Here’s a trick for keeping the side stitches at bay when running: push out your stomach on the inhale.

It’s hard for me to do — like patting your head while rubbing your stomach — but if I start feeling tight in my belly, I do a half dozen of these stomach-puffing breaths: breathe in, push out my stomach, exhale. I don’t know what it’s doing exactly (stretching muscles that might otherwise cramp?), but it works. I’ve been doing it for months.

Still doing those PT exercises for that hamstring injury (and then a knee injury, sigh).

***

Have you seen The Lost City yet? 

One of my girlfriends saw it with friends and then raved about it, and then my son went to a drive-in theater to see it with a friend and came back blathering on and on about how funny it was and can he please go to the theater right now to see it and, we should all go, Mom, come on. And now, after all that hype, I’m rather looking forward to June when it’s supposed to be released at RedBox. 

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I’ve always let my shaped loaves of sourdough rise at room temperature for several hours before refrigerating them overnight and baking in the morning, but a few weeks ago I forgot to put the loaves of bread in the fridge before heading to bed. I remembered in the middle of the night and jolted wide awake — what else was I forgetting?! — but it was too late to do anything, so I didn’t bother getting up. I couldn’t sleep, though. I kept picturing my ruined loaves, the dough spilling out of the pans onto the counter. (As my mother says, everything is worse in the middle of the night.) But when I went downstairs in the morning, the loaves were enormous and beautiful. They didn’t sink when I scored them, and in the hot oven, they somehow managed to rise even higher.

Ever since, I’ve been shaping my loaves right before bed and letting them proof overnight at room temp. When the happy accident happened, it was a cold night, so now I replicate that by keeping the loaves in the downstairs bedroom or, if it’s a warm night, in the cheese fridge (though 52 degrees might be a little too cool — I think somewhere around 60 degrees is the ideal temp).

***

This historical hair video is entrancing — and long. I watched half of it, and then I started over again so the kids could watch it with me from the beginning.

I wonder how long it took her to research and plan the video. Not to mention execute it.

***

Do you ever marvel at all the cool people you know? Every now and then something clicks in my brain and I think, Wow, my people are pretty darn incredible. Take, for instance, one of our friends in small group. He’s a photographer and spends all his free time out on the river by their house photographing beavers and foxes and little creatures that none of us normally even notice. His attention to detail, enthusiasm, and extravagant patience are just, I don’t know… him. He’s our friend, so it’s no big deal. But then I came across this video and I was like, Wow, what he’s doing really is quite fascinating.

And here’s the thing: Steve is special, yes, but we’re all doing regular little things that, over time, add up to something that is often both ordinary and incredible — all at the same time. Think about it.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (4.26.21), that fuzzy space, an ordinary break, life can turn on a dime, thank you for holding us, taking off, Sally Fallon’s pancakes, mango banana helados, cauliflower potato soup, drama trauma.

Whenever I set out cheeses, the yogurt cheese is the one people usually rave over the loudest, which makes me laugh since it’s about the easiest cheese possible, really. (Talk about humbling, ha!) But it is good! Problem is, I don’t reach for it very frequently cause, stored in the fridge in oil that’s solidified, it’s kinda awkward to get to. Plus, any piece of cheese that sticks out of the oil turns moldy, which turns me off, too. 

But then one of my friends in our cheesemaking group served yogurt cheese that she’d rolled into logs, wrapped, and then stored in the freezer. The herbs were incorporated into the cheese, there was no oil to mess with, and it tasted fabulous. 

Inspired, a couple weeks ago, I turned three gallons of milk into yogurt into cheese. I stirred in a bunch of herbs à la Boursin cheese — the fancy French stuff — and rolled it into logs.

Worried the texture would go all wonky, I was a leery of freezing the cheese. (My friend said the cheese, once frozen, gets a little crumbly, which she likes, but I love the smooth, creamy texture.) So I tested one log by itself: frozen and thawed, it was indistinguishable from the fresh cheeses, whoop-whoop! Though, to be fair, it was only in the freezer for a couple days, so maybe it will get crumbly if it’s in the freezer for a longer time? We’ll see. Either way, I suspect it’ll be perfectly fine.

Now I’m warming all my jars of prior-made yogurt cheese balls to room temp, removing them from the oil, and wrapping and freezing them. No need to take up all that fridge space with jars of cheese if I can store it in the freezer just in paper and plastic. Plus, just think of all the oil I’ll save. 

Creamy Herbed French Yogurt Cheese
Adapted from a recipe I found on The Cookie Rookie blog.

Since I doubt most people want to make three gallons of yogurt into cheese on the first go-round, I dialed the recipe back to two quarts. Herbs amounts are estimates. Taste and adjust according to your preference.

I was worried the cheese would stick to the paper, but it didn’t. I think wax and/or parchment paper, or plastic wrap, should probably work, though I’m not sure. (The cheese paper gets quite wet from the fresh cheese when stored in the fridge — it’ll look watery and weird, but it’s totally fine. Just, if serving to company, transfer it to a pretty bowl first.) 

2-3 quarts yogurt, drained and salted (this method)
1 tablespoon dried parsley
1 teaspoon dried dill weed
½ teaspoon EACH garlic powder, dried basil, dried chives, and black pepper
¼ teaspoon dried thyme

Stir the herbs into the cheese. Eat fresh — it should keep for a week or two in the fridge — with crackers, as a dip for veggies, in sandwiches, with eggs, fresh asparagus, etc. If freezing, shape into logs, wrap in brown paper and then in plastic, and freeze.

This same time, years previous: what we ate, the coronavirus diaries: week seven, the quotidian (4.23.18), what it’s like to write full time: an experiment, creamed honey, out of character, ailments, my lot, bacon-wrapped jalapeños.

On Sunday, my husband and I took off for a much-overdue trip to Massachusetts to visit our daughter, leaving the younger two kids at home to take care of the house and do the milking. 

On the way up, we stopped at my aunt and uncle’s place to spend the night and pick-up/drop off a bunch of stuff: several gallons of syrup from my cousin in exchange for a bunch of cheese, a mattress topper from my other cousin, etc. 

My aunt served us crepes and fruit, and my uncle showed us how to make maple sugar. I’d had no idea how it was made and found it endlessly entertaining (which he knew I would), and now I can’t wait to try it with some of my syrup. 

We were going to hit the road first thing in the morning, but then my husband got to talking, and then I got to talking, and, well, so much for early! (Not that I minded. It’d been a couple years since we’d been to their place and I could’ve happily visited for hours.)

When we arrived at the farm, my daughter was riding, so we watched while she finished up, and then I trailed her around the barn while she blanketed horses and cleaned up. 

She’s been working at Iron Horse for the last fifteen months, and she loves it, but being so far away from home hasn’t been easy. Over the last year she’s had to figure out everything: car insurance, establishing residency, grocery shopping, and health insurance, not to mention learning how to navigate a new place and a different culture, and then there was the cold, dark New England winter to contend with. Everything revolves around work and, since she has only one day off a week, she has no community beyond the barn (this, I think, is the hardest part). But she’s tough, and, like I said, she loves the work. As of now, she plans to stay at least until (through?) winter of 2023 — her trainer is having knee replacement surgery this fall and has asked her to fill in with a bunch of his responsibilities training and riding his horses while he’s laid up, in addition to her regular duties. 

The afternoon we arrived, she’d gotten a piece of sawdust in her eye and it was still really bothering her. As the evening went on, it got progressively worse. She’d tried all the things — flushing it, rolling back her eyelid, ice packs, crying. We went to Target for the special cup thing to wash the eyeball, and for soothing eyedrops. Nothing worked. 

So then we spent the next couple hours at urgent care where she got to use her new health insurance card for the first time. (They were turning people away because they were understaffed, but then the nurse took pity on us and worked us in, bless his heart.)

The doctor swiped the eye lid a couple times, dyed it, and numbed it — he never found anything, but by the next morning she was perfectly fine so they must’ve gotten it (or else it was a scratch that healed overnight). 

Twice, we stopped here to get food. It’s one of my daughter’s favorite spots, and the place is always packed. That, plus the fact that a lot of the employees don’t speak much English, is a sure sign it’s authentic. (There’s a huge Brazilian population in the area; most of the men who work at the farm are from Brazil.)

The real reason for the trip was to get my daughter’s car road legal.

It had failed inspection, thanks to a busted bumper (in Massachusetts, cosmetic stuff matters, apparently) and then, since getting a new bumper in the shop was ridiculously pricey, my husband decided to do it himself. Besides, it was high time our daughter had a little hands-on support from us. 

My husband spent the morning installing the bumper and fixing headlights. And then we took the car to get inspected — it passed — and on the way back home the muffler fell off and then he spent the afternoon fixing that. So that worked out well.

He also shaved down the front door (she and another worker, and three dogs, live in a small rental next door to the barn) since it sticks and is hard to open, and he changed lightbulbs in some of the ceiling fixtures and nailed down part of the kitchen counter that had lifted up. He explored the basement, and then I went down there and was like, There’s furniture here! Let’s use it! And then we drug up a table for the kitchen and two chairs (they can ask forgiveness from the home owner later), and my daughter dug out a tablecloth and picked a few sprigs of forsythia, and I lit some candles. And then we went to Target for a couple lamps and two butter knives (because they only have two — this problem is solvable, m’child!), and then to TJMaxx for canisters for sugar and flour. 

That afternoon I putzed around in the kitchen, making a batch of vanilla pudding and a baked French toast for a future breakfast, and boiling eggs for the evening chef salads, and then I was like, “We should move all the pantry items over here and all the appliance over there,” and my daughter was like, Um, I think the table already rocked our world enough. 

The next morning we took off before breakfast. She had to be at the barn early, and we had a long drive ahead of us.

Which we survived! Today, I’m making cheese and doing laundry and relaxing. It’s lovely to be home. I just wish Massachusetts wasn’t so far away…

This same time, years previous: the coronavirus diaries: week 59, making pie: I have a system, the best fix, in the night air, with an audience, let’s pretend this isn’t happening, the quotidian (4.21.14), loose ends, therapy, what Willy Wonka’s chocolate river tastes like.