Running is rubbish

Bad weather and work pressures have stopped me getting out to the woods for a trail run for the last couple of weeks, so I've resorted to pounding the pavements again. On Wednesday night I extended my regular route a little to 7.5km (including 80m of descent / ascent), which I managed in 44 minutes. More importantly I started to get back into 'the zone', with my mind quieting down, my body feeling loose and a sense of calm sometimes penetrating the plodding. God help me, I started to enjoy it.

Until I woke up the next day with a very painful knee. Normally it's my shins that ache so at first I thought I'd partly conquered the shin pain, but the day after that the aches & pains although focused in my knee also spread down to my shins and ankles. I wasn't quite hobbling, but I was definitely limping. I sought solace on-line, but my regular bunch of triathlete runner types basically told me to suck it up, everyone gets hurt so your whinging and get on with it. Which to be fair is probably good advice.

By coincidence I also got a copy of 'Born To Run' by Christoper McDougall yesterday. The author starts off with the simple question 'why do my feet hurt when I run' and then heads off to a remote area of Mexico to dodge drug smugglers & hang out with a tribe of ultra-runners. His early comments on running are worth paraphrasing...

"Take up any other sport and my injury rate would classify me as defective. In running, it makes me normal. The real mutants are the runners that don't get injured. Up to eight out of ten runners are injured every year. No invention yet has slowed the carnage. If anything it's actually ebbed up; Achilles Tendon blowouts have seen a 10 percent increase. Running seemed to be the fitness version of drunk driving; you could get away with it for a while, you might even have some fun, but catastrophe was waiting right around the next corner'.

He also visits a sports doctor who's advice is 'get a bike'. Now there's a thought.

Fuzzy pucks

After a couple of days hidden away in the cave the cheese wheels started to grow a fine white down and when you opened the cave lid it smelled strongly of Brie (to quote from someone on-line - 'from the smell of things you're either making french cheese or something is really off'). The mould fairly quickly spread over the whole of the cheese until it resembled (using another description I've stolen from online) 'a fuzzy white hockey puck'. The smell had reduced considerably at this point, presumably because the mould is sealing in the odiferous-ness

The camembert is looking great - I don't know whether to age it or put a leash on it and take it for a walk. The brie suffered a bit from the earlier cave collapse - the bars of the rack had sunk into the base of the cheese and it needed some delicate surgery to seperate the two. But it does mean you can see the underlying gooey goodness 

The cheese now gets wrapped in tinfoil and aged in the fridge for a couple of weeks. The fuzzy mould should die back leaving a crusty shell, and inside the cheese will slowly liquify. *yum* 

The second wheel of brie was kept in the fridge as a comparison, and as you can see from the picture below pretty much nothing has happened to it.

That's now in the cheese cave and should hopefully be pulling on it's downy white jacket as I type this.

Busy day

Alarm set for 4.30am
Woke up at 2.30am and catnapped restlessly for two hours
Finally dozed off again at around 4am
Wake up at 4.30am with the alarm
Headed off to the airport through heavy rainfall at 4.45am
Arrive at the airport 5.15am
Board plane 6am
Arrive Sydney 8.30am
Picked up hire car (XR6 Falcon!) and was off putting myself in the hands of the gps 9am
Pick up salesman from his hotel 10am
Arrive at client 10.15am
Three hour meeting with 1 coffee offered
Drive bqck to airport, arriving 2pm (5pm flight)
Join salesman in the Qantas club (I'm just a worker drone so don't have access, but our salesman and my boss both do and they can sign me in)
Manage to get bumped up to a 3.15 flight
Land in Brisbane 4.15pm
Drive home through more torrential rain missing the acceleration of the XR6
Early night tonight!

Things cyclists say

These are going viral on the web right now, but just in case you haven't seen them...

SO stoked about that clip.

and the roadie riposte (which isn't as good)

Incidentally I'm not able to respond to comments at the minute - blogger doesn't seem to be playing well with Internet Explorer - so thank you for those who write things! Anbd Kitty - I need that trail bar recipe!

Welcome to the cheese cave

Spot cheese question - what's the difference between Brie & Camembert?

Answer - not a great deal. They're made in exactly the same way and using the same ingredients. The process is the same -

• Heat milk up to around 30 degrees C.
• Add starter culture (to give the flavour) and Penicillum Candidum (which will give the white mould shell) 
• Leave for an hour or so
• Add rennet to curdle the milk
• Leave for a few hours to curdle (longer than for other cheeses)
• Ladle curds into molds and drain without pressing (don't cut or cook the curds like you would for other cheeses) 
• Keep in a cool environment for a week or so to let the outer mould form
• Wrap & age in a fridge for another few weeks

The only differences are the size of the cheese wheel and (to a lesser extent) the 'terroir' of the milk used - the two cheeses traditionally come from different parts of France and so the milk will have a different flavour. The size of the mold is important as a smaller Camembert wheel will have a higher relative surface area than a larger Brie wheel, and so the outer mould will have more of an impact on the flavour.

I had a go at both this weekend, using 7 litres of milk to make two Bries and a Camembert. I used milk from the Coles in Fairfield for the former and from the Woolies in Buranda for the latter, so that should replicate the terroir.

I'm also experimenting with using an esky as a 'cheese cave' and will need to remember to swap the ice-block out every morning - not sure if this will give a cool enough temperature, but it's that or the fridge and the fridge is apparently too cold. You're basically providing the best conditions for any mould to grow, but because you've pre-loaded the milk with specific cultures you're assuming the mould you want will out-perform any nasties that may have been introduced along the way.

These wheels drained overnight, and the crusty texture is because I used cheesecloth in the molds. I think this was a mistake, I should have just ladled the curds directly into the molds, and that may lead to a wetter crumblier cheese as not all the whey was expelled. We'll see. The cave is a bit ad-hoc and needs some further internal development, but that can wait until I don't have a batch of milk products going off in our sink. I'll post up more pictures as the cheese ages. I'm keen to try some more variants as well, adding more salt into the curds and also using raw milk (traditionally Brie is always made from raw milk) - this is where the benefits of doing it yourself really come out, as raw milk cheese cannot be sold in Australia.

Incidentally the names of both cheeses come form their respective places of origin - Brie is a province around 60 miles away from Paris and Camembert a village in Normandy. So I should probably say I'm making Brie-sbane....any suggestions for the Camembert alternative?

Edit - I had a potentially catastrophic collapse in the cheese cave when I tried to change the freezer block - the grid supporting the top wheel fell onto the lower wheel and started to slice through it. So after some emergency reorganisation the top wheel of brie is in a container at the bottom of the fridge, the bottom one is still in the cave with the camembert. Will be interesting to see how the two compare....   

Return of the Roadie

Regular readers would possibly be surprised to hear that I do still occasionally ride a bike. When I do it is at best a very relaxed affair, but I'm also lucky enough to be friends with a number of people who take their riding a lot more seriously than I do. One of those people is Rach, a lady who is making waves on the local road-racing circuit and has also competed in 24 hr solo mountain biking events at an international level. She manages to be both an awesome bike rider and a very nice lady (assuming you don't steal her Chomps on race day), and she occasionally drops into this blog to make comments.

She is also generous enough to this blog from her own. The format she uses posts up not only the title of my blog entry but also the first picture that I show. It always makes me laugh to think that her blog, mainly frequented by uber-fit hyper-competitive road racer or triathlete types, regularly shows pictures of cheese, beer, pork scratchings or a short chubby bloke beaming awkwardly at a camera whilst pointing at something food related.

Anyway - this post has a road bike in it so will fit right in. I've recently rebuilt my Abeni with some quality parts sourced from racer mates for remarkably low prices (in some cases measured in bottles of homebrew).

Steel frame, hand built in Sydney in probably the mid 80's and paired up with a half-chromed fork of unknown origin. Built up with Reynolds wheels (thanks Rach) which roll beautifully, 10 speed 105 'brifters' (sic) and an Ultegra rear mech. The lightweight rear skewer wasn't strong enough to hold the wheel in the semi-sloping dropouts and snapped when I tried to cinch it up, 3km from home, so has been replaced with an old Suntour steel skewer which has the strength to withstand the awesome power of my mighty thighs (and poor gear choices).  

Carbon FSA K-lite cranks with 53/39 gearing (no compact weakness for me), running on a Miche bottom bracket (Miche components in cross-compatibility shocker!). The chain was a pain in the arse as you can't split a 10 speed chain and rejoin it in the usual way - I found that out the hard way as my first chain lasted about 10km and then gently slid off the bike and lay out flat on the road like a dozing snake.

The cable routing for old steel road frames is a bit rudimentary and I found that the cable was snagging slightly. This threw out the precise indexing required for the rear mech. Fortunately Gordy came to my aid with some cable inner which smooths everything out.

So it was a bit of a battle but after sorting out a few teething problems it rides really nicely. Perfect for my entry to the crit-racing circuit this year*. Until then, here it is in its natural environment. After all it is a cafe racer.

*Only kidding Miff :)

A musical interlude

I've been out on site for the last three days doing some user training. Not difficult as the people I was working with were good people, easy to get along with and who picked up what I was teaching fairly well. But still draining, so I just get home and relax. So here's a musical interlude which kinda sums up how I'm feeling at the minute....

Warm beer in the morning

The weather's turned hot this last week. We had the hottest day in three years on Wednesday, with temperatures hitting 37 degrees. The typical Queensland humidity means that there's no escape, and with no air conditioning our lounge was 33 degrees at 9pm. I rode into work and although the front of my arms were cooled from the airflow passing over them, there was warm pockets of stationary air behind each arm that I could feel my knees pushing into with every pedal stroke. Odd.

The hot weather also makes brewing tricky as most beer yeasts will start to produce off-flavours above about 25 degrees. But as regular readers will know there is a strain of Belgian yeast that can work up to 35 degrees. Luckier still, that yeast is used in the brewing of Saison, a traditional farmhouse ale that is crisp, dry, hoppy, spicy and fruity. The perfect summer beer (and soon to become the 'new IPA' - you read it here first!).

This morning I was up bright and early to beat the heat and get my latest brew on. The grains were mashing by 7.30am and by midday the brew was finished and the kitchen floor mopped (an essential part of the brewing process, not for this brew but so that I'm allowed to make the next one). My ingredients are controlled in part by the stock of my Local HomeBrew Shop (LHBS) and so this time around I had to use dried wheat malt extract instead of cracked wheat grain, so my recipe was

1kg pilsner malt
1kg traditional malt
1kg dried  wheat extract
1.5kg dried pale malt extract (added with 20 mins to go)

I tried to keep the hop load low this time around so
20g of Northern Brewer for the full 80 minute boil
25g of hallertau at 20 mins to go
30g of hallertau with 5 minute to go

Also 15g of kaffir lime leaves at flameout, because I could.

This gave 24l of 1050 OG wort, which is a little stronger than what I was after so hopefully the maltiness won't override the other flavours. I should invest in some beer softweare to advise on strengths & bitterness when I'm putting recipes together, but then again I still haven't degassed the aircon in the Landy either.

The yeast was Wyeast 3724, from American yeast manufacturer Wyeast. It was developed over many years in Belgium, taken over to the US and cultured in a lab and then shipped out to Australia.

This is a refrigerated liquid yeast which is stored in a 'snap pack'- an inner pouch of yeast surrounded by  liquid yeast nutrient. When it's time to brew you take it out of the fridge and break the inner packet by slapping it a few times - the yeast then comes out of it's cold-induced hibernation, feeds and reproduces so in a few hours your pack goes from this

to this

(The same thing has happened to me over the last few years).

You can listen to the yeast bubbling away in the packet as it swells. I like to imagine that it's the clamour of amorous yeast conversations - 'Hey cutie - what's a cute single celled organism like you doing in a packet like this'. It's not weird as long as I don't join in myself.

Cottaging

Making cheese is fun, but it doesn't really work well with a low fat diet. Similarly, making beer is fun but doesn't really work well with a low calorie low alcohol diet. For the last few months I've tried flipping diets depending on what I'm going to consume next, but the sad reality is that this doesn't really work. Shocking, no?

In light of this I looked up some healthy cheeses. It turns out cottage cheese is a very healthy alternative to regular cheese, made from skimmed milk instead of full cream. There are actually a couple of types of cottage cheese - long-set small curd cheese and short-set large curd cheese. Long-set cheese is made by heating skimmed milk up to close to boiling point, curdling the milk with vinegar or lime juice and letting the milk slowly set over four or five hours (incidentally if you then press the curds you make paneer). Short-set cheese is made by using rennet (and in some recipes a starter) to help thicken the cheese, and so the curds set quicker and the curds are larger.

Being the impatient type with a freezer full of rennet short-set cheese looked the way to go, so I knocked up a batch of cottage cheese on Sunday. It was surprising how well the curds formed - I always thought it was the fats that formed the basis of the curd but it looks to be more based on the proteins in the milk - the fat just adds the flavour.

This is the cheese after the curds were cut and then cooked - you can see why cottage cheese is also known as 'popcorn cheese'.

The cottage cheese you buy is normally mixed with other things to give a lumpy sauce, and having sampled this I'm not surprised as it was pretty rubbery & tasteless. Fortunately the cottage cheese wasn't the end goal - I'd also read about a style of cheese called 'hoop cheese' or 'farmers cheese', which is pressed cottage cheese. This seemed perfect - a kind of hard cheddar-ish cheese but with virtually no fat. So I pressed my cheese curds - possibly a little too enthusiastically it seems. 

After a few days in a container in the fridge a rind of sorts was starting to form, but essentially I'd managed to produce a disk of something resembling a large hockey puck, and tasting much the same. More experimentation is required! Or preferably, more exercise and better cheese.....

Resolution Run

The run this morning was the 'Resolution Run', a 5.5km or 11km fun run. We both went for the 5.5km event - me to run, Liz to walk - and once we both recovered from the early start we enjoyed it. Although in some ways the start wasn't early enough - the temperature must have been hitting 30 degrees at 7.30am! I managed to come in with an elapsed time of 29 minutes dead, which I was pretty happy about

Liz also did well and battled a sore toe to come in just under the hour.

It was a very good natured event, although some of the roadies coming the other way who were confronted with over a thousand weaving runners weren't so impressed. It was also strange at the end because there was no queue at the coffee cart - not what I'm used to with cycling events! Now to recover from the dehydration headache - maybe I should have skipped a couple of those beers last night.....

Early start

7am on a Sunday and we're in the city, along with 1400 other people gathered for a fun run. Not sure where the fun is going to come from :)

Does home-made cheese pay it's own whey?

The economics of homebrew are fairly obvious. The govt gouges a huge chunk of tax from brewers (far more than for small wine manufacturers) and by making your own you avoid that tax burden. An initial outlay of $80 gets you a brew kit with all the gear you need to make 20litres of reasonable beer - so a cost of $4 /litre or a just over a dollar a stubbie. After a few kit brews you can graduate to partial-mash brewing and make pretty much the beer you want to drink for at most $60. My last brew gave me 23 litres of 6.5% bitter that tasted better than most mainstream domestic beers - definitely cost effective.

Cheesemaking is different because of the lack of tax. The major cost is that of the milk, and that depends on what milk you buy. The best for cheesemaking is non-homogenised whole-cream milk, which means the cream hasn't been mixed in with the milk (it's 'milk like you used to get in bottles with cream on top'). Note it's still pasteurised, because unlike healthy offerings like cigarettes, high-sugar foods and caffeine-laden energy drinks it is illegal to sell raw milk in Australia. It's hard to get nonhomogenised milk that isn't organic (and hence expensive), but you can use homogenised milk and a dose of calcium chloride to keep the cost down.

I made halloumi the other day with 4 litres of homogenised milk and 2 litres of goats milk - so total cost of around $12 ($8 of it the goats milk). That gave me almost 700g of halloumi (the redness in the top disc is due to diced chilli mixed into the cheese)

and almost 100g of ricotta. That's pretty much breaking even given the price of halloumi in the supermarkets, but of course there's also the satisfaction of knowing it's home-made. If I hadn't used the goats milk it would have been significantly cheaper, but I guess you have to pay a premium for the great taste of goat.....

Back at work

I say - anyone for tennis?

It's the week of the BrisbaneInternational Tennis Tournament this week, and as the tennis centre is only a couple of km away we thought we'd nip down and check it out today.

There are two ticketing options. One gives you access to a nominated seat in the Pat Rafter Arena, where the famous people play ($50). The other is a 'ground ticket', which gives you access to all of the other courts so you can watch games by lower seeded players and also if you're lucky catch the stars warming up ($15). Not being massive tennis fans, we decided to take ground tickets.

The main problem was the sun - most of the viewing areas were outdoors, so when the sun came out it quickly became painful.

 The courts had shade cloths at their corners, so people ended up forming a chevron out of the sun, all peering over each others shoulders to figure out who was playing (as in the bottom right below)

 Although the urge to wear silly hats was still overwhelming to some

We still got to see a few famous players, notably British player Andy Murray (in true UK tabloid style, he is British until he loses a match and then he strangely becomes Scottish)

 We also saw a game between Zapp and Andreev, although we're still not quite sure who was who

  

 and in the ladies tournament, King vs Czing

I've never been to a tennis tournament before so it was interesting to see the routines and social niceties that take place (SIT DOWN IN FRONT!). For instance the main arena only allowed people in and out during breaks in play, so there was always a queue of people standing outside the doors with drinks watching the game on the TVabove the door.

 It was an interesting day, although we both got pretty battered by the sun and were happy to leave in the mid-afternoon. But there were still people outside the gates wishing they were inside



Happy New Year!