Celebrations & Cheesegasms: Naomi

Each Fourth of July, my family gathers in the Adirondack Park to partake of boats, beer, and bonding.  Usually in that order.  There are upwards of 30 of us, so the beer helps with the bonding. 

 We’ve been going to the same spot for years, so it feels a bit like home.  And no, Gentle Readers, this is not glamping.  We do not do electricity.  Or hot water.  Or beds.  We do flashlights, and weekly showers, and air mattresses.  We are tent campers!  We laugh in the face of cabins.  We breathe the clean piney air and swim in the loon-filled lake and sing around the softly-glowing campfire.  And when it rains, we remind each other that we are having FUN, dammit!

(Wee One)

Usually, I do some hiking, some boating, and a lot of sitting in a lawn chair with my feet in the lake, reading my book in the sunshine.  This year was a bit unusual.  People were popping in and out of the campsites like mad.  One of my cousins had a baby on the Fourth, so Grandma & Grandpa Bear went home to meet Baby Bear.  Dad lent his newly-refurbished Sunfish to one of our crew, who flipped it and then promptly sent the mast, boom & sail to the bottom of the lake. My roommate from Super Little University (which is just off the edge of the Park) came with her husband and toddler to join us.  It was the Wee One’s introduction to A) sleeping in tents, and B) fireworks.  It was a very exciting year.  

 [Side note: The majority of the campers departed one day before I did, taking 95% of the camping materiel home with them.  I was staying just one more night, and was traveling light.  I had a pop-up tent, a tarp, a sleeping bag, Fritos & cherries, a 6-pack of beer, and a bottle of wine.  These were my worldly possessions as I waited for my SLU roommate to return from her family field trip to join me for dinner. 

And then it rained.  The heavens opened.  It monsooned.  I had to move my tent out of a puddle.  Then I had to move it out of a new puddle.  I had to tweak the tarp situation.  It was so wet I eventually took off my raincoat (why bother?) and just got soaked to the skin.  Then, alone, in the rain, wet under my tarp, I opened my bottle of wine.  And drank it, straight from the bottle.  For the “grown-up” campers had taken all the cups.  I was the person that Mommies hide from their children.]

…But I got no reading done.  So today’s post is about my other favorite thing: food.  

In honor of Dad’s July birthday, we extended our vacation to include a cheese-making class at First Light Dairy Farm & Creamery in East Bethany, NY.  This tiny farmstead is owned by Trystan & Max Sandvoss, two brothers who make artisanal cheese.  They have a small herd of pastured goats for goat’s milk, and an arrangement with a local organic farm for cow’s milk.  They hold regular classes where foodies and wanna-bes learn how to make cheese.  

We dragged Dad out of bed at the crack of dawn and threw him into the car without a word of where we were going.  He finally figured it out, but it may have been the overwhelming eau de vache that gave him the hint.  After almost an hour of cheese indoctrination, we headed off to the creamery, where we started our Grand Cheese Adventure.  

When Mom and I finished covering our shoes in sanitation booties like something out of a crime procedural, we found Dad already in the Make Room, stirring what would eventually turn into cheddar.  (Did you know that “cheddar” is actually a verb?  One can cheddar things… who knew?)  Trystan, the  older of the cheese-brothers (and the one with the glasses above), waxed poetic about yeast and mold and other things that make food yummy, as the milk slowly began to cheesify.  It took all day to make the cheddar, as each step needs to cook while the yeasts do their thing.  Trystan was a great guide—a cheese proselytizer, if you will—and all our basic recipes ended up with hints and illustrations and shortcuts scribbled in the margins. We were not able to eat our cheese that day, as the cheddar has to age for a couple of months before it's delicious.  But the creamery kept us rolling with samples, which kept everyone more than happy!

When we hit the mozzarella stage, cheese-making became infinitely more entertaining.  In order to properly make mozzarella, it needs to be stretched.  A lot.  Like taffy.  It also needs to be over 100 degrees, so it’s very toasty taffy. I've not really gotten a reason why mozz needs to be stretched, but it's the most fun you'll ever have making cheese, so who cares?  When it's shiny and stretchy, you can make it into bocconcini (tiny mozzarella balls) or a regular roll of mozz. (If you over-stretch, you still get cheese, but it's more like string cheese.  Edible, but not awesome.)

We cooked up some ricotta just before lunch, and trooped off to eat.  Not only does the First Light Workshop teach you how to make cheese, they also feed you.  Best. Workshop. Ever!  Younger brother Max desperately tried to fit in one bite of food for every eight questions.  I would not have blamed him if he'd just told us to shut it 'til he was done eating.  The food was fabulous!  Mushroom leek quiche made with local cream.  Fresh salad with creamery feta.  Golden butternut squash soup topped with the ricotta we just made in class.  For dessert: a homemade brownie filled with chevre and a glass of local whole milk.  

Had I not been in (semi)public, I might have licked my plate clean.  Or stolen food from my table-mates.  It's probably best that I was supervised.

After lunch we learned how to set chevre, and just as our cheese-making fantasies were reaching their heights, we wrapped up.   We might have just gone home, but after listening to the brothers talk about "the girls" all day, we wanted to meet the goats!

They're a mixed herd of Alpine and Nubian goats.  Alpine goats have beards, even if they're female...just like dwarf women in Lord of the Rings.  Nubians have long floppy ears, like Leo the Lop.   Also, for future reference, goats like hot pink shorts.  Or how my knees taste.  It's hard to say which.  But I had lots of new friends.  

Poor Trystan was nearly run over by the goats.  The brothers interact with each one of their herd daily, and the goats see them as parent figures.  So if you've ever seen a favorite teacher mobbed by a group of preschoolers, you'll have an accurate picture of Trystan with his "girls."  The only difference was that the calls of "Hey! Hey!  Look at me!" were replaced with a little more friendly head-butting.  Other than that, the similarities were uncanny. 

I folded myself into the car at the end of the day smelling of goat, and clutching my goodie bag of cultures, yeasts, and directions.  In theory, I now know how to make four kinds of cheese: chevre, ricotta, cheddar, and mozzarella. One day soon, when the temperature outside is not reminiscent of the surface of the sun, I will try to make my very own cheese.  

If you would like to join in the fun, my friend at andthenshechangedmylife wrote this awesome post about how to make mozzarella.  Try her recipe until I return with my own battle-tested version of 30-Minute mozzarella.  Stay tuned for imminent cheesy disaster!

Homage to a Library: Naomi

Some people love bookstores.  I like bookstores a lot.  They make me happy.  Almost all of them now have coffee shops attached, which makes them smell yummy, and most of them have comfy chairs where you can sit down and try out a new book before you buy it.  

Bookstores are great.  

I’m a library person.

I LOVE libraries.  I think it’s because when I was a little girl, the library was my happy place.  My Mommy took me to the library every Friday and I was allowed to roam around to my heart’s content.  My childhood library was a beautiful building built in 1907, with a huge dome above the circulation desk, and marble pillars, with the hush and sacred feel of a temple or a church.  As one progressed back into the “working” parts of the library—the general fiction stacks, the periodicals, the nonfiction second floor loge—it became less lovely and more ‘70s utilitarian.  It was still a magical place.  

 

I had a Mommy-imposed limit of 10 books.  I wasn’t allowed to take any more home than that, because it was hard enough to keep track of ten when the due-date came around.  Even now, years and years later, I feel overburdened if I have more than 10 library books out at a time.  You can’t imagine the daily guilt I lived with in grad school, when I sometimes had to check out 15 or 20 books for one paper.   

Leaving Mom in the dust, I would toddle down the stairs to the basement Children’s Department.  Two of my very favorite people worked there: Sue and Claudine.  Sue was lovely, with waist-length blonde hair and pretty Laura Ashley dresses (it was the 1980s, Gentle Readers.  She was chic.).  And then there was Claudine, who was one of the single most important influences on my life, because she helped me learn to pick out books.  Is there any better way to shape a child?  Sometimes she had a special book hidden behind the circulation desk for me, and regardless of what it was, if she recommended it, I read it.  She helped me work my way through every book in the library on Arthurian myths, answered questions on how to pronounce the names of Greek gods, and taught me that “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was just the gateway to Baum’s world.  For years, even after we moved away, our families exchanged Christmas cards.  I promised her that I would dedicate a book to her.  Sadly, she passed away a few years ago, and she didn’t get her book.  Claudine, I owe you.  For so many things.  

  [In a side note, both Sue and Claudine moonlighted (moonlit?) as clowns.  Knowing that the clowns who showed up at craft fairs and school festivals were the nice ladies who gave me books made sure I was immune to fearing clowns, no matter how many times I’ve read “IT.” Thanks, librarians; I have no fear of clowns, and a vast fear of overdue library notices.]  

The library was a safe place, full of dangerous ideas.  I don’t remember my parents restricting my reading at all, believing that if I was old enough to choose the book, I was OK to read it.  I do remember having to fight to move from the Children’s Department downstairs to the Young Adult section upstairs.  Then again, considering that I began a year-long diet of Sweet Valley High books, maybe my folks were right!  (Lila was my favorite.  She, too, loved purple.)  But I could wander the library, pick out my books and then meet Dad in the Westerns, or Mom in Fiction.  I happened upon some great books, all by accident, because I liked the title, or the front cover, or because I randomly pulled it off the shelf.  It was a wonderful playground. 

And it shaped my reading habits more than I ever realized.  It is very rare, even now, that I walk into a bookstore knowing what I want to buy, or into a library knowing what I want to check out.  I have always found the best stuff when I am looking for nothing in particular: Your eye is caught by a photograph.  You like a title.  You recognize a book you’ve read before by the cover art and see if the author has done anything new.  You misread a title and pull it off the shelf.  You accidentally knock a book out of place, and as you replace it, you start reading the blurb. 

One of my problems with e-readers is that it pretty much kills the art of the accidental book.  Yep, that might make me a Luddite, but that’s OK.  You can find me curled up in the fiction section with the rest of the weirdos. 

Alternate Archipelago America: Naomi

I have been ill with a non-specific ickiness for almost a week now.  It’s perhaps an outgrowth of my Benign Positional Vertigo, which sounds more fun than it is.  My mother, wonderful being, thinks it may be because I’ve been exercising too much.  Best.  Excuse. Ever!

Essentially, this means that I can’t move much.  You would be AMAZED at the amount of reading I have gotten done.  If I weren’t feeling nonspecifically icky, I would be quite pleased.  As it is, I really, really want to be able to stand up without feeling like I’m falling down. 

But the reading.  O the reading.  Since I can’t move, and reading doesn’t make me dizzy, it’s been a week of me, my bed, and whatever is on my bedside table.  The Dante I’ve been reading, though, has remained untouched this week.  I can’t handle dizziness and the fires of hell: it’s all too much.  The review of the GENIUS translation I’m reading will just have to wait. 

Instead, I give you the review of the GENIUS YA novel I finished.  In a day.  Because I can’t move.   And, you know, it’s really good.

My friend and fellow-blogger, The Serial Bookseller, recommended a new book by Brandon Sanderson, the fantasy wordsmith tapped to finish Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time Series.  For me, Sanderson is hit or miss.  Mistborn: Awesome.  The rest of the Mistborn series: Hugely boring.  Elantris: Amazing.  Warbreaker: YAWN.  As for Sanderson’s ability to finish The Wheel of Time series, I stopped reading roundabout Book 7 (A Crown of Swords), when Jordan had been unable to pique my interest since Book 4 (The Shadow Rising).  But I digress.  The Serial Bookseller and I have this argument often.  He adores Sanderson.

In this case, he was right.  Yep.  I said it.  I said it out loud and in print: The Serial Bookseller was right.  (This will never happen again.) 

The Rithmatist is awesome.    It takes place in Alternate Archipelago America (henceforth known as AAA).   We don’t know why it’s an archipelago; there is no backstory; it just, geologically, is.  Each of our states is an independent island in AAA, so there’s a fascinating separatist atmosphere, which fits the vaguely Victorian vibe of the book as a whole.  And no, it’s not steampunk; it’s Victorian AAA fantasy.  To underline this separatist theme, we find out that all of Europe is under the rule of an Asian dynasty, and the Aztek Empire is still going strong.  Our little AAA is understandably shy of banding together, and the separatist politics do a nice job of dovetailing with the larger plot. 

On the central AAA isle of Nebrask exists a pernicious magical threat: wild chalklings, two-dimensional monsters (yep, made of chalk) that eat people alive.  They attack in swarms and munch on eyeballs and skin and things; they’re quite icky.  The can be held off by acid attacks (to dissolve the chalk), but they greatest defense against them is the, you guessed it, Gentle Readers, Rithmatists.  These Rithmatists are geometry-savvy magic-wielders who can draw their own chalklings and imbue them with life.  Then the good chalklings battle the bad ones.  Obviously. 

Rithmatists must be trained.  And Joel, our protagonist, is a scholarship student at an academy that trains Rithmatists, although he himself has no power.  He is, however, fascinated by Rithmancy, as was his father (a chalk-maker) before him.  Joel manages to talk his way into a summer internship with recently-humbled Professor Fitch, where he befriends an untalented Rithmatist named Melody.  The three of them are tasked with solving a string of puzzling disappearances.  Then magic and plot and stuff happens.  Read it yourself.     

Each chapter is preceded by a short lesson on Rithmatics, including why the geometry of certain defenses work, etc.  Now, Gentle Readers, I detest geometry with every fiber of my being, but as soon as it’s magical, somehow it becomes more interesting.  I almost cared about vectors while I was reading this book.  Almost. 

This book is an easy read.  It is not particularly challenging in format, language, or characterization.  It’s also written for 12-year-olds, so I allow some leeway.  It is, however, beautifully grounded.  The organization of the world, the history, and the science of the Rithmatic magic are really impressive.  This is the beginning of a series, and I am looking forward to the sequels. 

There were also more surprises than I expected.  One subplot did not resolve itself at all in the way I expected.  The villain is red-herringed like mad, and even once I thought I had it figured out, I was wrong.  Only in fiction, Gentle Readers, do I enjoy being wrong.  And Sanderson got me good.  *high five* 

I can see this series becoming quite popular if only the word gets out, and people refrain from comparing it to Harry Potter.  Yes, it’s magic; yes it’s a boarding school; yes, there’s a mean teacher who hates our protagonist.  That is where the comparison ends.  Do not pick up this book expecting Harry Potter.  But please do, Gentle Readers, pick up this book.  You’ll be glad you did, and for five minutes, you might even care about geometry. 

Maybe.

And right now you can order it in hardcover for $12.83.  Ye Gods, just buy it!