yogurt and metronomes

Hi all. I've been told I need to keep blogging. This despite feeling like I don't have much to say.

To follow up on the last post, yogurt-making attempt #4 was met with success! I haven't tried a fifth time yet, although I will need to do so soon because I am nearly out of yogurt. I think my biggest problem was incubating methods. For the successful attempt I used a cooler and I put a magic bag in the cooler with the yogurt both at the beginning and halfway though, after re-heating. I have also become much more confident in the heating and cooling process of the milk, which is speeding everything up overall. The first few times I did it I was so cautious it was taking me ages to bring the milk up to just below boiling and then to cool it down, and I was spending the entire time staring anxiously at the thermometer, checking if it was ready. But now I've got a much surer sense of when it's ready, so I just blast the heat on it, and then cool it in an ice bath. This makes the process is in general much less involved. Which only means that I am much more likely to actually go through with from time to time. Which means less plastic! Yay!

In other news, I had a terrible lapse of plastic-free consciousness the other day. I bought a metronome at a music store. Now, not only was the metronome made of plastic, but it was also (of course) WRAPPED in plastic. It honestly didn't even occur to me until I was out the store and halfway home, I was just so lost in all the beautiful instruments in the store, and focused on this idea of getting a metronome. Completely did not think it through.

I'm not sure I have the strength of conviction to keep this up. Some things have turned out to be fairly easy, like not buying food in plastic (except for cheese, I'm still buying cheese for now. But I think I may have found a good cheese supply that I will be able to get without plastic! Must go to the next farmer's market in two weeks to find out), but honestly, in order to find a metronome without plastic I'm pretty certain I would have had to really search... and it definitely wouldn't have done all the cool stuff this one did! Of course, I could possibly have found one second hand. But I didn't. Oh well.

I think that's about it for updates. I went to a conference this week and was worried I would have to be careful to avoid plastic there, but everything was already pretty plastic-free. They didn't use any disposable dishes or cutlery, and the only plastic that escaped my notice was the hanging name tag they gave me.