Cheese!

I am excited to say that I started a new adventure in cheese making yesterday. I have been making soft cheeses for about 5 or 6 years now. I make Feta, Chevre, Cream Cheese along with buttermilk, butter and sour cream. Yesterday I made my first hard cheese….a colby!

My first lesson….never start this late in the afternoon when you don’t really know what you are doing…I won’t even mention when I finally hit the pillow. I used Riki Carroll’s book “Home Cheese Making”. Everything seemed to go according to plan…but it will be 2 months before we really know.

Lesson 2….you can’t add up all the times in the recipe and really think that you will be stopping at that point. It is not…I repeat NOT…..like baking a cake! I should have been done at 11:00 pm according to my calculations… a little late but do-able….let’s just say it was quite a bit past that point and I was so tired I was ready to chuck it out to the chickens!

I had wonderful advice from the Kansas Milkmaid…check out her link on this page and check out her new website….awesome! There were some concerns about the cheese sticking to the cheesecloth. This could be for a variety of reasons…some good and some bad. I will just go on in faith, wax the cheese and see what happens.

I am, however, undaunted and will be trying again in the next few days. Wheels of Parmesan, Cheddar, Gouda along with Mozzarella, Montery Jack and Pepper Jack are dancing before my eyes. I am cleaning out the small dorm refrigerator that has been out in the garden shed and dedicating it to my still to be pressed wheels of cheese.

This would be something you could do even in a small apartment. So, I encourage those of you who long for the homesteading life….or those of you working towards it….get a copy of this book or check out the links on the Kansas Milkmaid’s website and give it a try! I hope to hear lots of success stories….

.Good night folks…thanks for stopping in!