Rest in peace, Captain Picard

Holy cow, one sad loss after another. I just learned Sir Patrick Stewart has passed away.

One of my favorite stories:

A young Star Trek fan from Statesboro, Georgia, living with mitochondria disease, received the surprise of a lifetime while attending DragonCon, a popular sci-fi and fantasy convention.

The 11-year-old's Make-A-Wish request was to simply attend the convention, but when Sir Patrick Stewart got word of Dawn's trip, he decided to go and surprise her.

Stewart and Dawn embraced with a hug, but their meeting didn't end there. The renowned actor spent one-on-one time chatting with Dawn and learning about her life.

"I was shy at first not sure what to say or talk about but he kept talking to me," she told Mashable. "I felt like I was on the Enterprise talking to the Capt.... It makes me happy even when I am sick so I just wave and call Hello Sir Patrick."

For Dawn, it was undoubtedly the #BestDayEver.

The man was a legend. Rest in peace, Sir Patrick.

Biscuits and gravy tutorial

Recently I made a batch of biscuits and gravy, and Don suggested documenting the process as a sort of tutorial. So here goes.

I use the biscuit recipe from my battered and faithful Better Homes & Garden cookbook:

I also routinely quadruple the recipe, since we enjoy leftover biscuits.

The first task was to skim some milk. I just use a soup ladle for this purpose.

Then I mixed the dry ingredients: Flour, sugar, salt, cream of tarter, baking powder.

Once the dry ingredients were mixed, I grated some of the butter I made the other day. (My rotary grater is very handy for this!)

The grated butter mixes easily with the dry ingredients.

To this mixture, I added the (skimmed) milk.

After the dough was all mixed, it was time to turn it on to the breadboard...

...and give it a bit of kneading.

What follows is something I only learned through Older Daughter's culinary expertise on making exceptionally flaky biscuits. Take the dough, flatten it somewhat...

...and then fold it over itself. Flatten and repeat two or three times to make "layers." Simple, eh? But it makes all the difference.

Then I rolled the dough to about half an inch thick.

Next is another trick Older Daughter taught me: Use an actual biscuit cutter to cut the biscuits, not the old tuna can or plastic tumbler I used to use. Why? Because a biscuit cutter has sharp edges, not dull edges like a can or tumbler. The sharp edges slice through the dough and expose the flaky layers, rather than compressing the edges. Also, don't "twist" the biscuit cutter to cut the biscuit – just press down firmly and pull it back out. Twisting also seals and compresses the edges and reduces flakiness.

Gather the scraps, re-roll to half an inch thick, and keep cutting until the dough is used up.

Of course, there will be the odd "leftover" biscuit that's too small to cut.

Out of a quadruple recipe, I normally get about 30 biscuits or so. Pop them into a hot (450F) oven for about 20 minutes, or longer if you like them browner as we do.

While the biscuits are baking, it's time to make the gravy. For this, I modify a recipe for a separate dish, pork chops with gravy, using just the gravy part. (I skip adding mushrooms for this application.)

I started by cutting up some sausages...

...and letting them fry in their own grease until brown. Bacon is also a fine choice for the gravy.

At this point, I kinda "wing" the gravy. I started with two cups of (skimmed) milk, drizzled some in, then sprinkled in a bit of flour, stirring continuously until it thickened. Milk. Flour. Stir. Thicken. Repeat until the milk is gone. Don't just dump the milk and flour in or it will clump. The constant stirring is also crucial to keep the gravy from getting lumpy.

At some point during this stirring process, add your preferred spices. I use a bit of salt, a generous amount of pepper, and some thyme. Your choices may vary.

When the gravy is done...

...put it aside until the biscuits are baked.

Then cut open the hot biscuits and ladle the gravy over the top.

Ironically, I'm a biscuit purist and prefer just butter on mine (the gravy is for Don).

So there you go: Your biscuits-and-gravy tutorial.

Dairy Day

I had a bunch of milk in the dairy fridge to use up, so I decided to make yesterday a Dairy Day and get things processed.

One of the things taking up room was this gallon of older cream. It's been hanging around for weeks, so of course it smelled sour. Oddly enough, sour cream makes some of the best butter, for which I had it earmarked.

Ah, but I had far more cream than just this one jug. I skimmed the (fresher) cream off the rest of the milk in the fridge. Some I used to make another batch of ice cream. Then I used the skim milk to make yogurt and mozzarella cheese. So at one point I had three pots on the stove: One (on the left) for mozzarella, one for yogurt (back right), and one for butter (heating the cream to 60F).

After the ice cream, the yogurt was finished first. I heated the milk to 180F, then let it cool to about 110F. It formed a skin on top, which must be removed.

Then I mix in the culture, which is simply a bit of yogurt I made previously and which I put aside for that purpose. (I use a Bulgarian starter culture that can be re-cultured indefinitely.) Then it was into the incubator for several hours.

This is the first batch of mozzarella, just out of the pot. Look at all that whey.

Here's all the butter I churned, still in its sloppy unwashed stage.

This is after it's washed.

It came out to almost exactly three pounds.

I'm not very scientific when it comes to freezing fresh butter. I just lay out plops of about half a pound each on sheets of waxed paper...

...then wrap them before putting the lot in a Ziploc bag and stashing them in the freezer.

This morning, I scooped some of the chilled fresh yogurt into small jars for future cultures.

Then I date the cultures. This way I can use the oldest ones first. I always keep at least three jars of culture on hand in case of mistakes (such as adding the culture to the milk before it's sufficiently cooled, which kills the culture).

This morning I also grated all the mozzarella, both the two batches I made yesterday (on the right) and another batch I made a few days ago (on the left) which has been sitting in the fridge.

I tell ya, this new rotary grater I got is worth its weight in gold as far as I'm concerned.

Here's all the mozzarella grated up.

I bagged it in one-pound increments. It came to about 6.75 lbs.

So my final tally for yesterday's Dairy Day is a gallon of ice cream, a half-gallon of yogurt, six+ pounds of mozzarella cheese, three pounds of butter ... and no waste except the whey. Not a bad haul.

Rest in peace, Chekov

I just learned Walter Koenig, Star Trek's original Chekov, has passed away at age 90.

As a huge fan of the original Star Trek series, it's sad to see the cast departing this planet one by one.

Rest in peace, Mr. Koenig.

Removable hooves

No photos, sorry, so just use your imagination.

With autumn upon us, often the cows are still bedded down when I go into the barn in the morning to milk Maggie. Sometimes it takes a bit of persuasion to get Maggie to her feet and "emptied out" (letting her do both her liquid and her solid business) before putting her in the milking stall.

Anyway, that sets the scene. One morning, while Maggie was still lying down on the barn floor, I felt a small rock in my boot. Standing right in front of her, I braced myself against the barn wall, balanced on one foot, took off my boot, and shook out the pebble. Then I put my boot back on.

I glanced down at Maggie when I was finished and saw a comical expression on her face. If a cow can look shocked, Maggie seemed shocked down to her core ... shocked and a little freaked. I could almost hear her thinking, "Oh my gosh, she took off her hoof. She took off her hoof!!" She scrambled to her feet right away and somehow seemed subdued by my magical ability to remove a hoof at will.

Cow logic.

Moving manure

Don had a project he wanted to accomplish before too much rain or even snow was predicted; namely, moving manure.

Specifically, he wanted to remove the enormous pile of barn waste that had been accumulating in the corral over the past year.

While he started this project about six weeks ago, he got derailed from completing it as other, more pressing projects took over. However with some rain moving in tonight, he pushed through to get it done before the corral gets too mucky for the tractor.

So Don fired up the tractor and got started. It's sheer bucket-work.

Once he had a bucket scooped up, he transferred it to a spot near our lower driveway that is accessible both for piling barn waste and (later) for turning the waste to make compost.

He spent two mornings shifting the barn waste around. By the end of that first session, the results showed.

Yesterday and today, he finished the job, spending several hours transferring the barn waste to the compost pile. This is the "alleyway" on the side of the barn he traversed with the tractor to access the back.

(This is also the location we can fence off to confine animals for butchering.)

He was able to scoop at least 95% of the barn waste out of the corral and transfer it to the compost pile.

The compost pile is now enormous. Notably, it took the wild turkeys only about an hour to find it and begin scratching around for worms.

Another fall project, done.