Blue Sky

Well, we didn't have blue skies yesterday for WWKIP (wide world knit in public) day.  By the time I got back from dragging Shawn around a grocery store while he was half asleep, it wasn't raining, but it was just after I passed the Hooksett tolls on my way up to Concord.  After many phone calls and Sarah A's help with the Meetup site for our group, we got just about everyone notified and moved it to the food court of the Steeplegate Mall.  There was another group convening there as well for WWKIP, so there was quite the gathering of the knitterly.  Since  we were there for a four hour stretch, I was able to get quite a bit done on the Secret Project II, which is for Chris and Kristie. 

Shawn and I made cranberry orange wheat bread in the bread machine last night, and I worked on Secret Project IV, Part A for Sarah A, since she'd been at WWKIP.   I also managed to get a couple of loads of laundry done so I have work clothes for a bit, which is helpful as I have four suits at the dry cleaners at the moment.  Don't get me wrong, I like my dry cleaner, but doesn't it gall me to pay for it.  Sigh.

Yesterday Mary Kate blogged about a new cheese replacement product.  So I toddled down to A Market off South Willow in Manchester and bought some Daiya  mozzarella style shreds this morning before knitting guild.  I also managed to finally find some Parmesan replacement that didn't have any milk derivatives in it, so that was cool. 

After knitting guild, I decided to put the Daiya to the test.  Since the pepperoni we bought yesterday has milk in it, I couldn't do pepperoni, so I did a veggie pizza instead, tomato, onion, olive and zucchini, using my Pampered Chef pizza stone.  (Also, for those keeping track, I cut myself again on the new killer Pampered Chef forged knives.  That's twice this weekend and four times total since we got them.  They're great, they are just really, really, fricking sharp.) The first picture is the before picture, meaning before I cooked it.  The second is the after baking picture. 

I don't know how I feel about it.  The texture was more like melted brie than mozzarella, and it tasted okay, it just didn't taste like cheese.  It tasted more like a tangy ish white sauce.  It wasn't bad, but it wasn't very cheesy.  Maybe that's because it hasn't been long enough since I've been off the milk wagon, or maybe it's that I like my pizza cheese somewhat toasty brown with lovely crusty brown bits that the Daiya did not achieve. Again, it wasn't bad, it just wasn't cheese.  Maybe if I made a meat pizza, the meat would have been more of a primary player and I would not have noticed the lack of cheesy-ness as much.

Stay tuned for further updates as they arise.