The Pantry Project (Ice Cream Edition)

Ran across an ice cream maker at Goodwill the other day, and it reminded me that ice cream is a wonderful way of preserving the products of the season - goat milk, eggs, and fresh fruit. Also it’s been pretty hot lately and that’s just the excuse I needed. I bought the ice cream maker. 

This delicious pink concoction, my first foray, is not technically ice cream, because it doesn’t have any eggs in it (or cream for that matter) but rather frozen yogurt. Sorta. I’m calling it “raspberry cheesecake” and it’s based on a batch of chévre that didn’t quite firm up enough to be called cheese. I could have used it like sour cream, but I already had sour cream in the fridge. It occurred to me to sweeten it instead, mix it with a bunch of raspberries, some yogurt, and run it through the machine. It’s delicious and right now I’m enjoying it as a bedtime snack. 

From the farm: 

Goat milk

Chèvre 

Raspberries 

From the grocery store:

Sugar

Yogurt 

Nothing from the gleaners pantry in this batch of ice cream, but maybe next I’ll try peach - there are always peaches at gleaner’s right now. 

High Cheese Season 2020 (Making Do)

            A middle stage in the making of cheddar 

In last week’s post on preserving, I forgot to include cheese. Cheese is kind of the whole point of this farm - a desire to milk goats and learn how to make cheese was one of the driving forces in moving up here in the first place. After ten or so years, I have developed three or four cheese recipes that serve me well. As in many endeavors, it is pretty easy to achieve a basic level of competence, and then quite difficult to move on to a level of expertise that allows for consistent, high quality results every time. 

Being who I am, I have more or less decided that I’m happy with my level. I very seldom have an abject failure - all the cheese I make tastes good and is usable for one application or another. But I often have to decide what that application is AFTER I see how the cheese turns out. 

Today I am making chevre and cheddar. Chevre is easy - you just culture the fresh milk and wait 24 hours, then drain it through a clean pillowcase and salt it to taste. Once in a while, especially in very warm weather, the chevre will develop some off, goaty flavors that nobody is fond of. When that happens, I incorporate the cheese into a highly flavored recipe where the goaty flavors will be outcompeted,  like spicy eggplant Parmesan. 

Cheddar is more difficult. It requires several steps, and my recipes include instructions that are patently impossible to follow in a home kitchen, such as “hold the milk at exactly 99 degrees for four hours.” Much of the “cheddar” I’ve made is actually just “plain semi-hard cheese.” The most common defect is that it stays crumbly instead of melding into a single, smooth textured mass. But hey, goat cheese crumbles are a delicious addition to many dishes. Luckily, my Mexican husband is totally used to a dish of cheese crumbles on the table as a condiment, with a spoon, for sprinkling onto everything from refried beans to scrambled eggs to green salad. 

Making do with what you have is a philosophy, one that I’m fond of. I’m not going to waste any time lamenting over a “failure” to produce perfect cheddar when what I’ve actually produced is a pretty delicious piece of cheese. Instead, I’m going to incorporate that cheese into the larger, creative task of taking stock of what I have on hand and weaving disparate ingredients into something new and satisfying. 

This morning, I opened a vacuum sealed package of cheese from early this spring, expecting to find a nice, mild, melting cheddar. Instead it was a sharp flavored crumbly cheese. But it still worked well to make squash blossom goat cheese quesadillas for breakfast. I got no complaints. 

The Fermentation Files, Spring 2019

Spring finally sprang, and we’ve had a few weeks of beautiful weather. The grass grew all at once, the trees blossomed, and the rhubarb plant went wild. 

I love rhubarb, it’s exactly the kind of low maintenance perennial I want to fill my property with. But it is seriously prolific. By mother’s day I had already exhausted my family’s patience with rhubarb crisp, rhubarb pie, and rhubarb quickbread. So today I decided to start another batch of rhubarb wine. 

Last year’s rhubarb wine came out pretty good - dry, light pink, and quite quaffable. It’s nice to be able to start a wine in springtime, because most homemade fruit wines are only possible in the fall - blackberry, plum, hard apple cider. Rhubarb can be started now, in May, and be ready for drinking in September when the other wines are just getting started. 

It’s cheese season. The mama goats still have nursing babies on them, and will for the next few weeks. So I’m only getting about three quarters of a gallon daily, but that’s still plenty for making some cheese. 

This year I decided to switch up the cultures I usually buy.  In years past,  I have bought an all-purpose mesophilic starter that says it is suitable for chèvre, queso fresco, feta, and cheddar. And it is suitable for all those purposes.   But this year I decided to spend a little bit more for a fancier culture from France, and I’m so glad I did. My chèvre is leaps and bounds better than last year. It’s smooth, tangy, and delicious. It was a big hit at mother’s day brunch. 

Tonight I’m making cheddar with the same culture. I’ve made two batches of hard cheese before now, and they have been drying in the shelf during this nice dry weather. Today I broke out the vacuum sealer and sealed them up for long term storage in the fridge. That’s the best system I’ve yet found for keeping hard cheese at home without molding. It’s not ideal - the cheese doesn’t “breathe” if it’s vacuum sealed - but it does keep the cheese from molding for a good six months, which means we can enjoy cheese in December. 

Vampire Goats

When we got home from our trip to Oregon to see the eclipse (WOW amazing sight and a great family vacation), I noticed that one of our mama goats, Polly, had become skeletally thin. She has always been a slender goat. Some

goats are naturally thin, some are naturally plump, just like

people. However, Polly's condition was in no way normal - her bones were sharp and visible from a distance. 

There are many factors that contribute to weight loss on goats. One of the main ones - insufficient feed- is not an issue at my place because I have three acres of fenced pasture for three does to feed in, more than enough. Probably the most important factor after availabalility of feed is parasite load. 

Goats are particularly prone to parasites. They are a problem in every area of the country. There are a plethora of parasites - stomach worms, lung worms, coccidia. For the most part, parasites will not kill an otherwise healthy goat, but they will seriously depress her ability to produce healthy kids, abundant milk, and keep her own health intact. https://www.famu.edu/cesta/main/assets/File/coop_extension/herds/Practical_Management_Internal_Parasites_in_Goats1_7-23-2007.pdf

I use ivermectin to control parasites, but over the years I think my herd has built up some resistance, because this year ivermectin is not showing much effectiveness. In particular, my best doe, Polly, has lost a tremendous amount of weight while raising her twins. 

The caloric cost of nursing twins is, of course, very high, but a healthy doe with unlimited forage ought to be able to do it without losing condition. Polly has been losing weight, and when we got back from our five day trip to see the eclipse (AWESOME!!) she had suddenly become emaciated. 

I worked her again, with Ivermectin as usual and also with Quess, a different wormer which has a different mode of action. Hopefully that will have an effect, but in the meantime I needed to get those kids off of her. They have been sucking her dry. 

We have three kids left - Polly's twins and a single doe from Christmas. They are all of an age to have been weaned a month ago, at least, but I am softhearted and didn't want to separate them from their  mamas. Well, Polly's condition forced my hand. Two nights ago, I put all the babies into the sacrifice area. Such wailing! Such gnashing of teeth! Anyone would think they were being peeled alive. But no- they are just being weaned.

All three babies are seriously overweight. Obese even. They have "milk glitters" on their throats- signs that they are being over fed. And meanwhile their poor mamas are staggering around at the end of their endurance. I should have separated them a month ago. 

Cheese Season Solutions (Practicality vs. Purism)

Cheese season will be short this year. We are leaving for Oaxaca June 24th, and at that point we will let the does dry off, since Rowan cannot milk and take care of the farm and go to school full time. Right now, Iris is at peak milk production, providing me with just about a gallon of milk a day. The other two does still have kids on them, and I am not usually bothering to separate the kids because Iris is providing me all the milk I can reasonably use.

Unless, that is, I find a solution for the difficult problem of aging hard cheese. I have tried for several years, with little success (okay, no success) to age my hard cheeses. I purchased a wine fridge. I bought cheese wax and waxed the cheeses and stored them in the wine fridge. I read about optimal humidity levels. I turned them over daily. No matter what I did, the wax cracked and the cheese molded within about a month to six weeks.

With larger wheels of cheese (large for me is about a four to five pound wheel) I was able to whittle off the mold and eat the interior of the cheese, but more than half of it was lost, and I could always detect a little moldiness even after trimming. Just seemed like a giant waste and a big disappointment.

So this year I have been making more chèvre, which I can use up in lots of ways (although I feel like an Iron Chef with chèvre as a secret ingredient - "you must use chèvre in EVERY dish") There's about three pounds of it in the fridge at the moment. I still make the hard cheese, my farmhouse cheddar, but we just have to eat it young. It's extremely frustrating, because the cheese continues to improve every day, right up until the day it starts to mold, which is at about one month. Very green hard cheese is not delicious - it's naturally quite sour and one-dimensional. Complex flavors don't begin to develop and the sourness doesn't subside until the cheese is about two weeks old, and then it becomes a challenge to try and eat it before it goes bad two weeks later. I have found that I can speed up the maturation process some by cutting the fresh cheese into 2" cubes and giving them a final salting. But what I really want is to be able to make hard cheese that I can eat six months later.

Recently, an exciting new cheese shop opened up in my town, Twin Sisters Creamery (http://www.twinsisterscreamery.com/#!cheese-shop/cjdh). Not only do they sell a wonderful assortment of cheeses both local and international, but they are cheesemakers as well, producing a terrific blue cheese called "Whatcom Blue," among others. When they first opened, I went in and had a long chat with one of the owners and she was delightful. We talked about cheese for a half hour or so, and she was interested in the fact that there are many home cheesemakers around. I told her I'd be back as soon as cheese season started, and if she wanted to sample some of my goat cheese, she'd be more than welcome. She said she'd love to.

It occurred to me today to go and ask her about solutions for my storage issues. I brought along a wheel of two-day old cheese, and two baggies of cheese cubes, one about two weeks old and one about four weeks old. I was hoping that she would want to taste my cheese and would be impressed with it (I'm a sucker for praise), but mostly I was just hoping she would have some suggestions for aging it successfully.

Turns out, she wasn't there. I spoke to her husband, instead, who was a very kind and friendly guy, but not the head honcho cheesemaker. He didn't want to taste the cheese ("I'm not really a goat cheese kind of guy") and I don't blame him - if I were a professional cheesemaker I certainly wouldn't want to taste random cheese from a local person I'd never met before. He did, however, have a very useful suggestion for me.

A Foodsaver. A vacuum-sealer.

It was kind of a "du-uh" moment.

Vacuum sealers are the kind of medium-large, medium-expensive appliance that I always categorized in my head as "unnecessary gadget." Along with microwave ovens and dehydrators. Less frivolous than ice cream makers or popcorn poppers, but to a culinary purist like myself kind of a cheat.

I always imagined myself - in my daydreams - as learning the real, old world, traditional crafts of aging and curing; hanging salami in natural casings, brining kosher dills in stoneware crocks, brewing and bottling hard cider, and carefully turning and aging my own cheese. It matters not that each of these processes is actually an entire professional category on its own, I cheerfully imagined that I would become an expert in them all. And look good doing it, too.

Time passes and illusions fade. Cheese molds, cider turns to vinegar, and salamis never even get made. Time to get real. Do I want to eat my homemade cheese in November, or not? Am I simply a dilettante, feeding goats year round for the sake eating fresh cheese three months of the year, or am I serious about this thing?

So I bought a Foodsaver. It won't be just for cheese - I can also use it in the fall, for storing home-smoked salmon. I still have some questions, and I still plan on going and asking the head honcho cheesemaking lady about them. First among them, won't the cheese stop maturing once it is sealed? Doesn't it need air to keep developing? Maybe not - after all traditional cheeses are either waxed or develop a rind that severely limits gas exchange. At what stage ought I to seal the cheese? As soon as it's pressed? After air drying for a few days? Just before it would begin to mold?

Assuming I can get some answers to those questions, and assuming I can figure out how to work the darn thing. I will start separating the babies from all three does and try to make cheese two or three times a week until we leave. Hopefully, with a little experimentation, I can start to make maximum use of the oceans of milk that flow in the springtime, and save it for the droughts of winter.

Three Easy Cheeses (From One and a Half Goats)

Polly and Iris

This year I have one-and-a-half does in milk. Sounds weird, but it's about right. Polly (black and white, above) had twin babies born early during a snowstorm that didn't make it. She is a good milker and is now giving me about 3/4 gallon of milk a day. This isn't as much as last year - she ought to be at peak production about now and I expected closer to a gallon a day based on last year. However, with the addition of the cow, the pasture is not as abundant as it once was; maybe I am not making up the difference with quality supplemental hay. It doesn't matter much to me - she has good body condition and I don't need to squeeze every last drop of milk from her.

Flopsy had a single buckling a month later, a spectacular spotted boy. It's nice that Flopsy had a single this year, because she is more usually given to throwing triplets, and as a "half a doe" she can't raise triplets. Years and years ago, Flopsy had a serious case of mastitis and lost most of the production on one side of her udder. If this were a commercial operation, we would have had to cull her. Luckily, this is a homestead and I can make decisions that aren't ruthlessly practical. I decided that since Flopsy is fertile, healthy, a good mother and a good kidder, and still capable of raising twins on one teat, she's worth keeping. Indeed, Flopsy brought in the only cash income of the year, with the sale of her flashy buckling. Flopsy adds about three pints a day to the milk total.

Iris didn't get pregnant at all last year - a first. She is the best milker I have and also usually throws triplets. I don't know if it's her age - nine - or the fact that she clearly didn't like last year's buck. She ran away from him and wouldn't let him mount, even though she was in full, raging heat. It's okay though -together, the in-milk does are providing me a little over a gallon of milk a day, which is a lot.

I have to make cheese about three times a week to keep up. This year I have been pretty busy with a new job and so I have settled into a routine of making easy cheese that I am already very familiar with rather than trying to experiment with tricky recipes. Here are my three go-to cheeses, in ascending order of difficulty:

1) queso fresco. Just heat a gallon of milk to 180 degrees fahrenheit, add 1/4 cup of distilled white vinegar, and when the curds separate, strain through a clean cotton cloth. When drained, you can place cheese in a bowl, cut or crumble into small pieces, salt, and then wrap and press (in a press or under a stack of books) for several hours until firm. If you like, add chopped herbs or red pepper flakes when you add the salt. Good for quesadillas.

2) chèvre. Heat a gallon of milk just to blood temperature, no higher. Add mesophilic starter, 1/8 teaspoon and gently stir. Cover and let sit several hours. I like to add two to three drops rennet for a slightly firmer cheese, but if you like it very soft and spreadable, omit this step. Continue to let sit undisturbed for a full 24 hours at room temperature. Then drain through a clean cotton pillowcase. I like to hang my pillowcase up on the clothesline to drip. It will take several hours or overnight to drain sufficiently. Remove cheese and salt, mixing well. Takes about 1 level tablespoon salt per gallon of milk, less if you have drained the cheese until it is very thick and dry.

3) "cheddar." This is probably not really cheddar; it's my simplified recipe that I have developed over the years. For a gallon or up to two gallons of milk. Heat to blood temperature and add 1/8 tsp mesophilic starter. Cover and let sit undisturbed about 2 hours. Add five drops rennet and gently stir. Wait until curds separate into a cake with whey floating on top - about two more hours. Check for a clean cut with a thin-bladed knife. Make three or four cuts and then wiggle the pan - the cheese should separate cleanly with sharp lines. If not, wait longer, up to 8 hours if room is cool.

When you have a clean cut, use your knife to cut curd into small cubes - about 1/2". Heat gently to about 105 - warm bath temperature but not hot. Stir. Curds will firm up and whey will get clearer. Stir continually for as long as you have available - up to 45 minutes. Curds will become rounded, shiny, and firmer. Drain through a clean cotton cloth. Salt well, using hands to turn and knead for a few minutes. Then wrap in the cloth and press under firm pressure - about 50 pounds. You will need a press for this - a 50 pound stack of books is very wobbly.

Press overnight. Turn cheese and press under even firmer pressure - 75?- for another 10 to 12 hours. Remove cheese from press and let air dry (under cheesecloth to protect from flies) for about 2 days, turning once. Then cheese may be waxed and stored at cellar temperature. My oldest "cheddar" is now about 10 weeks old, but I haven't broached it yet so I can't tell you how it turned out.

It goes without saying that all of your equipment ought to be not just clean but sterile - use only stainless steel or tempered glass, something that can withstand being washed with boiling water. I keep a small pot of water simmering on the stove for my spoons, thermometers, etc. Only the cotton cloth cannot actually be sterile - but after each time I unwrap cheese, I wash it and wring it out in very hot water and then hang it up to dry outside in the breeze. I wash it again in hot water just before use.

Two of the above recipes use unpasteurized milk - that is up to your discretion. The recipes will work equally well with pasteurized milk. Just heat milk to 160 degrees. Boom, it's pasteurized. If anyone who might eat the cheese is pregnant or has an immune deficiency disease the milk MUST be pasteurized. Not to do so is to court Listeria, Salmonella, E. Coli, and other dangerous diseases. Even healthy, well-cared-for animals harbor these bacteria in their gut. I wash my hands!

Nettle Season (Copycat Cheese)

Today was a beautiful unseasonably warm day for March. I think it was 60 degrees. We took the kids down to the beach, where it was warm enough for them to roil up their pant-sleeves and squish around in the cool mud, turning over rocks and looking for crabs and limpets.

It was more than warm enough for me to move some dirt around and plant some things in the garden - radishes, arugula, peas, even potatoes - but I have been sinfully lazy. In fact a large part of the reason we went to the beach is so I wouldn't have to feel guilty for not working in the garden.

Much easier than shovel-work is scissors-work: in the afternoon, after we got home from the bay, I took a pair of kitchen gloves, a pair of scissors, and a big brown paper bag and went out to the field to harvest nettles. In the past, I have usually used the nettles to make Avgolemono Soup, but this year I decided to make nettle cheese.

On the way to the bay, there is a wonderful local cheese maker, Samish Bay cheese.  They sell their beautiful cow's milk cheese at local farmer's markets,. and they are justly locally famous for their Ladysmith Cheese, Gouda flavored with Caraway, and Jalapeño Queso Fresco. They also have a seasonable fresh cheese, available for just a few months each year, flavored with nettles.

I adore stinging nettles. Well, let me amend that statement just a little - I love eating stinging nettles; I do not love accidentally wading into a patch of them in capri-pants. Stinging nettles are a wild child's nemesis - lying in wait along roadside ditches and fence-lines to attack the unwary. The merest brush of the dusty green leaves against bare skin causes a sting that lasts hours - not for nothing is this plant's name is Spanish "Mala Mujer."

However, the sting is easily removed by drying or by blanching for even a few seconds in boiling water. I put a full kettle on to boil, place the nettles in a colander in the sink, and trickle the boiling water over the nettles. Let sit for five minutes, then rinse with cold water and squeeze to remove excess water. Then they are ready to be used as food or medicine. Many herbalists consider the nettle to be a near- panacea (see, for example http://www.herballegacy.com/Vance_Medicinal.html) and I certainly can't quibble. But there is no doubt as to nettle's nutritional qualities.

Plus, they are just plain delicious. They taste like a blend of spinach and asparagus. They have a full, soft texture and a wonderful mouth-feel. They are one of those foods that you can feel make you stronger and healthier as you eat them.

Tonight, I am going to try making my own version of Samish Bay's nettle cheese. I am making my basic cheddar recipe, but in the second pressing I will add the finely chopped nettles along with the salt. Of course, I am working with goat milk instead of cow's milk, and also my cheese is made from raw milk whereas their's is pasteurized. I expect it to be delicious. I'll let you know.

A Day in Cheese Season (Okay, Half a Day)

A day during cheese season actually begins in the evening, when I make the decision whether or not to separate the baby goats from their mothers for the night so I can have milk in the morning. Checking the fridge last night, I saw that I had three quarters of a gallon of milk in the fridge, which would be enough to try making yogurt, but not really enough for cheese. Since I have some store-bought yogurt in the fridge, but no cheese, I decided to milk in the morning.

Right now I have two milkers, Flopsy and Polly. Each of them have a single buckling on them. They each threw twins, but Polly's doeling died, and I sold one of Flopsy's bucklings. Every evening, I have to go outside and catch the little buggers. Until recently, I was closing them in the mama barn during the night, but this had a few drawbacks. When Iris kidded, she needed the mama barn for a few days. I probably could have left the bucklings in there with her and the newborns - what harm could they do? However, there is another reason I wanted to find a different place to put them.

When I go out in the morning, I have a logistics problem to deal with. I have to get two babies OUT of the mama barn, and two mamas IN (one at a time, of course), because that is where the milking stanchion is. Once the babies are released, they will instantly run over and latch onto their mama's teat, and I will lose the milk. So I need to get them from  the barn into some other secure location. This other location used to be the adjoining small pasture, and the routine went like this:

- Open the mama barn door, keeping my body between the opening and the does, who instantly try to crowd inside, because they know that's where the food is.
- As the babies come hurtling by me, trying to get outside to their mamas, grab one.
- Shut the mama barn door before the other baby gets out.
- Carry a struggling, yelling baby goat fifty feet across the barnyard to the fence, and throw him over the top into the adjoining pasture.
- Repeat.

But bucklings grow quickly, especially when they are singles and are guzzling down a gallon or so of milk a day. Blizzard, the oldest, weighs about thirty pounds already, and chucking him over a four foot fence isn't easy. Also it is not uncommon that I get mildly injured somehow during the crush at the mama barn door - I've slammed my hand in the door; the mama goats stand up on me and knock me down; the baby goats struggle in my grasp and scratch me with their surprisingly sharp hooves.

the bucklings, Blizzard and Comet

Homero came up with the idea of putting them in the other pasture, with Rosie, at night. I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me. Maybe because until just a few months ago, that fence wasn't secure enough for goats. I fixed the low spots with cattle panels, and now the little guys can't get out. Suddenly milking is easy; I put the babies in with Rosie at night and don't have to think about them again until after I have milked both mamas.

Milking the mamas is another job. Polly, though a good milker with delicious sweet milk, has never learned to jump up on the stanchion. She will poke her head through the bars for food, and I can close the stanchion and trap her, but then I have to lift her hind end bodily onto the stanchion, which is annoying and difficult. Why she won't jump up I don't know; all the other goats do. Then she tries to squeeze her hind legs together and deny me access to her udder. Polly is giving about a quart and a half every morning.

Flopsy has a diminished milk supply on one side due to mastitis a few years ago, but even so she gives almost as much milk as Polly. She is much easier to milk, but all goats that I have ever known will start kicking as soon as they run out of food in the stanchion tray. I must always have a container of grain by my side, and as I milk, I toss scant handfuls into the tray. The idea is to extract maximum milk for minimum grain. Because there have been does in the mama barn recently for kidding, we have had to put the grain up on the highest shelf, and getting a container of it down isn't easy for me. I have to climb up on the stanchion myself, reach up over my head and pull a tote with fifty pounds of grain inside towards me, and try to scoop out a couple pounds without toppling it over on myself or falling off the stanchion. Maybe (and here's an idea that just occurred to me) a stepladder wouldn't be a bad idea.

Bibi with Iris' doling

7:45 Alarm goes off. Get up, wake up kids, pull on a sweater, grab two half gallon mason jars, and head out to the barn. Run through rigamarole described above, plus morning feed and watering.

8:15 Come back inside, curse at realizing I forgot to put on water for coffee. Put on water for coffee.
Realize it's okay there's no water hot because I have to use the Melitta filter to filter the milk anyway. Make a mental note to buy a second Melitta filter so I can make coffee and strain milk at the same time.

8:30. Yell at kids, try to think of something to feed them that I can make and they can eat in less than twelve minutes. Usually this means a banana smoothie and some bread. This morning, I have leftover beef vegetable soup from last night.

8:45. Kids out the door to the school bus. Milk filtered and put away in the fridge, coffee made. Homero and I have a few minutes to drink it and read the morning news.

9:00. Look around the kitchen and realize I have a solid hour of cleaning to do before I can begin the cheese making process, which requires a fairly spotless kitchen environment. Sigh heavily.

9:20. Make a deal with Homero that if he will clean our room, I will make him anything he wants for dinner. He chooses chiles rellenos, which means in exchange for his half an hour cleaning, I have to go shopping, and then spend about three hours cooking, and the children will all complain because they hate chiles rellenos. Oh well; I made this deal.

10:00 Dishes washed and sink scrubbed; put milk to heat on stove. Remember to check recipe for cheddar in cheese making book. Search for cheese making book. Find book under a pile of homework that probably should have been brought to school to turn in. Also find an overdue library book. Check recipe; proceed.

10:30 Check laundry on the line in the playroom to see if it is dry; it is raining hard outside and there's no drying laundry on the outside line. Also no drying laundry in the dryer, which continues, annoyingly, to be broken. It's not dry.

11:00 Add rennet to warm milk. Tell husband proto-cheese needs to sit for an hour and I will go to the store to shop for ingredients for chiles rellenos. He says he's going out to the shop to work. Not cleaning our room? No, he says, he'll do that later. If you think you are getting any chiles rellenos before that room is clean, you've got another think coming, say. Have small spat. Get in the van, notice there's no gas. Go back inside to get money for gas. Kiss and make up.

12:00 Come home with ingredients. Realize I forgot to buy Melitta coffee filter. Roast chiles under the broiler and cut the curds in the cheese. Next twenty minutes: go back and forth between stove top and oven, turning chiles, and stirring curds. Burn fingers. Drain curds.

12:20 Remove chiles to cool. Peel chiles. Salt the drained curds and mix well, then wrap and put into cheese press. Stare lovingly at beautiful cheese press made for me by my husband for mother's day a few years ago. Feel bad that I snapped at sweet husband who made me excellent cheese press. Wallow in guilt for two minutes.

the beautiful cheese press

12:45 Realize I am starving. Eat cold beef vegetable soup off kitchen table, where the kids left it four hours ago.

1:00 Check recipe again. Per instructions, unwrap cheese, salt, turn upside down, wrap again and put back in the press.

1:10 Facebook.

1:30 Turn cheese one more time; crank up pressure on cheese press. Think about writing this blog post. Think about taking a hot bath. Vacillate. Feel vaguely guilty about not writing much lately; wonder who the hell cares if I write or not? Feel vaguely sorry for myself. Decide to write.

1:50 Finish blog post. Take a hot bath.

queso fresco with chives

Massive Milk Overload (How to Make Paneer)!

I sent all my non-lactating goats to a friend's house to clean up her yard, and so for the next week or so I will be collecting nearly three gallons of milk a day. Probably that means it's time to can the year's supply of cajeta (goat's milk caramel sauce). I am actually all out of cheese making supplies - culture and rennet - so I'm going to order some more. It will take three days for the supplies to arrive in the mail, but in the meanwhile I can always make paneer - vinegar soured cheese.

Most of you are probably familiar with paneer from your local Indian restaurant - Saag Paneer is the famous pureed spiced spinach with cubed cheese dish. However, Paneer is used in any number of ways in Indian cooking, both sweet and savory. I tend to be lazy, which means I simply toss cubed panner into whatever type of curry I am currently simmering on the stovetop - peas and potatoes are popular, as are tomato based curries or chickpea or lentil stews. In my wonderful cookbook "660 Curries" by Raghavan Iyer, there are some thirty recipes for Paneer utilizing everything from cashews to cabbage. Most of them call for the paneer to be fried in shallow oil until golden beore being added to the curries, but you can skip this step if you want. Paneer is also great tucked into a hot folded tortilla or crumbled into a pan full of scrambled eggs. In fact, Paneer can be used pretty much any way you would use a fresh farmer's cheese or queso fresco. It works in quesadillas, for example. Indians use it in desserts, but I can't offer any recipes because I've never tried that.

What I love about it is that Paneer is "easy cheese." It requires almost nothing in the way of equipment or supplies. If you have a colander and some clean cloth, you can make paneer.

Paneer:

1 gallon milk (fresh raw milk will have the most flavor, but plain store bought cow's milk will work as well)
2-4 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
salt

Heat milk in a large pot to near boiling - about 180 degrees if you have a thermometer, or until it begins to rise up if you don't. Remove from heat. Drizzle in vinegar, stirring, until you see curds separate from whey - this will take about 1 minute.

Line a colander with a triple thickness of cheesecloth or with a section of plain cotton cloth cut from a pillowcase or sheet. Pour the contents of the pot into colander, slowly enough to let whey drain and curds be caught. Fold clean cloth over the top and let sit overnight.

In the morning, cut cheese into 1/2" cubes and salt heavily. Use in Indian or Mexican recipes or in grilled cheese sandwiches, or as you like.

Best Mother's Day Present EVER (Thanks, Baby, You're the BEST)

Today was great. The best mother's day I can remember, in fact. Many things about today were nice - lunch at my sister's with Mom and family; a late afternoon sunbreak; barbecue ribs and potato salad - but the best thing about today, as it is most days, was my husband.

Homero spent yesterday out in his shop, working on a mysterious present for me. All I knew about it was that he came in with greasy hands and that welding was involved, but that pretty much mirrors his daily routine, so I couldn't guess. He was fairly smug about it, however, supremely assured that I was going to love it. The little girls, who knew, did an admirable job of keeping the secret, only giggling uncontrollably as I interrogated them: "Is it bigger than a breadbox? Does it walk and talk? Does it wriggle on it's belly like a reptile?"

He wouldn't even give it to me this morning, but insisted on taking it with us to my sister's house so I could open in front of everybody. Which I did. And here it is:



It's okay; it took me a minute, too. It's a CHEESE PRESS! A beautiful, beautiful CHEESE PRESS, about two feet tall. The cheese basket (?) is a stainless steel pot from Goodwill, in which Homero drilled several drainage holes. He then cut the lid so that instead of sitting on top of the pot it slid neatly inside of it. Then he made the frame. The handle on top spins, lowering or raising the pressing-arm (I really know my technical language, don't I?). The entire machine is stainless steel for easy cleaning, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it!

No more wobbly stacks of books! No more kettles of water precariously balanced on top of a colander! No more sudden crashes in the night, waking us all out of a sound sleep! Now I have even, controlled pressure. Now I can make beautiful round wheels instead of irregularly shaped lumps. Now I feel like a real cheesemaker!

The best part of all is the beautiful knowledge that my husband knows what is important to me. He really thinks about my desires, he respects my work and he wants to help me. He has done this before - once he spent weeks making me a whole series of gigantic stretched canvasses for me to paint on. I still haven't used them all. I am so very lucky to have a man like Homero. Not only does he know me and love me enough to think of these terrific gifts, but he is capable of making them a reality. And willing to spend time and sweat on them, too. I am so grateful and so moved and so happy.

And I haven't the FAINTEST IDEA how I am going to top this for father's day next month.

Cheesy Success!

It;s just about suppertime, so I have no time at the moment for a detailed explanation, but I have FINALLY created a reasonable facsimile of Quesillo, also known as Queso Oaxaqueno, a fresh mild string cheese which is wound into balls and used in quesadillas and as a topping for just about anything. Also it is my husband's favorite unavailable food from home, and I have been trying to make it for years now without notable success.

Consistency is the demon that torments all cheesemakers, of course, and one batch of decent quesillo does not guarantee success in future attempts. But nonetheless, I'm thrilled that I've done it once.

Gimpy Goat and No More Milk

This is Django. She is one of the original three goats we bought when we moved here, and now she is the only La Mancha I have (La Manchas are the earless goats. Nobody cut off her ears: it's just her breed.). Django has always been a good goat - good mother, good milker, about as easy-going as a goat gets. She did get terribly ill a couple of years ago after getting into the grain, but she recovered and has been pretty healthy ever since. She had triplets this past year.

Yesterday when I went out to do the chores, I saw something awful. Django appears to have a dislocated shoulder. One of her shoulder blades is depressed downwards and if I lay my palm on the place where it ought to be I can feel the bone socket. Her elbow is rather radically displaced - down and to the side. Nonetheless, she is getting around okay. I called the vet, of course, and as I was trying to explain exactly where the dislocation was, Django kept running away from me. As James Herriot said in his wonderful book All Creatures Great and Small, if you can't catch your patient you've probably got little to worry about. She was browsing normally and later on chewing her cud. She didn't cry when I manipulated the joint.

The vet said that he's seen this before, and never had any luck trying to manually replace the bone. He said an operation would be the only option. Well, I said, it's not an option for us... do you think she'll recover on her own? Is this a very painful condition? He said that it was unlikely the joint would "pop back in" on it's own, but that over the next few months she would develop a false joint and be more or less normal. She would look funny and probably never quite keep up with the herd, but once the joint stabilized she would get around fine. It's hard to tell how much pain a goat is in, they are very stoic animals, but it's a good sign that she's chewing her cud. He said it's a good thing it's the foreleg; hind leg displacements are more problematic and could interfere with kidding.

So we aren't going to do anything. This morning she jumped on and off the milking stand just like usual. She is interacting with the other goats and seems pretty normal, except for that weird elbow thing. I'll just keep an eye on her and watch for worsening mobility or signs of pain. If she does get worse, we'll have to make a decision then.

Also, all the goats are more or less dry. I got about a cup of milk from each one, and that's just not worth it. Most likely they are all pregnant and so I'll just stop milking until next spring.

Cheese season is over at last!

Serious Disappointment

Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2010 15:49:02 -0700
Subject: Good Food Awards Entry Notification


Dear Aimee,

Many thanks for your interest in participating in the Good Food Awards. In its inaugural year, the Good Food Awards will honor the people behind tasty, authentic, and responsibly produced foods. We regret to inform you that due to a miscommunication with our cheese committee chairs, the acceptance letter that you received about your eligibility for the Oct. 10 blind tasting was sent to you in error. Upon further review of your application, the committee has decided that your cheese will not be eligible for this year's competition. Despite your commendable production methods, we are not accepting entries from homestead operations that are not "sale ready".

Please accept our very sincere apologies for the mix-up. We are aware that there are many challenges to overcome in creating a commercially viable product that also meets the sustainability criteria set forth by the Good Food Awards. Nevertheless, we applaud your efforts, wish you the best of luck as you grow and overcome these challenges, and hope that you consider entering next year's competition.

If you have already paid the $10 transaction fee per submission, then we will refund the full amount to your paypal account. You will receive a confirmation email from paypal followed by a full reimbursement within a coupe of days. If you paid for your submissions with a check, we will return your voided check to you shortly.

Thank you again for your submission. Please contact us at info@goodfoodawards.org or call the office at (415) xxx-xxxx if you have any questions or concerns.

With great appreciation,

All of us at the Good Food Awards

My Reply:

Dear Xxxxx -

What a shame - I've already told all my friends.

I read your site carefully and did not see any requirement that entrants be commercial operations - you might want to rectify that in the future. Of course I understand that my product does not fit your criteria and cannot be included. Since I am not trying to create a legal business, simply to follow my personal passion, I doubt I will ever be eligible for inclusion. More's the pity - I doubt many of your panelists ever get the chance to taste a product such as mine. I am sure your cheese panel could have a lively debate on the subject of the law as it pertains to raw milk cheeses.

Should you ever decide to allow the inclusion of non-commercial products, please let me know. I would be delighted to provide samples of my "Smokin' Goat Chilpotle Cheddar" or my "Chevre Chevrere" for consideration any old time at all. There's no doubt in my mind that my cheese would stand on its own merits.

I hope your inaugural event is a great success. Your goal is laudable and I wish you all the best in advancing it. Enjoy yourselves as you taste the best that America's small producers have to offer.

Sincerely,

Aimee Day

Great, Now I'm Terrified

On a total whim, I entered one of my cheeses (the seedy dill and caraway) into the national Good Food Awards contest (Good Food Awards). This is a "first annual" event - just like my swap meet, ha ha ha - meant to honor producers of local, artisanal food in several categories, which include cheese, beer, pickles, preserves, and charcuterie.

Obviously, most if not all of the entrants are businesses. I knew that - after all, the big prize is not money or an all-expenses-paid vacation but the "Good Food Seal of Approval" to slap on your product. I was totally honest in my application: I said I am NOT a business, NOT a licensed dairy, and NOT allowed to sell my product at all. I said I make something under 100 pounds of cheese a year for home consumption. I said that my cheese was made from raw goat's milk, aged considerably less than 60 days, and most likely I would be breaking several state laws just by mailing it in. I said they taste at their own (legal) risk.

Frankly, I was totally shocked and surprised to hear that I was chosen as one of 400 entrants to submit their product for a blind taste test. I am to mail my cheese to California, sufficiently wrapped and packaged, to arrive by October 7th at the latest. This is a very very big deal - the event has been written up in the New York Times, the Village Voice, the San Fransisco Chronicle, etc etc. Among the tasters are Alice Waters and Ruth Reichl (who just happens to be my food hero, being the person who brought a soul and a social conscience to Gourmet Magazine.).

Here's the problem - they want five pounds of cheese. Since I never expected to actually send in any cheese, we ate most of the seedy cheese (damn, it's really really good). There's barely any left. I am making more tonight, but it will be

1) extremely green, and

2) only about 2 pounds.

The fresh cheese is good - some people prefer it quite fresh, but it isn't really representative of the product, which I think is best at about two months old (well, ok, yes - that's as old as it's ever gotten, because we eat it that fast. So I guess in fact, my judgement is that it gets better and better as it ages.). Fresh, the cheese is slightly sour and has a bouncy, squeaky feeling between the teeth. It's good, but it's not what I decided to submit.

The other problem is more difficult. I can send in immature cheese but I can't send in five pounds of it if I only have two. I'm thinking that I am simply going to make up the difference in other cheeses (like Smokin' Goat Chilpotle Cheddar) and include a note explaining why.

Here's a first draft:

Hi!

I am most incredibly flattered and excited to have been asked to send y'all some of my cheese. As you know, this is not a commercial product, but a sample of the cheese I make for myself and my family. That being the case, I regretfully inform you that I do not have a full five pounds of Seedy Cheese. Please accept this "Smokin' Goat Chilpotle" in lieu of half the Seedy Cheese. I hope you will enjoy it equally.

This year, I have only three does, and every bit of cheese I made (as well as yogurt and cajeta) is made from their milk. Iris, Django, and Flopsy together provide us with about 350 gallons of milk a year (while still feeding their own kids), from which I make somewhere between 50 and 100 pounds of cheese.

My goats browse freely on my five acres, eating whatever they like. They like blackberries, thistles, fruit trees, and dandelions! In the winter, they eat local hay. I take care of them entirely: I breed them, I deliver the kids, I trim their hooves and give them medicine when they are sick. I milk them myself, and I even trained my dog to help me herd them around the property. It has been my lifelong dream to have goats and learn to make cheese, and now it is the opportunity of a lifetime to offer some of it to you.

I offer you this not because I think it is the best cheese around - it isn't. My cheese is delicious, if I say so myself, but I have a lot to learn and a long way to go before I reach the level of the professional cheesemaker. I offer you this cheese because it is something lamentably rare, something that ought to be more common - a true farmstead product; the product of a single place, a single season, and a single person. This cheese is an example of what can be achieved by an ordinary city girl who has followed her dream for only a few years. This cheese is the product of one woman determined to feed her family on the best food she can produce. I am pretty damn proud of it, even though it will most likely fall short of the very high standard you have solicited. Please enjoy with my compliments, and I hope you like it as much as I do.

Aimee

p.s. please please don't eat it if you are pregnant.

The Quesillo Chronicles

My cheesemaking experience now stretches back almost three years. I have had some notable successes, and several notable failures. At last, I can now reliably produce chevre, queso fresco, and cheddar - which isn't bad considering the poverty of my equipment. One of my cheeses is even achieving some local fame - some of my friends ask for it by name. That would be my "Smokin' Goat Chilpotle Cheddar," a delicious, spicy, lightly aged cheese with chilpotle pepper flakes in it.

But to be honest, my cheesemaking is pretty much hit or miss. My recipe books say things like "hold the milk at 86 degrees for 18 hours." I don't know what kind of equipment they think I have, but I'm pretty sure they are imagining something more sophisticated than a stainless steel pot, a flexible cutting mat, and the oven-light. The rest of my equipment consists of a colander, some muslin, and a tall stack of heavy books. I do the best I can with what I've got and I'm willing to tolerate a fairly high degree of variability.

my cheesemaking equipment

This philosophy has so far resulted in a lot of delicious cheese, but it has not been very successful at producing specific, recognizable varieties of cheese beyond "soft" and "hard." Case in point: Quesillo.

Quesillo is a delicious, fresh, stretched-curd cheese (like mozzarella) indigenous to Oaxaca - in fact, if you are lucky enough to find it here in the states it will probably be labeled "queso oaxaqueno." It is most like string cheese in that it pulls apart into long shreds and melts beautifully. It is sold in long ropes wound into balls. My husband has been asking me to make it for him since the first time I made cheese.

Stretched-curd cheeses are difficult. There is a way to "cheat" with a microwave, but I don't own a microwave and anyway am far too much of a purist/snob to do it that way. Basically, stretched-curd cheeses are made the same way as other cheese up to the first draining, then they are plunged into very hot water or whey and massaged and kneaded until they become very smooth and elastic. Then they are pulled by hand into long ropes.

Sounds easy but it isn't. Since I have had a major milk-glut, I decided to begin experimenting. At any given time I have several gallons of milk and five or six pounds of cheese in the fridge - there's really no reason to be frugal. You gotta break a few eggs, right?

My first three attempts were total abject failures. Usually, any cheese can be salvaged, you just judge the texture and taste and then decide what to call it and how to use it. I tried for creamy and spreadable and got crumbly instead? That's okay, just call it "salad crumbles" and proudly say "I meant to do that." It's goat cheese; it all tastes good.

Well not this time. My attempts at quesillo were completely unsalvageable. Only the dog enjoyed the results. I was frustrated and confused. I thought I was following the recipe. Annoyed, I decided to let it go for a while and go back to something I knew and make some more cheddar. Oddly enough, it was this batch that turned into quesillo. I left the burner on low instead of turning it off and ended up with a very thick, tough curd. When I tried to cut it, it didn't cut cleanly, so I drained it on one solid piece.

Something about the way the drained curd looked made me decide to try one more time... so I heated up the whey to a temperature lower than boiling but hotter than "ouch" and plopped the curd back into it to poach.

I stirred the curd with a wooden spoon for fifteen or twenty minutes, and it began to get stretchy and droop off the spoon like Dali's clocks. Then I got out a clean bowl and placed the curd in it and scooped hot whey over it and began to knead it like dough. Yes, it was very very hot and my hands were poaching too. I got out another bowl and filled it with ice water so I could dip my hands in it when they started to feel like the skin was about to peel off. I kneaded for oh I'm going to say thirty minutes, frequently returning the curd to the hot whey for another bath.

After a while, I saw that when I picked up the curd out of the hot whey it began to stretch more and more. That's when I started to pull it like taffy, folding it over on itself and pulling, folding and pulling, and dipping it in the hot whey whenever it started to lose elasticity. I broke it up into smaller clumps and pulled each one into a long string and then laid it out on the cutting board to salt it. When it was salted, I rolled it up into balls, just like the balls sold in the 20 de Septiembre market in Oaxaca.

Well, almost like that. My skills are not refined enough to produce really thin strands or really round balls, but it WAS recognizably quesillo and it WAS good.

My next batch, however, was another throwaway. I'm trying again tonight. Consistency is the hard part - it always is. It was when I was playing pool and playing chess and it was when I was painting and it certainly is the hard part of parenting and it probably always will be the hard part of all my endeavors. On the other hand, as my favorite English teacher in high school, Mr. McAllister reminded us, "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

One Giant Leap for Cheese

It's been only two days since the last two baby goats were picked up, and already I have run out of room in the refrigerator for milk and cheese. I am frankly stunned by the amount of milk three dairy goats produce daily. Yes yes, I have had three milking does for three years now, but this is the first year that I have bit the bullet and actually sold the kids while they were still babies. In years past, I have kept the kids until they grew up and weaned themselves. Then I sold them for meat.

Sure, theoretically, I knew that each doe would produce about a gallon a day, split between morning and evening milkings. But three theoretical gallons are very different from three actual gallons taking up all the very literal space in my refrigerator. I need to make cheese every day just to reduce the cubic volume somewhat - a gallon of milk makes a pound of cheese, which occupies much less space.

Today I made cheddar, and yesterday I made black pepper chevre. The day before that I made paneer. The trade network will be able to absorb some of this excess, but not all of it. As I am not a licensed dairy, it is illegal for me to sell cheese or even milk. I am not entirely sure of the legality of selling milk "for animal consumption only" but I advertised it that way on Craigslist nonetheless.

What I really need is a way to reliably age hard cheese. I can make cheddar, but without a "cheese cave" - a climate controlled area - I can only keep it for a month or so before it begins to mold. It's delicious young, but that's not the point. The point is, how can I store my summer excess for winter?

This is hardly scientific, I know, but my best idea so far came from the "Little House" books. Ma Ingalls used to paint her cheeses with wax and then set them to age in the root cellar, turning them every couple of weeks. I can buy paraffin cheaply at the craft store. It's worth a try. I don't exactly have a root cellar, but I have a crawl-space and a lockable cooler.

The other possibility is convincing my husband to have a go at converting an old half sized fridge we have sitting out in the garage into a cheese cave. What I need is a box that will maintain a temperature of between 45 and 55 degrees, and a set humidity which I'd have to look up. He likes to tinker, so getting him to give it a go isn't too far fetched. Getting him to maintain interest long enough to make it actually work, though...

The last possibility is training myself to look upon my astounding surplus of milk as a golden opportunity to experiment with tricky cheesemaking techniques and obscure products. I'm dying, for example, to learn how to make Oaxacan quesillo - a delicious kind of string cheese. My husband would absolutely swoon if I succeeded in making quesillo. I haven't attempted it before because it's difficult and I would certainly fail a few times before I succeeded.

I am rather a miser when it comes to milk (and eggs) and I find it very hard to launch an experiment which might very well result in the loss of a few gallons. Nobody knows what an investment of time, sweat, and tears those gallons represent but me. I am the same way, actually, with paint and canvass. Lord knows the masterpieces I might have created if I could just get over my fear of wasting materials.

Whaddaya say - shall I risk a little milk in pursuit of new and superior cheese? Some gourmand said (I read in a book of quotations) "Cheese is milk's leap toward immortality." If immortality isn't a goal worth risking a little raw material for, well, whatever is?

Aimee's Excellent Snacks

first cheese of the year - chevre.

I didn't really cook at all today - we all just snacked a little here and there all day long. For the first time this year, the preponderance of said snacks were all products of the farm.

Early snack - frozen blueberries with creamy goat-yogurt and honey (honey is not yet a farm-product, but it is from one of my neighbor's farms. Next year, I hope, we will be using our own honey.). To make this snack extra-decadent, I like to drizzle a little tiny bit of thick cream on top, from a local raw-milk dairy. This cream is unbelievable - if you've never had fresh raw cream, you won't believe your mouth. It has no resemblance whatsoever to grocery store cream. I just don't know how to describe it, so I'll leave it at that.

Lunchtime snack - radishes with homemade chevre. I thinned the radishes today and brought in all the little ones to munch on. Also today I made the first "real" cheese of the year. I have made paneer a couple of times, but that doesn't involve rennet and culture, so it isn't quite the same. Today's chevre is very nice, smooth and spreadable and just a little bit tangy. The French eat radishes with butter, and that's a good way to eat them, but not as good as with fresh homemade chevre.

the mint patch - spearmint

Evening snack - tabouli with fresh mint. The mint has come back with a vengeance. Now I have three kinds of mint; spearmint, peppermint, and grapefruit mint. As mint tends to do, it is pretty much taking over the herb garden. I don't care - I love mint. I use about three cups of finely minced mint to one cup of tabouli, and a few tablespoons of olive oil, the juice of two fat lemons, and plenty of fresh ground black pepper. I'd throw in any veggies I had on hand, if I had any. Beets are nice, it makes the tabouli shocking pink.

Really feels like spring when we can start eating like this.

Easy-Cheesy (No Room at the Inn)

Last week, I started separating the baby goats at night. Now I am getting a crazy-large volume of milk, a volume that must be dealt with daily. If I don't do something with milk at least every other day, there will soon be no room at all in my fridge. The eggs are space-hogs. I have seven dozen eggs in there now, and the hens are outside popping out more even as we speak. I need to step up the trade network; but that's a topic for another day.

Yesterday I made a quart of cajeta (Cajeta is Love). Cajeta is easy to make, but you HAVE to watch it, because milk boils over whenever you take your eyes off of it for fifteen seconds. Ask me how I know. Because it has happened to me EVERY SINGLE TIME I make cajeta. Yesterday I pulled a chair right up to the stove so I could sit and read while I watched the pot. After an hour or so I was pretty sure that I had the right gentle simmer going, and the milk was nowhere near the top of the pot. So I went to the bathroom. Now I have a hamper full of sticky caramel covered washcloths and the floor is still pretty tacky on the bare feet. Will I never learn? But at least we also have a jar of cajeta in the fridge, and my husband was so happy to see it he gave me a big kiss and washed all the dishes.

I have made a half-gallon of yogurt, which is really too much. The guy I thought would want some is out of town so I can't offer him any. We'll just have to eat it. Luckily, there are still some blueberries in the chest freezer. We picked a LOT of blueberries last summer. Blueberry smoothies make a very good breakfast. Maybe I should put a raw egg in the blender too. Get rid of a few. No one will ever know.

When I started to make cheese the other day, I discovered that I'm out of rennet. I already had the milk heated to 100 degrees on the stove, so I thought fast and came up with the idea of making paneer. Paneer, for anyone who doesn't know, is soft fresh Indian cheese. It is made by souring milk with vinegar or lemon juice instead of coagulating with rennet. I like paneer just fine, but I've never made it before. I sort of can't think of it as "real cheese." But I'm glad I was forced to make it: it is so incredibly easy. The finished product tastes pretty much exactly like queso fresco, but it takes only an hour to make instead of a whole day.

Here's how you do it:

Heat a half gallon of milk to just below boiling - when the milk suddenly starts to expand in volume you're there. Remove from heat. Add about two tablespoons white vinegar, little by little, stirring as you go. In a minute, the milk will separate into tiny little curds and clear whey. If you want soft cheese, immediately scoop (with a fine mesh sieve) into a colander lined with a triple layer of cheesecloth. If you want your cheese firmer, put it back on the heat for a few minutes and stir, then scoop. Wrap the cheese up and either hang the cheesecloth bag from the faucet to drip, or leave it in the colander and put a heavy pot on top of it to press out the whey. In about an hour, you will have cheese. If it's firm, slice it into cubes and toss with a little salt (otherwise it's incredibly bland).

These are little cubes of pure protein, without much flavor. Indians put them into all kinds of curry. My husband crumbles them over eggs or beans. They can be used to make quesadillas. I have a feeling I will be making a lot of paneer. It's a perfectly adequate every-day kind of cheese, and it sure saves a lot of time. Of course I will still make regular cheese too: chevre and feta and cheddar. But maybe I don't have to make serious cheese every time.

Sometimes I can make easy-cheese.

2010 To-Do List

A few days ago, I was walking the property and making a mental to-do list. I like to to do this about every month - just walk the perimeter, checking out the fences; go up and down the pastures looking at weeds and rocks; scope out the state of the orchard and the compost pile and the outbuildings. Usually I take the camera and take a few photos of what's going on here and there and everywhere.

Looking at my photos, I see I didn't take any useful pictures that would help remind me of what needs to get done in 2010, so I will rely on my memory, impaired though it is by several glasses of New Year's Eve champagne. I did however, take this lovely picture of Poppy, still nursing although she is clearly several inches taller than her mama. Horsey people, spare me: I already know I should have separated them long ago.

In fact, I may just make that my first resolution: Get serious about training Poppy to walk on a lead, wear a blanket, let me pick out her feet, and generally not be spooky. The farrier suggested I start her on long-leads, as she might make a very nice cart pony someday. She is an adorable pony, very sweet and affectionate, but all ponies need to be trained and the more I handle her the better. Let's make a concrete goal of thrice weekly training sessions, at least a half hour each.

Next: plan a garden. Yes: plan! That means draw out on paper how many square feet, what I am going to plant when and where, buy the seeds and get starts going by the first of February in the sunroom, and generally get my ass in gear. The vegetable garden in MY responsibility, not Homero's. If I need him to do some of the heavy lifting, like building beds or shoveling compost, fine, ask him... but the kitchen garden is the kitchen witch's arena, and I am she.

Next: Plant four to six new fruit trees and a hedge of hazelnuts. Of the original twelve fruit trees we planted, only seven are alive. Damn goats. There is only one apple left and it is pretty sickly. Considering that I own a press and cider is a long-term goal, I think I should plant four apple trees. I have three pear trees and two cherries, but only one plum. I'm going to say, four apples, two cherries and another plum. Plus three to six more hazelnut bushes. I'll need Homero to run the billy-goat brush clearer, but I'm willing to do the shovel-work myself.

And to protect the orchard, we need more fences. I'd be satisfied if we just do the minimum necessary to protect the fruit trees and the garden, but I'd really like to finish fencing in the whole property. Then I could just turn out the goats and the ponies to graze and browse and not have to be a full-time shepherdess. Also my damn fool dog Lancelot would stop bothering the neighbors and chasing cars. But fences are expensive and they are not something I can do myself, so I think it likely I'll have to settle for the minimum.

I think that's as much infrastructure as I can commit to. I'd like to install the woodstove. I'd like to get the rainwater catchment system running smoothly - I have 1,250 gallons worth of storage available and it seems a waste not to use it. But once again, not something I can do by myself, so I can't make any firm plans.

Areas where I can plan firmly include food storage: this is the year I'd like to complete my goal of having a full year's worth of food on hand and of preserving a goodly portion of that food myself. We have a new piglet who will be ready to butcher in April or thereabouts, and now we know a very fine butcher (Crecencio) who is willing to do the job for us, so I guess one of my resolutions is to preserve that pig. I bought an industrial meat grinder, and by God I intend to use it. Ditto for this next year's goat kids.

Cheese. Last year I learned to make fine hard cheese, but I didn't cure it or store it. This year I will. With three milking does I ought to be able to make a two-pound wheel of cheese every week and still have plenty of milk for daily use and for yogurt and cajeta. Out in the shed we have a half-size fridge; I'm going to ask Homero if he can modify it to be a cheese cave: 50 degrees F.

Okay the champagne is getting to me. I think I'm done for the evening. I may think of more resolutions, but if I get most of these ones done I'll be doing pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. Happy 2010 to all of you and may all your resolutions come true!

Cheesy Goodness

I made a new type of cheese today. Black Pepper-Rosemary Queso Fresco. It's good. It's really, really good. That brings to four the kinds of cheese I can make (well okay, really it's flavors, not kinds so much:

Chevre, with or without herbs

Queso Fresco, ditto

Regular Cheddar

and

"Smokin' Goat" Chilpotle Cheddar, which seems to be the hands down favorite.

I will keep on trying new combinations and ideas. I just remembered the Pepper Thyme combo was pretty darn delicious. I think oregano would be nice. I'd like to get some grape leaves from my neighbor and try wrapping some soft chevre in them.

My kid is hanging off my arm and it's hard to type, gotta go.