Travel Day Turned to Snow Day

What a surprise. I woke up at 9 this morning to a winter wonderland, or the beginnings of one. Since Paducah was supposed to be hit harder than we, I called the parents' house, and learned, yes, it had been. One of the sitter's husband took an hour and a half to get work.  That's sooo not normal.  Chicken that I am, and really feeling my mortality, I didn't travel today.  Like, I really don't wanna get in an accident and have to mend broken bones.

It was nice to be able to be at home. I got to finish up stuff.  The followers for the cheese press finally got cut and sanded. Clean up got done - all  most of the tools left out from making the cheese press got put away.  Max can again eat supper on his end of the dining table.

The bacon experiment is coming along nicely. Every evening I've been draining the baggies, rinsing them and wiping dry; patting the slabs dry with paper towels, and adding a bit of salt and seasoning. There hasn't been a lot of liquid collecting, by that I mean tablespoonsful, but more along the lines of a teaspoonful. The plain salt slab has released the most liquid. The largest difference I've noted is that the slabs originally fit in the gallon-sized freezer bags only vertically, and now they fit horizontally. I can push them down to the end of the bag, roll it up, and zip it. This means they've shrunk in length by a half inch at least.

Tonight I made a batch of Lebanese Garlic Sauce. Since I stopped at the Arabic Market next door to Charlie's Meat Market when I bought the pork belly, I have a couple of lovely bags of homemade pita bread. That called for a near eastern sauce. I adapted a recipe from DedeMed.
For things like this, rather than use a full-blown food processor, I have a little gadget called an Oskar by Sunbeam. It's a small food blender/chopper. I don't think they're made by this company anymore, which is sad because I've tried other brands, and none have proven to be as good. Mine is 30 years old. Prayers to The Powers That Be that mine keeps on chugging on.

Garlic Sauce:
1 cup Canola oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
6 cloves of garlic
2 egg whites
1/2 tsp salt

Peel the garlic and then "smoosh" the cloves with the flat blade of your chopping knife. Next, go at them and mince fairly fine. Add to the chopper/food blender. Add the lemon juice and salt and gave it a whirl for about 15 seconds. Add two egg whites and give an additional short whirl - about 3 seconds.

Pour in about 1/4 cup of the oil, put the top on the chopper and start blending.  To the hole in the top of the chopper, add the rest of the oil in a slow drizzle. The size of the drizzle should be about the size of a large pencil lead - like the ones kids use in the first grade (about 1/8th of an inch). I didn't time it, but I think this took about 2 minutes.

The result is a wonderful, thick, white, garlicky sauce like mayonnaise only with an almost meringue look. Yum. Goes with almost anything you can think of to put in pita bread.

Edited 2/22/2011 for spelling and style.