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Impromptu Cheese Spread

Published June 13, 2009

This is what happens when I’m cleaning the fridge and decide to turn the leftover (and rather old) stubs of high quality cheese into cheese spread. Taking the general idea from this Good Eats recipe I took about six ounces of cheese, 1.5 Tbsp of butter, one clove of garlic, and a pinch of (inadvertantly) refrigerator dried parsley and processed it all together. The resulting spread is very good, but quite salty. I think it’ll work best as a potato or corn topping, or maybe a sandwich spread to compliment something else.

The cheeses used were very dried pieces of Montgomery Cheddar, Stitchelton, Raw Milk Clothbound Cheddar, and Caerphilly which were grated on a Microplane to near the rind. These grated cheeses were then padded out to roughly six ounces with about two ounces of Tillamook Vintage White Extra Sharp Cheddar which is waiting around for me to use in more macaroni and cheese.

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Third Coast Old Ale is Bottle Conditioned?!?

Published June 11, 2009

Up until today I was under the impression that Bell’s Third Coast Old Ale was not bottle conditioned. However, after pouring this glass tonight and seeing the dregs in the glass (as seen above), I’m thinking otherwise.

First introduced to me by around 2003 or so, I found this Bell’s beer to be a really nice, thick, almost-sweet version of a brown ale. It’s 9% or so, and is definitely the sort of beer that one sips. The last time I had it was back in 2005 or so, but when up at Red Wagon after a bike ride on Tuesday I decided to get some. As I remember, it’s really quite tasty, even with the lumps…

(For what it’s worth, here is a photo of this beer in 2005, sans lumps.)

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My Random Day

Published June 9, 2009

Instead of a post talking about something in particular, I’ll talk about the last 28 hours or so of my day:

To start, as seen above, Danielle and I came across both Deluxe and Old Fashioned hot dog buns from Aunt Millie’s in VG’s. When comparing them, there was no substantial difference. Beyond the price (about $1/package difference) only a few things at the very bottom of the ingredient list, vitamin supplements mostly, varied.

This photo shows the large wrapped stack of boxes waiting on my front porch when I got home. These are CD-sized outside tuck corrugated mailers from Planned Packaging of Illinois Corp. which I will use to box my CDs and store them in closets in the basement. The CD rack in my office (see this fisheye photo) will then be removed and replaced with a bookshelf to hold both my and Danielle’s books.

After work I went for a ride around the mountain bike trails at Stony Creek. I hadn’t eaten properly today, polishing off a bag of trail mix before leaving the office, and this made it really difficult to ride. Despite this I pushed myself quite a bit, and thus I kept having cramps in my lower back. I think that lowering my handle bar will help with this, because most of the cramping came with trying to stand and pedal, but with the bar relatively high I could pull on it properly and likely overdid things.

Dinner tonight was two garlic chicken sausages from Trader Joe’s, along with salad, potato chips, a bunch of spicy cheese popcorn, and a bottle of Le Fin du Monde. I made a point of drinking the dregs from this bottle to experiment with the gastrointestinal results of ingesting a quantity of yeast. My next experiment will likely involve a teaspoon of bread machine yeast. Danielle says that I’m not allowed to do this when she is around, so it’ll probably happen next week.

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Changes Around The House

Published June 8, 2009

The more I use my Millet Hybrid Maxed headphone amplifier, the more I realize that my iPod canot properly drive my old standby Sennheiser HD 570 headphones. Since the Millet Hybrid Maxed is a bit too large (and fragile) to bring to work, I’ve begun ordering the parts to build an AMB Mini³.

I also ordered up some cardboard boxes, because I’ve decided that I’m going to take the CD rack out of my office and put all the CDs in storage in the basement. As seen here this takes up quite a bit of wall space, and with all the CDs long-ago ripped into iTunes I think this space would be better filled by a book shelf.

At the same time I’m also considering emptying the office and installing a hardwood floor, just to make for a nicer area to work in. Since moving the CD rack is one of the hardest parts of this job, after removing it and before removing the book shelf would be a good time to do it. I’m also considering putting hardwood down the hall and maybe into the dining area, but I’m not certain of this yet.

After this I’m also going to consider some other changes, like possibly moving my Mac Pro down to the basement, hanging from supports in the ceiling, so that it takes up less space in my office and is even less audible. I’d also like to re-rip all my CDs in a lossless format to more permanently archive them. We’ll see, though. These two tasks will probably take more effort than all the others.

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Strawberry Banana Gu Gel

Published June 7, 2009

Wanting a gel without caffeine for while riding, I picked up a Strawberry Banana-flavored Gu gel. While it does the job, I really don’t like the flavor. I think I’ll stick with the vanilla / chocolate Gu flavors, and maybe pick up this Hammer Nutrition gel flavor sample pack and try these out.

Today I went for a ride around Stony Creek after eating not quite enough food, so I had to eat two 100 calorie gels to keep myself going. The lack of food and my pushing myself meant that I kept feeling a bit shaky and dizzy until I ate something.

While riding around I came across this really swampy area filling in one of the paths, but thankfully there was a bit of newly worn trail going around the side of it. This is a route that I hadn’t taken before, but as it generally follows the normal route through Stony with a slightly new dimension, I think I’ll continue taking it. It exchanges two grueling back to back climbs for a quirky turn around a tree to avoid falling in the scummy swamp. (Weirdly, in the aforementioned photo it appears as if something disturbed (or started to go into) the swamp. I really hope it was a turtle and not one of the people heading out from that area as I was riding in.

Oh, and if you’re interested, here is what my legs looked like after today’s ride. No, those aren’t tan lines… That’s just dust from the trails.

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White Castle Is Bad For Me

Published June 6, 2009

Ordering up a meal consisting of five cheese sticks, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a sack of biscuits is exactly why I shouldn’t be allowed to eat at White Castle. Not only is it bad for me, but I eat most of it then feel terrible.

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Another Nice Spring Day

Published June 4, 2009

Tonight I showed up at Mt. Clemens High School where some folks often meet up for a ride to Metro Beach and back, but this time I ended up making the ride myself. It was a really nice night for a ride, with a relatively empty path, not too strong of winds, and perfect low 70s temperatures.

Including time spent poking around in the parking lot before leaving, riding a few circles to stretch my legs afterwards, and poking around the end of the peninsula at the park I ended up riding the 17.62 mile route in just over 1:10, averaging 15 MPH. Not bad, but I’m sure I could do better if I was feeling up to it. For some reason I’ve been feeling as if I’m getting sick or having bad allergy problems, so a good part of the ride was made with a headache and runny nose. Hopefully that’ll go away soon.

All in all, this was a rather nice day. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back out to Stony Creek for some single track riding tomorrow, but we’ll see how that goes. It’ll involve changing tires†, and if I’m not feeling too hot I won’t push it.

† I sure could use a bike for this kind of riding… If only I wasn’t being overly cautious about spending big chunks of money I could get another bike…

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Dead Animal

Published June 2, 2009

This dead animal has been in the F parking lot at Stony Creek’s West Branch Picnic Area for a while, because I remember seeing it on Friday when caught in the storm. I’m not sure if it is a squirrel, small possum, or something else. If it’s not to your liking, enjoy this photo of a cute, fuzzy gypsy moth caterpillar instead.

Today I had a nice ride around Stony Creek, which was probably one of the easiest rides I’ve had in a while, despite doing a lap of all the single track without really stopping. I paused to throw some deadfall off the trail, and once to check that my rear tire had enough air (squeeze test), but didn’t actually take a break. It’s kinda nice.

I did fall at one point today, when doing a second lap of part of the Roller Coaster and trying to go over one of the more difficult log piles. I ran out of momentum, stopped part way up, and toppled over hitting my shin on a log. Thankfully I’ve only got a bump, few scrapes, sore shin, and what may become a bruise, though I don’t usually bruise, so it’ll likely just remain sore. Oh well.

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