Mozzarella

JWise Food, Photo of the Day

Jutta Engelhardt in Phoenix, Arizona

Having found wonderful fresh RAW milk, my mother-in-law and I embark upon making some homemade mozzarella. The milk comes courtesy of the folks over at SaveYourDairy in Queen Creek, Arizona, and while this milk is more expensive than what is now traditional milk, i.e., pasteurized and homogenized, I just feel better about using a natural product that for some 10,000 years was just fine the way it came. We made marinara the day before and will make dough for pasta when the cheese is finished. Cooking this way is quite time-consuming but the satisfaction is irreplaceable.

Garlic Dill Pickles

JWise Food, Photo of the Day

Cucumbers, spices, salt, vinegar, and water ready to ferment and become homemade garlic dill pickles

After a wild goose chase to find the required spices (but still missing one), Jutta and I started a batch of homemade garlic dill pickles. We started with cinnamon stick, mustard seeds, black peppercorns, whole cloves, whole allspice, juniper berries, couldn’t find mace so it has been left out, dill seeds, bay leaves, dried ginger, coriander seeds, 4 cloves fresh garlic, and a few sprigs of fresh dill. With our pickling spices ready to go, we mixed white vinegar, water, and sea salt to make a brine, then scrubbed the cucumbers. One-half our spice went into the bottom of the crock, next came the cucumbers, then more spice, and finally the brine. The hardest part of the process was finding something to put inside the crock that would keep the cucumbers below the surface of the brine, once that was found, I filled a plastic bag with more brine to weigh down the plastic lid. In 2 to 3 weeks the cucumbers should have fermented enough to be called pickles.

Here Comes the Mother-in-Law

JWise Photo of the Day

Screen capture of some of the details that will make up the travels and activities for my mother-in-law's visit from Germany to America this winter.

My mother-in-law is already coming back. A week from today as a matter of fact. That’s right, she was just here last year. But that was almost 18 months ago and she has never spent a winter here in sunny Arizona and we thought it would be nice for her to get away from Germany’s long gloomy winter. I have been planning for weeks her travels and activities that we will share with her during her visit. Above is a sample of what my monitor looks like at any given moment while I work on her itinerary. Not much is left for improvizing as events sell out and good rooms can be hard to come by without some planning.

This visit will take us to Santa Barbara for Christmas, New Mexico on New Years’ for a massive flyout of migrating birds, a trip to San Francisco to see a performance of the Prairie Home Companion, and a visit to Alcatraz. We will stay at the El Tovar at the Grand Canyon, visit the remote western rim of the Canyon, drive parts of old Route 66 through ghost-towns, visit Death Valley, hang out in Los Angeles for a long weekend, go to the Renaissance Festival, take in the Kodo Drummers, and visit a fair share of museums and gardens prior to my mother-in-law’s departure in mid-May….err, I mean February.

Holographic I.D.

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Resident Alien Card - the backside

Caroline has finally received her new Resident Alien card – a modern new-fangled one! The backside of this I.D. card is amazing. A large metallic strip containing God-knows-what data runs the width of the card. Below that are DVD controls or what looks like controls anyway. Maybe a tunneling electron microscope could identify the myriad symbols down there. Near the top of the card are portraits of all of our United States Presidents, look real close, they are animated, if I could find the right control symbol below, I am certain I could make them talk. Caroline’s photograph from the front has been holographically embedded back here along with her signature. But what I really want to know, is what’s inside all that blank-looking reflective metal surface.

My Neighbor

JWise Photo of the Day

Dog Poop

This isn’t literally my neighbor, it is from one of his Labradors. Maybe the neighbor sees his two dogs as making poops in the image of their master and hence they must be seen by all. Could my neighbor have a poop allergy and would break into hives coming into contact with this pile of canine scat? The dog did unload next to another neighbor’s Harley; maybe he, too, hates that noisemaker as much as we do and was leaving him a message? No matter what, I will get my revenge. I have been watching this neighbor and am training my cat so when next summer comes around and he leaves a window open, I’ll shove Murphy the Cat into his apartment to leave one of her special Seafood Captain’s Choice bombers that have been known to force Caroline and me out of our own front door.