Cheese and Crackers!: May 2008

Lucy in the sky

Hmm, For two days now, I woke up to the sound of buzzing planes, a whole load of them.
Having them spoil my slumber party twice, I wanted to see what it was.

Here they are:

From the looks of it, my guess is that they just took off from Subang airport and are trying to find a formation.

Ok this just in, I saw the infamous SU-30 MKM right over my head, I tell you, it was only 80 m above my apt unit. The camera didn't capture it though. Too fast. Close enough for me to see the double back fins and the dual engines to say that it is an SU-30.

Ok this just in too, all these air activity is for the TUDM expo, 1st June that is tmr. =D

Spotted and most probably belongs to the Malaysian air acrobatic team

Project Giant Pork

I was reading the newspaper during my 2 hour long break today and one article caught my eye.

Here is what it was all about:
Just yesterday, the nation's beloved son-in-law of our PM, Mr. Khairy Jamaluddin took the podium in Parliment and talked about the country's food production, a fine topic by my judgment considering the current food crisis the world is in.

To whet up my appetite further, he was talking about my favorite choice of meat, P-O-R-K yes i said it right, Pork.

Well, he didn't like the PKR party in Selangor to approve a pig-farming project in Sepang.
-Ok I admit, he has some points to go against pig farming as pigs consume a lot of grain and water which can be used to feed more people than the fatten pig can.(especially now with the world in it's sorry state)

But what made my day was this:
"he gave a new definition to the acronym PKR (Parti Keadilan Rakyat). He called it Projek Khinzir Raksasa (monsterous pig-farming project)"

and so the name calling began, a ritual in the Malaysian Parliment, today, to fit the agenda of food prices and shortages, Pork was on the menu.

Today's Menu:
Matured Opposition Babi in Red Wine
-Pork slices with smoked salmon from the recent "political tsunami" marinated with matured red wine and roasted over "hot air", nothing lavish, a layman's meal served in a high class setting but meets the highest standards of taste.

Sour Coalition Pork with Rasins
-Pork Chunks, steamed with the little steam they have left with small sweet sultanas, squeezed with some lemon juice to give that sweet and sour Mediterranean flavour.

My appetite, so whet up by now, I went on to order some roasted Vietnamnese Pork, Sour, roasted, not lavish but taste good, sweetened with "kunyit" marinate.

mmm... now now, cant the chefs get together and make a nice dish that all of us can enjoy?

Cheese of The Week Pt 5

This week, I have something different for you guys out there =D Read on...

Sakura cheese is a soft cheese created in Hokkaidō, Japan. It is the first widely-acclaimed Japanese cheese, as cheeses in general were a European/Mediterranean phenomenon until spread to the rest of the world during the days of European imperialism.

This cheese is a creamy white, and is flavored with mountain cherry leaves. Sakura means "cherry blossom" in Japanese.

It has the rare distinction of winning a "gold medal" at the Mountain Cheese Olympics in Appenzell, Switzerland, which normally favors Swiss, Italian, or French cheeses almost exclusively for awards. The medal was in the "soft cheese" category.

Cheese of the Week Pt 4

Blue Blue my world is blue, Blue is my world and I am without you. These lyrics from the song Love is Blue is a perfect intro to this week's "Cheese of the Week", Blue Cheese... I bought a wedge today and my favorite way of eating Blue cheese is with capers and Crackers(meiji). To those who have not tasted it before, it smells like an old sock but like durian or sotong panggang,it smells but taste great.

Ok, enough talk, here is the story of Blue Cheese...

Blue cheese is a general classification of cow's milk and/or goat's milk cheeses with a blue or blue-green mold. The blue mold in these cheeses is due to mold spores from Penicillium roqueforti or Penicillium glaucum, etc.

Today most blue cheeses (also known as bleu cheese) are either injected with the mold, as with Roquefort, or the mold is mixed right in with the curds, as it is with Gorgonzola, to insure even distribution of the mold. Most of these cheeses must still be aged in the original caves where they were developed to bear the name.

Most Blue cheeses are made from whole cow's milk, but there are also made with ewe's or goat's milk. These complex blue veined cheeses are generally ranked as some of the best cheeses in the world. They are strong flavored, and have a unique 'tang' that distinguishes these cheeses. Some of the best are Roquefort, Stilton, Gorgonzola and Danablu.

Lanark Blue is a Scottish blue cheese made from ewe's milk. It has blue green veins, a strong salty flavor, with a creamy white inside.

Some Blue Cheese History
Most of these cheeses were originally produced in caves in their respective areas, where the mold was naturally present. This combined with the unique nutrients that the mold grew on in the caves affected the flavor, texture and blue-green color of the mold in each of these cheeses. In the beginning, this was most likely discovered by accident when cheeses were stored in the caves, and they developed mold. Then someone decided to taste the cheese that others might have thought to be ruined, and realized how exquisite the taste had become.
Some blue cheeses, such as Danablue, were developed later as less expensive alternatives to the higher priced Roquefort cheese from France.

The process for making America's ‘Maytag Blue Cheese’ was developed by the Iowa State U. in 1941 (it is a process for making blue cheese with pasteurized milk.) Production was begun by Fred Maytag II (of dishwasher fame) when he heard about the new process. Maytag blue is also aged in specially designed caves.

The invention of the wheel!

Today at Mc D discussing our Physics Rube Goldberg Project, Me, Sofia and Cho returned way back in time, some 2mil years, to re-live and celebrate the invention of the wheel.