Tracing My Bongo Burgers: A Day on the Farm, Part 5
This series of posts describes my recent trip to Bobolink Dairy Farm. I decided to break it into chunks because I apparently have a lot to say about it. Today’s entry finishes up the cheese-making process.
As the milk starts curdling, Jonathan draws on his engineering background and draws the exponential growth rate over time on a makeshift graph, illustrating the point of the curve that we are going to add our final ingredient, which will stop the milk from turning into yogurt and instead make it draw together to form cheese. It’s a special enzyme, we learn, one that comes from the stomachs of calves (and all mammals): rennet. This enzyme will cause the proteins to coagulate and separate into curds and whey.
It’s all well and good to draw graphs and whatnot, but there is no way to know exactly when the right time to add the rennet really is, according to a clock. Instead, we have to once again rely on our senses. We smell the milk, looking for sour notes, and taste it, looking for the same thing. After twenty or so minutes, we can all smell it, and the flavor is different, acidic, and we’re ready. In goes the rennet. Read the rest of this entry
WTF, AOTS?
Lady Aravan and I used to watch Attack of the Show on G4 faithfully. Kevin Periera and Olivia Munn had fantastically goofy chemistry, the show was fun, and we both loved it.
Then Olivia Munn got all famous, wrote a book, got a gig on the Daily Show, then her own sit-com, and that was that. For most of 2010, Kevin had to labor alongside a guest host every night. Some of them, like Alison Haislip and Morgan Webb of X-Play, were great – not Olivia, but themselves, and that was perfect. Others, well, didn’t do so well, and they were so memorable I can’t remember a single one of their names. Read the rest of this entry
Tracing My Bongo Burgers: A Day on the Farm, Part 4
This series of posts describes my recent trip to Bobolink Dairy Farm. I decided to break it into chunks because I apparently have a lot to say about it. Today’s entry chronicles the finer points of milk and cheese.
While Lady Aravan is gleefully milking cows and scratching cow heads and hearing stories, I begin my education in cheesecrafting. I have my little cheesemaking hat on (see yesterday’s picture) and don an apron. There’s all kinds of stuff all over this little room, but the important things are a table in the center, and a rack next to it. On the rack are several round smaller cheese wheels, a handful of cheese pyramids, and a larger wheel. Later on we’ll learn the names (the small wheels are Amram, the pyramids are something I can’t remember, and the larger wheel is Baudolino), but for now we learn that those cheeses were made two days ago, and they are headed to The Cave. Lulu takes them away while Jonathan promises we’ll see them later. Read the rest of this entry
Tracing My Bongo Burgers: A Day on the Farm, Part 3
This series of posts describes my recent trip to Bobolink Dairy Farm. I decided to break it into chunks because I apparently have a lot to say about it. Today’s entry chronicles the early part of the day.
This is the part where I go backwards a little bit before going forward, because I like to ramble, and because there was some stuff I forgot to say. First, I want to answer the question: Why Bobolink?
When Lady Aravan and I were on our journey to better health, we by chance started watching Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. It’s not a cooking show, but it is a show about food and travel, and we liked Tony’s acerbic sense of humor and presentation. One show he did was set in New Jersey, and in that show he traveled to a small cheese-and-bread-making farm called Bobolink. There he met a raw-milk enthusiast, baked bread, and had what sounded like the world’s best pizza. Read the rest of this entry
Tracing My Bongo Burgers: A Day on the Farm, Part 2
This series of posts describes my recent trip to Bobolink Dairy Farm. I decided to break it into chunks because I apparently have a lot to say about it. Today’s entry chronicles the journey itself.
Dawn broke on the big day as we woke up to head to the dairy. Actually, dawn didn’t break until well after we’d woken up, bu that just made it feel all the more farmier. A quick breakfast (cereal and a protein shake for me; leftover homemade pizza and cottage cheese for the Lady. Seriously.) followed soon after, and then we got bundled up. We knew it’d be in the 30s and we’d be tramping in snow, thanks to an email from Jonathan White, the cheesemaker and half the head of Bobolink Dairy Farm, the other half being Nina, his wife, who bears the lovely description of Dancemaker on the website since she is a ballet dancer as well, and who teaches breadmaking classes. Read the rest of this entry
Tracing My Bongo Burgers: A Day on the Farm Part 1
This series of posts describes my recent trip to Bobolink Dairy Farm. I decided to break it into chunks because I apparently have a lot to say about it. Today’s entry is sort of an introduction and background.
For Valentine’s Day this year, Lady Aravan got me the coolest present ever: a trip to a farm to take a cheesemaking class.
Now, to a lot of people, that might sound like hell on earth, or at least dull and pointless. I mean, Wal-Mart has all the cheese you’ll ever need, right? Perfectly yellow, helpfully shrink-wrapped, every single one of each variety tasting exactly the same as all the others. Such perfect uniformity is yummy! Read the rest of this entry
Exercise DVD Review: Bob Harper Kettlebell Sculpted Body
Originally, I wasn’t going to do a review of this one, since a lot of what I have to say about kettlebells in Bob’s workout videos was covered in my Cardio Shred review. After mixing it into my normal routine and doing it today, though, I decided to do one anyway. I’m not going to go into the merits and drawbacks of kettlebells here – just suffice it to say that my opinions haven’t changed since the last review. I did the workout with handweights, and I feel like it is a good enough workout to use if you like Bob’s style. Read the rest of this entry
Winter in Derenemyn 