Food.

Hey guys!

I'm currently sitting in the TV lounge watching season 2 of Doctor Who. Not having classes has been really great so far—I've been meeting up and hanging out with a few friends, napping a lot, playing music, and bonding with those of us who are still here.

Life has been pretty normal these days, so there isn't much extraordinarily exciting stuff to talk about, but I do have some pictures—I've been cooking pretty often and with cooking, comes pictures :)

Here's an eggs benedict that Alan and I made. The layers are: bread (made by our very own Alan) -> cheddar cheese slices (thanks Alan) -> baked bacon (described below) -> poached eggs (also done by Alan) -> hollandaise sauce -> dried parsley.

I am currently working on a food blog, so I won't go into much detail here, but I will say that baking bacon is probably my new favorite way of cooking bacon—just line the toaster oven tray with aluminum foil, put a small cooling rack on it, lay out the bacon on the rack, and bake at ~375F for 10-15 minutes. The fat drips off the rack and the bacon is just much more tasty without all the extra fat (you still do need to kind of dab the bacon for the fat that hasn't dripped).

Yesterday, I made ricotta cheese. Laura and I had actually attempted to make it a couple days before, but we kind of failed because I didn't trust the thermometer and the milk didn't get hot enough. Again, this will also be on my blog at some point, so you guys can all read how to make it there, but in the meantime here are a few pictures!

fresh ricotta with honey is pretty amazing

fresh ricotta mixed with some salt and pepper is pretty good too

The most fun part about making this was trying to filter out the liquid without using a cheesecloth (I didn't have one). For future reference, paper towels folded in half make pretty good substitutes for a cheesecloth.

This final picture is not of delicious looking food but of our master griller, Laura, with the fire-y grill. We had a Memorial day barbecue today, and I thought this picture captured the moment pretty well (the mushroom caps look slightly sad compared to the fire though, oh well).

With that, I am going to go charge my computer. Hope everyone is having a great summer!

-SK (not the sorority)