I was backed up on milk, because I wasn’t here last week, so had an extra heavy dairy making sessions today. I made yogurt, strawberry maple ice cream, lemon cheese, and mozzarella, all from raw milk, of course. The pigs love me today, as do the dogs. Frank was able to take a few breaks from work to take all the whey out to them, which was nice because my left arm *still* hurts and is weak.
(We must try to move the pigs, next.) (Again.) (Attempt 384.) (Sigh.)
Quick reviews: I’m not sure lemon cheese is worth the effort. Not a lot of cheese for too much effort. I’m not sure if it was because I’m using raw milk, or what, but it took 6 lemons to get appreciable curd, and then I even tossed in some rennet, since what could it hurt? It tastes okay, but not great. I think I will try to pair it with blueberry jam, and another with basil, to see if I like it. I read a recipe for lemon/orange curd, and I wonder if that is worth it. The whey that it left was still really milky. I drained the whey in butter muslin, to save as much as I could. Too much bother, I think.
I’ve got my greek-style yogurt perfect, finally. I strain it, so again lots of whey, but we like it better this way and don’t let it go bad, whereas when I left the whey in it, we didn’t actually eat it that often, so it went bad. It’s really nice with apricot preserves, or bananas and honey. I don’t actually like it frozen, though. Sadly.
Though not too sadly. Instead of frozen yogurt, I tried another flavor of ice cream, this time strawberry maple. It got two raving reviews today, too, so yay. Very strawberryish, but the maple is there, not too subtle, and they go very well together. I also used the whole eggs, not just the yolks, and it still came out really creamy and nice texture. I will feed some to Valerie tonight to see what she thinks.
I’m getting fairly good at mozzarella. I screwed up my last batch — the texture was just horrid — so I was a little worried about getting back in that saddle. But it again came out great, whew. I’m doing a weird combination of the “30 minutes” recipe and the slow method that is supposedly so much better. I think it is as good as the all slow version. Frank doesn’t really like any mozzarella, at least the stuff he’s had while out, but he likes this one. I love this one. I love mozzarella anyway, however I can get it, so I’m finding this good stuff hard to stop nibbling. I can’t wait to make a pizza with it again.
I think that’s all I made today. We don’t need butter, yet. We have too much ice cream, and I’m out of freezer containers and freezer space.
Pearl update: still no baby. She is quite enjoying her fabulous quarters at Cassie’s awesome barn. Her barn was made by the same log house builder who built our house. Can you imagine a barn that awesome? It is. I want one, badly. Her place is for sale, and she has 5 cleared acres of land. It is so tempting to trade! We don’t need 343 acres of woods, do we? She said it took them 15 years to go from where we are now to where she is now. I don’t want to wait 15 years!
Frank just bought a new tractor. It got delivered yesterday, but he had no time to even turn it on, so it taunted him out his window. He’s out playingworking with it now. It has a back hoe and a bucket, and I’m sure he’ll be writing about it soon. Now that I can hear him on it, so I know he at least figured out where the key went, I’m going to go out and take pictures of him on it. I’m sure he’s doing something useful with it.