Stupid Technology, service, and cheese

Dumb stupid phone and stupid computer and stupid technology. I have a picture of Matt at the field trip on Monday and want to post it here, but the computer is choosing not to "recognize" the phone. And the phone is miffed because it keeps saying "connect USB cable" when I try to access the picture. The stupid USB cable IS connected! And it has to be the right USB cable, because a) it fits both ports, and b) all the other USB cables in the drawer are for other devices--this particular one has to be the one for my phone.

Anyway, picture Matt in a white hair net, with a mug in his hand; the mug is filled with soy protein powder and he's waiting his turn to dump the soy protein into a funnel that leads to a small plastic bag. That's the picture I wanted to post. The elementary student council went to Feed My Starving Children to package food for starving children around the world. I urge all of you to do this at least once if you live around this area. Packaging food for malnourished kids is a great way to make a difference in our world and it is actually quite fun! Matt had a great time, until the soy protein dust aggravated his allergies. I had no clue he was going to get itchy eyes and nose or I would have brought the medicine. But he lasted almost the whole 2 1/2 hours. Not a single kid who went on this field trip complained about the work. Every kid participated enthusiastically, even when it was time to wash containers and sweep the floor. The experience made us all feel good. We got to try the food that is sent and it is surprisingly good. It makes kind of a rice mush, but it is flavored with chickeny salt and has dehydrated veggies in it. Most of the kids liked it, but thought it would be kind of hard to eat it day in and day out. We all came away reminded of how extremely lucky we have it here in the US.

Speaking of food, I went to an enrichment class on provident living last night and we learned how to make ricotta cheese from dry milk. It's hard to post how excited I was last night without over-using exclamation points. But you can't even tell that the cheese was made from dry milk! It's a little drier than store-bought, but much tastier, especially if you season it. We tried lasagna made with it and it was so good! We also ate it plain--it makes a really good salad ingredient. We also tried a custardy cheesecake make with homemade sweetened condensed milk. SO GOOD. And we have recipes to make homemade mozzarella and cream cheese, all with non-fat dry milk. The ricotta took only 20 minutes to make and it was SO EASY. You need three ingredients: water, nonfat dry milk, and vinegar. If you are interested in the recipe, just comment on this post saying you want the recipe and I'll send it to you.

I wish I had brought my camera to the class last night so I could have a visual to go with this post. We'll have to make do with a picture of Matt sitting on our new chair (new as of last fall) playing DS.

Comments

Sean said…
You're lucky your phone even allows you to connect it to your computer in theory. I would have to hack my Verizon phone in order to do that. So my usual method for transferring pics from my phone to my computer is to send them via text message to my email address. Have you tried that?
Hmmmm. That sounds promising. I might have to get my daughter to teach me how to do that; she's texted (is that a standard verb now?) pics to me before.

I know I'm lucky--and I have uploaded pics to my computer via USB cable before--everyone else in the fam has not the same privilege as I once had.

Nice to see a Village face here!
Jenni said…
Here is another Village face although I don't know which village it is. (Does it take a village to control me?) I would also suggest email/texting the photo to the 'puter. And please remember to send me all info regarding making cheese-stuffs from milk powder.
Jen said…
I feel this must be said...

"I love technology, but not as much as you, you see... But I STILL love technology... Always and forever."

There are about 30 pictures that have been on my camera since first receiving it, but I have never even attempted to get them onto my computer. I'm kind of a camera snob though, and I worry that the quality would be way below my standards (::grin::)