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Certified Cheesemaker

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I don’t remember if I mentioned it on here before or not, but Sara’s awesome Christmas present to my brother and I was a gift certificate to a cheese making class, run by Angelic Organics, and the class took place over the weekend.  It was really cool!

The class was set up brilliantly. We made 6 kinds of cheeses total, all of which were varieties that didn’t need to be aged very long, so we were able to try all of them. They had each group take one kind of cheese to be responsible for, we had ricotta, but it was timed out so that different cheeses had interesting steps at different times, so we could all gather around to see. Also, the different cheeses were timed out so that they all finished at different times, so we could try them as they were finished.

The cheeses made were mozzarella, ricotta, queso blanco, chevre, feta, and formaggio. The mozzarella was unbelievably delicious, but complicated. I’d say our ricotta was the second best, followed by the queso blanco. The other ones were all good, but they were a little bland. In some cases this is because we didn’t add any flavoring and didn’t let them sit for as long as you normally would. Most of them were made with fresh goats milk, but a few were with cow’s milk. As part of the class, we even got to milk goats!

Nate and I ended up with ricotta because we didn’t care much about what kind we made. It turned out that it was the easiest to make, and the quickest. Despite that, we manged to make a huge mess when ours boiled over, and then later forgot that it had boiled over and used that burner again, causing a small fire. Just a smidge embarrassing. I’m sure everybody was like, “Oh of course, you invite guys to a cooking class, they mess everything up.” On the other hand, everybody liked our cheese. We made one without salt, one with, and one with some herbs like green onions and garlic. That one was the best and it went pretty fast.

The whole point of the class is to enable you to make cheese at home. So they gave us some recipes and pointers and stuff to take home. I don’t think I will ever make cheese at home, but I am content in the knowledge that I could if I had to. And as far as Christmas presents go, I have a little saying, it goes like this: if you give a man some cheese, he has cheese for a day. If you teach a man to make cheese, he will have cheese for a lifetime.

You scream, I scream, we all scream for iCream

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Over the weekend, we went to a new ice cream shop, or should I say iCream shop. We heard about this place because the person who started it is a University of Chicago grad and they did it as a senior project.

What they do is make the ice cream while you wait, instantly freezing it with liquid nitrogen. Aside from making some awesome science fiction fog, the advantage of this is that they don’t have to make every possible flavor ahead of time. So you can make any flavor, any color, any type of ice cream that they offer, which makes for a near infinite amount of possibilities.

For example, let’s say you are big fan of frozen yogurt. When you go to an ice cream place, they maybe only have one or two choices that are frozen yogurt because frozen yogurt is not that popular; so they don’t want to make a bunch of mint chocolate chip frozen yogurt, only to have to throw it out later. So you are sort of constrained to what they have, which may only be vanilla and chocolate. But this place doesn’t need to make it up ahead of time, which means you can get whatever flavor you want.

I went with almond flavored low-fat frozen yogurt with heath bar and nutella mixed in. It was delicious! I think Sara had almond organic ice cream with peanut butter and banana mixed in. Nobody was disappointed.

The downsides are that it was a little on the expensive side and also the service wasn’t super fast…they do have to make the ice cream. It wasn’t a problem on the cool-ish day we went, but in the height of summer with a huge line of people, I could see how it would be a problem.

But if you find yourself on the North Side, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend iCream!

Exciting Garden News (speculation only)

/ Shane / 1 Comment

As reported in our local newspaper (I would post a link but they only have the latest issue, so the link would be inaccurate in a week) our Alderman suggested the empty lot that is more or less across the street (sort of kitty corner, but a little farther) from our house as a potential new location for the garden.  This would be great for two reasons, 1) I didn’t think the garden could possibly be any closer, but across the street is pretty dang convenient, and 2) that lot is currently full of trash, broken bottles, etc. so it could only be improved.  The downside is that the lot is much smaller than where the garden is now, so we could potentially be pushed out of a spot. However, with such a convenient location, I would think we could wait as long as it takes to get a spot.

So perhaps something that seemed so dire could actually be a benefit! Clouds with silver linings and all that.

In tasty hamburger news, CNN had 5 Tasty Burger Joints Worth Visiting and good ole Triple XXX and the Purvis burger made the list! For those of you not in the know, Triple XXX is a sort of hole in the wall, iconic Purdue restaurant and the Purvis burger has peanut butter on it. That sounds kind of gross but it is surprisingly good. I usually got something else, but Sara was fond of the Purvis burger. Still, I can’t deny it exceeded my expectations.

Another Important Developmental Toy

/ Shane / 1 Comment

As we all know, an important developmental step in the life of a child is deciding which side to come down on in the endless Pirates vs. Ninjas debate.  The sooner this is settled the better, for example, if your child thinks that a ninja could beat a pirate, he potentially has some form of mental illness. Well, now we have a tool for helping your child make that decision earlier in life: the pirate vs. ninja mobile!

Via Gizmodo via Tony Vegas


GRRM is the man

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Somewhere roughly around 10 years ago, my friend Rody introduced me to a book named A Game of Thrones. I had never heard of the author George R.R. Martin, but I immediately fell in love with the book. Luckily for me, it was the first book in a series known as A Song of Ice and Fire (which is still on going by the way).

This series flat out blew my mind. It the the best fantasy epic I have ever read and I have recommended it to many people since then. It is hard to explain what makes it good exactly, but I will say this: do not become attached to any character, no matter how main they may seem. The world and characters (and there are many, many characters) are so completely fleshed out that you get a sense that things are happening to other characters and other parts of the world while your attention is regrettably focused on just one thing. The books are simply amazing.

After enjoying these books so much, I naturally sought out other works by the same author. This led me to discover that George R. R. Martin was the editor of the long running series Wild Cards. I had indeed read a few Wild Cards books years ago and positively loved them. Score another for Mr. Martin!

I would like to get my hands on the entire set (and it is vast, about 20 books, many of them out of print) but I have been holding off on it because I don’t have the time to read them all at the moment.

At some point I picked up A Song for Lya and it didn’t disappoint. Every story in the bunch was good, and the titular story was especially awsome. It only spurred me on all the more.

So next, I mentioned in passing that managed to get my hands on the audio book format of Dreamsongs volumnes I and II, a retrospective on Martin’s career.

I cannot gush about these books enough. If nothing else cemented R.R. Martin as a master of his craft, this certainly puts him over the top. I don’t even know which was better, the many stories contained within or the fascinating pieces about his writing career. Now, keep in mind these are some HEFTY books, something like a total of 1,500 pages or, to put it another way, about 4.6 pounds. Even the audio books are large, somewhere around 32 hours. And I haven’t even gotten to Dreamsongs volume 3 yet! They are roughly chronological, so volume I covers his very early career including things from when he was a kid or while he was in college, mostly shorter stories and sci-fi. Volume II is later and includes some of the longer works and things like a couple of excerpts from Tuf Voyaging (which was originally individual short stories anyway). All genres of his career are represented from sci-fi to fantasy to horror. Absolutely get ahold of this book(s), you will not be disappointed.

In particular, I will call your attention to a story named Sandkings, which is one of the collected stories in the book. What a story, my goodness.  Soooo good! But I knew right away that I had heard it before, or in this case seen it. There was a revival of the show Outer Limits that I used to enjoy and it was kicked off with a special double episode which was so good that I have never forgotten it. Guess what, the episode was entitled “The Sandkings” and it was a retelling of this very story. So score #3 for Mr. Martin, yet another thing I thoroughly enjoyed and did not know was by him! I found the story better than the T.V. version, but I can completely understand where they were coming from with the edits. They actually did a really good job with the adaptation. I highly recommend finding this story in particular. I have seen it on the web, but I won’t link to it here because I’m not sure it is authorized.

If I have any knocks on G.R.R. it was that I didn’t really enjoy The Armageddon Rag. Apparently, I was not the only one. To be fair I wasn’t really the target audience, since it is about the music culture of the ’60s and what had happened to it by the ’80s. Not really my generation. Another common complaint is that the Song of Ice and Fire books have been taking longer and longer to come out, sometimes years after the original release date. George has addressed this quite thoroughly on his blog and he makes some good points. I agree it is annoying, because I can’t really remember what happened in some of the older books anymore, but as far as I am concerned as long as they are of the quality of the earlier books, nobody has any right to complain.

One note on his blog, the title is “Not a Blog” and he more or less means that. It is mostly talk about merchandising and occasionally about the Giants. Don’t expect what he had for dinner posts.

So, in summary, George R.R. Martin? Awesome. Two thumbs up. I endorse any of his writing and I highly recommend any fan of speculative fiction give him a try. Maybe, like me, you already have and enjoyed it, though you didn’t know it at the time!