Good morning, Shizuoka. Wow!
The view from the hotel. What a nice surprise! You can even see the Shinkansen passing by below.
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how to make a zine
The 5-minute bread recipe does work!
It's been a while since my last post, but that 5-minute fresh baked bread recipe in my previous post does work! It's just too easy and too tasty. It works fine in a bamboo steamer too, to make chinese steamed buns.
Yesterday I just bought my third 25 pound sack of flour from Sam's club ($7.32). That is in addition to another three 10 pound bags of flour I've gotten in the past few months because I didn't want to haul a 25 bag sack of flour home (I'm car-free). That means I've baked over 80 lbs of baked goods since June for personal family consumption!
Making Yoghurt Without a Clue
A Mongo-American bacterial blend
In Tbilisi, you'll often hear a voice, always an old voice, calling out Matzoni! Matzoni! This is the Georgian word for yoghurt. Old folks make a little extra income by making yoghurt at home - probably in their bathtubs - and selling it on the street. It so happens that this is the best yoghurt in the world, one of the few Georgian boasts that I don't question. I left Tbilisi in 1999, and ever since, I have missed their yoghurt. I can't eat the fruity, slimy stuff they sell in supermarkets. I need plain, white yoghurt, with a sharp, sour bite, and loaded with bacteria. I've never found what I want in a store.So I decided to make it myself. My wife had made yoghurt a few times, using UHT milk, with limited success. I think the process of superheating milk had something to do with it. But she gave me the idea, and I had a dim idea of the process.I kicked off my experiment with locally-made commercial yoghurt and some Shin Suu, fresh milk produced from Mongolian cows. I mixed some of the yoghurt and milk in a pitcher, and then added the contents of an American-made acidophilus capsule. I like the idea of a Mongo-American bacterial blend.
The next morning, I just had a pitcher of milk. I couldn't understand it. But then, I remembered that Mongolian nights are chilly, even in summer. My kitchen is like a walk-in refridgerator at night. So I filled a big pot with water, heated it up, and put the pitcher in. The next day, I had a pitcherfull of real yoghurt. It was a little runnier than what you get in the store, but tasted perfect. Now I'm making it almost every day, with mixed results. I don't know how much yoghurt to mix in with the milk, how long it should sit, or what the best temperature is. It comes out differently every time. But it's always delicious. Maybe, someday, I'll go online and find out how to make it properly. But for now, it's more fun to learn from my own experience.I can't say that my yoghurt is as good as the stuff I bought in Tbilisi. I think the secret ingredient in Georgian yoghurt comes from bathtub grime - maybe I'll give it a try after my kids go to college.
download protected images? - NOT with me! (Doodle Art)
< CLICK ON IMG to ENLARGE >
I couldn't post the funny photos via email-sent links
The photos were download-protected. BUT NOT WITH ME!
This is exactly what the photos looked like. I got them. OK, admitted ... they are not funnny anymore as doodles ... but this is a serious issue anyway.
fed by / up with corporate media (doodle art)
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From Tbilisi to Ulaanbaatar: Ten Years of Marriage
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Today is one of our 10th wedding anniversaries. The other one, the real one, is in July. When my fiance came to Tbilisi in May 1999 to help organize the wedding, the priest told us that our planned date was during Post, which is some kind of Lent-like period when getting married is not possible. "But tomorrow's OK," he said.After some energetic consultations, my bride-to-be decided it would be OK to have a church wedding in May and the legal one later. So we rushed to the Tbilisi gold market, bought rings, and let our friends know we'd be getting married on Monday at around lunchtime.The wedding was a typical, spooky Orthodox one in Tbilisi's main Russian Orthodox Church, complete with chanting in old church Slavonic and a lot of incense. The only unusual thing was that a bird crapped on my head right before we
went in. I though this was a bad omen, but apparently it's good luck in Georgia, especially at a wedding.Ten years later, after dragging her around the world and producing two kids, we are in Mongolia. We spent the day having a cookout (muttonburgers anyone?) with friends on the river Tuul, just behind the Hotel Mongolia. I waded across the freezing river and hiked up a nearby mountain. Now that everything is green, the landscape is particularly beautiful. On the way home, I decided to surprise my wife by gong to Ulaanbaatar's new Orthodox cathedral. I watched as she taught my Ukrainian Orthodox children how to light candles and cross themselves. (As far as I'm concerned, they're still 13th-generation American WASPs.) My five-year old girl stood on her toes, stretching, straining, to light her candle. My son, bewildered, asked why anyone would nail a guy to a cross. I guess I'm going to have to deal with this whole religion thing sooner rather than later.Ten years. So fast. I can
hardly remember my life before then. |
