Steen's home of the certainly strange
Today I hiked to Alamere Falls via Bear Valley Trail with Doc and Jon! It was a very beautiful and spectacular hike, ~15 miles in all. To be honest, our favourite part of the hike was the section of Bear Valley Trail about 4 miles in. There was a lot of steep sections, but the views were spectacular. However, on the way back, we skipped that section because it was so steep and instead took Stewert to Glen trails and it was much mellower, but less scenic.
You may recall that I rolled a male Altmer Dragonborn recently just for the heck of it. Even though I still hadn’t finished sidequesting my female Dunmer Dragonborn into oblivion.
Well, he is still having his many adventures. Just recently, he thought that maybe Nelacar would be nice to him because they were both Altmer. I figured Altmer must be nice to their own kind at least. But Nelacar was always so aloof and dismissive of him, just like how he is to any other race. Frankly, he was being kind of a jerk.
So he gave up on being friends with Nelacar. Until one day the Dragonborn walked into the inn for some other business, and Nelacar immediately approached him saying, “When I saw this, I immediately thought of you! Take it as a token of my gratitude” and he pressed a Breton cookbook titled “Uncommon Taste” into the Dragonborn’s hands. Which surprised the Dragonborn because it was actually a really thoughtful gift, as well as a very kind and warm gesture.
Now, I haven’t finished the Azura’s Star quest line yet (I don’t even think I’ve started it), and I didn’t really do anything for Nelacar that would make him like me. Part of me thinks this must be some sort of bug that set his affinity for him to very high. But another part of me likes to think that Nelacar and my Altmer Dragonborn actually are best buds, and that cold, aloof dismissal is how Altmer show their love. An Altmer behaving in a way that isn’t outright hostility is a sign of affection!
And now I have to wonder, why did the cookbook make Nelacar think of the Dragonborn? Does he like cooking? Traveling? Eating exotic foods? Maybe the two of them should try to cook one of the recipes together sometime.
GUISE. Our homemade brie turned out absolutely, deliciously amazing. I was so concerned after the earlier mishap and also because I had heard that you can get “totally adequate brie” by aging it in your fridge. But this tasted like amazing, high-end brie and was so ooey-gooey runny soft. Mmmmmmm. Add the fact that it was much easier than cheddar and doesn’t need to age as long, I will definitely be making brie again!
Here are the previous two forms of the brie, by-the-way.
I don’t know if I mentioned earlier, but one of the rounds of curds had a lot more moisture and was softer, whilst the other was much firmer. The instructions were kind of vague as to how firm they should be, so one I barely handled at all and the other I handled a lot when first flipping them in the forms.
The soft runny one (somewhat visible in the foreground here) was extravagantly soft and very pungent and flavorful as a cheese, because the cheese ripens faster with higher moisture. It also had a lot more mottling on the rind because moisture kept seeping out throughout the ripening process. The firmer (the main focus in the photo) one was much milder in flavor, more like brie that you have probably tried before, but was still luxuriantly soft and gooey compared to most other bries I’ve had. Both were amazing, but it was good to see how the moisture content affected the final product.