Pickles & Pie: A Short Verse

I made a batch of pickles & pie

For my guests on the 4th of July

You can make these dishes anytime

They'll still be tasty, but will not rhyme

Unless you make them another day in July.
In which case...

Oh, never mind.

Impress-ed are the cheesemakers

I'm having one of those weeks where I forget stuff. So far, I've left home without my daughter when I was supposed to be driving her to a friend's house, gone to pick up my son at school 15 minutes after he left with his carpool, and taken a call this morning at 11am from my dog's physical therapist to see if were actually planning on showing up for his 10:30 session*.

I'm pretty sure it's because f*%#ing 4th of July was on a Wednesday**.  I'm all screwed up now.

That's why reminder emails are so helpful.  Like this one:

Hi All,

Our second Can It! Foodsteader class is only days away and we have a wonderful afternoon planned for you on Saturday, June 30. Please come prepared to work with milk and to visit with some adorable goats. Stephen Rudicel of The Press, Mariposa Creamery, The Institute of Domestic Technology will be your teacher for the day and will be giving us the inside scoop on all things dairy. We will have coffee and scones in the morning and provide light snacks as the day goes on. Please eat breakfast, wear comfy shoes and pull your hair back. We will be sending you home with recipe cards and samples but feel free to bring a notebook and pencil if you plan to take additional notes. Please arrive by 10am and expect to stick around until 2pm. This class is sold out so there will be no room for additional guests.

Right! Because of course I had completely forgotten about signing up for this class, and had planned to be in Santa Barbara picking up my daughter from camp that day at the exact same time.   After working things out with my husband and my daughter***, I drove out to the Zane Grey Estate in Altadena, unsure of exactly what was in store for me, but happy at least about the prospect of scones.

Here's what I found:

They weren't kidding about the goats.  Stephen, the owner of the estate, the goats, and the rapt attention of our group of students, took us into the cavernous, light-filled creamery and immediately began instructing us about the finer points of milk.

First up, a blind tasting. Crap. I totally hate drinking milk. I wrinkled my nose, took tiny sips, and jotted down my notes.  The rest of the class swigged away with relish.

As did this little one.

Divided into groups, we began making cheese under Stephen's watchful eye.  It turns out that the process is all about temperature and bacteria, and that curds and whey are real things. Our ricotta was a 96 degree situation, with a lot of stirring, a little acid, tiny little rice-like clumps, and a big old dripping bag of cheesecloth.

We made chevré the same way, but with a lower temperature and a different active agent.  The gouda was a whole different thing: milk heated to 110 degrees, turned into a gelatinous blob, sliced and diced, reheated until it formed (literally) squeaky curds, then pressed, using an oddly beautiful contraption, into molds.   

Showing us some four-month old gouda from the fridge.  Ours will need to age 9 months before it is ready to eat. 

In between, there were interviews...

...lunch****

...and butter making!!! (Oh yeah!)

I packed up my take-home containers of fresh cheese and butter, said good bye to the goats, to Stephen, to Meg, the wonderful organizer of this class, and my fellow cheese makers. I walked through the organic garden to my hot car, drove to the nearest fast food restaurant for a big caffeinated ice tea, and went home to wait for my daughter.

If you want to make your own cheese, Stephen recommends this book to get you started.  I recommend buying cheese from a local cheese shop, and just making butter instead.  It's way easier.

Gooey Butter Cookie Butter Cakes

Hint: Contains butter.

Hitting Black Bottom

Sleepaway camp.

For my daughter, it's a totally new experience this time around.
Intensive soccer training instead of arts and crafts, and nighttime yoga instead of campfires.
Nutritional workshops instead of goofy skits, and hyper-competitive athletes instead of cliques of camp veterans.
This is one serious place.
But she has her teammates as roommates, and a cell phone to stay connected*.
She'll be fine.

For me, it's the exact same drill as last year and the year before that and the year before that.
She's gone.
I'm a wreck.
The oven's on.
I'll be 10 pounds heavier by Friday.

Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.

Gittes: A memorial service was held at the Mar Vista Inn today for Jasper Lamar Crabb. He passed away two weeks ago. 
Mrs. Mulwray: Why is that unusual?
Gittes: He passed away two weeks ago and one week ago he bought the land. That's unusual.

Somehow, this particular exchange really resonated, given that we were watching the movie outdoors in a Los Angeles cemetery.

Along with hundreds of other people (living and dead), blankets, lawn chairs, various smokeable substances, wine bottles, a DJ spinning atmospheric background music, and all kinds of picnic suppers.

The sun went down, the palm trees were silhouetted against the moon, and the side of the mausoleum lit up.

The crowd cheered as the opening credits rolled. John Huston, buried in this very spot, got an especially loud round of applause. As Morty (the coroner) says in the movie:

"Only in LA*."

Naturally, we had a theme picnic: