Life as a Spectator Sport

One of my old computer customers had an employee who was a real clown. She'd moan and groan all day long about how hard the work was, and at the end of the day, her refrain always was, "I worked so hard today my brain hurts!"

That's how I feel today. I've been home for three days now, and was aggravated with how little I'd accomplished in that unexpected free time. So I was determined to get everything finished up today. Maybe not laundry, considering that we were supposed to be snowed upon. But certainly all my dairy projects. I had three quarts of milk left from last week that wasn't exactly sour yet, but definitely wasn't as fresh as when I picked it up. I was still drinking it and putting it in coffee, but it wasn't going to last another day. And I had two gallons of very fresh milk waiting to be made into something.

So I made a batch of lemon cheese (milk coagulated with lemon juice) with half a gallon of last week's milk. Here it is in its cheesecloth wrapper, hanging with multiple knots from the plant hanger over the sink. By the time I took this picture, it had pretty much finished draining, and had contracted into a firm, fairly dry, ball in the cheesecloth sack.


After the whey had all drained away, I crumbled the cheese into a container and threw a bunch of dried herbs in it --thyme, basil and marjoram, I think. Tasted good, anyway. This is too crumbly to be used in a sandwich, but it will make a good addition to salads and scrambled eggs, the same way you'd use feta. It's my all time favorite fast cheese, basically a panir. You can use citric acid to curdle the milk, but I prefer lemon juice. It's more traditional, and I like the slight lemony flavor.


Then I started a batch of cheddar cheese, which is something new for me. I've made soft cheese for years, but never invested in the equipment to make the hard cheeses. Now that I have access to good milk, I thought it was time to make some good cheese. So here is two gallons of fresh raw milk in my next to biggest stainless steel pot, warming slowly from refrigerator temperature to 90 deg. F. What look like spots of something on the surface of the milk are just shadows from droplets of moisture inside the glass lid.

I had to do this in a laundry tub, because my stupid mobile home sink isn't big enough to surround the big pot with water to heat the milk. You're basically creating a water jacket type warmer, and without the laundry tubs I couldn't have done it. It never occurred to me when I put the laundry tubs in last year that I was enabling cheese making almost a year later, but I'm sure thankful that I did it. That's my candy thermometer floating in the tub checking the temperature of the water (before I read the fine print on the back of the thermometer that said it wasn't submersible, and before I noticed the water sloshing around inside the tube getting the paper with the printed scale on it soaking wet). So I may be buying a new candy thermometer before long.

After the milk reaches the proper temperature, you add the particular type of starter for the cheese you're making, let it sit for a while to ripen, and then add rennet. After it sits for another length of time, the resulting curd is cut into cubes with a curd knife, and the curds are slowly heated to 100 degrees. This was the hardest part for me, because the blasted milk did not want to get any warmer than the 90 degrees I had already managed. I finally had to add water heated on the stove to get it to the required temperature.

Then I stirred and checked the temperature, and stirred and checked the temperature, and added hot water to keep the temperature where it was supposed to be, and stirred some more. Half an hour of stirring, yuck. Mom, you will remember how much I hated having to stir a custard or cream sauce when I was little. I don't like it any better now. But the half hour finally passed, the curds had firmed up in the 100 degree water bath, and I reluctantly drained the whey down the sink--another good reason to have chickens. I hate to throw away anything with so much vitamins in it, but I could not bring myself to make anything with it today. Whey cheeses, like ricotta, have to be made with fresh whey, and by the time I'm up to cheesemaking again, it would be way too old.

Little Miss Muffet's Curds 'n' Whey, or my equivalent thereof. Doesn't look terribly appetizing, but it sure tastes good! I had to sample at each step. The recipe I was using said the whey would look greenish. Mine was yellow! Tells you how much butterfat there was in that milk.


Here's how the curds looked after draining the whey. I see that I'm going to need a different colander. This one is large enough, but it doesn't have enough holes. I had to tip and turn the colander for several minutes to drain off most of the whey, and even then, a lot ended up back in the pot with the curds.


It took hours, but we've finally made it to the final step, pressing. Or the final step for today, at least. The round of cheese still has to air dry for a couple of days after it finishes pressing, and will then be waxed and aged for a couple of months.

More pictures tomorrow after it comes out of the press.

Oh--almost forgot! While the cheese was in one of its resting periods, I started a batch of yoghurt. So I've been through eleven quarts of milk today. I think that's a record.

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RSS Feed PERSONAL Send email to liz at life-as-a-spectator-sport.com Home I'm a mother, grandmother, a computer professional, Democrat, Christian. I welcome politely worded comments and email, my spam filter throws the rest away, so don't bother to flame me WHY 'LIFE AS A SPECTATOR SPORT' "If you're lucky not to live in the gutters of a slum, but still can't afford to take vacations in the Alps, you're part of that enormous middle class who lives life through the medium of the television, further separated from "real" life by air conditioner, by automobile, by dishwasher, microwave and ice-in-the-door refrigerator, by automatic washer and dryer, and all the other appliances and conveniences that make it possible for America to live life at second hand. I'm not sure why Americans decided that televised drama was better than the real thing, that cardboard microwave food containers were an adequate substitute for real dishes, and their contents for real food, or that cooking, dishwashing and face-to-face conversation wasn't worth the effort and time it required. Someone fed this nation a plastic crate of out-of-season tomatoes and told us it was life and we took them at their word, and we're so much the poorer for it that it's hard to know where to start to list the shortcomings." I wrote this a couple of years ago, but I have to admit it's much less amusing than I thought it would be to see the artifical construct falling apart. THE NON-ELECTRIC HOME Cleaning, 1 Cleaning, 2 Cleaning, 3 KNITTING BLOGS Extravayarnza Knitting Heretic Mind of Winter Pie Knits Persistent Illusion See Eunny Knit The Keyboard Biologist Taleweaver's Ramblings TECHnitting Wendy Knits FINISHED PROJECTS -------FINISHED IN 2006------- Peruvian Cap Tutti-Frutti Socks Shelley's Socks Carol's Socks -------FINISHED IN 2007------- Chain Link Socks Baby Surprise Jacket Valerie & Friend Baby Bonnet Rainbow Baby Socks Girls Pixie Hood Mitred Square Heart Red & White Socks Coffee Cup Pot Holder Nubbins Dishcloth Garterlac Dishcloth Suede Booties Kate's Socks Norwegian Sweet Baby Cap Half Thumbless Mittens Red Mittens for Akkol -------FINISHED IN 2008------- SELF-RELIANCE AND THE FUTURE -- Blogs and websites -- Causubon's Book Club Orlov Food Storage Made Easy From the Wilderness In the Wake Listening to Katrina Survival Topics The Modern Homestead The Oil Drum Notes from a Hillside Farm -- Mailing Lists -- 12vdc Power Living on the Land Rainwater Refrigeration Alternatives Old Ways of Living POLITICAL BLOGS and SITES The political sites have moved BOOKS I'M READING How to Grow More Vegetables, etc. Small Scale Grain Raising ARCHIVES February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 August 2008 July 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February 2002