The Biggest One

On friday Alison mentioned how she wanted to make a 5 lb cheese with the new slow roaster that we just found at the di.

Powdered milk doesn't have fat in it cause that would cause it to spoil quicker. We bought some whipping cream to try to add in a little fat to the milk (all of our long term cheeses have been pretty hard, and it seems to me that we need to add some fat to them to soften them.)

On Saturday morning we started to make the cheese. We made a quadruple recipe (the slow cooker only holds 4 and a half gallons, not actually five). It came out well. Now we have about ten pounds of cheese stored away (five from various other cheese making exploits.)

As you can see, our old cheeses are much smaller. The four that are red were waxed with ordinary cheese wax. The yellow one was waxed with 'cream' cheese wax. The big one is not yet dried, so I have not yet waxed it (though I think I will go with the red wax on this one.)

On saturday, we had the first salad from our (read Alison's) garden. I can honestly say that it was the best salad that I have ever had. I have never actually enjoyed the flavor of the leaves

before this salad (they always taste a bit bitter to me), but we picked our leaves small, and had a lot of spinach in it, and it was just amazing.

I have been making more changes to the SRD recently - mostly aesthetics, but some real ones. It amazes me that Wizards of the Coast would publish such poorly proofread material. Loren and I have found so many errors as we have read through it.

I really need to get the campaign setting and world history into the SRD somewhere. I think that that could be useful.

Also, our home has been infested with fruit flies. When Alison planted all of the plants, she planted them inside (to get a head start on the weather.) She noticed that the damp soil began to breed them. After a while we would see them in the kitchen, and now (after we have moved all the plants outside) we still see them. We have decided to make an effort to kill as many of them as we can, and destroy the places that they could be hiding. We have been met with limited success so far. If I never mention it again, it is probably because we won. Otherwise expect to hear more.

Finally, tomorrow is the second session of the 42 Earths campaign. Here's to hoping it goes well.