Light.

Dragon's Blood

On Sunday we racked the mead that has been bubbling away in the den for the past month into a few small secondary containers. At first we were concerned about using several small containers over one larger one, but after some discussion and ideas on how eventually to proceed, I think we’re both happier with the decision. Because the mead is entirely experimental, we’ll likely bottle it in shifts letting some of it age longer in the jugs. We did give it a sample after racking and mostly it tastes like sour (think lime) alcohol that has a slight effervescence. It has a beautiful color –from the pomegranate juice– and seems to be aging nicely.

I dubbed it (rather greedily) Dragon’s Blood, because it is red in color and because mead makes me think of the cartoon Flight of Dragons that came out in the early 1980’s and was a favorite of mine as a child. In one particularly memorable scene, the two main dragon characters drink their way through an entire cellar of mead (while traveling to the castle of the ‘bad wizard’ Omadon) and share a rousing chorus of Oh Susanna!

...and while not trying to question something this simple, the movie itself rests on the idea that the human world must choose between science and magic. So, is it wrong to call what is essentially a science experiment dragon’s blood?

Duck...Duck...Doctorate

The U of O has admitted me for Doctoral Studies in the Department of Geography for Fall of 2008.

{insert dance of joy here}


Let the games begin.


...Update: I've also 'unofficially' been accepted by PSU :)