SnitchSeeker.com - Potions Seminar #3

Quote:

Originally Posted by astrocat (Post 12475370)

So no one had noticed her choking on air. Good. That would be... embarrassing to say the least. Ashley got to the flavoring part. Should she put anything on it? Nah, what was she gonna do, eat it? She left the cheese plain. No. Thank. You. And she left it in one ball. She brought it over to the cheeseboard. She didn't wanna keep it. "This is definitely edible. I didn't season it though." Then she walked away, having no intention of trying anyone else's cheese unless someone she tolerated and semi-trusted asked her to. Goodbye, plain blob of mozzarella cheese that I made perfectly but didn't season because I wasn't planning on eating it.

"How do you know it's edible if you didn't try it?" David calmly questioned the Ravenclaw as she presented her cheese. He wasn't planning on trying all of these himself; surely the students saw that! Nonetheless, he gave the girl a bit of a smile as she turned in her cheese. And if it wasn't seasoned... well, he might just save it for the school ingredients cupboard.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MadAlice (Post 12475428)

Violet had finally gotten her mixture back up to 80 degrees and then sprinkled on the salt. Looking up for a minute at the teacher, she copied his movements and began folding and stretching the mixture--it was cheese now, she guessed. This was fun!

But wait--other flavorings? They were supposed to have flavorings? Violet wasn't sure what you would flavor mozzarella cheese with. Wait--she had some basil leaves in her pocket; she'd picked them when she was on that walk the other day. She pulled them out--they were rather dry by now, but that would be fine, she could crumble them up and add them to the cheese.

Violet worked and worked on her cheese until it shone and the texture felt just right. Then she cut off a small corner and put it in her mouth--it felt weird eating potions experiments! And what do you know, it tasted pretty good! So she cut a nice-sized slice from the other end and brought it up to the front of class.

"I think mine is ready, Mr. Truebridge."

"Thank you." David accepted the next cheese offering with a nod. "It looks nice." Was that basil in there? Mmmm. He MIGHT try this one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FearlessLeader19 (Post 12475445)

So Truebridge hadn’t said anything to her which meant that she was doing okay so far. His nod confirmed it. Confident in herself, Claudine was all set to stretch and fold the cheese. But how did she do this? With Truebridge’s instructions, of course. Eighty degrees? Check. Gloves? Also a go. Once the salt was sprinkled on, the fourth year did her best to copy Truebridge’s actions.

Did she want to flavour her mozzarella? Um… yes. Claudine opted for olive oil and herbs, which she collected from the counter. Carefully, the olive oil was added first then rubbed in. The same pattern went for the herbs. The entire cheese was once again folded and folded repeatedly until her hands hurt. At least it was smooth in the end.

Claudine hearty sliced a bit for the others and Truebridge [s]and his bad pun[/i] to try. So, um… it was okay to try the few that were up there already, yes? After adding her slice to the mix, the Slytherin proceeded to take tiny chunks of a few of her classmates’ cheeses.

Ah, here was a brave soul willing to sample from the cheese platter. "And how are they?" David inquired kindly, waiting to see if the Slytherin girl made a face or anything at the cheese samples. Was the Ravenclaw's, in fact, edible?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cassirin (Post 12475454)

Phoebe grinned HUGELY at the teacher man, pleased that he felt the need to stop and give them his extra attention, since apparently they were just being ignorant about how the spell interacted with the cheese juice. Ahem, the whey. She didn't stop giving him a big, charming grin, even as she pointed her wand at the cauldron and gave it a little spiral motion. "Caseum celeri. Check on the cheese juice, will ya, Flynny?"

Did it bring her joy to annoy adults? Yes. Yes, it certainly did. Phoebe leaned in herself, giving the fire another nudge upward, since they needed to get the whole thing nice and toasty (cheese toasty) before it was ready for stretching. "I'm sorry if I offended you, Flynny. How about I have to give it the salt and stretching to apologize properly?"

It wasn't easy to annoy this particular Truebridge. David merely blinked at the goofy girl, watching and waiting to see if she would be able to perform the spell. Once she did, to his satisfaction, he walked away with a small tsk to himself.

Quote:

Originally Posted by emjay (Post 12475455)

Although Morgan was pretty terrible at potions, or pretty much anything that took an extended amount of focus, he was rather keen on making his own food today. Of course he'd be eating it rather than save it for any future potions. If it ended up edible, of course.

He'd stirred and stirred and stirred, then cast the cheesecharming spell. Oh, look at that! Morgan watched as the milk solution started breaking up and curdling. He watched another moment before remembering he needed to heat this up again (unintentionally forgetting the crosshatching cutting). He stirred and stirred as it heated - probably a little too much stirring, but that was partially out of boredom. It took a long time to get to the right temperature, okay? But by the time he looked at the thermometer again, it was past 40 degrees, so that was probably good enough.

Morgan cast the spell again and watched as the watery stuff evaporated away and he was left with all the chunky milk bits. He was kinda fascinated with how gross it looked. But would it taste okay? He turned up the heat and started stirring more. Was he supposed to stir more? He wasn't sure, but it was getting harder and harder to stir.

He let out a chuckle as he heard the instructor's pun. "Good one, Mr. Truebridge! Do you have a lot of kids?" He eyed him a moment. The man looked older, but not like old enough to have many kids. How many kids did one need before they started telling dad jokes in public? It sounded like something his own dad would say and he had five kids.

He was getting distracted again because when he looked down at his thermometer, it was over 80 degrees. Oops. Time to take that off the heat and get some gloves on. Morgan sprinkled plenty of salt over the dough-like substance and started to streeeetch it out. He stretched and pulled and folded it in on itself, over and over, soon forming it into a shiny ball. In fact, it looked so much like a giant bouncy ball that he wonder if it would actually bounce.

Without missing another beat, Morgan picked up his cheese ball and bounced it against his table, only to see it bounce high into the air. "Whoa!" That was SO cool.

"I.... do not have any children," David replied to this Gryffindor, puzzled as to why the boy thought he had offspring? Did he seem like an old wizard with many children? Odd. Odd boy. At least he liked his joke.

As for the cheese bouncing. "I will take that, thank you." David silently summoned the mozzarella ball to the cheeseplate for sampling. The boy could have it back at the end of the lesson, provided he could show enough responsibility to take it safely from the room.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MadMadamMalfoy (Post 12475500)

Heath’s eyes flicked from the contents of his cauldron to his thermometer. Was he doing this right? He had no idea, but the nod he received from Mr. Truebridge was an encouraging sign. He liked this teacher! He wasn’t loud or chaotic, and a teacher who threw out cheesy (see? He could make puns too!) puns was much better than one who threw out insults! Could Mr. Truebridge be their permanent potions master? Please?

He looked up as Mr. Truebridge spoke again, making a note of the next instructions. Okay, massage salt into the cheese when it reaches 80 degrees, pull and fold until smooth and shiny, add flavor if desired. Got it! But what flavor should he add? As he thought, he remembered a tomato basil cheese his grandma had served as an appetizer last Christmas. Maybe he could try to recreate that! He was so focused on picking the right flavor combination for his cheese that he almost missed Mr. Truebridge’s next cheese pun. Hehe, good one, sir!

By the time Heath finished listening to the directions and picking a flavor for his cheese, his thermometer read exactly 60 degrees. He quickly turned off the burner and put on his gloves - because no way was he doing the next part without gloves! He didn’t want to accidentally flavor the cheese with germs! He sprinkled the salt on and massaged it into the cheese. When that was done, he went to the counter to retrieve some dried tomatoes and basil. Once those had been added to the cheese too, Heath began to work the cheese. Pull, fold, pull, fold…

As he worked, he wondered if different flavors of cheese produced different effects in potions? For that matter, were some types of cheese better for certain potions than others? Did all cheese-based potions use mozzarella or did some call for other kinds of cheese? Asdfjkl! He had so many questions, but none that he could ask at the moment, as he didn’t have a hand free to raise. Maybe he’d check out Charm Your Own Cheese from the library later.

Heath lost track of how much time had passed until his cheese became smooth and shiny. He carefully broke it up into three good-sized balls; two of which were placed into containers to keep for later. He already had an idea about what to do with that cheese! He broke a tiny piece off the third ball to taste. He had to make sure it was edible before letting his classmates sample it. Hmm… it wasn’t exactly like the tomato basil cheese from Christmas, but it was pretty close. Anyway, it tasted better than he expected! Satisfied with his work, he placed his ball of cheese on the cheeseboard up front, breaking off a small piece to take back to Claudine, and took samples from the other cheeses.

“Here, want to try mine?” he asked upon returning to his station, offering Claudine the piece of cheese he’d saved for her.

David approved of this one's effort. He could tell he was a conscientious student who knew how to f o c u s and take his time with his work. "Thank you," he greeted the boy when he dropped off his cheese. It looked nice.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tegz (Post 12475520)

Evaporation was convenient, Flynn just nodded at Mr Truebridge thankfully, hoping his ears weren't too pink, not that they were likely noticeable since he had outgrown almost everyone now and these days most people didn't see the tops of his ears so easily. Being watched usually came second nature to Flynn, as a performer, but it was different in a classroom setting, especially when your friend had just said stuff to you about said watcher. Thankfully Phoebe had the spellwork under control. He startled a bit when she asked him to check but went ahead.

"Um.. yeah sure, Fifi."

He could check the cheese juice was gone, no sweat. And.... yeah, no... cheese juice. He gave Mr Truebridge a weakly enthusiastic thumbs up. Yup. Evaporated, just like the man had said.

The temperature was going up and Flynn kept an eye on it.

"You didn't offend me. Go ahead though, Fifi its 80 now." massaging cheese wasn't really on his to do list. It was a good chance to peek around at their classmates too. Nobody seemed to have mucked up too much that he could tell, but Flynn for sure didn't want to volunteer to taste test anything either, especially not Morgan's giant ball, though Heath's looked kinda fancy and impressive.

"Do you want flavours, Fifi? You could send some home to your mum maybe."

So, would this pair be finishing their cheese any day now, or...? Were they to wait until Christmas? David pointedly looked at the Hufflepuff, then at his watch, then at the boy again. Time was ticking, did he know?

"Our time together is nearly up. If you'd like to try a bit of your classmates' cheese, please help yourself as the cheeseboard floats around the room." And with a light flick of his wrist, David sent the wooden platter floating off toward the first row of students. "Please be sure to clean your cauldron and take your potions kit, and your cheese if you wish, with you. Thank you for giving me your time and attention today! I think Potions doesn't get cheddar than this."

He had to throw in one last pun for them, heh.