More cheese!

Ok, no pictures in this post because really, how many pictures can one have of mozzerella cheese on a blog?

Today I made "chaos cheese" which means I made cheese with 5 children in the house who were all hungry/thirsty/wet/bored/can we play the wii???????

I have found the secret to success is delegation, make one child stir while you get goldfish for the others, another child stirs while you get apple juice and then when things get hectic tell them they need to "work it out themselves." Also, the kid who did the most stirring gets to pick the leftover curds from the bowl and do what they will with them. I have to admit the 20 month old did spend some time in the playpen because she kept falling off the step stool (which is about 5 inches) and then being incredibly dramatic about it when I took the step stool away.

When the cheese was done, I called our handy-neighbor and shuttled all the over-two kids to his house, leaving me with only the toddler and dog.

Speaking of the dog, I was not able to get his groomer scheduled for today, so he's just going to have to smell like a dog when my dad gets here. I made the executive decision that it's worth far more to me to pay the $35 and have someone else wash the dog, than attempt to do it in the bathroom and end up chasing him around the house while he pees on the carpet trying to escape.

Note to self: used 1 teaspoon of salt for the cheese. Will taste test on assorted neighbors shortly.

My Mom Makes Cheese

Apparently in class, Max is learning _at words, like Cat, Rat, Hat, etc...when the teacher got to "vat," the kids inquired as to what a vat was and the teacher responded with "Oh, it's a big tub where you make stuff like cheese" and Max jumped up and yelled "My MOM MAKES CHEESE!"

Yes, yes she does.

More Cheese!

In an attempt to not drive myself crazy today...I made some more cheese

This time I used a cheesecloth and got about twice the curds out of it...



After the cheesecloth but before the first microwave, quite the difference from the first time.


Kneading...always kneading....


Finished (this is about 2/3 of the cheese, I gave 1/3 away to neighbors)

Cheese!

Holy moley...I made cheese!

from: http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/Mozzarella.pdf

Stirring the milk...stirring...stirring. The milk started out at about 40 degrees.


Adding the citric acid at 55 degrees. Then, more stirring.


Felix was super interested at first...at least he was hopeful I would drop something.


Still stirring.


Felix starting snoring at about 70 degrees.


Max checks the temperature


Time to add the rennet!


Curds!


Squeezing out the curds


The curds before the first microwave


After the first microwave


After the third microwave


Pulling the cheese


Max kneads the cheese


All done!