"How to" of the day

Wikipedia can be time-consuming, but WikiHow is scary. Anyone can post anything. About a week ago, while I was avoiding some loathsome task, I idly clicked on an innocent-looking link in Google which invited me to personalize my Google homepage. I liked that idea. I kept some of their suggestions, and ditched most of them, like sports. (Although I now have the World Cup results at the ready.) It was handy to have New York Times headlines, Rochester weather, Doonesbury, the BBC, and so on. I also liked "Word of the Day" and the "How-to" feature of the day. Although I've had "How to" on my homepage for about a week, I hadn't looked at it. Today there were three links. The first two were "how to survive being lost in the woods for three days" (unlikely that I will ever need this advice)and how to leave someone for good (not going to touch that one). The third one caught my eye: how to make yogurt. This was something that I hadn't done in a number of decades.

This was a slow Sunday morning. John has been in New York since Thursday morning for his 35th reunion (Columbia University, 1971, B.A. in English). I kept myself pretty busy. Saturday morning started with a variety of household activities, followed by a couple of hours at the Market, mostly spent at Java Joe's. Janet Irwin came this morning. The subject of James ("the Godfather of Soul") Brown came up, because I was trying to convince her to come to the show of Eastman Theatre at 8 PM.



She had seen him in Boston, many years ago. I hadn't, but we began to talk about other Sixties music icons we'd seen in concert. A discussion of Woodstock (1969) ensued, during which Janet asked me how far Woodstock was from Poughkeepsie. I said that the Woodstock festival had not actually taken place in Woodstock, but rather in White Lake, New York. "Oh" Janet said "I know that, because it was on my mother's cousin's farm." I couldn't believe that I've known Janet for decades and just found out that she's the second cousin of the most accidentally famous New York farmers, Max Yasgur. (It had never before occurred to me that Max Yasgur was Jewish.)



Around 5:30, I met Birthday Girl Margaret Spevak and her husband Jeff , the Storms, and some other people at the bar at 2Vine. On our way to the Eastman Theatre, we stopped at Java's on Gibbs Street to have some coffee and to hear a Hungarian jazz group, Djabe. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see them perform very much, because they were so late setting up. I suspect that their fingers were frozen; it was about 55°F, damp and sort of windy. Not very June-like weather.

James Brown is 73 years old. His energy level was inconsistent, but at that age, most people don't even have an energy level. He sparkled, and his hair glistened. I'm not going to say any more about the concert, because you should just read Frank De Blase's Jazz Festival blog in City Newspaper. (See "Never saw it comin'.") It's more than a good piece of writing; you'll be on the edge of your chair as Frank describes his close call during the show. Not that you didn't already know that journalism is a dangerous field.

So I stayed up past my bedtime, drinking wine, talking incessantly, listening to music, and drinking more coffee back at Java's. We never did run into Margaret or Jeff Spevak later, and I hope that the rest of her birthday was as good as the earlier part. I suspect that it was. The Storms walked me to my car which was parked by Spot Coffee. On the way, we stopped in to see the tired proprietors of a beautiful new stringed instrument store on East Avenue. The store was so great it made me wish I were a musician. It's called Bernunzio's and it actually has a creative and well-designed urban window display. This is something you don't see the United States very much, outside of large East Coast and West Coast cities.

Too much audio and visual stimulation. So I got up later than I expected, and rushed around trying to get a few things done before picking John up at the airport around noon. The afternoon was sort of a blur, but I do remember going back several times to the WikiHow thing on making yogurt. I thought it would be worth seeing if I could re-create the Greek yogurt that we get from the incredibly annoying 19th Ward Food Buying Club. We actually had a yogurt maker at one time in the distant past; it may have been a wedding present, and it may have gone to the Salvation Army sometime in the late 70s. It was just plain ugly. I knew what to use, though. Years ago, Janet gave us a gift of a plate warmer. It's basically a giant heating pad that folds into numerous baffles; the whole thing is covered with a screaming golden yellow acetate pillowcase of sorts, and you layer the plates in the folds. This is not a dumb thing to own in a climate like this. In the dead of winter, it's pointless to put hot food onto dishes just off the shelf; it will be cold before you get it to the table.

I followed the WikiHow instructions, and realized that I'd read them elsewhere. I pulled out the Goldbeck's vegetarian cookbook, published in 1983, and I think the instructions are identical. Not that the WikiHow author credits the Goldbecks, of course. I think this must be the WikiWay. Of course, recipes can't be copyrighted. So here we have the stages of my first batch of yogurt that I've made in at least 2 1/2 decades. You can go to WikiHow and read all the boring instructions. This photo demonstrates my home-engineered yogurt incubator.



The only thermometer I could find was on an old refrigerator magnet that I bought in Kansas City, Missouri about 10 years ago. I laid it on top of the plastic wrap. The catch was that it only went up to 120°F, and I think the heat exceeded that. No matter. It's a nice refrigerator magnet.


The whole thing was covered up with one of my favorite linen dish towels which we bought some time in the 90s at the National Trust gift shop at Stonehenge. Someday I am going to photograph my linen dishtowel collection. (Consider yourself warned.)



I wish I could remember what time I started the process. We went to see Blazing Saddles at the Dryden tonight, and by the time we got home, the yogurt seemed ready. Tomorrow, when it is cooled, all will be revealed.

True confession: I never actually had seen a Mel Brooks movie before, and neither had John. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it, and it was pretty interesting. I can see why my father and my sister were Mel Brooks fans. Blazing Saddles isn't a bad update on Marx Brothers anarchy, and it's very 1974. I was glad that Jim Healy had urged us to see it.