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the inspirations of spring
Apr. 12th, 2020 06:40 amMy sisters and I have taken to having a weekly happy hour, but given that this involves three time zones (one lives in Seattle, another in San Francisco, I am in Sweden, and the fourth is in the Melbourne area) it wasn't so easy to choose a time when we would all be awake. The two in the states are the ones most likely to want a glass of wine or something during a happy hour video call, so we agreed on 22:00 on Friday evening, Pacific time, which now that everyone has either sprung forward or fallen back means that it is 07:00 Saturday for me, and 13:00 Saturday in Melbourne. They gave me the morning shift because I never drink alcohol, and Kirsty the afternoon, as just late enough if the day that if she wants a glass it isn't too unreasonable.
I wound up staying up till 00:30 on Friday testing my new bluetooth dongle for the computer which pipes the sound directly to my hearing aids. Well, actually, that zoom call with some friends in the West Kingdom only lasted till around 23:30, but then, as I went to disconnect my Oticon bluetooth adapter that talks to my hearing aids from the computer dongle and re-connect it from the phone, I realised that I need a place to store the computer dongle, and it is quite small, and therefore easily lost if it doesn't have a home. So I started a skype call with a friend in Canada (who refuses to use zoom for reasons of privacy and security) and sewed a quick extra pocket onto my phone baldric. (If you are curious enough to click on the link, know that the baldric strap is about 7 cm wide just there where the blue cotton twill edging for the pocket for the Oticon is, and the new pocket is the darker, 2 cm wide, more densely woven black wool to the right of the slit in the Oticon (that lets sound better reach the microphone). This took about 30 or 40 minutes to make, which is why I wound up staying up late. Of course, that last call I had to rely on just the computer audio (since I didn't feel like doing the project in the living room, where I have the phone stand for doing video calls with the phone), because I needed the dongle to fit the pocket. It has a lid that holds shut with velcro, and I think it will be a safe place to keep it, and ensure that it is always within reach when I need it.
I got just after 06:30 on Saturday got dressed etc., went to the computer and put the dongle into the computer, thought I had it properly re-attached to the phone, went to connect to Zoom, realised that I had no sound in the hearing aids, looked at the phone, and discovered that when I had told it to turn off bluetooth that it didn't actually turn off, so the light showing connection was connection to the phone. So I turned off the phone bluetooth, and tried again, it looked like it should work, but I was still having issues--Zoom claimed to be using the dongle, but no sound. So I gave up, unplugged the dongle, left the meeting in the computer, turned bluetooth back on on the phone, and reconnected to the meeting via the phone, went to the living room, set the phone in the holder, and started sewing on my blue and red wool tunic in progress while we visited.
We talked for a couple of hours, and it was good to catch up. My Seattle sister has been doing a Family Spirit week all week, posting photos of their costumes to FB. They did Formal Friday, Monochormatic Day, Disney Day (which included a reference image), and Emo day.
If my sister's privacy settings means that those don't show, suffice it to say that they had a lot of fun with the dressing up. One of my nieces is highly competitive, so, of course, it was also a contest. They did blind voting, wherein they stood around the table and everyone set a napkin in front of the person they wanted to vote for (not permitted to vote for oneself). At the end of the week three of them were tied for second place, and little miss competitive just barely won, but, of course, put on as many airs as if she had won with a landslide.
After a couple of hours visit the US sisters decided that they needed to go to bed, Melbourne needed to get busy, and I was ready to put my sewing down. I spent another couple of hours on useful tasks, and then decided I wanted a nap. As I was falling asleep I thought I heard the front door open, but was too tired to even call out a greeting, and just drifted off to sleep. Around 11:30 David came in to say that he and Caroline were just having fika, and after they were done eating would be heading to the store, and did I want to come along? He knew my answer would be yes, since we had discussed the fact that the plant cuttings that had been put into water last week had enough roots now that they really did need to be given some dirt.
So got back up, ate a quick second breakfast (first breakfast hadn't happened till after I said goodnight to my sisters), and off we went. First stop was Bloomsterlandet (literally "flower land"), to get the dirt, and, since I was there, some seeds for the garden, since spring is coming. Nearly all of the snow between the house and the walkway has melted, and the snow/ice other places is getting rapidly lower. Of course, as I type it is snowing again, but I don't expect it to last, given that the forecast shows temps above zero C for at least part of every day in the foreseeable future.
Then we went to the grocery store next door, where I only needed a few things. I had planned to get some cream for my next batch of cultured butter, and when I was walking to the dairy area thought of picking up some mascarpone cheese to make a black currant pie (in part because the containers that comes in here is a good size to take food to work for lunch, since it holds what I consider one large serving, e.g. 1 cup). However, I am not often in that particular store, and wasn't certain where to find it, and as I was searching the dairy shelves I noticed that they had plain skyr! I haven't seen plain skyr in a store here for about five years (and yes, I do check now and then). They carry the stuff with sugar and other stuff added, but I am so not interested in that. So I forgot about the mascarpone, and even about the cream, and just bought two containers of skyr plus the couple of not dairy items I was looking for, and we went home, where I enjoyed skyr with muesli and frozen cherries for lunch.
I did a few things on the computer, and then felt like I needed to Move, so I went to the living room, intending to do a DownDog HighIntensityTraining app session. However, David and Caroline had just settled into the beanbag for an afternoon nap, and they were so cute I didn't have the heart to disturb them. So I grabbed a grocery bag and the glass milk bottle, and took my trike to the large grocery store I normally go to. 36 minutes to get there, and 38 home, on a slightly different path. I got a liter of good milk (stick the glass bottle in the machine, and press "start") and three boxes of ecological cream.
Once I was home I introduced the cream to the culture and left it on the counter to get acquainted, and then consulted google about ways to make homemade skyr. There are a Lot of different approaches out there. They all agree that while skyr is referred to as a yoghurt because of its texture it is more like a cheese. Most of them agree that one should use some culture from a previous batch of skyr (which I expected), and they all seemed to think that heating the milk and cooling it is important (I didn't know about that), and some of them also suggest the use of rennet. One of them gave a recipe for a vegetable based rennet made from dried nettles. Since I have dried nettles I decided to try that. Their recipe involved boiling 450 grams of dried nettles for half an hour in 3-4 cups of water, and then using 1 teaspoon of the liquid (after straining out the leaves) in the skyr. I see no reason to use that much of my precious dried nettle stash at once (unless I am making a nettle soup), so instead I put two tablespoons in my tiny frying pan on the stove with 4 tablespoons of water, and let that simmer while I microwaved the milk (while most recipes said heat on the stove for half an hour, stirring constantly, one of them said you could do the heating in the microwave. Since David and Caroline were using both the stove and the oven for their cooking I decided that the microwave, on the far side of the room, was a much better option.
Once the milk had been heated to just under scalding, and cooled to just pleasantly hot I added the spoonful of nettle juice and a generous spoonful of skyr, and then set the bowl, covered, into the little oven (which was warm from having been between a oven and a stove burner that had been in use, and left them overnight. Now that I have had breakfast and caught up on reading everyone's new posts I will go see if I can drain out any of the whey before putting the skyr in the fridge. The cream, on the other hand, will need to wait till tomorrow before I set aside some clotted cream to use as is and whip it into butter. Luckily, it looks like I have the time, since Monday is also a holiday, so I don't need to go back to work till Tuesday.
I wound up staying up till 00:30 on Friday testing my new bluetooth dongle for the computer which pipes the sound directly to my hearing aids. Well, actually, that zoom call with some friends in the West Kingdom only lasted till around 23:30, but then, as I went to disconnect my Oticon bluetooth adapter that talks to my hearing aids from the computer dongle and re-connect it from the phone, I realised that I need a place to store the computer dongle, and it is quite small, and therefore easily lost if it doesn't have a home. So I started a skype call with a friend in Canada (who refuses to use zoom for reasons of privacy and security) and sewed a quick extra pocket onto my phone baldric. (If you are curious enough to click on the link, know that the baldric strap is about 7 cm wide just there where the blue cotton twill edging for the pocket for the Oticon is, and the new pocket is the darker, 2 cm wide, more densely woven black wool to the right of the slit in the Oticon (that lets sound better reach the microphone). This took about 30 or 40 minutes to make, which is why I wound up staying up late. Of course, that last call I had to rely on just the computer audio (since I didn't feel like doing the project in the living room, where I have the phone stand for doing video calls with the phone), because I needed the dongle to fit the pocket. It has a lid that holds shut with velcro, and I think it will be a safe place to keep it, and ensure that it is always within reach when I need it.
I got just after 06:30 on Saturday got dressed etc., went to the computer and put the dongle into the computer, thought I had it properly re-attached to the phone, went to connect to Zoom, realised that I had no sound in the hearing aids, looked at the phone, and discovered that when I had told it to turn off bluetooth that it didn't actually turn off, so the light showing connection was connection to the phone. So I turned off the phone bluetooth, and tried again, it looked like it should work, but I was still having issues--Zoom claimed to be using the dongle, but no sound. So I gave up, unplugged the dongle, left the meeting in the computer, turned bluetooth back on on the phone, and reconnected to the meeting via the phone, went to the living room, set the phone in the holder, and started sewing on my blue and red wool tunic in progress while we visited.
We talked for a couple of hours, and it was good to catch up. My Seattle sister has been doing a Family Spirit week all week, posting photos of their costumes to FB. They did Formal Friday, Monochormatic Day, Disney Day (which included a reference image), and Emo day.
If my sister's privacy settings means that those don't show, suffice it to say that they had a lot of fun with the dressing up. One of my nieces is highly competitive, so, of course, it was also a contest. They did blind voting, wherein they stood around the table and everyone set a napkin in front of the person they wanted to vote for (not permitted to vote for oneself). At the end of the week three of them were tied for second place, and little miss competitive just barely won, but, of course, put on as many airs as if she had won with a landslide.
After a couple of hours visit the US sisters decided that they needed to go to bed, Melbourne needed to get busy, and I was ready to put my sewing down. I spent another couple of hours on useful tasks, and then decided I wanted a nap. As I was falling asleep I thought I heard the front door open, but was too tired to even call out a greeting, and just drifted off to sleep. Around 11:30 David came in to say that he and Caroline were just having fika, and after they were done eating would be heading to the store, and did I want to come along? He knew my answer would be yes, since we had discussed the fact that the plant cuttings that had been put into water last week had enough roots now that they really did need to be given some dirt.
So got back up, ate a quick second breakfast (first breakfast hadn't happened till after I said goodnight to my sisters), and off we went. First stop was Bloomsterlandet (literally "flower land"), to get the dirt, and, since I was there, some seeds for the garden, since spring is coming. Nearly all of the snow between the house and the walkway has melted, and the snow/ice other places is getting rapidly lower. Of course, as I type it is snowing again, but I don't expect it to last, given that the forecast shows temps above zero C for at least part of every day in the foreseeable future.
Then we went to the grocery store next door, where I only needed a few things. I had planned to get some cream for my next batch of cultured butter, and when I was walking to the dairy area thought of picking up some mascarpone cheese to make a black currant pie (in part because the containers that comes in here is a good size to take food to work for lunch, since it holds what I consider one large serving, e.g. 1 cup). However, I am not often in that particular store, and wasn't certain where to find it, and as I was searching the dairy shelves I noticed that they had plain skyr! I haven't seen plain skyr in a store here for about five years (and yes, I do check now and then). They carry the stuff with sugar and other stuff added, but I am so not interested in that. So I forgot about the mascarpone, and even about the cream, and just bought two containers of skyr plus the couple of not dairy items I was looking for, and we went home, where I enjoyed skyr with muesli and frozen cherries for lunch.
I did a few things on the computer, and then felt like I needed to Move, so I went to the living room, intending to do a DownDog HighIntensityTraining app session. However, David and Caroline had just settled into the beanbag for an afternoon nap, and they were so cute I didn't have the heart to disturb them. So I grabbed a grocery bag and the glass milk bottle, and took my trike to the large grocery store I normally go to. 36 minutes to get there, and 38 home, on a slightly different path. I got a liter of good milk (stick the glass bottle in the machine, and press "start") and three boxes of ecological cream.
Once I was home I introduced the cream to the culture and left it on the counter to get acquainted, and then consulted google about ways to make homemade skyr. There are a Lot of different approaches out there. They all agree that while skyr is referred to as a yoghurt because of its texture it is more like a cheese. Most of them agree that one should use some culture from a previous batch of skyr (which I expected), and they all seemed to think that heating the milk and cooling it is important (I didn't know about that), and some of them also suggest the use of rennet. One of them gave a recipe for a vegetable based rennet made from dried nettles. Since I have dried nettles I decided to try that. Their recipe involved boiling 450 grams of dried nettles for half an hour in 3-4 cups of water, and then using 1 teaspoon of the liquid (after straining out the leaves) in the skyr. I see no reason to use that much of my precious dried nettle stash at once (unless I am making a nettle soup), so instead I put two tablespoons in my tiny frying pan on the stove with 4 tablespoons of water, and let that simmer while I microwaved the milk (while most recipes said heat on the stove for half an hour, stirring constantly, one of them said you could do the heating in the microwave. Since David and Caroline were using both the stove and the oven for their cooking I decided that the microwave, on the far side of the room, was a much better option.
Once the milk had been heated to just under scalding, and cooled to just pleasantly hot I added the spoonful of nettle juice and a generous spoonful of skyr, and then set the bowl, covered, into the little oven (which was warm from having been between a oven and a stove burner that had been in use, and left them overnight. Now that I have had breakfast and caught up on reading everyone's new posts I will go see if I can drain out any of the whey before putting the skyr in the fridge. The cream, on the other hand, will need to wait till tomorrow before I set aside some clotted cream to use as is and whip it into butter. Luckily, it looks like I have the time, since Monday is also a holiday, so I don't need to go back to work till Tuesday.
