Sunday, May 15, 2011

Cheese, Glorious Cheese!

 Recently I attended a cheese making class at Sweet Grass Dairy in Thomasville, GA. It was awesome! We learned all about cheese and made our own! Simple, right? I'll just go home and make my own? Well, turns out it is! Who knew? Did I make a beautiful aged Brie? No. But I did make some ricotta that was quite tasty!
 In true Sus style, I had to start with the wrong pot. It just wouldn't be me to use all the right ingredients, tools and follow the directions. The universe would be upset! And despite a faint black bean stain on my cheese, it worked just fine! (And no residual bean flavor- my last meal was black bean soup.)
 These were my ingredients: Sparkman's whole milk (yummy milk for any of you with access!), buttermilk salt and lemon. Note to self: use less lemon next time, too much makes it more chewy.
 Bubble, bubble, boil and trouble...actually, no boiling, just a very, very, very slow heat up. You can kind of see the bean residue in there.
 This gnarly looking stuff is ricotta! Cheese is just the milk solids separated out and stuck together in a variety of interesting ways!

 And this was the finished product! Doesn't look so hot, but pretty tasty!

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Good Ole Carl Dog

My youngest daughter has this book she adores called Good Dog, Carl and we read it again and again and again.... It's a picture book with no words past, "be a good dog Carl" and then later, "Good dog Carl" but it has the best pictures! The premise of the story is the mom leaves the house and leaves the dog to watch the baby in the crib, however they escape and have a rumpus about the house that ends in a very messy baby being washed by a dog and put back to bed (see photo left- LOVE the hair dryer photo!) and she returns to find the house clean and the baby in the crib just like she left him. "Good dog, Carl!" This is the dog I need!

Friday, May 13, 2011

I finished!

 I did it! I finally finished the dress! Well, one of the dresses, but they are identical so in theory I'm like 80% done, at least in my mind. My darling refused to try it on, but would agree to have it lain on her. Had she tried it on I would have realized it's huge! When I finally got her to try it it was about 1-2 sizes too big! Ah well, better than the flip side! It'll fit someday. I think Dress #2 will be made in Germany, I'm already behind here on, um, everything. I did buy some pretty pink, girly material as she asked that it have a horse on it ;) crack me up. You know, it all started so I could make her a dress with her pop's plane on it! But she isn't feelin' that so much. We are all horses right now!