Adventures in yogurt-making

I looked at prices for a 'food flask' to replace the Thermos I was using solely for the purposes of making cheap yoghurt, and they cost about twenty pounds; I'd have to save an awful lot of money on commercial yoghurt (and be a lot inherently fonder of the stuff than I am) in order to justify that.

So I did a bit of looking-up on the Internet as to whether it was possible to make yoghurt by keeping it warm in the oven, say, and saw someone suggest a 'Dutch oven'. And I had a brainwave that it might be possible to use my really big earthenware pot; I can't heat it on top of the stove, but pouring boiling milk into it would both act as part of the necessary cooling-down process and help to transfer the reservoir of heat energy to the pot. ( Read more... )

The Fuehrer and the Tramp

This looks very interesting...
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/seandouglasmcardle/the-fuhrer-and-the-tramp-graphic-novel



http://comicsbulletin.com/review-the-fuhrer-and-the-tramp-is-a-surprising-fun-romp/

Frozen for challenge

Last night I finally started work on my entry for the latest Writers Anonymous Challenge -- the challenge this time being that everyone is given the same opening line and has to develop their story from that. Or, in the case of many of us (including me), has to try to shoe-horn that into the start of the story they want to tell...

I decided it would be an opportunity to develop the idea that struck me back when I saw "Frozen"; that the entire plot would be much more consistent as well as more emotionally interesting if, instead of delivering the Insanely Over-Complicated Face-Heel Turn of Evil we simply take pretty much everything that Prince Hans said and did at face value. Write an ending where he acts pretty much exactly as he does in canon, but he does so not because he has been hoping to assassinate Elsa from the start (despite actually defending her in practice multiple times...) but because when he sees the chance of the throne there right in front of him, he is too weak to resist the ambition of his own worse self. Hans as understandable opportunist rather than cardboard villain.