Ivan and I have been talking about this blog and what to do with it. I had thought about continuing with my home posts but Ivan, rightly I think, believes that this was a blog about our trip and should remain so especially if we manage to complete it in 2010. For the time being, I am going to resume posting on my other blog ( Rimer ) where I am in the process of deciding how, and if, I will proceed. Please check it out and let me know what you like or dislike about either of the blogs. Do you have any suggestions? In what direction, topics wise, should I go? I'd love to hear from you!

Goat Milk Yogurt: Update

Mehhh!

I've made several batches of yogurt in the last few weeks and, although the flavor is lovely, neither Ivan nor myself were fond of the Elmer Glue like thinness - it had more of a kefir-like consistency than a yogurt. So I experimented with this last batch and added 2/3 cup of powdered goat milk to my quart of heated and cooled goat milk. Success! The yogurt was just as tasty (maybe a tick more tangy since the milk was not as fresh as I would have liked) but it now has a firm, creamy texture. I will need to sift the powdered goat-milk next time as it was difficult to completely dissolve it in the liquid milk resulting in small lumps that I had to skim off beforing jarring.

I may experiment further with other thickening agents like agar agar or tapioca to avoid adding more fat/calories to the finished product, but for now we are pleased with the results.

On a related note, I was asked about making rice-milk yogurt in a comment from my previous post. I did a little bit of research and it seems as if the answer is 'no' - at least not successfully. However, making soy yogurt is do-able and you can find recipe/instructions here, here and here. I would also recommend looking for a few other sites to ensure that you have a 'Plan B' and 'Plan C' in hand in case your first batch doesn't make it.

Next up: Yogurt cheese!

Goat-Milk Maid

As many of you know I am allergic to cow-milk and cow-milk products. I had avoided eating anything with milk in it since my diagnosis almost 10 years ago, but when Ivan and I started dating I began eating goat and sheep milk cheeses because I am not allergic to them and, well, he loves cheese.

I also began eating goat milk yogurt on a regular basis because it happens to be one of my all time favorite breakfasts: yogurt with banana, walnuts and honey. I hadn't been able to enjoy it for many years and did a little Snoopy dance when I realized I no longer had to deny myself.

When I got home from the bike trip I was doing some mindless web-surfing (as one is wont to do) when I stumbled across, somewhere, a site or article about making your own yogurt and how easy it was with the use of a yogurt maker. With some research I came to the conclusion that it was easy to make and a yogurt maker wasn't too expensive. Additionally, over time, making my own yogurt should prove to be cheaper than buying it and, perhaps, be better for me as it would have less additives. It would certainly be fresher. I was taken with the idea and this past weekend marked my first attempt. I was very happy with the results because I had read that the first attempt can be a nightmare. Here's what I did:

From my research I decided to purchase a EuroCuisine YM100 Yogurt Maker from Amazon. While you don't need a maker I liked the idea of having one aspect of the process, the incubation/fermentation stage, automated. By using the maker I won't have to monitor the temperature at all for the 8-10 hours it takes.

I found lots of how-to sites each with it own variant of what to do. I decided to follow the basic directions from the how-to video from Chez Us because they use the same yogurt maker. I also took some various tips I picked up from 101 Cookbooks into consideration as well. I figure that it will take a couple of attempts to get it just right.

The recipe:

• 1 quart goat milk (as fresh as you can find)
• 1/2 cup of plain goat yogurt with live cultures to use as your starter
  

The tools:

• 1 Yogurt maker
• candy thermometer
• whisk
• sauce pan
• large spoon

ALL YOU NEED

The directions: Wash all of your containers and tools thoroughly to avoid contamination. Slowly heat one quart of milk on low-medium heat to 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Stir frequently to prevent burning the milk on the bottom of the pan as well as a skin forming. This is boring so have some good music playing.

When the milk has reached 180 degrees remove the pan from the heat and allow it to cool off to between 108-112 degrees. (It was at this point that a I discovered that the candy thermometer I had purchased was a piece of crap. The inside of the very tip of it became full of condensation making it impossible to see what the temperature was. It came out alright but I'm still going to replace it even it costs a little bit more.)


DOH!

When it's cooled off, take a small amount and stir it into your starter. This will help break up the starter as well as bring down the temperature. Once its well stirred, pour your starter mixture into the warm milk and whisk it up well.

Pour the milk into your containers, place them without lids into the yogurt maker. Put the yogurt maker cover on, turn on the maker and walk away for 8 - 10 hours. When the time is up, take the containers out of the maker, place the lids on the container and refrigerate them for at least 4 hours. Enjoy!

Notes and Results:

• With the goat milk make sure to shake the carton really, really well. I thought that I had but, when I rinsed the carton out, a good amount of fat solids came out. This may have affected the final consistency of the yogurt - making it less firm than I like.
  
• You may be able to use a powdered yogurt starter but the one I found used skim milk from a cow so it was not an option for me. However, most sites I looked at prefer using real yogurt.
• While heating the milk a small skin formed but I stirred it quickly and it seemed to dissolve back into the liquid. If it hadn't dissolved I would have skimmed it off.
• It took about 15-20 minutes for the milk to cool down. Be patient though, if the mixture is too hot it will kill the live culture and you'll be left with...milk.
• The longer the milk incubates, the thicker the yogurt will be. I waited about 8 hours for this batch and got a lovely, mild tasting yogurt with an Elmers Glue like consistency. Next time, I will incubate for 9 hours. I may also experiment with adding powdered goat milk to help with thickening.

Overall, this was a great success. As I said above, the yogurt was tasty but a little thin. This may be a side-effect of goat milk or a result of not incubating long enough or not having enough milk-fats in the mixture. I have 4 jars of yogurt left before I can try again, but I am looking forward to it.

On another note, if you like food blogging you should check out these two sites -the first is mix,mix...stir, stir written by the lovely and talented Carol Peterman with pictures by her equally lovely and talented husband, David. Carol has a true love for food and it's fun to read about her experimentation.

My other recommendation is 28 Cooks which has a lot of great vegan and vegetarian recipes. I mean, this is not just another tofu pup loving site. She has food that makes you want to sit down and eat.

He's Alive

In case you were wondering, Ivan is alive and has made it to Colorado.

West Seattle: Garden Ho, Part II

Sunday morning arrived with unexpected sunshine and warmth. After taking Sally for her morning constitutional I drove to 8 Limbs Yoga in the Alaska Junction for an early morning yoga class (it's time to start taking exercise seriously again). Afterward, I headed over to the West Seattle Sunday Farmers Market where I was delighted to find an "Ask a Master Gardner" booth manned by volunteers from the Washington State University Master Gardner Program. Score!!

Last week I had gone to check out the local branch library and picked up half a dozen gardening books as Ivan had just informed me the day before that I was going to be in charge of the garden. I believe I actually missed that memo, but I vowed to take the matter seriously. I am a city girl who has barely managed to keep house plants alive but I am smart, gosh darn it! And resourceful! So I went off to arm myself with as much knowledge as possible. The books from the library, however, did not meet my most pressing need: to tell me exactly what I needed to do and exactly how to do it.

The issues:

1) I discovered that the Wisteria planted on the south side of the house was a Chinese Wisteria. Very invasive and very hard to kill. Here's a great description of it:

Folks in the Southeastern U.S. are familiar with Kudzu, another Asian import that runs rampant over trees, telephone poles, old buildings, and slow-moving children. As bad as Kudzu is, Chinese Wisteria is even worse; Kudzu simply climbs and covers native trees and shrubs--occasionally shading them out and killing them---while Chinese Wisteria almost always strangles them to death. Wisteria is a twining vine, and when it wraps around a tree trunk the combined growth of vine and tree eventually chokes off the tree's plumbing. After the host tree rots away or topples earthward, the wisteria simply grows along the ground until the delicate tip of a new stem finds another vertical object to ascend, and the murderous cycle repeats itself.

How do I get rid of it without resorting to herbicides?


FAREWELL, MY LOVELY

2) The stand of bamboo also on the south side of the property has been sending out roots yards away from it's supposed containment field. There are two shoots coming up through the bricks in the drive way. How do I keep it from spreading? The books say to sever the rhizomes but don't tell how to achieve that.


SILENT BUT DEADLY

3) The laurel on the north side of the lawn was unreasonably tall. The tallest was approximately 20 feet high. Can I prune them down to around, say 6 feet, without damaging them?


GOSH, YOU'RE A BIG FELLA, AREN'T YA?

4) We are being overrun by dandelions. If I dig them up, what do I do with the hole that's left behind?


DO NOT MAKE A WISH!

5) Aside from the wisteria and the bamboo, we also have to deal with the encroaching blackberry, ivy, morning glory, and lilac that are already fighting to the death in the woods around us and they are trying to create military outposts in our yard. Bastards! How do I keep them at bay?


AND IT WON'T BE OVER TILL IT'S OVER, OVER THERE

So, you can imagine my delight and relief to have four, FOUR, Master Gardeners to consult for FREE!

I received answers for all my questions and I won't go into detail about what they told me, but my task for the day became to hack back the wisteria and attempt to dig up the root ball. (In the months ahead I will continue to cut back new shoots for as long as it takes for the root system to exhaust itself- just like I am doing with the clematis.)

So I got home, ate a bit (my first food of the day) and then fell into conversation with Domenico and Carmela who were doing some yard work of their own. We started talking about the laurel that runs between our properties and that I wanted to cut them down to about 6 feet. Domenico, who has the tools for this sort of job, offered to do the job if I hauled off the debris. Deal made, he went to get his limber (a sort of a small chainsaw on a stick) and I went to attack the wisteria.

During this time, the sky has started to grow dark and within 15 minutes of us starting our tasks it began to rain. I ran inside with Sally, but 10 minutes later it let up so I returned to the yard where I grabbed what Dom had cut and brought them to the far side of their property and through them into the brush.


BEFORE

Within minutes of this Dom had returned to his task, the limber set aside in favor of a pair of pruners. As before, the rain started up in a matter of minutes but this time we didn't run and we, including Carmela, spent the next 3 hours or so cutting back the nefarious laurel. Dom wielded the pruners while Carmela and I loaded up a large blue tarp (about 12x15) with the discarded branches and then dragged it through the mud to the the north side of their property where we dumped each load. We did this about 8 -10 times, easily, and I would guess that the total weight of the loads added up to several hundred pounds. Needless to say I was quite sore this morning.


DURING

The Master Gardeners had, in unison, rolled their eyes when I mentioned the laurel. But they assured me that, even though it might take a bit of time to grow back, not much could harm them so 'have at it'. So Domenico did. But each pass revealed just how tangled the branches had become - branches from one tree becoming fused to another's trunk; branches spanning at least 5 feet in length. It became clear that leaving the laurels at 6 feet in height was still going to be too tall. So the cutting continued. By the time we were done we were soaked through, covered in mud, rain dripping in our eyes and the laurel were pathetically bare, stumpy ghosts of their former glory.


AFTER. I SAID IT WAS SAD LOOKING.

Having said all that, I must admit I had a great time. I love hard physical labor and fancy myself a packhorse when it comes to this sort of thing - you just need to put your head down, set your teeth and keep going forward. The feeling of accomplishment is most satisfying and doing it in the rain looking like a rugby themed Abercrombie & Fitch advert just added to the overall pleasure.


MANDATORY SAFETY MEETING

As for our sad-looking laurels? I can now easily access the various plants underneath them if I decide to replant them elsewhere. If we decide we don't like the laurels they are at a state where we can pull them out. If we decide to keep them, we can now prune them properly and keep them under control.

Next weekend? Project Wisteria resumes and, if I can find a pick-ax, Project Bamboo begins.

West Seattle: On busses and spare rooms

Yesterday was cool and rainy so I limited myself to a couple of tasks around the house after one outside task in the morning. I go back to work next Monday and, without Ivan around, the schedule is going to become tight for me. Now that we live in West Seattle my commute has become much longer - both in distance and time. Although annoying, the long commute itself is not an issue for me. It's how it impacts Sally. I generally work 9 hour days. Add at least 2hours of commute time and that means an anxious dog with her legs crossed by the time I get home.

Before leaving on the trip I rode my recumbent to work for one week but the fastest I've gone is 1.25 hours - one way. I also drove for a week because Ivan and I were carpooling but, even though it's relatively quicker, driving is not a viable option due to gas and parking costs. Plus I hate sitting in traffic. The one thing I'd not tried was travel option #3: King County Metro Bus.


BUSTRATION

Here's the breakdown: I have to be at work by 8:00am, so I need to have enough time to 1) shower and dress, 2) eat breakfast and feed the animals, 3) walk Sally making sure she poo's because she's not having another walk until later in the day, and 4) walk 10 minutes to the bus stop which includes crossing Admiral. Oh, and there is no direct bus to the UW so I have to transfer to another line when I reach downtown.

I figured that I would need to get up at 5:30am, at the latest, in order to catch the 6:41am. So yesterday was my dry run. Other than crossing Admiral, which can be a bitch due to it's unrelenting 4 lanes of traffic and no crosswalk, I did ok. I managed to get to the UW by 7:30 which works out well because that means I can adjust my schedule to leave work a little earlier.


THIS IS NOT MY BUS, DAMMIT

I meant to ride my diamond frame in to work today to see if that would be quicker than my recumbent or the bus, but I slept fitfully last night and woke up late. And then I discovered that I'm still having issues with the front tire so I need to have it looked at as well as picking up some extra tubes for it. If I can resolve those issues today, I'll try biking tomorrow unless the rainy forecast turns heavy.


HUH. IT'S LIKE WE JUST MOVED IN OR SOMETHING.

I spent the rest of the day cleaning up our spare bedroom. We will need to figure out a number of storage issues but I put all non-essential items in the basement, sorted through the remainder of my books putting some aside for trade and shelving the rest, and separated the remaining boxes into 'mine', 'his', 'ours' piles.


NEXT, THE BASEMENT!

It's much tidier now but please don't ask to see the basement.

Update: I got my tire fixed (it appears that the tube was a little too small for the tire) so, if the weather is not too nasty, I'm set for another test commute in the morning.

West Seattle: Garden Ho

THE BIG GREEN MONSTER

Not much to report today other than starting some projects the first of which was removing a large clematis from the north side of the house. I like clematis, but it was taking up a lot of real estate and, like wisteria and jasmine, will slowly take over it's surroundings if you don't constantly maintain it. Neither Ivan nor myself were emotionally attached to the sucker and I am more interested in utilizing that space for either a container vegetable garden along the wall and/or a laundry line that we can use during the spring and summer months.


AWWW, IT LOOKS SO SMALL

First off, I went to visit Craig who sharpened our two shovels, a pair of clippers and a pair of shears for me. He gave me a visual tutorial on the finer aspects of tool sharpening including a visual effects laden demonstration entitled: "Do as I say not as I do or you, too, will slice your finger open." I have to say the blood was very realistic.


FIRST BLOOD, 10TH TO THE LAST CIGARETTE

When I returned home, I cut the bush back and down to the main stalk which revealed two overburdened metal stakes that I had to pull out.



With those removed, I cut down to the root and then started digging down which revealed that it was embedded underneath the stone wall. Domenico came over to help and he told me that the clematis had been there anywhere from 7 to 10 years - much longer than I had thought. I continued digging and he trimmed back the roots as they became revealed, but it was clear that a root system is firmly entrenched under there that I can't hope to get it all out without disturbing the wall.


YUP. THAT'S NOT GOING ANYWHERE

I didn't find much on-line about removing clematis, but I am hoping that it will prove similar to wisteria and that if I continue to cut back any new growth on the roots for the next couple of months, I will exhaust the root system and it will cease to grow. At that point I can then fill the hole back up and we will have a larger yard space to play around with.


THE REMAINS

Maybe we will build a goat pen.