Friday, November 22, 2013

Cheeeeeeeeseheads

I recently took a soft cheese making class with Herbalist, Linda Conroy. I got some milk from Grassway organics and tried out my hand at feta cheese. Here is the process after the heating, rennet, and culture steps.

"Cutting the cheese"

Draining the whey

"Cutting the cheese"...again

Draining the whey...again...after salting heavily

The final cut

We stored some in the fridge like this.

The rest is stored in olive oil in the cupboard. This is my preferred method, but we ran out of olive oil.

And, finally, Neal reading for our book discussion. He set the thermostat himself, so no comments about me being a meanie by keeping it cold in there.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Kitchen farming

We have been busy micro-farming lots of little bacteria and yeasts. Here are some of our most recent adventures:

Carrot,beet,cabbage, burdock-"kraut". Nice sweet-sour flavor

Brusselini ferment (like cabbage kraut but with Brussels sprout tops instead).

One of 2 crocks full of green cabbage sauerkraut. My friend Mercedes and I had a preservation day so we could combine efforts and socialize. We will hopefully be continuing that trend.

New experiment here: lactofermented chutneys. This pear version is less than a day old. It will sit out for one more day before I move it to the fridge.

Apple chutney. We did two quarts of this.i hope it's good because I'd like use up some of our apples.

Neal is making apple cider vinegar from apple cider. It should be almost done.

Oatmeal porridge. The oats soak for 24 hours before you cook them. It is supposed to be sour.... We will see how it goes.

Neal continues to tend the sourdough starter. I want him to diversify and start making sourdough crackers in edition to bread :)

Cream cultured with piima. Turns more sour than whipping cream but less sour than store bought sour cream.

We used some of the cultured cream to make cultured butter. Look how yellow it is!