3rd week of summer--Michael's mission call, cheese, scout camp, and more pinterest

Michael's mission call:

On Thursday (after an almost seemingly eternity of waiting for it to arrive), Michael gathered his family and friends around him as he opened his mission call:

Mexico Monterrey West Mission and he reports to the Provo MTC on Wednesday October 16th.

Of course, he'll be learning Spanish--he'll be the first Perazzo to speak a foreign language on his mission, though not the first to have a foreign mission (one brother went to Australia and another to England...and an uncle went to Canada).

We are very excited for him. I looked it up and he and Ryan will be about 760 miles apart.


News from Ryan's mission:
Ryan mentioned this in his email and then we got a call from the mission home--a 2nd bike has arrived in the mission field for Ryan!? We didn't send it and the bike shop says they didn't either... twilight zone time...

And speaking of Ryan, in a recent email he said that he and his trainer, Elder Silva, were going to trade places with the zone leaders this past week. Ryan said that they would be in Albany and the ZLs in Amite, but when I looked at the mission website, they have Ryan in Ponchatoula with an Elder Stucki and Elder Silva in Hammond, so the plans got changed (though the ZLs are now in Amite as planned). Can't wait to hear about it in tomorrow's email.

I noticed that Ponchatoula didn't show up on the mission's map, so here it is (it's just 47 miles from where I lived in Metairie--which is just west of New Orleans and my house was just 2 miles west of the bridge that went down the middle of Lake Ponchartrain and was 1 block from the lake):

My cheese projects: (sour cream, mozzarella, and neufchatel--light cream cheese)

My current calling at church is in the Young Women's program. I am an advisor and that means that I teach the girls on most Sundays. I've been with the 12 and 13 year old beehives, but today I am being switched to the 16 and 17 year old Laurels, so I'll be teaching Hannah!

Anyway, part of the Young Women Program is a goal setting program called Personal Progress. I am working on my award and for my project under the Knowledge area, I wanted to learn to make several different kind of cheeses. I finished the project yesterday. This week I made 2 different kinds of sour cream, some mozzarella, and some neufchatel cheese.

The short of it:
The sour cream was super easy, but the recipe that was supposed to be the thicker of the 2, came out to be the thinner of the two, but they tasted great. And both recipes are thinner than the store-bought sour cream.

The mozzarella recipe was a bit intense, and at the end it wasn't turning out like it should, so I added in steps from a different recipe (using a microwave) and finally ended up with some pretty good cheese (though I didn't add enough salt).

The neufchatel was an easy recipe, too, and it came out pretty good.

It was creamier than my first try at cream cheese, but I think I left it too wet and also it's not as smooth as store-bought. I might try whipping it. I can see me making this again, but 1 gallon of milk gave me just shy of 2 lbs of cream cheese, which is a lot. It lasts for 2 weeks in the fridge (unlike store-bought which lasts for months). You can freeze cream cheese, but it changes the texture, so it would be best to be used in a recipe after it's been frozen.

Scout camp:
Glen and Alex left at 3:45 am yesterday to go to scout camp at Camp Loll in Wyoming. This is Alex's first trip to scout camp. Hope they have a great week.

Pinterest projects: cinnamon rolls on a stick, nutella energy balls, and frozen avocados.

We started off with Hannah making cinnamon roll dough, lighting a fire in the driveway (in a barrel), and us cooking our cinnamon rolls that had been wrapped around a stick. It was good--though you did have to find the balance in between too cooked on the outside and too raw on the inside (the bane of all campers everywhere).

I found a recipe for nutella energy balls (no-bake energy bites is what they were called on Pinterest) here and we made some. Pretty tasty--though I think it needed more nutella.

And I have frozen avocado halves before and that worked well enough, but then I read that you should mash your avocados first. So I mashed some with just a little bit of lemon juice and used my small cookie scoop to make user-friendly sized balls (which scoop I also used for the nutella balls...and for when I made butter--the cookie scoop is probably one of our most used and still used wedding presents).

2nd week of summer--more projects

Ryan and his companion are swapping places with the zone leaders this week...he'll now be in Albany, Louisiana instead of Amite. So, I can't wait to hear all about that in a week. There wasn't much work in Amite and there's supposed to be a lot more in Albany. Hope so.

Anyway, I've had a wonderful, full week. Glen's been busy, too (poor thing keeps getting drafted into my plans). Some of the week's highlights:

Glen and Alex made homemade whole wheat bagels to go with the cream cheese I was making...my cream cheese wasn't creamy, however, as I forgot to leave the milk whole, but had ladled off the top layer of cream. Next time, if there is one, I'll know better. The thing is, with the cost of the mesophilic culture needed to make cream cheese, I'm almost doubling the cost of my cream cheese by making it myself...$1.39 to buy 8 oz at WinCo but $2.70 to make 10 oz at home, and if I didn't live on a dairy farm you would have to add the cost of a 1/2 gallon of milk to the $2.70. Maybe I just need to find a cheaper source of the culture.

the finished product--it was pretty good

Along with making cream cheese, I also made a small batch of mozzarella...it was edible, but I think I added too much rennet and I zapped it too long, so it was not soft. It should come out better next time.

I finished up some pinterest projects I had started last week. I've been saving old keys for years and finally made a wind chime out of them. It sounds nice, but it doesn't get any breeze as I want it inside so I can see it:

Glen cut some wood for me and I used my silhouette cutting machine to make two 4th of July projects:

I tried many times to make a version of a family tree pendant that I liked but was small enough that I would wear it. I finally gave up and had the idea to make a sun catcher, of sorts (its diameter is only  2 1/2"). I like it:

Friday June 21st was the first day of summer and the day of the longest sunlight for the year. I wanted to take advantage of it. Glen was willing to go on our morning walk a little earlier than usual so we could catch the sun rise:

sunrise just starting

We had a family get together that afternoon as Glen's sister, Teresa, and part of her family were visiting. We chatted and played games all afternoon and evening, but Glen was once again a good sport and went on a walk with me at sunset so I could catch the sun going down:

sunset

3 of Glen's siblings: Kathy, Teresa, and Alan

Grandpa, Joseph, Michael, Sarah, and visiting niece Amanda

Speaking of Michael...his mission call should come in the mail this week!!!!!

Now if Friday was all about the sun, last night and this morning was all about the moon...it was at 99.9% brightness at 4:33 am. It's called a supermoon. The following definition is from wikipedia:

A supermoon is the coincidence of a full moon or a new moon with the closest approach the Moon makes to the Earth on its elliptical orbit, resulting in the largest apparent size of the moon's disk as seen from Earth.
because that's when the full moon occurs when it's passing closest to the earth for a whole year.

The moon was big and beautiful, but I honestly wouldn't have known it was anything different if the internet hadn't told me so.

This is the moon rising...since the sun hadn't set yet, the moon was so pale I almost missed seeing it rise--I thought it was just a cloud at first:

And this was the moon at 4:34 am--I don't know how to make my camera take good photos of the moon:

(one of the best parts of summer is when you do crazy things like get up at 4:30 am to see the moon you just tell yourself you can take a nap later)