Say Cheese!

I made mozzarella and ricotta cheese for our lasagna. The cheese was awesome, but I over did the garlic in the layering. It was potent! Even worse than the garlic chili that was later used as starter. For leftovers, a bit of plain sauce and it should be good to go.

To make the cheese, I started a city wide trek to find rennet and citric acid. I thought the rennet would be hard to find. Nope, exactly the opposite. The grocery clerk at HEB knew exactly what I was talking about when I asked for rennet! It was on the top shelf of the ice cream makings and toppings. I would not have thought to even look there, but it is used for custards and ice cream making. Never knew.

The first batch was weird and never really made up into cheese. I used a recipe from the internet.

For the second batch, I used the recipe that was included in the box of rennet. It tasted great, but I couldn't get it to stretch out and get semi-hard. It stayed rather smushy. I also made ricotta with the remaining whey.

Here is the mozzarella curd cut up in the pot floating in the whey. It was fun to actually see what Little Miss Muffett ate!

Making cheese was so easy, but definitely took some time. I will do it again in a heart beat, but want to get a book to know a bit more about the chemistry to troubleshoot as I go. The best part was using cheese cloth for its intended purpose! It felt like the universal forces of cheese aligned in my kitchen and patted me on the back and said, "Whey to go!"

Future Wii Champ

Post reading excitement: Indiana Jones on the Wii.

Sisterly reading time

Renée is going to be so smart with a big sister like Phoebe.

Corpus visit

A good friend, Tim, from Mike's Navy days came for a visit in February. We all headed to Corpus so they could visit the USS Lexington that is permanently docked there and us girlies went to the aquarium. We had so much fun!

The parking area is under the overpass and Tim figured out the best way to remember where we parked. I hope you can make it out in the next photo; an orange road construction barrel was lodged in the steel cabling along the side of the overpass ridge way above the car. Crazy! Notice in the photo how confused Phoebe is trying to find the barrel.

The indoor dolphin house is pretty darned neat. Even the iPhone had enough underwater light to capture the coolness factor.

This dome lets you see what it must look like to underwater animals when we look at them.

Multiple uses for the Bumbo

Helmet to fight off the enemy or to pretend you have a big nose!

Mangosteen, more, please!

You heard it here first folks! The new rage in fruit goodness is the mangosteen. First seen as fabric, then made up into crafty and utilitarian projects, now it is the must have nectar to complement your noni and acai juice. Ahh, refreshing.

Can't tell you what it tastes like as the other juice flavors were present. Phoebe was desperate to get a bottle of this stuff, though! Geez, kid, no you can' have the $16 a bottle juice. Let me get you a nice 59 cent super-caffeinated Pibb Extra.

Pause in bloggin'

Pardon the recent pause in posts. I have been enriching myself with
the joys of motherhood.