Cheese, Gromit.

I love Barbara Kingsolver's novels.  I really enjoyed The Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer.  I picked up her memoir about eating local, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, expecting to love it.  Instead I learned that while Ms. Kingsolver can write beautiful and lyrical descriptions of her garden, she's a bit of a sanctimonious prig when it comes to food.  Who knew?

The one upside of this book is that it got me interested in making my own cheese from scratch.  I love cheese.  I also love making things from scratch.  Seems like a perfect fit!  Ms. Kingsolver claimed that cheese-making was easy, the directions online I found claimed that it was easy--but when I sat down to try and figure out how to actually do it, I couldn't make heads or tails of it.

Never one to give up, I found that there is someone local who teaches classes on how to make cheese.  I somehow conned my father, Evil Dr. Porkchop, into taking it the class with me.  Lo and behold, we learned to make cheese.  It simply requires a) milk   b) some random stuff like bacteria cultures and rennet c) time.  While not exactly rocket science, I don't think I would classify it as easy.

During the four hour class we learned how to make chevre, ricotta, feta, yogurt and a basic hard cheese.  More importantly, we got to eat cheese.  We were also given a nice booklet with instructions.  As soon as I can get my hands on some raw goat or cow's milk, I'm ready to make the easier cheeses--feta and chevre.  Fancy! 

I didn't take any photos of the process because I was too busy paying attention and the booklet had great pictures.  However, here are some photos of the goats.  Do you think Batman would be mad if I adopted a couple?  They could keep the lawn in the backyard trimmed and our dogs could herd them. 

Fresh cheese or not, I don't think Batman would be okay with that plan.

Only with white sand instead of white snow.

(Last night as we try to get to sleep.)

Batman:  Tomorrow we head to Mexico. 

Me:  Mmmmm-hmmmm. 

Batman:  It's like Christmas. 

Me:   Mmmmm-hmmmm.

Batman:  And when we wake up, your dad will be in a Santa outfit and say, "Ho-ho-ho, Merry Cozumel!"

Me:  ...One can only hope.



Peace, ya'll.  I'm out for a bit.  See you next week.

The Bald Psycho aka Evil Dr. Porkchop aka Dad

My dad loves nicknames.

It really started with my second cousin, Brooke.  My dad used to call her Brook Trout, then just Trout.  She would get upset and start loudly insisting, "MY NAME IS NOT TROUT.  MY NAME IS BROOKE, AND I AM NOT A FISH."

Of course, my dad would just look at her and respond, "Whatever you say, Brook Trout."

All the other little kids in our big extended family soon got nicknames.  There's Mouse, Monkeyboy (who actually is rather proud of his nickname), and Cowbell or Bananaslug.

For a time, my dad was known as The Bald Psycho.  This was more of an accidental nickname rather than one purposely chosen.  We were vacationing in Florida with our extended family.  One of my aunts has a boat, and we were discussing bringing the boat up to shore near a bald cypress tree.  A little cousin was listening to us discuss this and wondered out loud why were talking about his uncle that way.  Turns out when he was listening to us talk about the "bald cypress", he was hearing "bald psycho".

And of course he assumed we were talking about my father.

A bunch of my family came to visit us this weekend and the kids decided to plan a nickname counter-strike against my father.  Trout, Mouse, Monkeyboy, and Bananaslug would not take the abuse anymore!  They put their twelve hour car trip to good use to make a difficult decision:  what to call their uncle.

The moniker "Chicken Nugget" was discussed and discarded.  The next idea was "Porkchop" but that wasn't quite right.  All of the kids had recently seen Toy Story 3, so Porkchop naturally turned into....

EVIL DOCTOR PORKCHOP!!! 

Okay, so he doesn't look particularly evil.  Nor is he a doctor unless you count the juris doctorate.

But somehow....it fits.