So, what was I up to this weekend?

What I did this weekend: Among other things (It was my wife's birthday, labor day weekend AND the weekend immediately following my wife's surgery, so it was a busy few days), I gave in to the temptation I've harbored (ever since I started watching Iron Chef) to make Fromage Blanc - homemade cheese, fresh in the kitchen.



Original instruction here: You Don't Have to Be a Cheese Whiz to Make Your Own Fromage Blanc

I made one version with buttermilk and the other with yogurt; texture is the biggest difference, with the buttermilk being more like a traditional spreadable cheese and the yogurt-based one being a lot bouncier, more like a ... meringue, maybe, or rice pudding. It's unusual, but has a fun texture and tastes fine. If I were to fix one thing, it'd be the amount of salt in the mix, which could be cut down to two-thirds or so and still be just fine.

I've been mixing the buttermilk-base cheese with Sriracha and dusting the yogurt-based cheese with sage, pepper and rosemary, all in all it's working our great.

We've got company coming over this weekend, so I'll probably try to make up another batch before Saturday...




Besides the cheese-making, I also decided to get around to making my own custom, refillable sketchbook. I've been wanting to make one for some time, mostly because I'm tired of getting to the end of a sketchbook and being saddled with this enormous mass of papers, ninety percent of which I don't want to keep. This book has clasping rings on it which I can pop out, remove the pages, then re-insert blank pages to start over, and the pages with worthwhile cartooning on them can go into a file somewhere while the crap pages can go in the trashcan.

I used a copy of Les Daniels' collectors set book on Superman, which came in that nice box set with the Alex Ross/Chris Ware Superman statue. (I have another copy, I got this one cheap offa eBay). Nice thing is that I have all the interior pages with all those lovely Chip Kidd photographs, just awaiting further craft projects ...

(Rest of the sketchbook photos here)

I got right into sketching in my new 'book, just two pages to start with ...



Click for larger versions...

Discuss.