Asparagus - pickles and soup

We made another trip to the U-Pick-It farm to pick another 10 pounds of asparagus. This time we decided we wanted to make a few quarts of pickled asparagus spears to enjoy later this year. Our kids LOVE them!

The first thing we did was to measure and cut the asparagus spears. We did this by figuring out how long we needed them to be to fit the jar, with the proper head spacing, and made a mark with permanent marker on our processing cutting board. This makes it a little easier to cut through a bunch of them quickly.

While we boiled our brine which we used this recipe for, we blanched and placed out asparagus spears into the jars with spices, an onion slice and a wedge of jalapeno.

After water bath canning for the proper amount of time (see your local Extension Service Office for your local canning times it can vary by elevation.) we were left with a beautiful little treat for later this year. Can you believe the color? The tips turned a reddish tint from the spices I assume.

But what did we do with all those ends that we cut off??? Some of them were a few inches long. That would be one heck of a waste wouldn't it?

Never fear, they were run through our food processor for a few seconds to prep them for another spring treat. Asparagus soup. This was a first try for us, but I have to say, the result was ... soooooo good!

After some onion and a little garlic were sweated in the pot in some butter; sorry I don't have the recipe, A~ was cooking I was making cheese... Anyway, the asparagus was added along with some stock and boiled for a little while. It was surprisingly quick.

After adding some cream and slow simmering for a bit, the soup was nearly finished. All we had left to do was to run it through a seive to remove the woody parts that were remaining. Remember, this soup is being made of the leftover stalks from our pickles.

And voila... after seiving, and adding a few drops of good Extra Virgin Olive oil and pepper, this soup was done, served and devoured!

Waste not want not. Our frugal ways yielded us a really tasty treat in this soup. I encourage you to search online, find a simple recipe that will allow you to just enjoy the flavor of the asparagus and go for it!
The rest of the meal was great too... this was just our "first course".
Till next time.
P~

Cheese making at home

A~ and I took an opportunity to attend a cheese making class the weekend before last and had a great time. If you're following me on Facebook you may remember me posting something about it. (If you're not, don't delay, I'm making an effort to get more regular posts up there in a timely manner.) Well we had a great time.

Demonstrating the process of making mozzarella

The class was being taught by a man that started one of our very favorite local cheese companies, Beehive Cheese, and was covering the obvious first timer cheese of choice, mozzarella. This was perfectly fine with us since, with summer knocking on the door, we wanted to get a few tricks as to how to make this family favorite so we could add it to our repertoire to enjoy with fresh garden tomatoes this year. The class covered the basics of course, but we did manage to learn a couple of good tricks too. For instance, did you know that even just a couple of drops of milk in normal tap water is enough to negate the effects of the chlorine in it? That's nice to know. Another good tip was to mix your citric acid into a 1/4 cup of water (with a drop of milk in it...) to dissolve it before adding it to the milk. You should also do the same thing for your rennet. The reason for this is to allow the ingredient to be introduced to the milk more gently so to speak. Rather than the shock of a direct hit of citric acid, you can ease it into the milk this way.

Prepping all ingredients. Milk & diluted citric acid and rennet.

Since we were newly educated and wanted to put our new info to use to really reinforce it into out minds we went ahead and made ourselves a batch of fresh mozzarella and ricotta this weekend. We learned a couple of things during this process. 1. If we're going to be making cheese, even just the basic mozzarella and ricotta, we need to get some specific equipment. Namely a large fine meshed strainer and some good quality cheese cloth. (The kind for actually making cheese with, not the flimsy crap from the mega-mart.) 2. The final step in making the mozzarella is to heat the curd and "knead" it until it turns to the silken texture and stiff dough-like consistency of good mozzarella.During this part of the process, there is a time to stop when the cheese has formed... I passed that point slightly and the dough was a little on the rubbery side but still very tasty. I'll chalk this error up to simple inexperience. Overall, I really enjoyed the class and the cheese that we made as a testament to having learned something at it. now I'm looking forward to the lasagna that we'll be having with our fresh cheese! Here's a few pictures of our home cheese making process in the works. Buon appetito!!

First, heat milk slowly to 55 deg... then add citric acid and stir...

Continue heating to 88 deg (F) then add rennet..stirring in.. then let sit while curd forms and increase temp to 98

strain off the whey leaving only curds...

heat curd, continue pouring off whey and knead till silken and dough like...

Separate into serving sizes if you'd like and store in fridge. (or eat right away)

We also made ricotta from another half gallon of milk. The steps are even easier:

Heat milk in a microwave safe bowl until it reaches between 190 - 200 Deg (F), then stir in 1/4 cup vinegar per qt of Milk. This will separate the curds off almost immediately.

After lettin the curd separate for 20-30 minutes, strain off whey and store the ricotta.. BAM! that easy.

The leftover whey from both processes is still a very high nutrient supplement. If you have chickens or livestock they will love it! Waste not want not.

Till Next Time.

Ah, Kohlrabi... the sputnik of the garden!

It's funny, that's how I first heard kohlrabi described, as resembling sputnik! I had to look it up to find out exactly what sputnik looked like.Guess what? good description don't you think?

The edible part of the kohlrabi, besides the leaves that is (yes those are edible too. but I'll get to that.) is not a root or a bulb as many would think. It's technically the swollen meristem of the plant and forms above ground just like in the picture above. As the kohlrabi forms, it looks a lot like a kale plant or a broccoli plant. Then, after a few weeks of growing the stem will start to swell just above the ground. That's the good part, just like what you see below.

This oddball brassica relative of both broccoli and cabbage definitely HAS become a family favorite though. We first grew it three years ago on a whim. It was one of the first of what would become known as our annual "test crops". Crops that we would sow a small section of just as a test to see how they would do and if we would like them at all. It's funny that the more you get into gardening and the more confident that you feel, the more you want to try odd and unique plants. Well, with three kids at home I was hesitant to grow large amounts of anything that we didn't know for sure we would eat.

We have learned a few things in the last few years and have come up with some good ways to prepare and to cook kohlrabi. Because I've gotten a couple of requests and because it is apparently showing up now in CSA shares, I thought I'd share them with ya'll.

First off, bigger is not necessarily better with kohlrabi. This was a lesson hard learned last year. Because we had determined that we liked it, we wanted to maximize our yields from the plot that we were growing. So we let our kohlrabi get to a really big size, like softball sized. When we got around to cooking them, we found to our dismay that the insides of the "bulb" had gotten stringy. Not stringy in a good spaghetti squash kind of way, but stringy in a woody, not pleasant to the palette kind of way. Anyway I digress, The point is, you can harvest some as they form up, and then continue to harvest as they get larger. if you start to see them stall at a particular size, chances are they are done.

To prepare kohlrabi we cut off the stems and set them to the side. Then I like to cut the top and the root section off the bulb and work my way around with a knife cutting off most of the woody outer section. I finish peeling the outsides off with a regular potato peeler. You can tell when you've gotten down to the good part because it will look exactly the same as if you had peeled a thick stem of broccoli. That's because they are essentially the same thing! Now that you know that, I bet you have lots of good ideas on what to do with them. First though, let's talk about those leaves.

The leaves of the kohlrabi are a totally edible part of the plant. They're a sturdy leaf, much like kale for instance and can be treated much the same way. After harvesting a good number of kohlrabi plants, I generally take the young new growth leaves from the center and set them aside in a separate pile. These should be sauteed as soon as possible to get the best flavor and texture from them. The older leaves toward the outside of the plant have a much woodier stem that needs to be removed before cooking; the easiest way is to fold the leaf in half along the stem and slice the stem right off, even up into the leaf portion. You can slice the leaves up thin and steam them or sautee with some onion or use them much the same way you would a kale or Chard leaf for instance. They're not the best part of the plant, but they're definitely a usable part of the plant particularly if you are a fan of greens. The other thing to do, if you have chickens, is to slice up the leaves and feed them to the girls. They love em and it's a good source of green vegetation too. Now, on to the good part... the bulb!

I don't know about your families, but in our home one of the ways we can always count on veggies being scarfed down is to put them in a dish with a little veggie dip and just go at them raw. Kohlrabi is great for this. After peeling the bulbs you can cut them into thin french fry size pieces perfect for any veggie tray.

Of course you can cut them into chunks and steam them till they're just tender to the bite, and plate them with just a little salt (and butter if you like) and they're great too. If you like the ole cheese sauce thing with broccoli that's a perfect way to serve them as well. (I personally am not, but to each their own!)

If your a fan of stir fry, broccoli beef for instance, you can take the peeled bulb and run it over a course grater or mandolin to get a thin julienne that you can drop in a hot pan with some garlic and onion and a little soy sauce for instance for just a few minutes till the strips are tender. If your vegetarian some marinated tofu would go great with this.

Probably our biggest family favorite for kohlrabi is to put them into hobo dinners along with whatever else is fresh from the garden. Early potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions and a ground beef patty seasoned well and wrapped in an aluminum foil pouch and placed on the grill or around a campfire till the veggies are done. Mmmm, we just had these last weekend while we stayed up at a cabin in the mountains and they were as good as ever!

The flavor of kohlrabi is familiar yet unique and the plants are reliable as an early and late crop. Where broccoli can be picky in some climates and bolt early or not form heads at all, Kohlrabi is generally a lot less finicky, gives good yields and has a very similar taste profile. If you haven't tried it, give it a chance, if you do I think you'll find this interesting looking veggie will become a favorite of yours as well!

If you have any personal recipes or if you decide to try any of the ones I've mentioned please share your input. I'm always looking for more ideas and would love to hear how your taste tests worked out!

Best of luck!
P~

For the love of "Scratch"

I've been meaning to put this post up for a week but just haven't had the time to crop photos and make the post. I just can't let my wife go un-heralded though. She starting working this year, and has been recognized for all the talents that I knew she had which has led to more demand for her at work. The best part is that she's working with me (in a way) so I get to hear all about how great she is to which I look at people and say " Um, yeah?!! I know!".

Yet even with that, and a shoulder that is still giving her pains from our car accident a few months back, she continues to bless us with such good food... and so often from scratch!

Like these cheese rolls:
They're a big time family favorite. How could you not love homemade bread wrapped around a tasty cheesy middle? And if you glaze the top with salted butter it leaves the golden brown color with a just a hint of saltiness. MMMmmm MMMmmm good!

They're great with a bowl of homemade chili too.And I can't say enough how nice it is to make chili that just screams from flavor because its made with canned tomatoes and tomato sauce from your own homegrown tomatoes, fresh onions from the cold storage and green chili's that we picked from a local farm and canned ourselves. If you haven't had the pleasure of fresh food from ripe ingredients you have not lived!

For dessert we feasted on a brand new recipe for scratch made yellow cake made bright yellow of course with the dark golden yolks of our back yard chickens eggs.A~ found a new way to make the chocolate frosting that is the creamiest and tastiest that we've had.

It's one thing to talk about eating from the storage cabinet and survival food has it's place, but honestly, the best gift gained from building the habit of growing and putting up your own food and learning the ways of preparing it on a regular basis is really just in the enjoying of your labors and the flavors that they bring.

Hmm, I think I'm getting hungry again just talking about it. Life is good. Some days better than others, but days like this are among the best!
Best to you all.
P~

A vegetarian alternative

This weekend we decided to try a little something new.

The recipe we started with was for wheat gluten, but we've also eaten it under the name Seitan. It's a solid vegetarian alternative to meat, easy to make and inexpensive to boot. What we started with was a dough like mixture of fresh ground (not store bought) wheat flour (10 cups) and water (5 cups).That's it, just mix it in a large bowl and let it sit at least overnight. Ours sat nearly 30 hrs; no problem with that.
After letting it sit, we turned it out into a bowl that was filled with 20 cups of warm water. I personally can't see why it had to be 20 cups, but I think it has to do with the potential uses for the water later.At this point what we needed to do was to knead the dough like it was a regular bread dough, but do it under water. The reason we're doing this is to "wash" the starches from it. You can see the milky color of the water. Those are the starches separating from the gluten in the dough mixture.After rinsing the mixture for about 3-5 minutes, we put it into a colander to further rinse under warm water until the water ran clear. What we were left with was a strangely elastic and web like mass that was made up of the pure wheat gluten.After letting it sit for a few minutes, we pressed it out (not rolled, but pressed) onto a cutting board where it strangely did not stick at all. To do this we had to press it out slowly and give it a minute or two to settle and then press it out further.Next we cut the wheat gluten into strips. And here is where we differed from the recipe that we had.We decided to follow the process of seitan rather than the purely wheat gluten recipe. What we did was to boil the seitan in a mixture of water, broth, soy sauce and seasonings. Note: start with cold liquid and bring to a low heat and cook partially covered for at least 1 hr.This is the finished seitan. Cooked, seasoned and ready to use in any kind of dish where you might use something like beef chunks or chicken strips.I was dying to give it a try so I decided to give it a shot sauteed with some onions and egg for a nice omelet. The texture was really nice. Not chewy at all, and not too soft either. I would like to have had the seitan have a bit more flavor to begin with as it was still just a bit "wheaty" but I think if it is marinaded in some Worcestershire or soy before a slow saute, it would be even better.

We hope to make this a regular addition to our menu in the future as we try to become more self sufficient and to eat a healthier diet. I'm going to state the obvious here, but if you or any one in your family has a gluten intolerance, this is DEFINITELY not the food for them as it it pure wheat gluten.

I hope you'll give it a try.
Bon appetite~
P~

Breaking in a new toy

A while back, before Christmas actually, I treated myself to a little present. It's something that I've been looking for here and there, but it hadn't ever presented itself at the right time. This time however, during a trip to Ikea in Salt Lake City, I found this awesome clay cooking vessel and it was gonna be mine!There were only displays left of the shelf but I would not be deterred. After not taking the standard "We don't sell the displays" line to heart, I found another member of the sales staff and HE agreed that they would since it was the only ones left. I had to pay full price, but really all I was missing was a box...no biggie!

So, what's the big deal? Bread baby...bread. Last year, along with I think everyone in the homesteading blogosphere, I got hooked on the NY Times no knead bread. My problem was, my cast iron pot was 1, too stinky to use in the house (don't ask, long story.) and 2, too big to use in the oven very easily. I have heard of a "la Cloche" to bake in, but that's a tool that can only be used for baking where as this one can serve multi purpose. Also it was cheaper so that was a big selling point as well.

So tonight I christened it, and it baked a bread with a crisp crust, that looks great. I can't wait to get into it.I've been reading about the five minutes a day bread recipe too, any one have any experience with it? I'm not sure it would really fit our needs as a day to day bread. We have three kids in school that need lunch time sandwich bread mostly, but I'd still like to try it out perhaps.

I look forward to playing with this further throughout the year. I'll keep you posted.
Till tomorrow.
P~

The hardboiling dilemma

I learned something kind of surprising over the holidays. Although fresh eggs are tastier, healthier and just generally all around better eggs, they do have one shortcoming. They don't hard boil worth a D***!

A couple of days before Thanksgiving A~ and I began trying some different methods of hard boiling them so we could have some deviled eggs with some semblance of a decent appearance. It wasn't happening. You may know what I'm talking about. That incredible stick to the shell power of fresh hard cooked eggs is more that my usually nimble fingers could work around.

So I consulted one of my go to people for all things chicken, or egg.. or whichever came first.? Anyway, Laura over at (not so) Urban Hennery comforted me with the knowledge that her eggs do the same thing. and her most consistent solution; old eggs. That's right, old eggs. It seems that as the eggs age, the proteins in the egg kind of mellow out and let the shell go. Huh? Maybe that's the reason eggs bought from store shelves average 30 days old already? Anyway, we decided to start saving a bunch of eggs separate from the rest so we had them available when we wanted hard boil some for whatever reason.
As you can see, we came up with a really technical way of coding them as well. 1-1 in our code means the eggs were set apart during the first week of January. It's rudimentary I admit, but it works well. I now have a bag of hard boileds in the fridge at work to eat for breakfast and they slide right out of the shell!

So, if your new to raising your own eggs, save yourself the frustration of sticky shelled eggs and let them chill out for a week or two in the fridge. You'll be much happier with the results. I promise. Have any other ideas for ways to hard cook fresh eggs that works well for you? Leave a comment share it with the rest of us would ya?
Catch you tomorrow.
P~

Creamy Curry Butternut Bisque

I decided to so a little food experimenting the other day. I put up a few good sized butternut squash this fall, a first for me, and since I really don’t have any experience cooking it I felt a little experiment was in order.

Ok, ok, you caught me... I have cooked it before. But only like once and it was just steamed with some butter and brown sugar and wasn't really very good at all, so I don't count it. I decided to try something a little different with two of our butternuts and went with a creamy, bisque-like, curry soup. I'm happy to say that it came out much like I had imagined that it would. I don't often cook, and even at that I don't often cook with a recipe. A guideline yes, but a true recipe not so much. It's a blessing and a curse to be so comfortable winging it and it has re payed me with both some very tasty dishes as well as some real dogs! This one falls into the former category.

So then, first and most importantly, let me introduce the main stars of this show. A couple of nice sized home grown butternut squash and some smallish but very tasty homegrown storage onions from the cold storage.I might mention that I decided to try storing my butternut squash outdoors this year after reading about someone else that uses their front porch as their long term storage option. I kept them out back inside of my small metal shed and well, they froze. It was just too cold out there. The good news is that they seem to have frozen once and then stayed that way so the damage to the texture of the squash was minimal. After a couple of days on the kitchen counter they defrosted nicely and were still very firm.

The ingredients:
•2 med - large butternut squash peeled and chopped to about 1 inch squares.
•Approx 2 cups of onion sliced evenly
•5-6 cloves of garlic. Peeled and rough chopped
•Curry spice and seasoning mix in a small dish. (The seasonings contained about 80% curry seasoning, and the remaining 20% as a mix of onion and garlic powder, pepper, some ginger and a couple pinches of cinnamon.)
•One can or approx 1 1/2 cups of chicken broth.
•Cream or milk or both as you prefer.

Cook the onions with about 1/4 stick of butter tempered with a bit of olive oil in a good sized sauce pan until they are nearly translucent and then throw in the garlic. (Tempering the butter with olive oil raises the temperature the butter can reach without burning and lets the onions cook better at this point. Tempering is a fancy pants term that just means putting the oil in the hot pan first and then adding the butter.) When the garlic gets to the point that it's softening and getting well cooked in, toss in about 3/4 of the curry seasoning mix. The heat releases the oils and flavors in the spices and sort of "wakes them up" for the most flavor.

Cook all of this over medium-high for a few minutes stirring occasionally to keep it from burning or sticking too much then add about a half cup of the broth. Stir this really well and make sure to scrape up any little bits of the onion, garlic, curry that may be sticking to the bottom of the pan. This is called deglazing a pan and will get you lots of good flavor for whatever you are cooking.Now add the chopped squash, the remaining seasonings and the rest of the broth, turn everything together, cover and bring to a slow boil. When it starts to bubble, reduce heat to a simmer and cook covered until the squash is completely soft. I added some more butter at this point, but I'd say that was entirely optional, I just like the buttery flavor with squash.

Once the squash is soft, I used a potato masher to break up and mash all the ingredients together. Once you get it well mashed, you may find it to be like a thick applesauce consistency and want to add either some water, or better yet more broth, to thin it a bit. (Don't make it too thin, because we still need to puree and add cream.) You'll also want to add salt to taste at this point as it will still be rather bland. Cook it for another 15 minutes or so on low, and get out either a food processor or stand mixer. If you use a stand mixer you may need to do it in two batches. Pour everything into the processor leaving a little bit of room at the top. Blend until mostly smooth. Now add the milk or cream or, as I did, about even of each and mix further until your happy with the texture and flavor.

And there you go. My Creamy Curry Butternut Squash Bisque.
I topped it with a few sliced onions and some paprika and it was really good.

I did make an interesting observation though, quite by accident. Although not a spicy soup itself, it compliments spicy food very well. We were having buffalo wings for lunch the day that I made this and I had a small bowl of it at the same time. It went really well together strangely? The next day when I ate it for lunch I added a few chopped pieces of a hot pickled pepper to it and it went good together as well.

I hope you give it a try. Let me know if you like, or as always if you have any suggestions that may make it better.
Till next time
P~

100 Ft Diet and Harvest Keepers - Sauerkraut

At the beginning of September I wrote that I had decided to try my hand at making some homemade, very simple recipe, traditional Sauerkraut. That's it below, when I had just put it into the jar and crock. I only made a batch that called for 5 lbs of shredded cabbage and used some cabbage from our garden. Cabbage that was specifically planted with this idea in mind. Now I've never really been a huge sauerkraut eater; it's not something that we ate a lot of as I grew up, but I decided a few years back that it was something I wanted to "try again" and you know, I liked it. It wasn't something that I would get cravings for or anything but it was alright. So why make a concerted effort to grow cabbage, and make the stuff from scratch right? The answer is pretty simple actually. Because this is one of those foods that is easy to make, is very healthy, can be used as a condiment or as a main course dish and most importantly is a food that can be stored for long periods with simple methods making it a very good staple food to know how to make.
And now, a month and a week later, I have this. I jar with some slowly lacto-fermented cabbage, that when smelled is absolutely amazing! I now get why this stuff got to be so darned popular in the first place. The brine that developed around the cabbage is a slightly salty, almost kosher pickle tasting flavor and the cabbage itself still retains a lot of it's original texture, while being soft enough for us to know it's done. Here's a closeup.
I was worried about the liquid getting funky or moldy while it sat in the cold storage, but brine filled plastic bag that sealed the top off worked perfectly. That is absolutely the way to go by the way.

After we took the kraut out of the jar and started warming it over the stove, the smell of it was making our mouths water. Add a beer boiled brat, some steamed dill potatoes and popovers and you've got yourself a German dinner extraordinaire!
The best part of it all was that we only used a little more that 1/4 of what I made, and better yet, I harvested a 6 lb cabbage tonight that's going to make more of this tasty stuff for the winter.

If you've never tried it, and even if your not traditionally a Kraut lover, I encourage you to give this very simple recipe a try. I have to verify it, but I believe it was just 3 tbsp of salt (pickling preferably) to each five lbs of cabbage. I used the Salt Lake salt that I made a couple of months back. It worked great and helped to make this a totally local food product! You add the salt to the cabbage in a large bowl and mix it with your hands well, then pack in a crock or the largest jar you have (food safe buckets are also supposed to work well in place of large crocks.) and cover the top with either a weighted plate, or better yet, a large brine filled bag. Let it sit in a cool (60-70 deg F) room for a few weeks, cleaning the cover off regularly and voila! Sauerkraut. Or better yet, go to your library and rent "The joy of pickling" and check out the many different recipes that they have in it.
Good luck, and go make some Kraut!
P~

Finally - homemade mozzarella

This last weekend A~ and I finally tried our hand at making our own mozzarella. It was fun, interesting and didn't taste half bad. Add to that the fact that we got enough cheese from one $2.80 gallon of milk that it would have equalled what we would normally have spent $6-$8 on. There are still some finessing things that we have to work out, like the exact amount of rennet to add, how long to knead it for, and the proper amount of salt to add, but we ate it, and I think the boys are looking forward to more of it.
It all started with a gallon of milk poured into a stainless steel pot. The milk was then heated slowly to 55 deg F.



When the milk gets up to 55 F we add some citric acid diluted in water and continued heating until the milk had risen to 88 deg F, stirring occasionally. At this point the milk has started to curdle slightly and looked almost like cottage cheese sitting in yogurt.




When the milk has risen to 88 deg F, we stirred in our rennet with an up and down motion. (Don't ask me what that's supposed to mean that's just what the recipe said to do). It's at this point that we lost our way a little. The recipe that we were following called for 1/4 tsp, and the package for the rennet called for a different measurement. We added the packages quantity and it didn't seem to be getting the curds and whey to split so we added a little bit more and continued heating. We were supposed to heat it until it reached near 105 deg, but ended up having to go to nearly 120 before we saw any real separation. I don't know if it had to do with our elevation or what, but this is the main area that we need to play around with to perfect it.



Now you can see the curd separating pretty well. You need to let it continue to separate until the whey is mostly yellowish/clear.



It's now that you ladle the curd out of the whey with a slotted spoon. After you've done that, and drained off as much whey as you can, the curd needs to be microwaved for 1 minute, knead and pour off excess whey (don't throw that whey away, you can make ricotta with it) Do this at least two more times for 35 seconds each times, lightly salting after the second time, and knead the cheese until it is stretchy and shiny then roll into balls and set in ice water bath if you are not going to eat it right away.

And there you go. approximately 3/4 to 1 pound of finished mozzarella. You can eat it right away, or let it cool and store in a lightly salted water in the fridge.
It was fun and tasty, although I think I needed to knead it a little longer. The finished product was still a bit "wet" for lack of a better description, and was breaking down slowly in the water bath.




We did enjoy it with a few homegrown tomatoes and basil and some olive topenade that A~ made, and the next day put slices on top of some eggplant Parmesan.


We'll be tweaking this recipe to make it work better for us, but I think we're onto something good! I'm consistently amazed with how possible it is to make some of the dairy products that seem to mysterious like this cheese or the yogurt that I love to make. Give it a try, it's not that hard, costs very little for the supplies and is a great skill to have in your quiver.

Enjoy.
P~