Harvest

If this picture needs any explanation whatsoever, there is something severely wrong with you.

I MADE CHEESE!

There was a post recently on one of my yahoo groups that said how easy it was to make your own cheese. It piqued my interest, so I tried it. The first time, I went to the store and bought organic whole milk, followed the instructions and made cheese. It's actually quite simple...you put 2 quarts of milk in a pot, heat it to the desired temperature, add 1/4 cup of vinegar to make the curds and whey separate, let it sit for a few minutes, the strain through cheesecloth, or some other similar material. The first time around, I got the milk to 150, strained and drained, then put the whey back in the pot to heat to boiling. The first time I got a good half a pound of something resembling dry feta. It went into the panzanella I made for dinner last night. The second time I got about 2 tablespoons of cheese, but oh was it good. We had it on bagels Sunday morning.

Yesterday, I found a half-gallon of whole milk in the fridge at work which needed to be used for something before it went bad. Took it home and made, you guessed it, more cheese. This time I played around with the temperature and got something resembling a dry cottage cheese, which absolutely rocked with the addition of some kosher salt and some Pampered Chef rosemary herb seasoning blend. It was so good, I just HAD to toast a bagel and have some cheese on it right then, even though it was 10:00 at night.

So I made the cheese, and the leftover whey sent me off on another tangent. What do do with all the leftover whey? Seems like a total waste to just throw it out and I don't have any pigs or chickens to feed it to. So, I did what any good farm woman would do and I hauled out my bread machine and made homemade bread. I'd forgotten how EASY it is to load the bread machine and how GOOD the bread is.

So what's the point of all this? Well, it started out as a way to experiment and just try something to see if I could do it. What it became, was a good look at exactly how dependent modern society is on the supermarket. No, it's really NOT cost effective (at least not here in the US) to make my own cheese, because I can buy the same stuff cheaper than the gallon of milk to make it. If I had a flock of goats, like Loner does, I'd have a source of free milk and it would indeed be cheaper. But the fact is, the cheese TASTES BETTER. That should count for something. Yeah, I can go to the store and BUY a loaf of bread. But the bread that came out of my bread machine last night TASTES BETTER. And it had no preservatives in it, was made with organic whole wheat flour, and cost less than the grocery store bread. (I can guarantee you it will be eaten faster, too.) The thing is, Americans have gotten so hung up on the convenience of the grocery store that they've lost sight of the "big picture" - to eat healthy food that hasn't been genetically modified and actually tastes like it's supposed to.

Putting away my soapbox now.