I love how the rugby guys do their part for cancer research. Many of them did a 2009 calendar to help raise money for the McGrath Foundation, which covers primarily breast cancer. Here, we have Nick Youngquest (who is currently playing in the UK) helping MacMillan Cancer Support draw attention to self-exams for testicular cancer.
These somewhat blurry photos are of my garlic and carrot plants. I’m rather impressed that I have 16 for 16 of the garlic pods I planted using just a bulb of plain Australian garlic from the grocery store. The local garlic is sold with the roots still on the bottom, while the garlic imported from China has had the roots trimmed off.
I wasn’t sure I’d get the carrots, the packet said 2 to 3 weeks till they sprout and it’s 3.5 weeks out now. I imagine since it’s the cold time of the year they took a little longer. The weather was nice enough to keep the soil moist but not soaked.
A while back I saw a segment on Better Homes and Gardens where they had a technique for making quick ricotta cheese. It involved simply heating some milk and adding a little vinegar to curdle the milk. It turned out just great for some lasagna I was making. It also sparked an interest in making other types of cheese. Most cheeses are rather involved. There are several steps, like setting up the cultures which has to be done before hand, temperature can be very important, then it takes hours to cool. The curds need to be compressed in a mold to force the extra liquid out of them, often a few times with progressive weights, and then you have to wait months for the cheese to properly cure.
Not all cheeses are that complicated. Today I made a simple mozzarella cheese. Normally you’d age mozz a good three months, but the fresh mozzarella is great for salads or a snack. I plan to put some on a homemade pizza.
Once the milk is warm, add some citric acid and lipase. Citric acid makes the milk start to curdle, and if you make wine, you probably already have some around. Lipase is an enzyme that gives the curds a stronger cheese flavor. Heat the milk further and add some rennet. Rennet is (originally) an enzyme taken from the lining of a calf’s stomach. I can imagine how ancient people must have first discovered certain milk bags produced a different favoured sour milk curd.. or something gross like that. Now they can make it in labs and there is even rennet that is entirely plant based. This will really speed up the curding.
A handful of minutes later you can scoop out the curds and drain off the excess liquid. I’ve found those metal strainers you get in the house-wares sections of the grocery store or dept store, work great. The screen is tight enough to keep the curds from going through and loose enough to let the liquid drain fairly quickly. If you’re not in a hurry, you can just leave it sit in the screen for a while to get more of the liquid out.
With this recipe, once you have the curds out, with any extra liquid drained, just pop it in the microwave for a minute to heat it up. This will allow you to knead the curds into a smooth cheese. Add salt to taste at this point. Once the cheese starts to cool enough that it isn’t kneading easily – pop it back in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Knead, nuke, knead again and you should have a shiny ball of yum. You can drop it into a bowl of ice water to cool it faster and let it keep its shape better. I just sprayed a little vegetable oil in a super-sized rounded mug and put it in the fridge.
I’ve had this neat little pdf file, I can’t remember where I first got it, but it has recipes to approximate a number of famous brand recipes. One of them is for Bisquick. We used to have the jumbo boxes of this stuff at home when I was a kid. The boxes were covered with quick and easy recipes you could make using the product. I thought for this weeks pancakes I’d go for that style. (when I lived in Madison, I’d get the big 10 lb bag of Krusteaz from Sam’s Club. I never thought of it as ‘crust ease’ but like Krusty the Clown on the Simpsons). According to my pdf, Bisquick is approximately:
8 Cups Flour
1 1/4 Cups Nonfat Dry Milk Powder
1/4 Cup Baking Powder (4 Tblsp)
1 Tablespoon Salt
2 Cups Shortening
Combine flour, milk, baking powder, and salt in a very large bowl.
Cut in shortening until it resembles coarse cornmeal. Store in tightly
closed covered container in a cool place. Makes about 10 cups.
I cut the recipe down by 1/4. I’ve always taken “shortening” to mean hydrogenated vegetable oils like Crisco – which I won’t eat if I can help it. I used butter – chopped into pieces and mixed with the flour in a food processor. The butter was another reason to cut down the recipe. I didn’t think the shelf life would be very long unless I kept it in the fridge, and my food processor can only blend so much at a time. I also used wholemeal flour.
The pancake recipe, that you can get on the box or off the web, is 2 cups mix + 2 beaten eggs + 1 cup milk. Easy. I don’t think mine were as fluffy as my Aunt Joan used to make (Crisco and all-purpose flour will give you more fluff), but they had the right flavour.
Last weekend, when it wasn’t raining, I raked over the garden beds and planted some purple carrots and garlic. It will be a week or two before I’ll see much from the carrots. I wonder with the rain we’ve been having if it will just get too soggy for them. I’m not confident planting things directly into the ground. I figure the weather will conspire against me and either drown or fry whatever I put in when it’s too young to resist.
In the other bed I sprinkled clover. A manure crop is a relatively novel idea to me. In Wisconsin, when it isn’t growing season, we just let the snow cover the ground. I was thinking with how sandy and weak the soil is, a couple bucks on clover seed to enrich the ground and keep the weeds away would make for a good experiment. I have little green sprouts coming up all over. I’m going to plant some comfrey for part of the other bed. I’ve heard it’s good for tomatoes.
Inside, I’ve added a shelf over the sink to see how well I can grow herbs in the kitchen. The basil, oregano, thyme are doing fine. I think the sage and cilantro will get there eventually. I’m going to try growing some stevia and lemon balm too.
Australia has just increased the minimum wage for its lowest paid workers to about $14.25. I find this interesting because minimum wage in the US is $7.25. Even if you discounted that 85% for the lowest in awhile exchange rate, that would still be over $12/hr (plus we have Medicare for everyone). Less than 5 years ago the US minimum wage was less than $6 and workers that make tips might only be paid $2.13/hr.
My father used to argue that there shouldn’t be a minimum wage or, at least, that it shouldn’t be raised because that would put people out of work if the employer didn’t want to pay them that much. I would suggest if the job wasn’t worth paying someone a livable wage, why was anyone doing it to begin with?
Perhaps if some US companies paid their highest paid staff a little less, and their lowest paid staff a little more – more money would be spent on everyday goods and more money would stay in the community, supporting local jobs.
I have friends who hate having birds around. They complain they poop on their deck, or make too much noise. I love having birds around. We put out a bit of bird seed and a little bit of bread dipped in honey for the lorikeets. Experts will say it’s better to provide habitat – plant things they birds like to eat or can use as shelter. You don’t want wild birds becoming dependent on what you provide; if you go away, you don’t want the birds to go hungry. (we try to just provide a snack, not their regular food supply).
A kookaburra was getting so many sausages from “kind strangers” that it became too fat to fly! They’re odd enough looking birds to begin with to me, but the fat one just looks plain funny.
I’m lovin’ it – but not enough to eat at McDonald’s. Fast food-like product is still gross.
Reminds me of the French rugby ad - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7PMIRCXOxQ
