Cut the Cheese and Yogurt

   Well the last batch of cheese and yogurt was a success.  There isn't anymore yogurt left to be sampled and I take that as an indication the yogurt was yummy.  It was a sweet yogurt and had an assertive buttery finish with just a spoonful of sunshine repose.  OK, yogurt does make me wax poetic.  You were warned.  I mean just imagine yourself as assertive and buttery.  You'd make friend and influence people.  You'd be unstoppable!  Imagine untold numbers of active cultures like Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus  doing their job converting all that sweet lactose into an even more delicious treat.  Wow!
   I did warn you.  I can get a little carried away.  Where was I....um, right, the cheese.  The cheese is supposed to be a brie style cheese or a camembert style cheese.   They are pretty much the same cheese it's just that one is bigger and the other is supposed to be smaller in order to keep their respective names.  As well, those cheese are place names in France so I guess the test batch of cheese I made was crafted here in Pennsylvania and since my cheese making skills are rudimentary at the moment I can't really call the cheese camembert or brie.  I pretty much followed the recipe to make a brie and camembert.   I used the appropriate cheese cultures and followed the appropriate temperature requirements for the inoculation and coagulation phases.  Still, as I said, my skills are in their baby phases so the finished cheese might not become what is in my mind, or yours, when we think of brie or camembert cheeses.  No matter, I understand there is a learning curve involved with any new (about a year of off and on cheese making now) field of study.
   As long as I hold in my imagination the end result and all its nuances, I will succeed.  I recently had a conversation with a gifted photographer and he gave away one of his secrets.  His secret was that when approaching a scene to be photographed he paused for a few minutes and imagined what he wanted to reveal with the soon to be taken photo.  He thought to himself,  how might I see this future event (the un-taken photo).  Of course being just a little obsessive I began to think about how this relates to my cheese making studies.  Ah!  I thought, I have to 'see' the end result before I begin!   Just like with all my other passions (hobbies) I have to imagine the end result at the beginning or it just won't succeed.  

   Another day another adventure.

You Gotta Make Your Own Fun

  Sometimes you have to go deep into your own madness to evaluate your motivations.  When I was 10 years old playing pee-wee football a team mate's father asked me what was my motivation.  I remember not knowing the meaning of the word motivation let alone the meaning of the question.  I just shrugged and said that I didn't know.  It was the truth.  I didn't know.  After thirty some odd years I now understand my motivations in life.  I am thankful for that day on the sidelines when that epoch question was before me.  What was my motivation all those years ago?--to know.  That's it.  My motivation was, simply, to experience the fruits of my imagination.  To know.  Which brings me to now.  The trouble is I find lots to entertain me.  Everything is interesting to me.  I mean, isn't it cool to watch a bunch of ants carrying to and fro?  Or, what about bending and re-bending a piece of copper wire to watch it break under too-much internal tension.  What about making a paper glider plane to see how far it can fly?  Cool!

  Ok,  I think you may be getting the point.  In the immortal words of Willy Wonka, "There's too little to do and so much time.  Strike that, reverse it."

   I've got things to do.