Yogurt

Today I made yogurt cheese.

You start with natural yogurt (with no setting agents like gelatin). You line a strainer with cheesecloth, put it over a container, and put the yogurt in the strainer, cover the yogurt with plastic wrap (or, in my case, a plastic bag), and then put it in the fridge for several hours.

The yogurt becomes concentrated. You can then use it instead of sour cream in dips, etc.

I inadvertantly bought vanilla yogurt instead of plain, so I ended up with really thick yogurt. It was very enjoyable.

I was amazed - I got almost a soup bowl full of liquid out of one container of yogurt.

Halloween

I'm sure you've all heard that the original jack-o-lanterns were not made of pumpkins. (I'm too lazy to look up a citation for that, so just go with it).

Anyway, today I carved faces into things that were not pumpkins. Specifically, a potato and an apple. To my surprise, the potato worked better than the apple - the apple fractured during the coring process and I was forced to eat part of it.

Sometimes it doesn't work out

Today I attempted to make a Toothbrush Bracelet. It did not work out - basically, I was unable to get it warm enough to bend. Oh well, that's how it goes sometimes.

Odd uses of a microwave

I don't remember where I heard it, but today I decided to microwave a lemon before juicing it to see if that resulted in more juice. I microwaved the whole lemon for 10 seconds.

I was somewhat cynical about it, thinking that there was no way to tell if it worked (because how would I know how much juice I would have gotten if I hadn't microwaved it). However, it obviously made a difference - it was much easier to juice than usual.

I'll have to remember this for the future.

Experiment

I think I've mentioned my garden before. I plant a lot of vegetables, but ultimately I have a garden for the tomatoes. They just aren't the same from the store.

Anyway, today I started a tomato-growing experiment. The red dishes surrounding selected tomato plants are supposed to make the tomatos grow faster - something about reflecting the right spectrum of light back at the plant. I guess I'll see if those 3 plants are the ones that produce tomatos first.

Egg-citing

Today I balanced an egg on end.

First the easy ways:

And finally:

Something isn`t working properly here

I have a bread machine. I go through times where I use it often, and then times where I don`t use it for months.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to make bread and it didn`t rise properly.

I had two containers of yeast in the cupboard - one that I suspected was too old to use, and another that I thought was OK. When the bread didn`t rise properly, I assumed I had grabbed to wrong one.

Today I did an experiment to determine which container of yeast was still usable. The results: both are too old. I need to buy more yeast.

Grenades

Today I made a vinegar grenade. Basically, you fill a film canister half full with vinegar. (I also added a drop of food colouring). Then you take a plastic lid (from a water bottle) and fill it with baking soda. You then float the water bottle lid on the vinegar, and put the lid on the film canister.

Then you throw the film canister. The vinegar mixes with the baking soda, and the expanding gas blows the lid off the canister.

You can see where the food colouring hit the snow.

Don't look to me for origami help

Today I attempted to make a flapping paper airplane . It wasn't a huge success. I was OK until step 14, then I was completely lost.

Oh well.

Egg in a bottle

Today's new thing didn't work out as planned.

My goal was to put an egg in a bottle (http://www.wikihow.com/Get-an-Egg-Into-a-Bottle ).

It didn't work.

The first challenge was getting the matches to stay lit. That was very, very difficult.

The second problem was that the yolk was too close to the edge of the peeled egg, so what happened was that the yolk was sucked out of the egg into the bottle.

Oh well, at least I've never failed to do this before, so it's new.