Rusticating, Part II

As I posted a few weeks ago, this has been a summer full of "rustic" activities: gardening, picking fresh local fruit, visiting the Charlottesville City Market, canning, etc.  Two weekends ago, I decided to try my hand at yet another activity that has me thinking that maybe I was actually raised on a farm and just don't remember: cheese making.  For whatever reason, I suddenly just had a burning desire to make cheese with my own two little hands.  Yes, I know, I am a freak of nature.  So, I did some digging around on the internet and found instructions/recipes for both ricotta cheese and mozzarella that seemed relatively straightforward.

I started with the ricotta cheese, which seemed fairly foolproof, even for a cheese-making novice like me.  Basically, you throw milk (which I buy in glass bottles, 1950's style, from a local dairy that supplies Charlottesville Krogers), vinegar and some yogurt into a pot and heat it until it curdles, then you dump the whole thing into a strainer lined with cheese cloth and about half an hour later, ta-da, you have ricotta cheese! 

Ricotta cheese starting to form curds (in my very poorly lit kitchen)

Ricotta cheese straining in cheesecloth-lined collander

Finished ricotta in a container!

Making ricotta was so easy that I felt motivated to try making mozzarella, which requires some slightly more exotic ingredients and a little bit more time and effort.   You need a good candy thermometer (or something else that reads temps under 100 degrees F well), twice as much milk, rennet, citric acid, and salt.  I have never in my life had to purchase rennet before, but fortunately Rebecca's Natural Foods in the Barracks Road Shopping Center carries rennet, citric acid, and cheesecloth.   There are varying "recipes" on the internet, but basically, you heat the milk to around 88 degrees, add the rennet (dissolved in some water), add the citric acid, heat to around 105 degrees, and then scoop out balls of cheese curds and squeeze the whey from them with your hands.  You then place the balls of cheese into the microwave (this is the faster way...if you are particularly industrious, you can dip them back into the whey until they soften) for a few seconds, remove them, squeeze out the whey, knead, and repeat until the mozzarella reaches the texture you want.  You add salt at the second kneading (I am kind of anti-salt, especially since I'm working for a company focused on hypertension and salt sensitivity this summer, but you can't make mozzarella without salt.  Seriously.).   I think I over-kneaded a bit....probably one too many rounds of kneading, because once I had refrigerated the cheese, it came out more like mozzarella that you could grate and put on a pizza than soft "fresh" mozzarella that you would turn into mozzarella caprese.  But that didn't stop me from making a nice caprese with some local tomatoes (only my cherry and grape tomatoes are ripe) and home-grown basil!

Essential ingredients - vegetable rennet and citric acid

Just getting started....

Some nice preliminary curdling action around 88-90 degrees F

The first ball o' cheese

Mozzarella balls, pre-microwaving and pre-kneading

Finished mozzarella balls, ready to go into the fridge

A nice fresh caprese salad platter!

After my cheesemaking, I decided to make some braided Italian herb bread (I like to pack a lot into one day, OK?), and then I packed up the whole lot to take over to Brianne's, where she was cooking up some very tasty pasta with veggies.  We enjoyed the food and then topped off the evening for a trip to Splendora's for gelato.  Tasty, local/homemade, Italian food - what more can a girl want?

That is a good-looking homemade bread if I say so myself

I took a few days off after The Great Cheesemaking of 2010, and then my parents came into town for the weekend.  On Saturday, we grabbed breakfast at Albemarle Baking Company, picked up sandwiches to go at Bellair Market, hit up three wineries (Barboursville, Prince Michel, and Sweely Estate), and topped off the day with dinner at The Bavarian Chef (totally worth the drive, but don't go on the hottest day of the year - their poor little A/C just couldn't keep up!).  Sunday, we did breakfast at a little place down the street from my apartment and then went peach-picking at Chiles Peach Orchard and blackberry-picking at Hill Top Berry Farm (they also have a winery/mead-ery) before the parents hit the road and left me to my own devices.  Naturally, once they left, the hot water canner came out again and I started canning up a storm.  In two evenings, I made peach salsa, peach pie filling, peach melba jam, blackberries in framboise, blackberry syrup, blackberry apple chutney, blackberries preserved in water (for use in baking recipes later in the year...blackberry cobbler in February?  Yes, please!), and maple walnut syrup (because I could...). 

Mmmmm....tasty canned goods!

This is what my coat closet looks like now...anyone need some canned goods?

And that, in a nutshell, is Rustication, Part II. 

Best of luck to all the Bar exam-takers!

Today is the first day of the bar exam in many jurisdictions, and since I know I have a couple loyal readers who are taking their exams this week, I just wanted to give them and everyone else suffering through the process a shout-out.  You've all studied hard, and you'll do just fine - you only need to pass!  If that doesn't make you feel better, just remember that I'll be in your shoes in just three years, and by that point, I'll be suffering and miserable and you'll be a fairly well-compensated third-year associate.  See?  It's all about perspective. 

For those of you (possibly MBA students?) who think the bar exam is no big deal.....go away, and I never want to speak to you again. 

For anyone who's looking for something entertaining, check out this hypothetical bar exam-type question from Above The Law.  It's funny whether or not you have any idea how you'd answer the questions. 

If this whole JD/MBA thing doesn't work out, I could always become a scullery maid

From medieval times until the early twentieth century, the scullery maid was basically the lowest of the lowely household/kitchen servants, responsible for washing pots and everyday dishes, scrubbing floors, boiling water, and performing other such unsavory tasks as plucking chickens.  The position is one that has (fortunately, I think) generally gone the way of the horse and buggy, but somehow I recently managed to find work as a scullery maid.

The Scullery Maid (L'Ecureuse)
Jean-Simèon Chardin (French, 1699 -1779)
From http://www.corcoran.com/

Yes, that's right - a Brown University diploma, a year of the MBA program at Darden, and impending matriculation into a Top 10 law school has landed me a position as a scullery maid.  Well, technically, the position is "Assistant."  And it's actually kind of fun.  A few months ago, the Wine & Cuisine Club (WACC....B-school humor at its finest - hahaha!  ) at Darden took a cooking class through the Charlottesville Cooking School, which also hires folks to fulfill the scullery maid function in exchange for either pay or free classes.  So for a couple nights in the past month, I've donned an apron and some gloves for 4+ hours after putting in my time at the internship.  While there is a LOT of dishwashing (particularly for the sauteeing class), I also get to listen to most of the class, and the assistant/scullery maid always gets fed part of the meal that the class cooks, too.  All in all, it's been a pretty neat experience (for dishwashing), since I learned some new knife techniques and recipes, and I'm looking forward to signing up to take some classes myself - I earned them, after all!

Now, I signed up for the scullery maid job at CCS, so I knew exactly what I was getting myself into.  What I didn't expect was that my summer internship would also necessitate serving as combination sous chef/scullery maid last week!  The local biotech start-up that I'm working for this summer hosted its first Advisory Board meeting last week, which was kicked off by a dinner at the CEO (who is technically my client/boss)'s house.  His wife was out of town until right before the dinner, and he needed some help pulling everything off, so I showed up a couple hours in advance to chop and dice and make crabcakes, and I ended up serving as combination cater waiter/scullery maid in addition to "guest" and "company representative" during the dinner. I'm guessing a good number of MBA students would have been displeased with that arrangement, but I enjoy cooking, and my mission this summer was to be as helpful as possible, and that's what the company needed at the time....so I did it, and my help was appreciated.  Like I said....if this JD/MBA thing doesn't work out, I'm going to buy a nicer apron and hire myself out.  Anyone else need a scullery maid?  Will work for food...

LO and recruiting...from a legal perspective

Apparently, today is the day of posting links rather than posting real posts.  But I stumbled across this article on emotional intelligence and legal recruiting and thought it was worth a read whether you're a law student, a business student, or both.  Dontcha just love it when LO* sneaks its way into law school?

*For the uninitiated, LO stands for "Leading Organizations," or a core course in the First Year at Darden - it's basically all about interacting with and/or managing people within an enterprise.**

**Dear LO faculty, please don't hate me for that super-condensed description of LO.

Who gets a JD/MBA anyway?

I recently stumbled across a Wikipedia list of "famous" (I use the term somewhat loosely) JD/MBAs from a variety of top schools.  Sadly, UVa is not listed, but if anyone is looking for some information about JD/MBA career paths, check it out!

The countdown to the first day of my second first year

Today marks the “one month from the start of law school orientation” point. Eeek! I honestly probably should have been more freaked out about starting Darden last year than I am now about starting law school, but oddly I wasn’t. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Darden does a MUCH better job communicating with matriculating students and letting you know what you need to get done before school starts (I can say this objectively.  I've lived here in Charlottesville for almost a year now and have done all the "Charlottesville things" one needs to do when one gets here.  I've even done most of the "UVa things."  But I'm generally clueless about most of the "law things" I need to or should be doing.  I don't think I'm alone on this.  At Darden, we got a checklist in May, and even though it stressed me out, at least I knew what I needed to be doing.) Or maybe it had more to do with the fact that the incoming Darden students started moving to Charlottesville earlier and organized social events so that we’d know each other before classes start. Or maybe it was because even though Darden is the bootcamp of business schools, law school in general still has a much nastier reputation than b-school. Or maybe it’s because I haven’t played softball since the days of The College Firm’s lawyer-league play. Who really knows why, but I’m apprehensive in a way (a “nervous gym tummy” kind of way) that I wasn’t last year.

I suppose that it isn’t really the nature of the work or the workload that makes me nervous. I’ve worked in political and legal environments since I was 16, and frankly, the parts of my summer job that I’ve enjoyed the most this year have been the corporate governance and legal-ish parts (though I’ve been very clear with everyone that I CANNOT provide legal advice under any circumstances). So it’s not the work or the reading of legal cases that is making me apprehensive; I periodically still track down pleadings for random cases to read them for fun. Nor is the issue the workload. I’ll be taking fewer classes, spending less time in class, and taking fewer exams over a longer period of time. I’ll also be able to do my studying on my own time, rather than on Darden-dictated time (which means the return of AFTERNOON NAPS!!!! So exciting.). I know it will be challenging, but that’s exciting to me, not nerve-racking.

I frankly think that part of my apprehension has to do with - *gasp* - the people (I know, I know…. I am SURE that I will be lambasted or burnt in effigy or something for saying this, but I’m trying to be honest.). When I visited Darden when I was applying to schools (18 months ago at this point), I loved the Darden people I met. They were friendly, they were welcoming, and I just seemed to “click” with the people I met. That whole “fit” thing they talk about in admissions was completely on the mark for me. I just “fit” better at Darden than I did anywhere else I had applied or been accepted, and a huge part of that “fit” was the people (the other part was that Darden was - of all the b-schools to which I was accepted -  the place where I felt I could do my "best work" in the words of Dean Bruner).  Last year, as I was preparing to start at Darden, I wasn’t at all worried about the “people” component of the experience (the finance component, yes…the people component, no). Now, I am by no means the world’s most outgoing person, and there are certainly people at Darden with whom I don’t hang out regularly, but I can honestly say that by and large, I really like my Darden classmates. The vast majority of Darden students are intelligent, motivated, and fun to be around. I’ll bet this is true at UVa Law, too, but I frankly didn’t get the same vibe and perfect “fit” feel from the law school either when I visited several years ago or when I went to the Admitted Student Weekends this year. Oh, I liked it and the people well enough, and I definitely didn’t get any stronger “fit” vibes from any other law school, but it just doesn’t feel the same. And if I have to put my finger on it, I would say that part of the issue is really age.

Now, before somebody starts accusing me of being hypocritically ageist, hear me out. The average incoming age of Darden students is 27-28. I was on the very young side of my class at 23 (I turned 24 a month later, and I will reiterate again, I worked full-time every summer and winter through college at the same law firm, and I worked at The Consulting Firm That Shall Not Be Named for a full 30 months after graduating). But I’ve always been younger than my classmates (even in grade school – a September birthday will get you!), and because I graduated early and spent a lot of time at the office, most of my friends are at least a couple years older than me. Given my work experiences and the friends that I have, I often feel older than 24. The vast majority of Darden students have had careers of some sort prior to returning to school. This means that they have (usually) lived independently, travelled for business, bemoaned the lack of summer vacation in the “real world,” tracked their 401-K performance, and balanced the demands of work and the “rest of life.” There’s a perspective that comes from having been out in the working world for a while, and I think there’s also a perspective that comes from having survived the first year at Darden, frankly.

The average incoming age at UVa Law is 24 (at least for the class of 2012, the most recent class for which data is easily available). Yes, that’s the average and I’m right at it (though I’ll be 25 shortly after starting). That means that the average UVa Law student at graduation is still younger than the average incoming Darden student. It also means that 50% of my class is younger than me. This is a first for me. It means that the peer advisors assigned to my class – who are 2Ls and 3Ls – are younger than me. It means that many people (about 40% of the class of 2012) have gone straight through from undergrad and haven’t worked or lived on their own. It means that, amazing though I am sure these future classmates will be, right now I very much feel like we are different points in our lives. And I feel like a grandma. This grandma-like feelings started at the Admitted Student Days this spring, when I hosted several admitted students (I have a guest room that might as well get some use) and attended the standard barbecue and other scheduled programming and found myself talking to people who were barely 21 and still seniors in college.  I felt truly ancient. Fortunately, the second student I hosted is coming to UVa and will be joining me in the “grandma club.” Also, I suppose that many of the "older" people joining the class of 2013 may have been stuck at work and didn't make it to the Admitted Student weekends.  So I know I will have elderly brethren....but I haven't found many of them yet.

It’s also comforting to know, as I get more apprehensive as the start of school draws nearer, that all my Darden friends are just a (very) short walk away from the law school. And they have the added attraction of being in a building with free coffee. And of having no idea whatsoever what the Blue Book is. You all better be prepared to drag me out of the law library, ply me with grown-up cocktails, and make fun of me for being a young’un next year!

I'm going to end up living in a cardboard box

Yesterday, as I was electronically signing yet another master promissory note (Um...hi...doesn't "master" mean that I should only have to sign one?  I signed four last year.) for student loans and petitioning to have my student budget adjusted so that I can pay for all my healthcare costs (I have diabetes.  I take care of myself, but doing so is darn expensive....bye-bye savings!), I thought to myself, "Wow, my 1L classmates and I are getting ready to take on nearly $70,000 of loans for a 9-month period."  Holy moly.  And that doesn't include paying for things like car insurance.  Or travel.  Or anything fun. 

Tuition alone at UVa Law is $47,500 for incoming out-of-state students (don't even get me started on the fact that I have lived in VA and exclusively in VA for a year, filed a tax return here, pay personal property taxes here, have a VA license and car registration, and certainly don't even pretend to reside anywhere else).  Yes, it's even more at Darden ($49,500).    That means that I'm basically paying more for tuition each year than the total cost of yearly attendance at my undergrad college, Brown University (and it was cheaper when I was there, obviously).   Yes, ostensibly (and hopefully) I'll have a nice, lucrative job when I graduate, but if you look at the costs of a JD/MBA, the base debt load amounts to $280,000 (not including capitalized interest or a discount rate or any of that other financial ridiculousness from which I'm taking a break this year).  Just an MBA will set you back $140,000, and a getting a JD alone can easily generate up $210,000 in student debt.  Eeeek!  You could buy a decent-sized house around here for that.  I am dreading - absolutely dreading - the day that the Powers That Be tell me what my monthly student loan payment will be.  Let's just say that most people have cheaper mortgage payments each month.  I'm going to start planning the interior decorating scheme for my cardboard box.  And to think that I tease my sister about her future of living in a tent (she's applying to Ph.D. programs in archaeology).  Tents are far more spacious than boxes, and somebody will basically PAY HER to go to grad school.  Sigh. 

Clearly, I'm not the only one who has been thinking about the high costs of professional education.  For more on the subject of law school tuition, check out Above the Law and this recent US News & World Report article.  My advice to potential professional school applicants:  Think long and hard about whether or not you think the costs of going back to school - and of attending top schools - is really going to be worth it to you before you spend time and money applying.  I do think it will be worth it for me in the long run...but that doesn't mean I can't grumble about the costs.  After all, I wouldn't be an MBA student if I didn't worry about dollar signs followed by big numbers...

Rusticating

Let me be clear: I am not typically an overly outdoorsy, tree-hugging sort of person (I did hug a tree once, but I went to Brown, so it was basically required before they let you graduate).  When and if I ever own a house, I plan to hire someone to take care of the yard, because yard work really isn't my thing (and my neighbors would end up stoning me because the place would become an eyesore very quickly).  I think the local food movement is great, but I also like to eat raspberries in January.  However, all those disclaimers aside, I have spent much of the last couple months going all "crunchy granola" and becoming domestically inclined in a thoroughly "old school" sort of way.  Maybe it's just the relative abundance of free time that the summer has afforded me, or maybe it's a result of living in the "country" (or maybe it's both...), but I've been rusticating to an extent that has started to frighten even me. 

It started innocently enough, I suppose.  When my parents and sister came down to visit for Easter (yep, I cooked Easter dinner this year), my father brought with him some tiny little mint plantings for me.  Mojitos are one of my favorie summer time drinks, and I maintain that you shouldn't be permitted to live in Virginia if you don't have all the makings of a mint julep on hand at any time, so this seemed like a good idea.  Plus, I already knew that I'd be spending my summer in the Charlottesville area rather than abandoning my apartment for the summer like many of my classmates with exciting jobs in exotic locales, so that meant I'd be around to water plants and all that stuff.  Well, the mint seemed to start me down a slippery slope.  I decided that if I had mint, I might as well have basil (for homemade pesto, another my summer favorites) and other herbs, too.  And while I was making the trip to Lowe's for window boxes and potting mix and seedlings, I might as well buy one of those nifty little upside down tomato growing pot thingamajigs, too, right?  Right.

Three months later, I have realized that there is either some sort of plant equivalent of steroids in the water here, or I actually may have a wee little bit of a green thumb.  Who knew?  The herbs are out of control, I've had to repot the tomatoes because they over-grew their original hanging pots and became slightly suicidal (one of the two pots spontaneously plunged two stories to its almost-demise), and I decided to diversify into peppers, too. 

Yep, I'm basically running a garden/mini-farm off of my little apartment porch.   My tomatoes have been very tasty...

...and I've been trying very hard to be patient while this guy ripens (but I am not naturally a patient person):

I've really been enjoying having fresh herbs for the aforementioned summer cocktails and pesto and other tasty treats, and I also bought an ice cream maker and made fresh homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream (and strawberry frozen yogurt with fresh-picked strawberries).   I brought the tasty frozen products to a BBQ a friend hosted, and they got rave reviews.  Yay!

In addition to my sudden urge to become a gentlewoman farmer (inspired by our man Thomas Jefferson, but minus the whole land-owning part) and purveyor of frozen delights, I developed an almost unhealthy obsession with the ancient art of canning.  By canning, I mean preserving various tasty foods in glass jars, of course!  I don't exactly know what inspired my desire to take up this new hobby, but it *may* have been related to my childhood love of going to pick fresh fruit.  Picking (and eating) locally grown fruit with my own two grubby little hands has always been a summer-time ritual in my family.  Now that I live alone in a climate and location that again permits me to partake in said activity (Rhode Island and Massachusetts were great for apple picking, but not much else), I needed a way to ensure that the fruits of my labors (literally and figuratively) didn't go to waste.  Because really, in my mind it's not worth it to drive out to the middle of nowhere to spend time picking fruit if you're only going to pick what you can eat in the next day or two.  Plus, homemade jams and jellies are both tastier and healthier than the ones you can buy at the store.  And I like to cook and bake, so canning seemed the next logical step in my own personal domestic diva development project. 

So I invested in a boiling water canner ($20 at the local Wal-Mart) and all the little necessary gadgets like jar lifters and lid lifters and canning funnels.  Oh, and the jars (which a friend of mine had to special order in Massachusetts but which are sold in grocery stores and WalMart here in more sizes and shapes than you might imagine).  I purchased so many jars at Wal-Mart that the cashier closest to the door by the housewares section and I were on a first-name basis.  For my first attempt, I chose strawberry jam.  It went so well (and tasted so good), that naturally I had to go cherry picking and make things with the cherries, so I made preserved cherries in almond syrup (delicious spooned over homemade vanilla bean ice cream) and cherry raspberry compote.  And then, because I was feeling pretty good about my mad canning skillz at this point, I made bread and butter pickles.  Yes, I did this all within the first week of owning a canner.  I may or may not be slightly obsessive about new hobbies (and again, I don't have homework, so what's stopping me?)

 

The results of my first week of canning: jam, compote, preserves, and pickles

Week 2 of my new addiction - er, hobby - conveniently coincided with the start of peach season and raspberry season, and Week 3 marked my first trip to the Charlottesville City Market (the big Saturday farmer's market downtown).  During these weeks, my canning repertoire expanded to include dill pickle slices, Oktoberfest beer mustard (no seasonal ingredients involved, but who cares?), golden relish, raspberry jam, chocolate raspberry sauce, peach salsa, berry wine jelly, and blueberry chutney.  Brianne even came over for a canning "lesson" (I use the term very loosely) when I made the chutney. 

From left to right: (front "row") Oktoberfest beer mustard, berry wine jelly, golden relish, blueberry chutney, peach salsa; (back "row") chocolate raspberry sauce, raspberry jam

Once I had made all of these tasty treats, I had to figure out where to store them.  I already keep a fairly well-stocked pantry (no real surprise there), and since most people don't have a root cellar these days (you should store glass jars of fruits and vegetables in cool, dark places so that the light doesn't lead to discoloration), I had to clean out the shelf in my coat closet in order to hold lots and lots of jars.  I also put together a gigantic basket of homemade treats as a gift for Father's Day (my mother hates sugary sweet things like jams and jellies, so she got a jar of bread and butter pickles and Dad got everything else).  Everyone else should be forewarned that I will be gifting canned goods from now and until eternity...

My last domestic rustication effort of the summer (so far) has included making all sorts of side dishes and tasty morsels for barbecues and picnics and whatnot in town.  One of my friends threw a surprise b-day barbecue for his girlfriend, and I offered to make the cake (this same friend once challenged me to a bake-off...after two months of talking smack, he finally forfeited after the aforementioned b-day barbecue).  Since I was feeling particularly ambitious, I actually decided to make a round layer cake AND to hand write the birthday wishes; I usually cop out and make a sheet cake, frost it in the pan, and buy "Happy Birthday" candles.  My focus is taste, not appearance.  But I think that this one looked pretty good (and certainly tasted good - red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting....mmmmmm), if I may say so myself:

I've been taking some time off from rusticating due to travel plans for the last three weekends, and I've been spending several of my evenings doing fun exciting things like organizing my case materials, ironing, and all that other stuff that you can do inside in the air conditioning (it was one of the hottest Junes on record in Charlottesville).  Since I'm in town again this weekend for the first time in a while, and I hear that it's blackberry season, I'm thinking I might need to bust out the canning materials again...