Reach Out and Learn

Yesterday, I read a thoughtful blog post by Gaye Glasspie, one of the knitters whose Instagram posts I really love. Among other things, she wrote, "I never ever thought I would live in the world we are in right now. I never thought I would be in a space where folks looked at me and didn’t notice my smile FIRST. I never thought I would have to be afraid simply because I am different. That was then right? I mean it’s history and times are better right? I will simply say this…I wish I could wrap the world in yarn but I can’t, so keep everyone safe." This post came after a terribly violent week. I've seen videos of police officers killing more black men (Alton Sterling and Philando Castile), and videos of the shooting in Dallas following a peaceful protest over recent police shootings. I've read and listened to commentary about these events, too, and all my reading and listening has led me to sign-up with local racial justice organizations. (I know, what took me so long?) In short, Black Lives Matter.

Gaye Glasspie opened her blog post with a wish that the world be more like a yarn store, where "ALL yarn is welcome. All colors, all sizes, all material and name brands in the same place at the same time and no drama." If only, right? How do we even begin to get close to that "yarn store" (or choose your own utopian) ideal?

I think one way is by reaching out and learning from each other.

I learned to knit when I was in high school. I had returned from a summer exchange program in Norway where it seemed like everyone—men, women, old, young, and even teenagers—were knitters. I wanted to learn, too. Lucky for me, my mom set me up with Mrs. Shey,  my sister's former piano teacher, who is also a skilled knitter. Mrs. Shey (who is originally from Beijing) sat next to me for hours on her sofa while she coached me through the basics of knitting, corrected my mistakes, and helped me go shopping for patterns and yarn.

After high school, I didn't knit for years, but for whatever reason, I never parted with the late 1980s royal blue yarn that I bought with Mrs. Shey (and never finished turning into a cardigan).

The unused, and now vintage, balls of yarn got some new life this week, though, when I taught my friend, Amy, and her daughter, Alicia, how to knit. 

Amy and I met at the swimming pool where Wyatt takes lessons and Amy's son, Sean, has physical therapy sessions. Wyatt and Sean are the same age, and they think the same things are uproariously funny. More than that, Wyatt and Sean are in the pool at the same time so I get to talk to Amy for an uninterrupted thirty minutes every week. We talk about mom stuff: everything from wacky recipes we have tried, to disability services, to racism.

Since it's now summer, Sean's older sister, Alicia, also gets to hang out on the pool benches while Sean swims. She'd rather be in the pool, naturally. But two weeks ago, I started talking about knitting, and before I knew it, I had offered to teach Amy and Alicia how to knit. Their excitement and enthusiasm at the idea made me smile for the rest of the week.

I brought knitting needles and balls of the blue yarn with me to the next swimming session, and by the end of our thirty minutes, they were off to a great start. I advised that for the rest of the week, they should just keep knitting, even as they noticed mistakes. Within a couple of days, Amy texted me that they had used up their yarn, and they wanted to take the work off the needles. I stopped by their house to deliver more (blue) yarn, teach them how to cast-off, and to help them cast-on another practice project.

I really can't wait to see their progress, bask in their enthusiasm, and teach them more this week. Of course they're not the only ones learning. I'm learning different ways to look at slip-knots and stitches, that I don't have to be an expert at everything before I can teach something, and that if I pay attention and listen carefully, we all get better results.

Who doesn't love a good life lesson or two delivered through craft?

Gorgonzola Tasting

"Gorgonzola cheese! Blue cheese! Who wants a sample?"

Remember back in April when we made our Gorgonzola style cheese? Well, it's now July, and the cheese has been aging in the cave for nearly three months. The Art of Natural Cheesemaking says aging should take between two and three months. We figured Independence Day was as good a day as any to break into our cheese and taste it.

We made a video of our tasting:

After we tasted the cheese, Wyatt spent about about thirty minutes running a pop-up cheese shop in our kitchen. He set up an area for the two of us, as workers, to be behind the counter. He then arranged a sample plate with cubes of cheese he had cut, and he added some toothpicks. Next, he ran around the house shouting "WHO WANTS A SAMPLE?" Fortunately, Marc was happy to be our customer. And even more fortunately, Marc was also up for returning to the shop again and again, pretending to be different people who had heard about the newly opened cheese shop. He was always such a good customer, too, sampling and purchasing a piece every visit, despite Wyatt's firm price of "ninety-nine dollars a pound."

Curiosity, Nature, and Knitting

Last week didn't feel like a series of days for me. It felt like a bunch of fragments that never seemed to add up to anything useful. All fits and starts, with ten minutes here, twenty minutes there, and by Wednesday, I finally accepted that it was probably going to be one of those weeks where I'd get nothing real accomplished.

But I was wrong! First of all, I got some reading done.

Since October 2015, I have read exactly two books. Abysmal, I know. I used to read all the time, and now? Knitting fills my eyes while podcasts fill my ears. I know, I know—audio books!—but I have yet to warm to them.

The book I started in October and finished last week was Proof: The Science of Booze, by Adam Rogers. Don't let my many months of reading it fool you—it was an absolutely terrific read. I highly recommend it to anyone with any interest in alcoholic beverages or science.

The second book I read, I started on Thursday, neglected it over the weekend, and finished it on Monday. I could not stop reading it (and reporting the most interesting parts to Wyatt and Marc). The book is Unseen City: The Majesty of Pigeons, the Discreet Charm of Snails & Other Wonders of the Urban Wilderness, by Nathanael Johnson. I heard about it on one of my favorite podcasts, 99% Invisible.

This is a book I wish I could have read during the years when I was walking around with baby (and later, toddler) Wyatt. Back then, I had a child who loathed his car seat and his stroller. His screaming was ear-splitting, and heartbreakingly frustrating. No loving words, kind pats or white-noise app on my phone could soothe him. As a result, I drove sparingly and spent hours walking with him in one baby carrier or another all around the neighborhood. As Wyatt became more aware of his surroundings, he'd start to point at things he noticed. "Tree!" I'd say. Or "Flower!" depending on where it looked like his chubby finger was directed. And as he grew older, he would hear a bird chirping and sign, "Bird." So I'd say "Bird!" But as the months rolled by and our urban nature walks continued, I became acutely aware of how few types of trees, plants, or birds I could identify. I went so far as to research whether there were urban nature walks where someone would identify things for you while you strolled, so I could learn. Sadly, all walks I found directly competed with nap time, so I never went, and I didn't pursue my curiosity further.

Nathanael Johnson, on the other hand, took a very similar experience with his daughter and turned it into a way of appreciating the "Urban Wilderness." He followed his curiosity, studying the "boring" or even "disgusting" plants and creatures we find everywhere in our urban landscapes. Then he wrote about them so engagingly and informatively that I finished his entire book in just two sittings.

I think this book grabbed my attention because, in addition to my early urban nature walks with Wyatt and our ongoing fascination with bugs, slugs, and plants, I sometimes feel torn between city life and what I imagine country life must be like (thanks, Instagram!) I struggle with the whole "Be Here. Now." thing in our busy, tech-driven city. As it turns out, there doesn't need to be a struggle, you just have to start actually seeing things. Thanks to a narrative that's as informative and persuasive as it is funny, I followed Johnson on his own journey of learning about turkey vultures, snails, squirrels, ginkgo trees, crows, and more. As I saw how we can connect with the natural world, I felt more compelled than ever to start exploring. Cities (with green spaces) are teeming with nature, and believing that I have to go out to the wilderness to experience nature is just silly.

As Johnson wrote on pages 63-64,

We see what we expect to, what we have a name for, what pops immediately into our heads. But confirmation of the expected is boring, and false. Life only becomes interesting when you watch it closely enough to see something surprising, and with that surprise come a little closer to the real thing. That, I suppose, is the point of this book: to allow people to see past their expectations. When actual seeing pierces the skin of habituation, if only for a moment, it permits a bit of wonder to bleed through.

Marc, Wyatt and I have decided to follow Johnson's helpful and remarkably practical recommendations for becoming "Neighborhood Naturalists."  We have binoculars and can easily find a magnifying glass. It will be fun to keep a journal and identify one species a month. And Wyatt already determined in preschool the rampant weed he loves to eat (sour grass), so he's ahead of us in that regard.

But I didn't only get reading done this week! I also had the most amazing Saturday at Kira K Design's knitting retreat at the Marconi Conference Center. I received the most inspiring introduction to Fair Isle knitting from Janine Bajus (The Feral Knitter, and photos of some of her amazing designs appear below), learned all about pattern adjustment from Kira, and connected with some other truly wonderful entrepreneurs, including Sunni Scrivner, who owns the the shop Yarn, in Eureka, and designs her own patterns, Maria Isabel, who owns A Needle Runs Through It and makes terrific project bags, and Brooke Sinnes, the woman behind Sincere Sheep and the yarns I love so much. The setting was beautiful, and the company was the best.

More than that, nature was everywhere! including in our classroom, when a terrified-looking hummingbird found itself in the track lighting and could not determine a way out. Luckily for the bird, one of my classmates had handled similar situations before and carefully carried it out of the classroom after it collapsed and fell to the floor. Seemingly no worse for the wear, it buzzed off after catching its breath while perched on a flowering bush (the name of which I of course do not know...yet).

Birthday Cake!

"I don't want to have my school birthday tomorrow. I'm not going."

"Oh dear. That's really too bad. BECAUSE I'M BAKING TWO CAKES FOR IT TONIGHT AND DAD AND I ARE GOING."

As you may know, Wyatt turned FIVE this week. And on Sunday evening, he announced his non-attendance at school on Monday just as Marc whisked him, freshly showered, off to bed after a truly epic weekend of fun (and an equally epic melt-down at the end of it all). And, to be honest, two hours later, between baking the first and second cake, I marched down the hall to announce (again) to Marc, "I HATE BAKING." Wyatt and I probably both meant to declare instead, "I'M EXHAUSTED."

Part of turning five in Wyatt's kindergarten is having a little celebration in the classroom: A birthday circle, with cake. There are two children's birthdays this week, so that's why we needed two cakes. Wyatt's class has celebrated most of the children's birthdays already. The tradition (as I understand it) is that the family of the birthday child provides the ingredients that a teacher then bakes into a birthday cake. I've seen the cakes—glorious looking bundt cakes topped with a sprinkle of powdered sugar and surrounded by a crown of fresh fruit or flowers. Because Wyatt is gluten-free, he can't have the school birthday cakes, so I bake gluten-free cupcakes that the teachers keep in the freezer for him and defrost as needed. Wyatt doesn't mind missing-out on the birthday cake. The cupcakes I bake for him are really good, and the fact that most baked goods are "gluten" instead of "gluten-free" is something he's used to.

But let's be honest. There's something special about being able to share a cake with all your friends on your birthday. In Wyatt's class, there are a couple of children who are gluten-free, and one child who is also dairy-free. So far, it hasn't been possible for the whole class to share a cake. Or two cakes, for that matter.

I figured it was time to find a cake recipe that everyone in his class could enjoy. Over the last two weeks, I have baked (and shared) a BUNCH of yellow 6-cup sized bundt cakes. I'm no baker (never mind a cake baker, as evidenced by the fact that I borrowed cake pans for this project), but thanks to a little knowledge from my Science & Cooking class and some careful troubleshooting, I have arrived at a delicious cake recipe that is gluten-free, dairy-free, and comes out of a bundt pan with absolutely no difficulty. The structure of the cake is very good and the crumb seems just right. This cake is a winner.

How much of a winner, you ask? Well, Wyatt told me when I picked him up from school, "Mom! We fooled the other gluten-free kids! They said to the teachers, 'Why did you give me cake? I can't have cake.' But they could! They were SO HAPPY and ate it all up. We even got seconds! Let's fool them again next year." My heart melts a little every time I think about how "we fooled them," and I feel a twinge of regret for all the times I declared, dripping spatula raised high in the air, "I HATE BAKING." An appreciative audience is one of the best reasons I can think of to bake a cake (or two).

Like most delicious birthday cakes, there's nothing health-food-like about this one. Also, because there aren't any children with nut or egg sensitivities in Wyatt's class, I only solved for gluten and dairy in this recipe. If anyone else wants to take on the challenge of further substitutions, please share in the comments the changes you make and how the cake turned out.

I developed my recipe based on the recipe for Yellow Cake in Gluten-Free Girl American Classics Reinvented and the recipe for Yellow Layer Cake in America's Test Kitchen's How Can It Be Gluten Free. I love both of these cookbooks. But having made both of these cake recipes in the past, I felt that that neither recipe would give me the exact cake I wanted (and both recipes include sour cream, anyway). So I did a little research about non-dairy sour cream alternatives, drew on the aspects I liked best about each cake recipe, tinkered with ingredients, and eventually, I got the cake I wanted.

As is the case with most "alternative baking" recipes, there are a few steps you need to take before actually baking the cake, so I'll lay those out first.

Make your Gluten-Free Flour Blend: I like Gluten Free Girl's blend, and that's what I used. You'll need 400 grams of millet flour, 300 grams of sweet rice flour, and 300 grams of potato starch. Combine all three ingredients in a large bowl and then whisk until well-blended. If you prefer, you can buy the blend, already mixed, here.

Make your Baking Goop: I had a terrible problem with my cakes sticking, and many good store-bought baking sprays include flour, which isn't an option when baking gluten-free. But this mixture works like a charm. Take equal volumes (I used 1/4 cup) of your gluten-free flour blend, a neutral-flavored oil, and shortening. Blend them (in a blender or with a whisk) until smooth. Store the mixture in a jar with a lid and refrigerate it when not in use to avoid separation. Before you bake, take the jar out of the refrigerator so that it can warm up a bit. Dip a pastry brush into the mixture and paint the goop evenly and thoroughly over the pan to prepare it before baking.

Make your Cashew Sour Cream: I mostly followed the recipe from Oh She Glows, but I used less water. Here is my slight adaptation of the recipe, which yields just under 2 cups of Cashew Sour Cream:

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups (225 g) raw cashews, soaked
• 2/3 cup water
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
• Scant 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

Directions:

1. Put the cashews in a bowl and cover them with boiling water. Soak for 1 hour, and then drain.
2. Place the drained cashews in a high-speed blender (I used a Vitamix).
3. Add the fresh lemon juice, vinegar, water, and salt. Blend the mixture on high speed until it is incredibly smooth. 
4. Store the "cream" in an air-tight container in the refrigerator. It will probably thicken a bit once it has chilled. You can store it in the refrigerator for about a week or freeze it for longer storage. I portion it in silicone ice cube trays before freezing.

... and then it's CAKE BAKING TIME! I used a 6-cup bundt pan (and to avoid over-filling the pan, I made a few cupcakes with the extra batter that didn't fit), but you could use another pan if you like. I prefer to weigh my ingredients when I bake because it is so much more accurate and yields the best results. But I have included rough volume measurements, in case you don't have access to a baking scale.

Gluten-Free, Dairy Free Yellow Birthday Cake

(click here for a printable version)

Ingredients:

• 100g coconut oil, melted (just under 1/2 cup)
• 311g Flour Blend (about 2 1/4 cups)
• 1 tablespoon gluten-free baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 large eggs, room temperature, separated
• a pinch of cream of tartar
• 198g granulated sugar (about 1 cup)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 163g cashew sour cream (about 2/3 cup)

Directions:

1. Place your baking rack in the middle position in your oven and preheat the oven to 325 degrees. With a pastry brush, paint your Baking Goop all over the inside of the pan(s) you will use. Brush a thin layer of goop thoroughly and evenly over the entire baking surface of the pan(s).
2. In a small or medium-sized bowl, whisk flour blend, baking powder, salt, and baking soda until combined.
3. Fit your stand mixer with the whisk attachment. Whip the egg whites and cream of tartar on medium-low speed until the mixture is foamy. It will take about a minute. Then, increase the speed to medium-high and whip the whites into billowy clouds for another minute. With the mixer running, gradually add half of the sugar and keep whipping the mixture until the whites make stiff, glossy peaks. It will take another two or three minutes. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl.
4. Return your now empty mixer bowl to the stand mixer. Add the egg yolks and vanilla, and whip them for about 30 seconds on medium speed (until they are well-blended). With the mixer running, gradually add the rest of the sugar, and then increase the mixer speed to high. Keep whipping the mixture for another two minutes or so, until it becomes very thick and pale yellow. Reduce the mixer speed to medium, add the coconut oil, and then the cashew sour cream. Whip for another 30 seconds or so. Reduce the speed to low and gradually add the flour blend mixture. Mix until thoroughly combined (about a minute), scraping the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed.
5. Using a rubber spatula, stir one-third of the whipped egg whites into the batter you just made. Then, gently fold in the rest of the whites and keep folding the batter until you can't see any more white streaks in the batter.
6. Pour the batter into your prepared pan(s), leaving at least 1 1/2 inches of space at the top of the pan. Rap the pan(s) sharply on the counter (to dislodge any bubbles that may have gotten trapped), and bake them. Rotate the pan 180 degrees half-way through baking time, and test for doneness by inserting a toothpick. Once the toothpick comes out clean, the cake is done.  In my oven, the 6-cup bundt cake takes about 40 minutes. Cupcakes take about 25 minutes.
7. Let the cake cool for 10 minutes in the pan, and then turn it onto a plate or platter. Let it cool completely before slicing and eating.

Gorgonzola Cheese

We are still working our way through David Asher's book, The Art of Natural Cheesemaking. I love this project and the cheeses we have made!

A couple of weeks ago, we made some space in the cheese cave (by eating some delicious cheese, of course) and Wyatt and I started working on our first Gorgonzola style cheese. For this project, rather than taking still photographs, I videoed the process. I shot everything on my iPhone, using my GorillaPod tripod. If you watch the video, you'll notice a bunch of first time filmmaker mistakes, especially if you really know what you're doing with a video camera (or iMovie, for that matter). But the video also shows how Wyatt and I work together in the kitchen, and we do pretty well.

I was curious what it would be like to watch us, and I wondered if I would be able to put together anything decent from the footage I got. Our first day of cheesemaking took about 3.5 hours, and we worked on the cheese off and on for a week after that. But the entire video is only about 15 minutes long—not bad if you want a relatively quick look at what it is like to make cheese at home with an almost 5-year old.

With that, I give you my Gorgonzola video. Enjoy!

Timbuk2 and Tacos

Our factory tour-themed week of spring break concluded on Friday when Wyatt and I went on the Timbuk2 factory tour. The tour is offered the first Friday of every month, so if you weren't there on April 1, there will be plenty of other opportunities. You can reserve your free tickets to the tour on their website.

Our group of about 20 or so visitors (honestly, I didn't count) began the tour in the Timbuk2 shop on Shotwell Street, where our energetic and knowledgeable tour guides gave us a brief history of the company. We then followed our guides next door, into their offices, to see some bag designs that will be available for purchase later in the year. We peeked into the lunch room, saw April Fools prank bags from previous years, and had the opportunity to admire peoples' workstations. Wyatt also found the foosball table. Our third stop was the factory itself, where we saw several expert sewists stitching bags together. We learned, among other things, that Timbuk2 follows the Toyota model of production, every sewist can perform every sewing task necessary to making any of the bags, and it takes just 18 minutes to make a classic Timbuk2 messenger bag. The San Francisco factory is just one of the factories where Timbuk2 manufactures its products. The other factories are located in Indonesia, Vietnam, and China. Our final stop on the tour was the second floor of the offices, where we spoke to a designer who showed us her process for designing bags for manufacture, and we got a sneak peek at designs that won't be released for a year or more.

If our tour guides' goals were to give us an understanding of Timbuk2's corporate culture and a serious case of bag envy, they largely succeeded. It seems like Timbuk2's employees are mostly young, fun loving, work-hard-play-hard types who are devoted cyclists and self-described "bag-geeks." And some of the bags I saw that will be coming out in the next year (or more) are more fashion forward than Timbuk2's traditional backpacks and messenger bags.

Wyatt loved the shop, trying out the buckles on the bags, and he even found a couple of bags he really loved. But as far as the tour went, he said, "It was okaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy, but all they did was show us bags. And talk about bags. I couldn't see much what was going on, and they didn't show us any big machines. I liked the sewing machines, but we spent hardly any time in there. And they didn't give us any of the pieces they sew together."

He proceeded to rank his factory tours, so far, as follows:

1. McRoskey Mattress Company

2. Anchor Steam Brewery

3. Timbuk2

He gave this ranking before he received the "thank you for touring" postcard from McRoskey. McRoskey may have secured their #1 ranking for awhile with that one piece of mail.

But the Timbuk2 tour was definitely fun, and it got us within easy walking distance of what Wyatt declared to be "The Best Tacos In Town" from El Gallo Giro, a taco truck that parks on Treat at 23rd Street. The carnitas tacos were the best I have had in ages, and lunch cost a total of only $8.

And guess what? There's still an ENTIRE WEEK LEFT OF SPRING BREAK. And I'm out of tours. So the current plan for the coming week is to start another cheese (a gorgonzola style, this time), visit a museum, maybe spend some time exploring neighborhoods we rarely visit, and probably eat more tacos from El Gallo Giro.

Spring Break: Factory Tour Edition

We've just begun a two-week spring break staycation, and I've rarely been so grateful to live in such an interesting city.

Wyatt is keenly interested in learning how stuff gets made. And he is even more interested in a manufacturing process if it requires lots of heavy machinery and many delivery trucks with forklifts. We spend so much time talking about (and speculating about) how stuff gets made that I recently started toying with the idea of taking him on some factory tours. 

To be honest though, when the idea of factory tours occurred to me, I was probably thinking about how much I love factory tours and hoping Wyatt was old enough to (1) behave and (2) learn something. I guessed that he was, and I tested my guess during February break when we took our first tour. We started with a beer factory, Anchor Steam Brewery. After years of driving past it and speculating about what it must be like inside, I figured, why not find out? Wyatt was overjoyed when I told him we were going to the brewery, and once there, he was totally perplexed as to why there weren't any other kids on the tour. I'm pretty sure that we were the only people in the group who were more interested in the tour of the facility than the extremely generous beer tasting at the end.

Since that successful factory tour, I've been researching and contacting San Francisco manufacturing companies to see if Wyatt and I can come and see how they do their work. I have yet to find a chocolate factory that will have us, and an electric motorcycle company declined my request because of their production schedule, but disappointments aside, how lucky are we that our first week of break is bookended by a tour of McRoskey Mattress Company on Monday, and Timbuk2 on Friday? Just based on the McRoskey tour, we are incredibly lucky.

The McRoskey tour was fabulous. We were six people (three adults, two kindergarteners and one teenager) on the tour, and we followed McRoskey's entire process of building a mattress, from the bolts of fabric, spools of wire, metal fittings, and what looked like bales of cotton, to the end product: a handcrafted mattress that got tufted as we watched. We also saw how the box springs are made. Our guide, Robin, was incredibly knowledgeable and kept everyone's interest. Possibly even more impressive were the workers and craftspeople we saw creating these beautiful mattresses—every single person was simultaneously focused on their work and incredibly welcoming.

First we saw the sewing room, then we headed to watch spring-making and spring-fastening. We saw the cotton, wool, and other layers that go into the mattress and watched it get sewn together. We watched them build box springs. And then we watched as different people made two huge tufting machines do their magic.

Wyatt and I drafted his "Thank You For The Tour" note this afternoon. He worked on the card at his little project board, next to his haul of many of the mattress manufacturing treasures that Robin had given him. Among other things, he asked me to write, "I think that if I worked at your mattress factory, I would want to be the person who folds and weighs the fluffy cotton . . . I liked how . . . you asked everyone if they were available to show us how all the machines worked."

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who loves factory tours.

Instagram Saved Our Cheese

"Mom! I LOVE that red thread! And the little face smiling sideways. Good job."

The Internet was so good to me last week. As you know, we are in the midst of spring cleaning at our house. We've got until Easter to get it done, and to be honest, the verve we initially brought to this project is basically gone. Don't get me wrong—we haven't given up on the plan, but we also don't make progress every day anymore. This scenario is obviously not ideal, but why be dogmatic about the "every day" part of it if we're still moving forward? Rationalizations aside, we actually made huge progress this weekend when we bundled and donated six big bags of items.

The process of clearing out closets brings me face to face with items we love but haven't worn because they need help in some way. I found a favorite jacket of mine (with a stuck zipper), a couple of sweaters (that have been worn thin in spots), a skirt (that's still about six inches too long for me), and a few of Wyatt's pants that have holes in the knees. My stack of mending is pretty tall right now, and my skills are not yet equal to the task. Imagine my delight to find that in 2014, The Guardian published some incredibly helpful "How-To's" in a series called "How to Mend." I've pinned them all so I can consult them as needed.

As you can see from the photo at the top of this post, my "visible mending" techniques can use some improvement, but I'm happy to be figuring it out as I go along. You can see my first attempt at knee patches on the left. The jeans were hand-me-downs to Wyatt, and there was nothing to lose by practicing on them with my sewing machine. He wears the jeans all the time now. On the right, you can see the intentionally crooked smiley face I embroidered by hand this weekend to mend two holes (one of which is now an eye, and the other of which is the nose). My next job is to find a replacement zipper and figure out how to use the zipper foot on my sewing machine. Thank goodness for YouTube tutorials.

And oh-my-stars, thank goodness for Instagram. Last Thursday, I posted a photo of the Valençay cheeses that have been aging in our refrigerator. I had noticed that they were developing weird little spots of mold, and I thought I might have to compost them. When I posted the photo, I used a bunch of hashtags and tagged a couple of experts, including Louella Hill, whose cheesemaking book I own, to see what they thought was going on.

Louella Hill responded! My cheeses are fine, she said. I could remove the mold, or not. The wild blue "invaders" weren't really a problem, and the cheeses should just keep aging for another week or maybe three. Louella even answered my follow-up question about where to look for more information about cheese mold (Ben Wolfe and Rachel Dutton, in case you're curious, and haven't yet followed me on Instagram). I removed the mold spots (they slipped right off the ash, interestingly enough) and things now look to be back to normal in the cave.

I keep remembering how much more difficult it used to be, when we weren't so well-connected, to try something new and troubleshoot when things went wrong. It's kind of unbelievable that we can now get practically real-time, helpful feedback from people we don't know in real life. I realize there are huge downsides to social media. And I know that some people write horrible things to others online thanks to the anonymity the Internet affords. But when Instagram saves our cheese, and the Internet rescues my favorite jacket, it's only right to notice the good that's out there.

Let Your Curiosity Transform You

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I dedicated the month of February to drafting my first ever knitting patterns. Now that I'm on the other side of my first draft, I can say that the pattern writing and accompanying hand-cramping deadline-knitting were challenging. The whole affair actually reminded me a little bit of my first legal writing assignments. Once again, I was struggling to write a piece that made sense, on a deadline, while employing unfamiliar citation formats. I had forgotten how difficult it is to drop into an industry, grab an opinionated reader's attention, show them an irresistible point-of-view, and then take them through a logical process, step-by-step, using concise and perfectly clear directions. It's really hard. I stayed up way too late every night, cut corners on pretty much every other aspect of my life, and I began seriously to doubt myself. (Can you spot the hard-boiled perfectionist who has committed herself to trying something new?)

Halfway through writing my second pattern, it dawned on me that I had probably taken on too much. I recalled the time in high school French class when we were assigned to write a journal entry with the story of our day. I attempted to write the actual story of my real day, with all the things I had done, along with my thoughts and feelings. You know, like an actual journal entry. I used my English-French dictionary for so many words, and I thought I had done a remarkable and insightful job on the assignment. But I hadn't. My teacher returned the assignment to me full of red ink corrections, genuinely quizzical question marks, and a gentle suggestion that next time, I keep things simple and report what time I woke up, what I ate, and when I went to bed.

If I had actually absorbed that lesson from Madame (whose last name I have now forgotten), I would have first attempted to design an interminably boring scarf or a detestably predictable shawl (that I could neither pin, tie, nor drape without looking absolutely ridiculous). But I didn't. Apparently, I remain as over-confident as ever in certain of my abilities. On March 1, I gave my kind, generous, and ridiculously capable technical editor my patterns. I await her proverbial red ink and promised constructive criticism. Part of me wants the patterns to be perfect, and most of me knows that under the veneer of my fine organizational structure and carefully chosen font, they are a hot mess. Whatever. I cannot wait to learn from my next draft.

Let your curiosity transform you, I say! The magical looking photo collage at the top of this post is my first visual representation of the spirit behind String & Twig (you can see additional related photos, as well as the sources of the photos I selected, on my Pinterest board). It dawned on me just this past week that this process of learning and growing is what my blog is all about. My posts are about how we indulge our curiosity by trying new things, seeing what works, and what doesn't. And every time we try something, there's some kind of transformation, like milk into cheese, seeds into plants, or me into whatever comes next (unwanted ecologies and all). We're all changing in big or small ways every day, regardless of whether we want to or not. Why not evolve in ways that satisfy our intellectual curiosity?

And at the same time, how about working to cultivate curiosity in the more ho-hum aspects of life, like cooking for example? On a very basic level, if we're doing our best, we're transforming ingredients into a meal (or more) every day. And there is so much eating that happens every day. Three meals! Every day. It's hard to get or stay curious about cooking, especially, as I noticed this past month, when you have some shiny, new, more interesting thing going on. I found myself becoming keenly interested in staying out of the kitchen. But because fasting wasn't an option, I focused on decent food I could assemble and cook quickly, as well as food I could basically ignore once I had applied a heat source.

My solution to dinner in a pinch became Weirdly Addictive Tortilla Pizza. We have eaten it every Saturday evening since I learned about it. We use the fancier handmade corn tortillas, and they have been fabulous as pizza "crusts." Another ridiculously easy and shockingly popular dinner solution at our house is a Baked Potato Bar, and it now also appears almost weekly. Confession: I didn't know how to make a good, oven-baked potato until recently. But now I use this very easy recipe and the potatoes turn out beautifully every time. Top your crunchy, fluffy, perfect potatoes with sautéed leeks, butter or olive oil, sour cream, bacon, herbs, whatever other odd ends of previous dinners you have in your refrigerator, salt and pepper, and enjoy. Aside from scrambled eggs and kimchi atop rice from my 1990s rice cooker (which I also hauled out this month), the Baked Potato Bar is the most straightforward weeknight dinner I have ever encountered. Even better, everyone is always excited about it.

If you do have some extra time or oomph for the kitchen, though, I have to point out that blood orange season is coming to a close. I've been grabbing them while I can. If you have eaten more than your share and are looking for a new preparation (but aren't up for spending the small fortune required to make a batch of blood orange sorbet), try a blood orange curd sundae or this lovely riff on the Dominican Morir Soñado.

We made the blood orange curd for dessert with homemade vanilla ice cream and whipped cream when my cousin, my favorite author of books about pirates and teacher of fourth and fifth graders in Atlanta, visited a few weeks ago.

As for the Morir Soñados, Marc, Wyatt and I enjoyed our beautiful pink drinks in martini glasses during one recent kid-friendly Saturday evening cocktail hour. See the tortilla pizza? I wasn't kidding. Every Saturday. Make some yourself and be sure to be messy enough with the cheese at the edge so that you get some of those crunchy bits, too.

Reinvention

Last week, I chatted with a husband and wife, parents of one of Wyatt's classmates, at a cocktail party. They were incredibly friendly and unassuming, but a few minutes into our conversation, the woman asked the question I've come to dread the most in social situations. She asked, "And what do you do?"

When I'm asked, "What do you do?" I often want to shout in response, "EVERYTHING AND NOTHING!" But because that kind of response would be rude, I usually look away, maybe down at my feet, mumble something about what I used to do and what I used to be, and then trail off about how I'm now a stay-at-home mom.

I'm not ashamed of my current occupation, but I am not at ease with it, either. When I was younger, I was adamant that I would never, ever be a stay-at-home mom. I remained firm in my resolve until shortly after Wyatt was born. When I stepped away from the legal profession, I had absolutely no plan for what I would do next. It has been almost five years since I quit my job, and I have yet to figure out my next move. I feel like I have never been busier day-to-day, or less productive (or less important) in the eyes of society. And while it felt liberating to shed my "lawyer" title, being a "stay-at-home-mom" sometimes makes me fear that I am betraying the feminist movement simply by breathing air.

But my cocktail party friend wasn't asking big questions when she asked what I do. She was just trying to find out about me. As I began to mumble my response to her question, I felt myself look down at my shoes. In that moment, though, I suddenly noticed my feet and felt how firmly they were planted on the floor. Feeling unusually calm and secure, I looked up at her again, and just as, "I practiced law for awhile, in Los Angeles and here in San Francisco, but I don't do that anymore," was out of my mouth, I heard myself add, "and if I were being fancy, I'd tell you that right now, I'm in a 'period of reinvention.'" To my amazement, she and her husband laughed appreciatively and said they might have to borrow that phrase sometime. We went on to have a lovely conversation. And yes, I talked a bit about making cheese and knitting.

Reinvention is proving to be pretty challenging for me. Exploring things is fun when it goes well and disappointing when it doesn't. Take this week in cheese, for example. Thanks to David Asher's email consult, I learned that our aging goat cheese had taken a wrong turn. I had initially emailed him not thinking anything was really wrong with our cheese. I was just curious how I could dry out the cheeses because they were sticky. But they shouldn't have been sticky, and by our third email exchange or so, he had seen a photo of our cheeses. David's diagnoisis: Unwanted ecologies.* The cheeses are now in the compost. But because we can all learn from failures, here are photos of our failed cheese:

And before you decide I'm crazy for ever thinking we could eat these, I want you to know that they look worse in these photos than when I first emailed David. I'm not sure what went wrong with this batch, but it smelled about as good as it looks.

One nugget of advice that David offered in our email exchange was that we should always taste our cheeses fresh before we put them to age. We have now tried enough batches of cheese to have an opinion of what tastes great, so we will keep up this practice, now with more educated palates.

At the same time our cheese was falling prey to unwanted ecologies, I completed knitting a trio of children's accessories I designed in Sincere Sheep's Vitamin C color of Shepherdess yarn. I started with a pair of convertible gloves, moved on to a reversible cowl and finished a coordinating hat the other night. All three designs have already been through at least two iterations each at this point because Wyatt is so clear on how he wants his accessories to fit. He loathes floppy cuffs on gloves or mittens, for example. In the coming days, I'm planning to take some photos, figure out how to write the patterns, actually write the patterns, find someone who can act as a technical editor for my patterns, and figure out how to open a shop on Ravelry. I'm curious whether I'll enjoy this process and whether anyone will respond to my virtual cry of, "Patterns for sale!" in the ridiculously saturated marketplace of knitting designs. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I've always felt like I'm winning at life when I find the marvelous things and unique details I can bring to what I do. Whether I'm an expert or a novice, and whether the result is amazing or absolutely stinks (even literally, sometimes), I want to feel grateful to be doing my work and learning from it, instead of focusing on how long it's taking and how imperfectly it's turning out. That perspective shift is going to take some practice.

*Who knew there was such a non-judgmental way of saying your cheese is bad?

Blessed Are The Cheesemakers

"Mom. Why couldn't I try any of the cheese snacks after your class?"

"Well, the snacks were in the classroom, and the only way you'd have been able to try the snacks is if you had been willing to come into the classroom, and you weren't. That's fine, of course—you didn't have to go in. But the snacks weren't coming out."

"Oh. Right. I wish I had felt like going in."

"Yeah, I know. Maybe another time."

"Yeah, maybe."

Just the other week, David Asher was in the Bay Area, and I got to meet him not once, but twice! The first time was at his Wednesday evening book signing at Omnivore Books. I couldn't have been more pleased with his Monty Python-inspired inscription in our copy of The Art of Natural Cheesemaking.

The book signing also included a kefir and cultured butter demonstration, and David offered everyone who attended the opportunity to take home their very own pet for making cheese: a grain of kefir culture. It was pretty terrific to meet David and his lovely partner, Kathryn, in person and get hugs from them across the demonstration table.

The second time I met David was several days later, on Sunday, at his Alpine and Blue Cheese workshop hosted by Pollinate Farm & Garden in Oakland. Originally, I had planned to head to Oakland without Marc or Wyatt and simply attend the three-hour class with our friend, Darcie. But that plan changed on the evening of the book signing when I unfortunately let slip to Wyatt that I was going to meet David and get our book signed. The poor boy started to cry because, as he said, "It's not FAIR that YOU get to go and I have to stay HOME!" I immediately made a quick (and clunky) course correction: I lied. I told him I had gotten confused and I actually had to go to a meeting for school that night, but we could probably meet David later in the week when I had my class. Wyatt calmed down right away and agreed that plan would be fine.

In light of Wyatt's keen interest and my lie, it seemed only right to do my best to give him the chance to meet David over the weekend. Accordingly, Marc and I planned that we would all spend Sunday in Oakland.

Before leaving for Oakland on Sunday morning, I asked Wyatt what he thought would be a good present to give David. I pointed out that he had written the book that taught us how to make cheese and had been away from his home for a long time. Wyatt responded immediately that we should bring him some of our cheese, and we should also bring him crackers so he would "have something to put his cheese on." Wyatt also suggested that we bring him some sauerkraut because, "I think it is so fun visiting places, but I miss eating sauerkraut when I'm gone."*

We met Darcie for brunch, and then all of us then headed over to Dimond Recreation Center. The plan was that Marc and Wyatt would hang out while Darcie and I attended class there. They would come back for me after class, and then Wyatt could meet David.

Darcie and I were early for class, so we got front row, center seats in a class of about ten students. Overall, the class was great. The only disappointing part was that the stove at the facility was broken, and because only one hot plate was available, we were only able to make blue cheese, not Alpine and blue as planned. But David was terrific. He spoke at length and in approachable detail about how and why he discovered and taught himself how to make cheese naturally, kefir, kefir culture, maintaining kefir grains, the importance of rennet and choosing a rennet source, cultivating Penicillium roqueforti, and making blue cheese. I truly admire David's educational approach. He presented a variety of often controversial topics, including the use of animal rennet, the importance of quality dairy products from well-treated animals, freeze-dried cheese cultures, and the value of raw milk, in a way that was never preachy or confrontational. He explained which products he uses and why, and he encouraged everyone to engage in their own conscious evaluation to decide how to proceed with their own cheesemaking. And just like at the book signing, he offered to anyone who was interested their very own kefir grain to take home.

And guess what? The Art of Natural Cheesemaking is really the only resource you need to make amazing cheese. There weren't any "secrets" that came out during class that aren't in the book. Moreover, the photos and descriptions are terrific representations of what you need to achieve at every step of the cheesemaking process. So while I would highly recommend attending any of David's workshops to meet him, experience how he teaches and meet like-minded cheesemakers in your community, you don't need to attend a class to get great results. Just buy the book and follow the instructions.

That said, I did take the following notes in class:

• Milk that is getting old and has already started fermenting will give you cheese with big balloons of gas in the curd. (So now that mystery is solved.)
• You can use a double-boiler to help keep milk the right temperature while you're allowing the curd to set.
• When you pour in rennet, just give the pot a quick stir. You can't really over-mix the kefir culture into the milk, but you can over-mix rennet.
• To dry kefir grains to store them, you can wrap them in a towel and leave them at room temperature. You should flip them every day so they don't stick to the towel. In three to four days, they will be dry, and you can store the grains. When you put them in milk again, they will re-animate and start producing kefir.
• When you drain your cheese on a stainless baking rack, be sure to put them first on a bamboo sushi rolling mat so that you avoid any rust on your cheese.
• You can age your cheeses in the refrigerator if you can't find a space that is about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. If you age the cheeses in the refrigerator, it will take 30% longer.
• You can make the recipes in the book that call for 5 gallons of milk with 2 gallons. The cheeses will be smaller, so they will not be able to age as long. As a result, the smaller cheeses won't be as amazing as if you had made the full recipe, but they will still be great.
• If you use a plastic bin for your cheese aging cave, it doesn't have to be exactly at 90% humidity. Just wipe down any water droplets that accumulate on the inside surfaces of the box every day or two, and the humidity should be fine.

That Sunday turned out to be awfully rainy—far too rainy for Marc and Wyatt to spend over three hours outdoors at the playground. So as Marc later told me, he asked Siri what fun things there were for kids in Oakland on rainy days. Siri suggested the Chabot Space and Science Center, so they went there. I'm still hearing new details about their adventure, so it must have been a truly splendid afternoon. But by the time they returned to pick me up after class, Wyatt was crying. He had tripped near a puddle on the way into the recreation center, fallen and scraped his finger. We washed the cut, but even after a few minutes, he just couldn't pull himself together. He flatly refused to go into the classroom. David, gracious as ever, came out into the hallway to meet Wyatt who proceeded to hide behind Marc's legs. Marc then lifted him up, and Wyatt buried his face deep into Marc's neck.**

All of us grown-ups took Wyatt's emotional short circuit in stride. After chatting for a couple of minutes, I gave David his gift bag. He immediately opened the cheese, took a long, appreciative sniff, and exclaimed, "And look! It's so gooey!" He also remarked that just that morning he had run out of sauerkraut—how wonderful that he now had some more.

Even though Wyatt hid during this entire exchange, he made it clear to me later that he had listened to every word. He was beyond delighted that David appreciated the presents. And he is still lamenting having missed out on the snacks after class.

*Crazy, I know. But I swear it's true.

**What can I say, other than that the dear child must have been starstruck.

Homemade Cultured Maple Butter - Part 2

"Mom. Does everyone in this family have a Christmas list? Or just me? You really should ask for a chef's hat that way we can be chefs together."

On Saturday, we began testing Dave Arnold's ideas about improving our maple butter. As he explained on the podcast, the problem with getting maple syrup into butter is one of water. To get the maple syrup into the butter, you have to either replace as much of the water as possible in the cream with maple syrup, or make the maple syrup more of a solid and knead it into the butter. We tried both approaches.

We started with two pints of heavy cream, kefir grains, maple syrup and salt.

For the first jar, I cooked two cups of cream on low heat, stirring continuously, until the cream had been reduced to 1 1/2 cups. I stopped there because the cream was starting to look a little grainy and weird, like something irreversible was about to happen. I also reduced 1/2 cup of maple syrup to about 1/4 cup. I stopped cooking it when the temperature reached about 245 degrees. Once again, I stopped because the color appeared to be starting to darken and the smell was starting to change, and it seemed that at any second, there would be no turning back. I let the syrup cool down, and I mixed it into the cream. I then cooled the cream mixture, stirring continuously until the mixture was about 90 degrees. At 90 degrees, I found myself so bored with stirring that I just refrigerated the bowl until the mixture was about room temperature. I added a tablespoon of kefir grains and left the cream to ferment overnight. In retrospect, I probably should have just added a tablespoon or two of active kefir so we wouldn't have had to strain the grains out of the thickened cream the next day. I recall considering this option and then going with the grains themselves for a reason I don't remember. I did not hold back later, though, when tweeting my questions about the health of my mapled kefir grains to Amanda Feifer of Phickle. She confirmed that prepared kefir would have been a better way to go, but assured me all would be well with the grains. She's the best.

For the second jar, Wyatt poured the pint of cream into the jar, we added a tablespoon of kefir grains, and we left it to ferment overnight.

On Sunday, we made the crème fraîche in the two jars into butter.

For the first jar, we strained the crème fraîche, whipped it into butter, drained it, rinsed it in cold water, and kneaded in salt. Let me just tell you that the maple-flavored buttermilk that resulted was incredible. Really amazing. 

For the second jar, we made the butter the same way. We also made Dave Arnold's recommended "snotty xanthan gel" of maple syrup. I made a 1% fluid gel by first dispersing the xanthan into water because, from what I had read, maple syrup is about 66% sugar and xanthan doesn't hydrate well in liquid that is more than 60% sugar. 

As Wyatt said about this preparation, "Try it, Mom! It tastes WAAY better than it looks." The gross-out goo level on butter bits was pretty high, so I actually rinsed the butter bits in cool water in the sieve. Only then was I able to get it all merged back into one ball of butter. 

Marc was our taste tester. He concluded, "These both taste really good. But maple? I don't know if they taste like maple. They may be circling maple. They taste sweet to me."

I think the xanthan preparation resulted in stronger maple flavor, but it was still pretty mild. The cream and syrup reduction preparation was even lighter on the maple flavor. After all, much of the maple flavor ended up in the best buttermilk ever created. While the flavor was more robust in the xanthan preparation, the butter unfortunately ended up with little blobs of maple gum throughout. The butter spreads well, but my kneading of that mess was apparently not thorough enough. 

There is one more idea that we may eventually try: adding maple sugar to the cream before culturing. Maybe that would work. But before we go there, we will need help eating our way out of the current round of butters.

Homemade Cultured Maple Butter - Part 1

"Hang on Mom! I need to change into my jeans, put my tools in my pockets, put my hard hat on, and Halloween beads. Then I will be a real construction worker. And we can start mixing the butter!"

With an eye towards homemade holiday gifts, we began experimenting with flavored butters. Delicious kitchen experiments are the best.

We started with cultured maple butter. Our first attempt tasted good. It could definitely use some improvements, but before I get into the issues, I'll describe what we did.

We started with a quart of homemade crème fraîche, and turned it into butter by whipping it gently in the stand mixer. We gathered all the butter bits, drained the buttermilk, and then washed the butter in cold water. Wyatt wore his Canobie Lake Park hard hat and sparkly Halloween beads for the occasion. 

Then we added salt, cinnamon, maple syrup, and mixed it all up by kneading it.

As I mentioned, it tasted good. But the maple flavor was not very robust. Also, the maple syrup that we were able to get into the butter (you can see from the photo that there is a fair amount left in the bowl) never fully integrated with the butter. As a result, the syrup continuously collected in little droplets on the surface of the butter and in the butter container, like the butter was weeping syrup. Weeping butter is weird. To me, it seems to require excuses, or at least an explanation.

I emailed Cooking Issues, my favorite cooking podcast, to see if Dave Arnold had any thoughts on how to improve our maple butter.

The Tuesday after I emailed the show, I listened live to episode 227. There was no mention of my question. As a result, Wyatt, my defeatist attitude and I started a giant jar of preserved lemons so that we would have some homemade gifts ready by Christmas.

I didn't bother attempting to listen live to the next episode of Cooking Issues.  I just listened as usual, later in the week, while doing cooking-related things. This past Thursday evening, I had time to listen to Episode 228 while cleaning up dinner and making Wyatt's lunch. And at minute 47:30, I had to sit down because I was too stunned and excited to do anything else. Dave Arnold read my email on the show and he had suggestions of things to try to improve our maple butter! 

That little bit of encouragement-via-podcast was all I needed. Wyatt and I spent time this past weekend trying two improvements inspired by Dave Arnold's suggestions. The details of those delicious and weird messes will be included in another post, "Homemade Cultured Maple Butter - Part 2." And because I am so grateful to anyone who is reading about this maple butter experiment during this Thanksgiving week, I'm planning to break with my my recent tradition of one-post-per-week and publish that story tomorrow.

Chèvre. Twice.

After listening to David Asher on Cutting the Curd and Fuhmentaboudit!, I was inspired to make his favorite cheese: chèvre. As he promised in The Art of Natural Cheesemaking, this cheese was very straightforward and required very little active time. 

Look at this beautiful chèvre! We got about a pound and a half of it, too, which is terrific. We ate it for snack on some crackers, with apples and honey. I also put some into a vegetable frittata for lunch yesterday. 

For as simple as this cheese is, would you believe that we may have had another cheese fail along the way? Here's what happened.

On Wednesday, I set up our kefir to culture so we would be ready for cheesemaking on Thursday. Thursday, morning, I went to Rainbow Grocery to buy four quarts of Claravale Raw Goat's milk. The milk was delivered that day. In fact, I had to wait for it to be taken off the truck. I brought the milk straight home, refrigerated it, and after school, Wyatt and I set to work making cheese.

Right away, we noticed an issue. The milk smelled strong. And while the milk didn't taste horrible, it didn't taste good. It had a strongly acidic and goat-y flavor, and there was no way either one of us would have even entertained drinking it. But this was only the fourth time or so that we had purchased goat's milk, and I wondered whether it was just we who had a problem with it. Maybe this milk was within the acceptable range of goat milk flavors. Or maybe the idea of doing another hour-plus round trip to the store with drippy milk bottles was just more than I could handle. We decided to move ahead with the cheese to see what would happen. 

As usual, we poured and heated the milk, dissolved the rennet, added the kefir culture, added the rennet, and then left the cheese to ferment. The period for this cheese to ferment is 24 hours at room temperature.

The cheese that resulted was definitely weird. The curd was firm, full of holes and spongy. You could actually wring out the whey from it. It looked nothing like David's photos, and it tasted strong. The flavors were more like the milk had been clabbered, so maybe there was something that had happened with refrigeration during the milk's transit to Rainbow. I emailed Claravale to find out what might have happened, but they never responded. We ate some of the cheese, crumbled on tacos on Friday. None of us suffered any ill effects, but we weren't that eager to eat more of it. 

On Saturday, I bought more goat's milk and we tried it again. This time, the milk tasted good and only mildly goat-y. And the curd we achieved looked like David's photos. Even better, the cheese tastes amazing.

I think the (admittedly obvious) lesson I have learned from this recipe is that we should trust our noses and taste buds, regardless of when the milk was delivered. If there's something off with the milk, the cheese will be off, too.

If anyone has any experience with goat's milk and can let me know what may have been wrong with the first batch we tried, I'd love to hear it. Please leave a comment!

Lambtown Festival

Lambtown has been on my calendar for months. I read about it in Clara Parkes' book, The Knitter's Book of Wool, where she included a list of popular fiber festivals. Lambtown, which is held annually in Dixon, California, seemed like the closest fiber festival to where we live, and therefore the best choice for us this year. Wyatt agreed that a 90-minute drive for sheep, sheepdogs, and music would be worthwhile.

We went on Sunday, along with my friend Maja and her family. We all watched two of the seven sheepdogs in the final round of competition. Each dog and handler pair had ten minutes to herd three sheep from a homogenous flock around obstacles and into a pen. The competition was surprisingly intense. We had to stay quiet (a challenge for little ones, which is why we only watched two competitors), and as the dogs got close to getting all the sheep into the pen, the crowd held its collective breath, silently cheering on the dog and handler. When the sheep decided to go around, rather than in, the pen, the crowd let out a groan of disappointment.

Wyatt loved the petting zoo. There were a variety of gentle animals, including some tiny, irresistible pigs who would give an adorable little snort-squeal when you touched them. 

There were also red helium balloons, stamped with a seal of the Republican Party. The kids loved the balloons. And as you may have guessed, many of us non-Republican-voting parents were vaguely irritated by having to chase, and secure these floating advertisements all day long. 

No other political parties were represented, but there was a non-partisan voter registration tent, and they had a craft where the kids could build little sheep out of toilet paper tubes, cotton balls, and pre-cut construction paper. These volunteers also had a sheep trivia contest that I failed miserably. I learned, however, that the three states with the greatest number of sheep are: California, Wyoming, and Texas. Also, sheep do not have to turn their head to see behind them.

The vendors' booths were terrific, and there was so much wonderful fiber and yarn for sale. I did not get to linger long, though, because shopping in beautifully organized and carefully curated booths was not easy with my young companion. We did, however, enjoy a fascinating demonstration of a drum carder, and Wyatt got to try blending some vibrantly colored bamboo fibers on a fiber blending board. I was so happy to grab a few minutes with designer and teacher, Kira, of Kira K. Designs. And, I finally got to meet Brooke Sinnes of Sincere Sheep! I love her yarns, her creativity, and her energy. if you haven't already listened to her interview on the Woolful podcast, I highly recommend it.

Our day at the festival was terrific. We got there at 9:00 am, and we stayed until about 3:00 pm. The space was really manageable, even for little kids, it wasn't too crowded, and there was even live bluegrass music all day on a stage in front of picnic tables. I suspect we will be back next year!

Mozzarella, Fast and Slow

"I just need to finish building this helicopter, and then I can make cheese."

We've been working on mozzarella for the last week, following the recipes in David Asher's The Art of Natural Cheesemaking. 

Or, I should say, we have mostly been following the recipes. Our first mozzarella attempt was last Monday, and it was our first cheese fail. "Fast mozzarella" is cooked and ready to stretch in about an hour, and it has a very mild, sweet milky flavor because it has not fermented at all. But we didn't learn what it tastes like last Monday because the curd never set in our cheese pot.

Luckily for me (and probably unfortunately for him), David Asher has proven to be the kindest, most supportive cookbook author ever. Last Monday, because we were in the middle of an email conversation about his slow mozzarella recipe, I told him about our fast mozzarella fail. He very gently asked whether I had forgotten to add the rennet. I hadn't, as you can see from this photo (also, I should have used a spoon, not a whisk), so the failure remained mysterious until yesterday when I remembered that I had used tap water to dilute the rennet. I also recalled that at the time, Wyatt had asked me why I wasn't using bottled water, like I had the other times we made cheese (and as David says in his book to use). I had told Wyatt it probably didn't matter whether we used tap water with the fast mozzarella because there was no kefir culture in the fast mozzarella recipe. I was so wrong. A little research yesterday proved that chlorine in water makes rennet ineffective, and while I have been unable to confirm whether whether chloramine (which is in our tap water) has the same effect, I'm pretty sure that it must.

We tried the fast mozzarella again on Thursday, with improved results. But the curd stayed pretty soft. That time, I had used the remaining tiny bit of a bottle of water and topped off the quarter cup I needed for rennet dilution with tap water. Even though our finished cheese slumped, we had decent success and a huge amount of fun stretching the cheese into crazy string cheese shapes.

Our next recipe to try was slow mozzarella. This was the recipe I had emailed David about initially, because the recipe states it takes between 8-12 hours to complete, and you have to test the curd for stretchiness every hour. There was no way Wyatt and I would be able to hang with this project for 12 hours. If it took the full 12 hours, Wyatt would be in bed by the time the fun of stretching came along. And paying attention to cheese every hour for 12 hours, not knowing when we'd have to stretch it, was too much uncertainty. Fortunately, David had a suggestion. He said we could prepare the cheese, ferment it in its whey in the refrigerator for 24 hours, and then knead, stretch and shape it. That plan was totally doable.

Because we wanted the cheese to be ready to stretch around 2:30 or 3:00 pm on Monday, we needed to get it into the refrigerator by Sunday afternoon around the same time. And because the rest of the process would take about 4 hours, we would have to start the cheese around 10:00 am on Sunday. So that's what we did, and it worked perfectly.

I have to note, though, that Wyatt has become more selective about the parts of cheesemaking he wants to do. This time, he decided he'd rather go outside to play than dissolve and pour in rennet, and he didn't really care about cutting the curd or stirring the pot of curds every 5 minutes for an hour. So I did those steps. The cheese forms, on the other hand, were new, so he definitely wanted to fill those. And he definitely wanted to remove the cheese from the forms and put them into their bath of whey. And because he knew how much fun the cheese stretching was, he had no problem setting aside Monday afternoon for stretching and shaping cheese.

We could have attempted to make tender mozzarella balls, but we decided it was much more fun to overwork the curd and make string cheese. So we made Oaxacan string cheese and Majdouli, a Middle Eastern string cheese that incorporates nigella seeds.

The flavor of the slow mozzarella is much, much better than the fast mozzarella. It's still mild, but it's more complex and less sweet. We ate some for dessert with apples and honey, and it was so good. 

But the lessons for me from this mozzarella adventure are that I should heed the recommendations of my assistant and always use bottled water to dilute the rennet.

More Feta Fun: Creamy Feta

"Oops. Mom. I smushed that little part off. But it was by accident, and it's only a small piece. So it's okay, right? And I can probably eat it, now, right?"

Did you know there was such a thing as creamy feta? I didn't. According to David Asher in Chapter 15 of The Art of Natural Cheesemaking, creamy feta is a softer version of feta, made using a lactic curd, like a chèvre, instead of the firmer full-rennet curd that we made last week. Creamy feta is commonly called Bulgarian feta but is now labeled as Bulgarian white cheese because of the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) protecting the name feta. If the controversy surrounding feta interests you, you can read more about the "feta wars" here. Because "Bulgarian white cheese" is at best an utterly uninspiring name, I'll refer to what we made as "creamy feta."

Making creamy feta was a pretty leisurely experience. The recipe said it would take about an hour over three days to make, and that would have been about right if I hadn't had any help. For us, it probably took closer to 90 minutes or so over four days, which was very doable.

Here's what we did:

Like our first feta, we made some active kefir culture, and strained it. We heated the raw goat's milk, added the culture and a very tiny dose of rennet dissolved in water. Then we let the covered pot sit out on the counter for a day.

On the second day, we filled our forms with the curds that had formed. Unfortunately, I did not have enough of the proper size and shape forms for this recipe, so we used two crottin forms and two Valençay forms. I'm sure we broke a variety of rules by making feta in the shape of a pyramid, but because I have no idea what those rules are, I'm not too worried about it. We mixed a 7% brine. As the cheeses drained, we flipped them once.

On the third day, we salted the cheeses and let them dry, and we attempted a whey ricotta. The yield was very small and the flavor was very strong. The ricotta was also much wetter than our previous whey ricotta. We preferred the whey ricotta from the firm feta over the one from this recipe.

On the fourth day, we put the cheese in the brine. Unlike our firm feta, this cheese seems to want to float. The recipe says if that happens, to weigh it down. Wyatt managed to wedge a couple of pieces of cheese into the jar in such a way that they are holding each other under the brine. I have no idea what he did, but I hope it holds because I wasn't able to find something in our kitchen to use as a cheese weight.

Now we must wait two weeks for the cheese to age. We're looking forward to tasting the two fetas side-by-side to see whether there's one we prefer. 

Friday Fermentation Class

A couple of weeks ago, my friend, Maja, texted me saying, "Hey, I'm keen to do a fermentation session with you, do you think we could do that one Friday?" I responded with a resounding, "Yes!"

I love fermentation. And I get excited when my favorite people get into it, too. One of Maja's goals was to choose a project with vegetables that her son would enjoy, and this is the kind of challenge I like to tackle.

My gateway ferments were yogurt, kefir, and sourdough. Vegetables came later. It took a friend of mine telling me about her adventures in making sauerkraut, several months of thinking about doing it myself, and a few false starts of my own before fermented vegetables became a regular part of our life. But I have now been fermenting vegetables for the better part of the last three years and they truly are a part of life for all of us, Wyatt included. He happily eats a variety of fermented vegetables at lunch, dinner, and sometimes both if we don't have much time to cook. He started eating my purple sauerkraut when he was just over two years old, and he seemed to enjoy it from the first bite. But some people, adults and kids alike, tend to avoid the the tangy and sometimes sour flavors that are the signature of fermented foods. As the diet of many Americans has changed over the years, the flavors of fermented vegetables have become unfamiliar. As a result, fermented vegetables may take some getting used to.

In our house, we firmly believe that your tastes can, and do, change over time. I learned to like beets, Wyatt learned to like cantaloupe (he doesn't remember it, though), and one day, Marc may hate parsnips less. Wyatt got the best real life example of the phenomenon of changing tastes in preschool last year. One of his classmates disliked avocados. Disliked as in she really, seriously hated avocados. But according to the custom in the preschool, everyone was required to take a (sometimes very tiny) "no thank you" bite of everything offered at a meal, including the things you don't think you like. Wyatt watched his friend take "no thank you" bites of avocado over their shared preschool career. But one day, his friend took her "no thank you" bite, and much to everyone's surprise, including her own, she actually liked the avocado. She liked it so much that she asked for more, and then even more. This event made a huge impression on Wyatt, and he talked about it for days. After all, it's one thing to be told, "Hey, someday you might really like this food you hate with every molecule of your being," and it's quite another to actually witness when that change happens for your friend.

Keeping in mind Maja's request for an approachable vegetable ferment, I suggested that we start with some fermented radishes and dill carrots. I thought of the radishes thanks to Amanda Feifer's interview on the Local Mouthful podcast. Amanda suggested radishes would be a good first ferment because they're ready to eat in about a week or ten days. I think that in addition to their short fermentation period, radishes are a good first ferment because their flavor changes so much during that week or so. I suggested we also do dill carrots because they're really delicious (imagine the flavor of a cucumber dill pickle combined with the sweetness of a carrot), they take about as much time to ferment as the radishes do, and I was almost out of dill carrots myself.

Maja ordered some fermentation weights and picked up a couple of wide-mouth mason jars. She also got some gorgeous red and orange carrots. I got the radishes and some more carrots, dill, celery seed, and I had the salt, pepper corns and garlic. We were ready to ferment. Here's what we did:

We washed and trimmed the vegetables, and then cut them into the shapes we wanted. Maja is a designer and you can tell just by how she cut and stacked the carrots. We mixed a 5% brine, and then we arranged our vegetables in the jars. Maja's were particularly artful. We added the brine to the jars, put a weight on top, and screwed the lids on loosely. 

I advised Maja to taste the radishes and carrots every day after the first few days to start to notice how the flavors change over time. I told her that for me, around ten days, the salty flavor that has been so prevalent on the vegetables goes away and other flavors start to come through. That's when I call them "done," take off the weight, tighten the lids, and store the jars in the refrigerator for eating.

Recipes:

My recipe for dill carrots is the same as for dill beans, which appears in this post. Just substitute carrots and you've got it (today we omitted the chiles de árbol, but you could include them if you like your carrots spicy).

Fermented Dill Carrots

Ingredients:

• Enough carrots to fill your jars. Trim and cut into spears or rounds, whatever you like. You don't need to peel them.
• 1 bunch (or more) of fresh dill. (I've used as much as one bunch per quart jar, but have also used less.)
• 1-2 tablespoons of black peppercorns per jar
• About 1/4 teaspoon of celery seed per jar
• 1-3 peeled garlic cloves per jar (I like more garlic, but you may prefer less)
• Enough salt and water to make a 5% brine for your jars
• Fermentation weights, one for each jar. I love Sandy Der's weights.

Directions:

Wash the carrots and the dill. Put the dill fronds into the jars along with the peppercorns,  celery seed, and garlic cloves. Fit the carrot pieces in the jars, as many as you can, in as organized a fashion as you can. Leave about two inches of space between the top of the carrots and the top of the jar. You may need to cut some of the carrots.

Measure 1 liter of water (about 4 1/4 cups) and 50 grams of salt (if you don't have a kitchen scale, for the Real Salt I used, 50 grams amounted to approximately 3 tablespoons of salt) and dissolve the salt in the water. When the salt is dissolved, pour the water into the jar of carrots until the carrots are fully submerged under the brine. Leave about an inch of space between the brine and the top of the jar. (If that wasn't enough brine for your jars, make another batch.) Place a fermentation weight on the top of the carrots in each jar so that the carrots stay under the brine. LOOSELY screw the lid on the jar. Write the date you started the carrots on the jar--grease pencil on the lid or a label made from masking tape work well--and put the jar in a cool corner, out of direct sunlight, to ferment. Check and taste every few days to see how the ferment is progressing and to confirm the carrots remain fully under the brine. Top off the jar with more water if the level drops. Our carrots are usually ready to enjoy in 10 days or so, but that timeframe can shift depending on the time of year and how warm it is in the house.

Fermented Radishes

For radishes, the process is the same as for carrots but with fewer ingredients. All you need is radishes, salt, water, and a sprig of thyme (if you want to add one). Get as many radishes as you need to fill your jars. Wash, trim and cut your radishes. Cut the radishes however you like. I enjoy thin cross-sections, but you could easily do quarters or even whole radishes.  Put the radishes in the jar by themselves or with a sprig of thyme. Pour in 5% brine, top the radishes with a weight (and if some radishes float up to the surface, lay a blanket of a washed cabbage leaf under the weight to keep all the radish slices under the brine). Cover the jar with a loose lid, and label the jar with the date you started them. Place the jar out of direct sunlight in a cool area, and check them every few days to see how they're tasting and to confirm they remain fully under the brine. The radishes should be ready to eat in about 7-10 days. 

My First Handspun Yarn

It took me a few weeks to finish the work I needed to do on the yarn I spun in Massachusetts, but now it's done. Isn't it pretty?

The item that kept from from finishing this project sooner was a niddy-noddy. I know. It's a silly sounding name, and as far as I have found, there is no other word for the device.  I looked to buy one locally, but I couldn't find one, so it was Etsy to the rescue. Here is the niddy-noddy I bought. And this is what it looked like with my yarn wound around it. 

The purpose of a niddy-noddy is to allow you to wind yarn, stretching it out at the same time you're measuring it. For example, I used a two-yard noddy-noddy, and when I was done winding my yarn, I counted the loops (33 loops), so I knew I had 66 yards of yarn.

I let the yarn sit on the niddy-noddy overnight.

The next day, I tied the loops together it in four places with undyed yarn (to avoid any color transfer), and then it was time to wash it. The spinning we did during my class was "in the grease," so the wool had never been washed. Here's what the yarn looked like going into the basin:

I washed the yarn four times, gently, in lukewarm water with a little bit of liquid laundry soap. The first three washes, the water was full, and I mean full, of lanolin. The water turned a deep brown. By the third and fourth washes, the sticks and twigs had started to float out of the yarn and the water was less and less brown. Here is what the third wash looked like:

By the fourth wash, the water looked pretty clear, so I knew I was done. I rolled the yarn in a bath towel to get most of the water out, and then I hung the yarn to dry over a doorknob in our laundry area, with the basin under it to catch the drips.

Even though the yarn is at best, inconsistently spun, I'm pretty happy with my first effort. I'm not sure what I'll make with it yet, but I'm happy that I have so much to work with.

Whey Ricotta

"Dad. Guess what? Mom ALMOST let the whey boil over! You should have seen the foam on the top of the pot!"

Before making feta, I did not have a good appreciation of how much of reductive process cheesemaking really is.

When I ordered our cheesemaking supplies from The Cheese Connection, the incredibly helpful Kallijah informed me that a gallon of milk makes about a pound of cheese. But what this actually meant in real life was that our gallon of goat's milk made just over a pound of feta, and left about 15 cups of whey. If you're not up on your conversion factors, let me help you out. There are 16 cups in a gallon, so the leftover liquid was only a cup less than our original gallon of milk. I suddenly began to understand why good cheese is so expensive.

And I was left with the question of what to do with all that whey. Fortunately, David Asher anticipated this question and included a chapter on "Whey Cheeses" in The Art of Natural Cheesemaking. In the chapter, David provided a variety of sensible suggestions on how to use whey, and there is a picture of him feeding whey to pigs, and a picture of him watering his garden with whey. Wyatt, a child of the California drought, looks for any opportunity to pour liquid anywhere, so he was in favor of finding a pig to feed, or barring that, pouring the whey on our garden. I, on the other hand, a grown-up involved in a Cheese Project, was in favor of trying to make one of the cheeses with it instead. Eventually Wyatt agreed to make whey ricotta.

As David explained in Chapter 22, Whey Cheeses, "Italian, for 'cooked again,' ricotta refers to the second making of cheese from one batch of milk: the milk is first 'cooked' to make Parmigiano Reggiano or pecorino or some other Italian cheese, and the leftover whey is then 'cooked again' to make ricotta." 

We had just over a half-gallon of whey available to play with, because the rest of it had been used for the brine to age the feta, or I had spilled it on the floor. A half-gallon was about half of the amount of whey required for the "Slow Ricotta" recipe, but I figured we could try the recipe anyway and see what happened. If we only got an ounce or two of ricotta, so be it. It's not like we had a pig starving for whey in our back garden.

Here's what we did:

First, we left the whey to ferment at room temperature for 24 hours. Monday afternoon, we poured the whey into a pot and brought it to a boil. David specifically warned in his recipe to remove the pot from the burner right as the whey comes to a boil so it doesn't boil over. Unfortunately, I forgot for a few minutes that the pot was even on the stove because Wyatt had begun conducting an imaginary orchestra (with they aid of a tinker-toy stick) in Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" from his San Francisco Symphony Orchestra Concerts for Kids CD. I lost track of the whey, and just as the foam was about to cascade over the rim of the pot, I happened to glance over at the stove, gave a little yelp, and pulled the pot off the burner just in time.

Back on task, we let the whey settle, and sure enough, there were little clouds of ricotta curd that had pulled out of the whey. We strained the ricotta in some cheese cloth and hung it to let it drain and cool.

Once the cheese had drained (and yes, we probably shouldn't have, but we squeezed the hanging cheese just a little bit to move the process along) and cooled, we weighed it, salted it and ate it for dessert with some fruit. I was impressed that we got almost four ounces of ricotta. The cheese was soft, creamy, and thanks to the fermentation step, had a depth of flavor I have never before tasted in ricotta.