A Broken Alarm clock

Our alarm clock is broken. For the last few weeks, we have been slowly and steadily been awoken by its blast earlier and earlier. Currently we are holding at 5:30. We would love to reset it, but somehow the Saphira clock has no manual. Last night Alister and I resigned ourselves to a no-win situation and went to bed at 9:30. Still bleary eyed, but more rested than the past few days, we all hit the ground running.

The day was lovely - sunny AND cool. And there are fresh strawberries coming into the market and the price has hit the frozen strawberry mark so I feel justified buying them. I bought them from a babushka. They were not the prettiest strawberries at the market, but they were garden grown and it is always nice to help a babushka who is probably living on a $120 a month pension.

They were amazing. I don't know if it was because they were the first fresh strawberries of the season, because they were garden grown, or what, but even the greenish ones were so incredibly sweet.

We also had a fantastic day at the play park. And the park is getting a face-lift. And I have 3 phone numbers, and two more on the back burner. I even have a "little black book" with the mothers' names and children's names and approximate b-days. but more on all this another time.

Am still pretty tired from this alarm clock battle, but today was a fantastic day all the same.

Accidental Cottage Cheese

I was all set to make Yogurt today but ended up with Cottage Cheese. The culprit was the "fresh" milk I bought in the store. Normally, we buy the long life milk and have it delivered once a month or so with our other stock up on grocery order. Delivery is free if you order about $80 so we can stock up on non-perishables. While this is very convenient - esp as I don't have to carry gallons of milk and a baby around every day - LongLife milk is a bit more expensive, so when I make yogurt I buy it in the "fresh" bags in the grocery store. This milk isn't exactly fresh, it has been processed somehow, but you never know how long it will actually stay good - another reason why we buy the long life as we know it will be good when we open it and will last a day or two in the fridge.

Anyway, I pured my 1.5kilos of milk onto the stove to bring to 200F, tried a spoon, noted it was a tad "off" but thought the boiling would kill anything in it and maybe add to the yogurt flavor process.

While it did kill everything, I will have to try again at yogurt tomorrow, what I got instead was white clumps in yellow water. A quick Internet search (what did they do before google???) confirmed this was cottage cheese, and was edible. And its tasty. The 1.5 kilos of milk produced only 225 grams of cottage cheese or what some may call closer to ricotta as it not the same rubbery curds we get in the states -and 1 liter of whey.

As Whey is incredibly healthy, I'm looking into what to do with it now - but in the meantime, if life gives you sour milk, make cottage cheese :-)