A Yummy and Healthy Post

Let's take a break from Economics (though I am sure I will reference this post sometime later when brain-washing you into believing my ideologies). This is one of those "thousands of other things" I do posts. I like cheese (she does like cheese), and despite what the stupid media put out there, it is actually quite good for you. Not to mention, it is just yummy! Think of the evolution of food, and here we are today with cheese still making it through the ages. Though I'm sure our predecessors enjoyed a much more delicious version than what we have. There is something about making cheese fresh from your own animal, in your own kitchen, accented with the herbs in your garden, that a cheese factory can't possibly capture. Not to mention, I'm starting to wonder what else is in there that we don't know about! So to match my attention span (last time I tried to make hard cheese, I ate it before it was cured), I made farmers cheese. A soft cheese that is good with almost anything!

The big bonus of making your own cheese is the pretty picture you get to take out of your creation. It just looks so much better with the cheese cloth there on the wooden thing. The cute little bowl is full of olive oil. I put in it crushed fresh garlic, oregano, basil and rosemary-- all from our garden. I looked at several recipes for farmers cheese, and then did my own thing. I always believe in taking a pirates approach to life "they're more like guidelines anyways." So I ended up putting in a half-gallon of whole milk into a pot, and heated it up. I was suppose to get to 180F degrees, but who knows if it did. Then I put in a table spoon of vinegar and two cups of butter milk. It was then was suppose to separate. When I poured it into the cheese cloth, I got about a half-cup a cheese, and some milky-looking run-off. My memory told me I should have got a lot more curds, and the whey should have been yellow-gross looking. So I re-heated it mixture, and it separated! YAY for my own thing! From there I put it into the cheese cloth and let it drip-drain. I salted it with my pink salt, and voila, yummy cheese!

For lunch we had the sourdough bread, the olive oil mixture, and white wine. It was a very satisfying meal. Ben was freaked out because that cheese took a half-gallon of milk. So here comes our economics lesson. Let's compare costs. Gallon of milk, versus that much cheese. Well, for a high quality cheese like that, the home-made version won.  Now I just need to go buy a cow so I can make a legit version of it.