Say Cheese!

I had big plans for this post. It was going to include beautiful photos outlining not only the activities for the day, but provide instructions in the event you wanted to duplicate said activities.
Well. Hmmm. How do I say this?
I.
Forgot.
Mostly.
You'll see the ones I remembered to take.
My kids started school today. Did I remember to take the "first day of school pictures?"
Nope.
I had a three-hour lunch with an old friend. It was wonderful. Simply joyful to be in her comfort again. We created a beautiful memory, but it will not be preserved in photos.
Noticing a trend, I decided to make cheese -- since, clearly, no one has had a chance to say "cheese".
I use recipes and supplies from http://www.cheesemaking.com. I found the site while I was trying to figure out how to make cheese. Since I have several thousand dairy cows in the back yard, it makes sense to make cheese, right?
The easiest to make is mozzarella and since I had a pizza date for later in the evening, mozzarella was in order. Again, I had planned a step-by-step instructional post. I forgot to take pictures. Here's one of the curds just as they started to separate from the way.

Homemade mozzarella is delicious. Wrap up a leaf of basil in a little hunk of fresh, still warm cheese -- it's spiritual, really. I had fresh-from-the-garden Roma tomatoes today -- really, there just aren't words.
I whipped up some tomato sauce, using the last jar of tomatoes from last year. Used the whey to make pizza dough then carted it to my friends house 45 minutes south of here in the big ol' city of Twin Falls, Idaho. (Again, I forgot to take pictures.)
My friend Shelley is teaching my daughter, Patti, and I how to make and use pin-hole cameras. First we had to eat. One needs good nutrition for creativity.
We grilled the pizzas and Shelley had made an amazing green salad featuring some heirloom tomatoes so we had quite the feast.
Shelly got started making pin-hole cameras a few years ago after visiting with a particularly inspiring artist. She's done some incredible work with them. Patti and I saw several of her pieces hanging in the coffee shop of the student union building on the College of Southern Idaho campus last summer. We went home and tried to figure out how to do it on our own, but without a good dark room I couldn't figure out how to get it done without making a horrid mess.
I called Shelley, a CSI professor and friend and asked for a lesson. That was in June. Between her schedule and mine, this is the first time we could get together.
Shelley, her daughter Emma, Patti and I gathered around her dining room table and began crafting our pinhole cameras. They were using a cardboard cylinder formally used for containing raisins. Patti and I brought a rather large shoe box.
Since Patti did most of the work, this might have been a good time to take pictures.
I remembered to do a few, but like your instructional cheese recipe, you'll just have to wait for the "how to make a pin-hole camera" post.
We have the cameras constructed, but will wait until we have time next week to shoot and develop the photos. Shelley has dark room in her basement. I'm pretty sure I will be living there sooner than later. I really have always wanted a dark room.
It's a school night, so Patti had a late night -- but it was great fun to spend time with Shelley and learn something new.
We came home and still needed to close up the chicken coops. A mountain lion has been seen in the neighborhood, making doing chores in the dark, well, creepy.
The bonus is I figured out why there were three or four chickens sitting outside the coop when I went to open the doors this morning. I couldn't figure out how this happened because it really appeared to me that all the chickens were on the roost.

Tonight I looked up and saw the hens roosting in the trees.
It would have made a great picture.