I find myself in unfamiliar territory:

It’s the first weekend in a month that I’m not planting anything, not pulling anything out  nor (the firm favorite since we signed the offer to purchase on a new house) planning our vegetable garden . The kitchen counters aren’t covered with buckets of separating whey and curd, the cheese thermometer’s  quietly resting in it’s plastic holder, the food dehydrator isn’t buzzing and the vacuum sealing machine has been boxed away after the morning’s grocery shop. My hands don’t have the faint odor of sterilizer, aren’t sticky with castor sugar and the heavy-bottom pot isn’t sickly sweet with rapidly boiling jam or chutney or preserve. In fact, the house is earily peaceful. Read more »

An easy and quick recipe for mozarella cheese (adapted from Margret Kingsolver’s recipe in “Animal Vegetable Miracle” [1]):

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One could begin with the whole history of cheese, how humans discovered it, made it, aged it, named it, got rich from it, but I’m not – you can look that up yourself.

Cheese is, in essence, solid, curdled milk. Nothing more, nothing less. Oh, there are various tricks in getting the milk to curdle the right way, in the correct amount of time under precise conditions, but, leave milk out of the refrigerator long enough and it will turn to cheese (strictly speaking, to whey and curds, but lets not get technical).

So why cheese?

Why not?

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