JuliaWM's blog

make your own yogurt

so my brother's girlfriend is named Derya, and hails from Turkey, her mother recently visited them in Philly and taught my brother and Derya how to make yogurt. "It's Easy!" they all agree.  

these are the directions greg sent me:

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so, I did the boiling and the dropping of the yogurt, but failed to see the opportunity to document until I reached the semi-ridiculous "blanket wrapping phase" so I have photos from there on out.

this is the nest made for the pot:

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then I "put it aside" as my brother said:

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and reminded my roommate what it was so she wouldn't pick up the large container filled with warmed milk.  After 24 hours, I put it into the fridge:

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then waited "overnight" and got this:

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which this photos is not doing justice too, but it smells a lot like yogurt and tasted like yogurt.  After a second day in the fridge it looked like this:

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you can see how it's achieved a more yogurty density given a chance (also still delicious).

Because I'm an optimist, I made a gallon of this stuff (when greg said "you'll make as much yogurt as milk you use", I apparently thought he was being humorous) so, I'm also attempting Lebaneh (yogurt cheese)

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results to follow.  

Tower of London

The last time I was in london I went to the Tower and enjoyed it so much I thought it was worth it to go a second time.  Since my last trip, they've added this crystal sculpture where the beheadings used to take place with a crystal pillow on top of a disc type thing

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I couldn't tell if this request was from Riccardo Graccherini Fine Frames or to Riccardo Graccherini fine frames, but I liked the sentiment.

Cambridge? I thought you said we were in England!

Cambridge is a truly beautiful place.  The town sort of winds and sprawls all over the place and felt a lot more pedestrian friendly than it actually turned out to be. So this is the river by cambridge.

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So, in the back is the "quintessential Cambridge photo", between that field and the cathedral is the river upon which you can "punt", which is the long stick approach to boating.

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There are cows who live int he field directly in front of this shot, however they wouldn't mosey over to where I was to let me take a picture of them.  There were also only three.

and so you're back . . .

now I'm back and it's time to play catch up.  Things were so jam packed the last few days in london it was hard to get everything I wanted to done, but it does leave me with a nice excuse to go back.  Though, even that has always seemed like a funny thing to say about a place, because honestly, no matter how long I've ever spent anywhere, there was always stuff I wanted to do or see that I didn't get to . . .
My flight home was slightly eventful, not the flight itself, but the pre-flight.  I got this shuttle thing to take me and my friend to the airport, and it delivered me to the airport with EXACTLY the amount of time to get through security and get to the gate in order to board.  When I used my passport to get my e-ticket, it told me to report to the info desk.  At this point, I was convinced I had been placed o the no-fly list for reasons unknown to me, perhaps a joke I made while somewhere with cameras.  The UK has a 2-1 Closed Circuit Television to Person ratio (per Chrissy, also loosely quoted), so it seemd relatively likely that they had overheard some portion of some story I'd told and all of that paranoia . . .
as it turns out, they wanted me to volunteer to go on standby, and in return, they would give me a free roundtrip ticket to anywhere Virgin flies . . .GREAT! I thought! I'M IN!!
so, I show up at the gate, because that's what you do, and low and behold, I was selected for the standby, put on the 2:30 flight.  So I go to the transfer desk halfway across heathrow, and they tell me that they still have a seat.  So they made some calls, and it turned out they had room for me anyway.
so I ended up in the crappy middle row. Though I was next to two hilarious english ladies and a college student returning from Kenya.  It was GREAT!
anyway, the following is a catchup of my last few days.

Debtors Prison

so, the tower item I mentioned in the last post was actually called "West Gate" in Winchester.  Originally, it was the gate of the Roman city, then got taken over and taken over, and repurposed, and at some point, because a debtors prison.

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so this is the outside, and those little slits, below the shields is the area where they kept the "debtors" which is also now the gift shop.  Many of them carved their names, as well as designs and messages:

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The most elaborate is a floor board which was saved.  They believe the man who carved it was a shoemaker based on the the shoe imprint, as well as the leather peice he put over the tracing on his hand, indicating the leatherpeice worn to push needles through leather.

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me and my 10 sec-timer!

so, my aunt Suzanne suggested I include myself in more of my photos, so I set the little timer and ran around! 

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the above is taken on top of one of the ancient gates . . .that door was hard to get out of, and because the stairs were so steep, I had to re-enter the doorway backwards . . .

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I'm trying to sneak along the ancient city wall . . . but because I'm laughing, I look a little like I'm posing for a magazine

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see you guys soon!

Winchester: Let's get social!

so, 1.25 hrs later, Lisa and I arrive at Winchester, where we encounter Alfie, the first king of England, that's right, this big ol' statue of King Alfred, who ruled Wessex from Winchester.

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this town also has rules which I approve of:

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as well as an intense fondness for sun dials, here is one of about 7, along with it's plaque:

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I'm not sure if you'll be able to read that one, but it will get bigger if you click on it.








Next, we arrive at Wolvesley Castle built by Bishop Henri de Blois:

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Then we move to Jane Austen's House (I know, all of this stuff is in the same town, but just wait!).  Jane spent her final days in this house.  My friend Lisa thought it would be nicer.  Also, while we were taking photos, a kid left through the front door . . .we felt a little awkward, so we left too.

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ALSO in this town is the Round Table of King Arthur, which is on a wall in the great hall (the rhyming comes from the map, I swear):

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WHAMO!
Apparently, in the 50's, 60's and 70's they were still using this building as a court while they were constructing the newer court buildings after the old-new court buildings proved insufficient, can  you imagine?

a walk to Waterloo Station

Lisa and I ventured out of London today to visit Winchester, a small town which was formerly the capital of England (we're talking a whiiiile ago)
It was off a train leaving from Waterloo station so we took the opportunity to walk.

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passing these beautiful little gems.










Along with this display of sewing machines . . . which I'm trying to bewitch or something . . . not sure what's going on there.

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the British Library

so, we got a special tour of the british library along with seeing their "treasures" including: The Magna Carta, Handel's Messiah, an early hand drawn map of New Amsterdam, and the envelope on which Paul McCartney wrote "Michelle".

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so, on the left is the grating of the entry gate.  On the right is an homage to the olden days of librarianship where they'd chain their books up, this is also cleverly, a bench!

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This guy is an enormous atlas, you can see my reflection taking this photo in the glass to get an idea of scale, I'm only standing about three yards from the thing, it's HUGE.  It belonged to Kind George, who donated his entire library to Britain with stipulations that it be put on public display and used by the public.  So in the new British library building they were put in this enormous glass column at the center of the library.  This one, being too big for a shelf, got a special case made.  Apparently it's quite a show when they take it out.  The way using books works at this library works is that you have to prove you need to use resources at the British Library for your research, a lot of people use it for genealogival stuff, then you request books, if you request a rare book (or anything published in the 19th century) you have to prove that 1) you need to see the actual book and can't just get info from the digital version, and 2) you can't get the information anywhere else, finally, you're allowed to see the book after a crazy computerized request process.  If you request a book like the one above, it takes a lot of convincing.  The last guy who got to see the atlas was in 2007.  He actually engraved map plates in the same style that were used in this atlas and need to reference the various lines and stroke marks used by the original map maker for reference . . . seriously.