Fungus is Among Us

Is this the beginning of the climate change? Has the Pacific Northwest moved this far east so fast? I don't know whether I have a persistent cold or newly developed mold allergy. I thought it was leaving, but now it's back! Yeah, the cold too. Toadstools have erupted among the weeds. Well, Friday and Saturday were ok. More gray, drizzle, and fog until Friday?

Breakfast on Friday at Taffy's Luncheonette in Newburyport with Laura Hallie was quite good. She liked the western omelet. Possibly the best she's had, said she. I agree....had it last week. Hash and eggs this time for me. The hash is homemade with lots of corned beef and just right potatoes and onion. Eggs were as ordered, and home fries very well done as I like them. Ordinary vittles, but well accomplished.

My American flag was showing its age. It was an inexpensive dyed cotton job, and it was five years old. I never flew it at night or during inclement weather, but it was beginning to fade and fray a little. I folded it correctly (I checked to be sure.) and brought it down to the Raymond V.F.W. to be properly destroyed. The new flag is nylon with sewed stripes and embroidered stars. It's much nicer and probably worth the expense. It wasn't cheap. It slides onto a plastic sleeve that swivels on the flagstaff so it doesn't wrap around in the wind. Of course, this meant a new white fiberglass flagstaff with a gold ball finial. The old staff was too skinny and now looked shabby. A new mount was now necessary to fit the larger diameter fiberglass staff. Ahh, the chain of unintended consequences! Now it was really not cheap. It looks nice anyway. It can be my Fourth of July celebration.

I found a nice little farmers' market at the Deerfield Fairgrounds (3-7 pm Fridays). I thought they might call it off this week. The sky was really hinky, and the wind was turning the trees inside out. The N.O.A.A. Station in Gray, Maine issued a severe thunderstorm warning. It never did rain on me until I got to the fairgrounds, and then it was only a shower. A little further north in Laconia they got drowned .... three to five inches of rain with hail. There were only a dozen or so stalls, but the people were really friendly, and they had some nice produce and preserves and crafts. I bought a maple cheese board and a jar of home canned green tomato pickle relish. The pickle relish is really good. It would be great on a grilled hot dog. There were burgers made with homegrown beef, and they were tasty. Several people had goat milk products. I passed on the soap. Couldn't get by the cheeses. There was a nice cheddar, a bleu, and fromage blanc. I bought some of the bleu and fromage blanc. The fromage blanc is very nice. It's rather tart but creamy tasting with a spreadable texture almost like cheesecake. It's a great substitute for cream cheese with much less fat and cholesterol. I chopped a few Manzanilla olives into it last night and let the melding happen. It was great on my bagel this morning. I will learn to make this. It's alleged to be easy.

I am a cheese freak. I'd thought about making cheese for a while. Daughter G got herself a pair of goats and made some chevre, then a woman I work with told me she wanted to make cheddar. Now I've tried an easy one. It was a lemon buttermilk fresh cheese made by heating milk, curdling it with buttermilk and lemon juice, and draining the whey off the curd. That was very easy, and it was good if bland. It was very milky with a little lemon tang. I added a little chopped fresh rosemary with a little salt and quite a bit of pepper. Good on the bagel, but not as good as the fromage blanc. There's a wealth of cheesemaking information on the web. I have a book by Rikki Carroll and Robert Carroll called Cheesemaking Made Easy. They sell supplies and give classes. Google it up. I bought their hard cheesemaking kit. I'm going to try the farmhouse cheddar soon. There aren't a lot of places to get good milk for cheese if you don't have your own livestock. Raw whole milk is generally recommended. I can get that locally, but it's prohibitively expensive ($5.49 a half gallon) . A gallon of milk makes about a pound of cheese. Pasteurized, homogenized milk can be made to work if necessary. Homogenizing is bad ... messes up the way the milkfat reacts. I stumbled onto a web site that said Trader Joe's sells pasteurized but not homogenized milk. I got some yesterday. Now I'm under the gun to make the cheese while the milk is fresh. Stay tuned.

I promised some blacksmithing stuff for this post. I don't have much. The metal stock at the smithy wasn't the right thickness for the wagon handle. I worked all day at the forge with one of the elder statesmen in the club. We cobbled up a handle that could be made to work, but it's not right, and there won't be pictures! We forged a spring loaded fuller that I need to finish by welding a post on it to fit the hardy hole in my anvil. Pictures when it's done. A fuller is a tool that flattens the stock to make it longer and/or wider. More blacksmithing later. It's past my bedtime.