In which I prove I can tell rambling, pointless stories about ANYTHING
A most felicitous and enjoyable birthday to jascott! If you were wondering about that chorus of “Happy Birthday” echoing in your head throughout the afternoon - that was me via the brain tap.
Also for your natal day pleasure, I present a TOTALLY random and pointlessly inane post/picspam, the likes of which have almost certainly never been seen before on lj.
In case you were wondering, I AM speaking literally.
Do you have any idea how difficult it is to slice a 40-pound block of chedder?
I do.
And now you are probably wondering exactly how this came about. I'll tell you. As you know, I am from a big family (oldest of five children). We aren't health nuts, but we do eat lots of fresh foods and vegetables, very little meat, and make pretty much all our meals from scratch. (As in raw ingredients, not from a mix or a can) And, if you read my fridge-organizing post, you have probably gathered that we eat a LOT of food. (Which only makes sense, since we don't drink cokes or coffee and don't snack between meals - except for an occasional apple or carrot.)
Because of this, my mom is always looking for ways to save money and buy in bulk. We oprganized a bi-weekly fruit and vegetable co-op for several years. As an outgrowth from that, we had co-op members with spouses in the restaurant or food service business. They were able to get us access to bulk cheese and chicken breasts. (REALLY great chicken breasts! Big, thick, tender - You can't get this quality at your neighborhood grocery store, that's for sure.)
Anyway, we had a chicken 'n' cheese pickup a few weeks ago. The chicken was separated and bagged and frozen right away, but the boxes of cheese have been sitting in the fridge, waiting to be cut up and get the bag-and-freeze system.
Well, two nights ago I was getting something to eat and thinking about my weekly fridge organization. (and, okay, I was pondering how we could fit another watermelon in there, 'cause I LOVE watermelon!)
I knew the cheese had to be taken care of, so I was considering when that could be done. You see, the one bad thing about freezing cheese, is that when you thaw it out again, the texture is slightly dry and IMPOSSIBLE to grate - it only crumbles.
THEN I think ... why can't we grate it BEFORE freezing? I mean, it'd take some time, but it should pay off repeatedly down the road.
So, last night, I open the smaller box in the fridge and get out the 10-pound block of chedder cheese. (yeah, I said "smaller")
I chopped the block up into hand-size smaller blocks, then got our handy-dandy little box-and-grater. It's a tupperware-esque bowl with a grater-lid that snaps on so you can grate straight into the container. No mess, no waste. (Kinda like this, only about twice as large - and it has a very helpful little handle, and a regular plastic lid so you can store the leftovers. It's marvelous!)
So, that evening, during the second half of Supernatural, I grated ten pounds of cheese.
In case you were wondering "Exactly how much IS ten pounds of grated cheese?" - well, here's a visual.
That's the box the original block was in. It's like grating it multiplied it into lots and lots of little cheese babies.
Of course, at this point, I discovered I had a problem.
We were out of freezer bags.
I found a partial box of ziploc sandwich baggies and filled a few to keep in our main fridge's freezer. But after that, I was stuck.
Well, today we restocked on the freezer bags (and sandwich bags. And onions. And lettuce. And toilet paper, paper towels, and swifter clothes. - But that's neither here nor there.) - so I was back in business!
After bagging up the results of last night, and grating down the remnants (make that - "the second half") of the 10-pound block we've been using, I turned to my greatest challenge yet.
The FORTY-POUND BLOCK OF CHEESE!
(43.42 pounds, to be exact, or 19.7 kilos - according to the label)
I included a can opener for scale. In case you're wondering (I seem to believe this post will lead to a lot of head-scratching among my flist - am I right?) - that blue lidded bowl on the righthand side (look closely) there is the same one shown full of cheese in the previous picture.
Here's a broadside view.
As you may imagine, getting THAT cut into grater-size segments was a little difficult. Took some creative problem-solving thinking and sawing.
There are no pictures of this portion of the procedings as I was weilding a knife. Well, not so much "weilding" as "forcing downward through sixteen inches of cheese" but whatever.
I conquered the considerable chunk of chedder as you can clearly see:
(Those bowls are filled with freshly grated cheese from the block on the side) - Only thirty more pounds to go!
I called it a night after another 10-15 pounds. In total I have filled 15 gallon-size freezer bags (AND three sandwich baggies!) with grated chedder cheese - so far.
- Heh. My mom just called (they've been out riding horses at our friends' ranch) and asked me to make some grilled cheese sandwiches for them. I told her we were all out.
There. As I promised, pointless and random.
So what have YOU done this evening?
Also for your natal day pleasure, I present a TOTALLY random and pointlessly inane post/picspam, the likes of which have almost certainly never been seen before on lj.
In case you were wondering, I AM speaking literally.
Do you have any idea how difficult it is to slice a 40-pound block of chedder?
I do.
And now you are probably wondering exactly how this came about. I'll tell you. As you know, I am from a big family (oldest of five children). We aren't health nuts, but we do eat lots of fresh foods and vegetables, very little meat, and make pretty much all our meals from scratch. (As in raw ingredients, not from a mix or a can) And, if you read my fridge-organizing post, you have probably gathered that we eat a LOT of food. (Which only makes sense, since we don't drink cokes or coffee and don't snack between meals - except for an occasional apple or carrot.)
Because of this, my mom is always looking for ways to save money and buy in bulk. We oprganized a bi-weekly fruit and vegetable co-op for several years. As an outgrowth from that, we had co-op members with spouses in the restaurant or food service business. They were able to get us access to bulk cheese and chicken breasts. (REALLY great chicken breasts! Big, thick, tender - You can't get this quality at your neighborhood grocery store, that's for sure.)
Anyway, we had a chicken 'n' cheese pickup a few weeks ago. The chicken was separated and bagged and frozen right away, but the boxes of cheese have been sitting in the fridge, waiting to be cut up and get the bag-and-freeze system.
Well, two nights ago I was getting something to eat and thinking about my weekly fridge organization. (and, okay, I was pondering how we could fit another watermelon in there, 'cause I LOVE watermelon!)
I knew the cheese had to be taken care of, so I was considering when that could be done. You see, the one bad thing about freezing cheese, is that when you thaw it out again, the texture is slightly dry and IMPOSSIBLE to grate - it only crumbles.
THEN I think ... why can't we grate it BEFORE freezing? I mean, it'd take some time, but it should pay off repeatedly down the road.
So, last night, I open the smaller box in the fridge and get out the 10-pound block of chedder cheese. (yeah, I said "smaller")
I chopped the block up into hand-size smaller blocks, then got our handy-dandy little box-and-grater. It's a tupperware-esque bowl with a grater-lid that snaps on so you can grate straight into the container. No mess, no waste. (Kinda like this, only about twice as large - and it has a very helpful little handle, and a regular plastic lid so you can store the leftovers. It's marvelous!)
So, that evening, during the second half of Supernatural, I grated ten pounds of cheese.
In case you were wondering "Exactly how much IS ten pounds of grated cheese?" - well, here's a visual.
That's the box the original block was in. It's like grating it multiplied it into lots and lots of little cheese babies.
Of course, at this point, I discovered I had a problem.
We were out of freezer bags.
I found a partial box of ziploc sandwich baggies and filled a few to keep in our main fridge's freezer. But after that, I was stuck.
Well, today we restocked on the freezer bags (and sandwich bags. And onions. And lettuce. And toilet paper, paper towels, and swifter clothes. - But that's neither here nor there.) - so I was back in business!
After bagging up the results of last night, and grating down the remnants (make that - "the second half") of the 10-pound block we've been using, I turned to my greatest challenge yet.
The FORTY-POUND BLOCK OF CHEESE!
(43.42 pounds, to be exact, or 19.7 kilos - according to the label)
I included a can opener for scale. In case you're wondering (I seem to believe this post will lead to a lot of head-scratching among my flist - am I right?) - that blue lidded bowl on the righthand side (look closely) there is the same one shown full of cheese in the previous picture.
Here's a broadside view.
As you may imagine, getting THAT cut into grater-size segments was a little difficult. Took some creative problem-solving thinking and sawing.
There are no pictures of this portion of the procedings as I was weilding a knife. Well, not so much "weilding" as "forcing downward through sixteen inches of cheese" but whatever.
I conquered the considerable chunk of chedder as you can clearly see:
(Those bowls are filled with freshly grated cheese from the block on the side) - Only thirty more pounds to go!
I called it a night after another 10-15 pounds. In total I have filled 15 gallon-size freezer bags (AND three sandwich baggies!) with grated chedder cheese - so far.
- Heh. My mom just called (they've been out riding horses at our friends' ranch) and asked me to make some grilled cheese sandwiches for them. I told her we were all out.
There. As I promised, pointless and random.
So what have YOU done this evening?