Need to Start Writing my SRP soon....

I'm seriously so screwed. But hopefully I won't leave it until the last minute. I've decided that I'll redo my experiment on the weekend or on Friday night.
Now, however I need to write the whole report up!

Firstly there's the abstract which is a brief summary of what I did.Which shouldn't be too hard seeing as I didn't have much to start off with anyway
Then I should write my introduction... I'll put it in dot point here and write it up in full for my report. :D

Explain what casein is.
Explain why milk reacts this way when vinegar is added to it?
Say what uses casein has (i.e making mishti, cottage cheese, yoghurt etc)

And the rest I will think about and add later...

My Awesome Revelation

Long time no post man. LOL.
Anyway, remember how I found out that my experiment is actually used for making curry stuff? Well, my aunty happens to do this experiment practically every week. Why? Because she sells mishti. Mwahahaha. So I asked her about my experiment and I found out that...

Too much vinegar = the end product is too hard and smells really bad but there is also more
Too little vinegar = end product doesn't form too well, smell isn't as bad but not that much is made

Also, when I told her how much milk I used, she told me that you could get less than a hand full of casein. Well, now I know how much I lost down the drain. And why she has humongous pots in her house.
Furthermore, I delved into the deepest pits of my memory until I remembered my parents making mishti, and I really wanted to help. Anyway, the main point is that when they filtered the casein, they used a cloth to drain out all of the water, so that the water could completely come out and no casein would be lost. Now I know why a normal strainer didn't work. x.x

So... all that's left is for me to do my experiment again? Oh wait, I have to write up my method, AGAIN. Waaaaaah~

----- I just realised, do I list my aunty in my a references, bibliography or acknowledgments? I'm leaning towards acknowledgment...

Something which I should have mentioned....

Ok well, you know how I was doing the experiment before? My parents happened to see me (well, more specifically my dad) and he asked me why I was making some of this curry dessert thing called mishti. And I was giving him the O-o face and then I realised that it was true. Then he started laughing at me.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure if you're not of Bengali/Indian/etc background you'll have no idea what it is, so I tried researching it.
Well, in Bengali, "mishti" literally means "sweet" in English. You can have a large variation in the way they are made so you can get different shapes, colours and tastes.
For example, the ones below are white and black(yes I know they're not black but we just call them that) mishtis.

I don't know what it looks like to non-Bengali people, but omg, this looks so yummy. X.X
I searched up some recipes for it on the internet and instead of using vinegar, they use lemon juice. Which also has acidic properties so naturally casein would form. (http://indianfood.about.com/od/sweetsanddesserts/r/chamcham.htm)

So, I thought that this is one of the things that I could put in my introduction. I could say that my research could help maximise the quality of the mishti? Or something like that. 8D

--------- I just realised when I use the term "curry" I mean people like Bengalis/Indians/Pakistanis. I'm not sure if this is racist, but I use it all the time and I know heaps of other people who use it too... Anyway, just know that I'm not reffering tothe curry that you eat with rice. Yeah, that spicy thing. Totally does not go with dessert. LOL.

What the Casin Looks Like..

Okay, I'M sorry for not updating this earlier but here is what the casein looks like.

I put it on a tissue on my table in my room. As you can see it there is like, seriously NOTHING.  And maybe I did the experiment wrong but it doesn't even seem like plastic... it's yellow and hard but not really like plastic to me, more like some type of hard dough. Anyway, I'm treating my failed experiment as a "practice experiment" in preparation for the real thing. Hopefully my new one won't be such a disaster!!

New method

Equipment

·        1x spoon

·        1x strainer

·        1x saucepan

·        1x thermometer

·        1x measuring cup

·        1x ceramic bowl

·        500mL of vinegar

·        1L of full cream milk

Procedure

·        Place the strainer over the sink and the ceramic bowl on the bench.

·        Pour 100mL of vinegar into the measuring cup.

·        Heat the 200mL of milk in the saucepan to a temperature of 50°C.

·        Pour the heated milk into the ceramic bowl.

·        Add the vinegar to the milk in the bowl.

·        Stir the mixture with a spoon for one minute.

·        Pour the contents of the bowl carefully into the strainer.

·        Gather the solids in the strainer and mould into a round ball.

·        Place in the sun to dry for one day.

·        Tabulate information on the resultant substance including: weight, hardness, colour, flexibility and smell.

·        Repeat experiment replacing 100mL of vinegar with 0mL, 50mL, 100mL and 200mL of vinegar.

Tying up the Loose Ends

Ok so, I think I've established that after my super fail experiment, I need to change my experiment a bit lot. I need:

• A better strainer. Like one with super thin holes
• More milk + vinegar. The last batch produced so little casein =.=''
• A noseplug
• A better method

Oh, but I don't really want to write up another method! I spent so much time on my last one~ Ah well, I'll make some tweaks here and there... ><;;

OMG KILL ME RIGHT NOW.

Ok, so I just came back from my experiment.

IT WAS AN ABSOLUTE DISASTER

The casein. Smelt. So. BAD. It was like a mixture between urine and vinegar. I felt like dying. Anyway, I'll just run through what happened.
I can't believe I was so happy at the beginning. I had no idea was I was in for.

I even took a picture of the milk heating. Even I call that sad now. ><''
I let it reach 50 degrees and them I poured it into the bowl, then I poured in 50mL of vinegar. (I wanted to start off from a middle number)
Then, the smell started getting to my nose. It was horrendous. Nevertheless, because I was an awesome scientist I continued on. I stirred the stuff for a minute (I'm really tempted to called the "stuff" something else starting with an s) and it came out so gross. It looked like vomit to be honest. I seriously thought that I would have much more casein than this minuscule amount.

You can see that there are only like, a few flecks in there. Then I saw that no more casein would form and put it into the strainer. The thing was, the bowl was kind of hot, and the smell was so nauseating that the bowl kind of slipped and a lot of the casein fell into the sink. I still persevered and I tried collecting the casein and put it onto paper towels. The sadder thing was that only the little flecks came out so I couldn't take them off the towels.

I did, however get the little clumps which you can see on the bottom left hand side in the above picture. So I squished those together and made it into a ball and not a "flat rectangular shape", because seriously, I knew by then this would not be a legitimate experiment. I put the casein on my hand and took this photo:

My hands smell really bad now.
LOL you can see the camera strap!


Anyway, after that there was a lot of cleaning up I had to do. I wiped the sink and benches, and washed my equipment. I also sprayed the kitchen with air freshener. Stuff the food.

This was such an epic fail. I might post later on how many mistakes/errors there were in here, but right now, I'm seriously way too tired. G'NIGHT!