Making Cheese

Did you know that you can stretch Mozzarella like taffy?

I am reading (or rather listening to) the book Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. She normally writes fiction with an environmental or sciencey twist. This book is more about food and about eating locally. In it, she mentions making cheese. I love cheese. When she said that making mozarella takes less than an hour, I was enthralled.

So, I ordered a kit from the Cheese Queen. It arrived on Wednesday and I had to make some
cheese! I noticed that Richard had bought a fresh gallon of milk so I grabbed it and started making cheese! Well, since I hadn't read all the directions yet, it came out horrible. Upon further inspection I discovered that the milk was homogenized. Homogenized milk cannot be used to make cheese! It won't set a curd. Well, I do believe in inquiry based learning so what can I say?

Last night, I went to three different stores before I could find a brand of milk in the store that is not homogenized. Sigh.

Want to see how easy it is to make cheese once you have found the right milk?




First, warm up your wood cook stove. What?! You don't have one of these? Oh, well, then you'll have to use your gas or electric stove!















In a stainless steel pot heat your non-homogenized milk with a teaspoon of citric acid mixed with 1/4 cup water to 90 degrees F while stirring slowly. Once you reach 90, remove from heat and gently stir in 1/4 tablet of rennet (previously dissolved in 1 cup water). Stir less than 1 minute and then let set covered for 5 minutes.










You are looking for this, a clean break. See how the curd breaks away from the whey?














If you don't have a clean break, let it set for a few more minutes undisturbed. Once you have the break, you can cut the curd into 1/4 inch pieces.












Put it back on the heat and gently stir. You don't want to break the curd up much smaller than it is, you just don't want anything to burn while you warm up the curds and cook them a little.

Here are the curds on the stove. This time we heat them to 105 while gently stirring. We don't want to break the curds! Once you reach 105, take the pot off the heat and stir gently for 2-5 minutes. The longer you stir the harder the cheese.







Separate the curds from the whey. Put the curds in a glass container. You want to get as much whey out of the curds as possible.









Heat the curds in the microwave for 1 minute. Pour off the whey and gently fold the curds into each other. Heat the curds for another 30 seconds and pour off the whey and fold. This is where you add your cheese salt and any herbs. The curds will form a "dough". The reason we heat the curds is because they need to be at about 140 F to stretch.












I wore gloves to handle the hot mozzarella. The more you work the cheese, the firmer it gets.


















Here is the finished product!

A trip to the dog show with Jane

I always have fun with Jane. We met about five years ago when we were showing our girls Winnie and Venus against each other. We struck a deal, whoever won had to take the other one out for lunch. It's too bad she lives so far away! We finished both girls and have taken turns dog-sitting for each other and have found various other excuses to hang out together such as driving down to California for the regular greyhound specialties. She got Finn a couple years ago and I handle him for her when she enters him in a show. This weekend he was entered in the Sammamish show on Sunday so I drove up on Saturday night and came home Sunday.

The show was fun and our friend Linda finished her dog Wyatt's dual championship! She took us both out to lunch (thanks, Linda!) in celebration!

The other excitement was that I got to meet Jane's new bird, Homer. Homer is a Slender Billed Cockatoo. When she first told me that she had a new bird I looked it up on the internet and thought that Slender Billed Cockatoos were not very attractive birds! They have these blue bald eye patches and orange feathers around their face. Plus, they have these long skinny bills. Well, these birds are not very common pets (Homer was bred and raised in captivity) so perhaps there just aren't enough good pictures out there. Jane told me that she wanted this type of bird because she had heard that they are very engaging and love to interact with people yet aren't as clingy and needy as other cockatoos.

I have to say, that there is definitely more to this guy than meets the eye! She took him out and set up on my shoulder and I tried to shrink away. That is a big bill and it is right next to my eye! Plus he makes this loud honking noise that sounds like a horn and makes me jump every time. It didn't take me long though, to get more comfortable interacting with Homer. He wanted me to scritch him (as opposed to Owen the African Grey who always looks at me mistrustfully). He would nibble gently on my fingers if I stopped and would tilt his little head and arch his neck to encourage me to get his favorite spots. When he started getting too nibbly, Jane put him away.

The next day, she bought him a new toy at the show, he instantly loved it! It was a ball type toy with lots of texture and a bell inside (you can see it in this picture). He would pick it up and hop around and make cute little sqwaking noises (more like a chicken). He was obviously having a great time! We rolled it across the floor and he hopped after it and retrieved it. It was very, very cute.

I endeavored to take some good pictures of him so that you can see that Slender Billed Cockatoos are indeed very pretty and extremely charming! I love the orange feathers that underly the white on his head and neck. It's true that the more you get to know someone and the more you like their personality, the more attractive they become!

Of course, I had to include pictures of the other kids so that they don't feel jealous! At the top is Venus (I love the way she looks on that couch!) and then Finn doing what greyhounds do best and below is a picture Owen who wants me to remind everyone that he was the first bird in the house!

Driving in the rain

This afternoon I was driving back home from Washington in the rain. (I had been to visit a friend in the Seattle area and show her dog in conformation). It is a long drive, about 4 hours. I was thankful that the trouble that plagued the north bound lanes did not spill over to the south bound side!

As I was approaching my exit, I realized I was behind a cute little white '65 Mustang with dual exhausts. It made me feel a little nostalgic since I used to drive a white '66 Mustang (it was just a straight 6). I noticed that they had the little triangular windows in the front open and made me smile to myself. I know why they had those open and I know why they had the other windows cracked open. They were defrosting the windshield. Yup. This is really sucky weather to be driving one of those babies!

It's funny because before I caught up to the cute little Mustang I had told my trusty more modern (by 30 years) vehicle how I much I appreciated the 10-speed windshield wipers. Wish I had known about rain-x when I was driving my own vintage Mustang! Made me want to roll my window down and pass on the info when I drove past. There are days I miss that car, but today was not one of them!

At The Farm

We went to "The Farm" (the in-laws place) this weekend. They live in a small valley in the coastal mountain range on 140 acres or so. Their property is bordered by a river on one side and a creek on another. We took the Brown Dog down to the river to cool off and I snapped a few pictures I thought I'd share.





This was taken when we first got there.


















This was taken at the end of the session. She was cooled down and the light was softer. This one is my favorite.










This is her retrieving her kong in the pasture.

Things that make me Happy

After all the hard work and the watching and the waiting, these are the things that make me happy!







Green tomatoes and peas


















An almost ripe Cherokee purple (Yum!)















A cute little volunteer pumpkin












A white eggplant. Incidently, slugs seem to really like eggplant! I don't like to share my eggplant with slugs.












A growing chocolate sweet pepper. It will be a beautiful shade of chocolate brown if I can stand to let it mature and not eat it when it's green. Very few of our peppers ever make it to maturity! We tend to eat them green.