popcorn and a movie

the kids watching a Toy Story movie marathon:

test kitchen

We've been busy in the kitchen, testing new recipes. First, we tried our hands at making homemade mozzarella. The cheese was coming along nicely, until the final stage where we had to re-heat the curds to stretch shape them. A little too much heat and... well, let's just say we have about two pounds of "ricotta" in the refrigerator. It was a lot of fun, though, and something we'll definitely be trying again!

The cheese experiment yesterday yielded over a gallon of whey, so this morning we used a bit of it to make a couple loaves of crusty Italian bread.









The bread was a moderate success- definitely edible! (Andrew ate quite a bit of the raw dough... why, I'm not sure, because it didn't taste very good un-baked!) Another recipe we're looking forward to trying again and improving on.







Tonight we're peeling and cutting a whole (7#) beef tenderloin into steaks, tips and stew cubes (most of which we'll freeze and enjoy over the next month or two), starting a gallon of kefir, and making a batch of chicken wings to enjoy while we watch the Superbowl. A near-perfect winter weekend (if only our kitchen was self-cleaning)!

the next Fred Astaire?

Andrew got into his sister's dance bag, and worked on his tap dancing moves:

the BIG snow - 2011

This year's big snowstorm might have been a lot less "big" than last year's big storm, but 8 inches (on top of what we already had) was enough to have school canceled for the day, and was plenty of snow to lure all the neighborhood kids outside to play for the last several days.