It was awesome. I brought it in to work today for show and tell (it's become a rather common activity, my coworkers are quite interested in hearing about the next thing we're doing on the farm). Some of the comments were, "this is the best snack I've had in months." "This cheese is awesome." "Good job Mikey." I think it was a hit. The pound of cheese was gone, approximately 1 hour after we dove in. I brought in some alder/cherry smoked salmon to go with it and that was supremely awesome. I think tonight, or another day this week I'm going to try again, but this time add some seasoning and make a smokey mozzarella or add some basil to it. We'll see... Here are some pictures of the making of the cheese. This pic is of the kit and the recipe booklet. There's some seasoning (which I didn't use) and the rennet and citric acid is in the plastic bag on the right in the middle. The little package hanging from a string in the top left is a sunflower. We're hanging it to allow it to drop it's seeds into that cheese cloth that's tied around it. This week we'll have 3 or so more (and bigger) sunflowers all dropping their seeds too. When they're done, we'll roast them and season them and have them for snacks all winter.
That is YUMMY dairy milk. "Cheese Making at Home, 3rd Edition" recommends that Fresh, pasteurized dairy milk is used. I used 1/2 gal of 2% milk and 1/2 gal of whole milk. I think next time I'm going to use all whole and then all 2% to see what the differences are.
Here's me stirring the pot. The temperature has to be just so and there's a lot of pot stirring. Pretty much the whole time, except for about 5-7 minutes while the rennet does it's enzymatic magic.
And finally... the cheese loaf. One gallon of milk yields about 1 pound of GLORIOUS cheese. I've already found ways to make these next cheeses better, quicker, and with less mess. Now I just need a cow and a goat... After I've made a few more mozzarella, I'll make a Gouda, then a smoked Gouda. After that, I'll try my hand at a cheddar and a Parmesan.
For dinner, we had grilled chicken over spinach troffie with some of the cheese melted between the meat and the noodles.
It was scrumptious.
Last week, another farmer came to the house. Our main farmer's partner. Our main farmer went on vacation. We built two row covers for winter crops. They are going to come in real handy. We've planted enough spinach, lettuce, and mustard greens to keep us fed all winter. The carrots we planted for winter harvest are just now coming in. The Brussels sprouts are AWESOME. we planted 18 and we'll be harvesting 15, I think. I stepped on a couple when we painted this spring and I think we lost one more to bugs. But on those 15 we have GOBS upon ginormous gobs of sprouts.
The tomatoes came out this week. they are done. It wasn't a great year for toms, but it wasn't a total waste either. Trisa made some fried green tomatoes for a snack the other day and I ate some and didn't gag. No, that's not a commentary on Trisa's cooking. I literally have an aversion to tomatoes. Can't eat them. But those fried green ones were pretty darn tasty. I do however love tomato soup, salsa, red sauce, etc. Maybe I can finally expand this to eating tomatoes like a normal person...
This weekend we're going to cover crop all the garden space we're not using over the winter. We recommend that anyone with a garden do this. Now is the time to plant Rye grass (carbon fixer) and Dutch Field Peas (nitrogen fixer). In the spring, early, we'll turn over all that good green growth and it'll help keep the land needing little to no fertilizer. Be careful you don't let the Rye and Peas go to seed in the Spring. You'll be fighting that ALL SEASON if you do. By Springtime, those cover crops will have boosted the soil's fertility to just about where it needs to be for awesome production.
And finally, I must set the record straight about breaking the rules. Yes we did indeed break them. When Trisa says that she "made mention" of her desire for chocolate, she leaves a little detail out. The devil is in those details. Made mention means that she stated clearly that she would like me to go to the store and get some chocolate at least 14 times in one hour. She also stated that since we really couldn't go to a farmer's market to get ice cream, then it's an even lesser break to get ice cream. I fully agreed (with the ice cream part). I had a hankering and I just had to have some ice cream. So off to the store I went. I bought 2 gallons of ice cream for about $10 and a whole bunch of chocolate for about $20. These are the things we didn't really think of going into this. We used to eat a lot of junk food and we just couldn't quit cold turkey. We eat way less, but we still need some ice cream and chocolate from time to time... If we break the rules again, we'll let you know. But so far in more than 16 weeks, we haven't broken the rules except this once (and the two times in the very beginning when we went on trips - but we're not really counting those).
We will be buying Halloween candy at the store in a few weeks. Remember, we're not imposing our rules on anyone else.
Well, that's all for now.
Mike
