Squeeze The Cheese, Please

The downside to having such a "family friendly" electronic journal is that you don't always get an action packed story where I'm slinging guns on The Border, or getting flashed by a grocery store clerk in the check out lane--I will archive those somewhere, promise--so you will have to settle for a few plain vanilla entries every once in a while. I think this is one of them; but, you never know what will come next...

I took time out of my busy, corporate week to make some goat cheese out of a gallon of fresh-off-the-farm milk that Farmer Ron had given me a few days ago. I didn't want the milk to go to waste, but I didn't really want to discover that it failed--again--after the last time I tried this. It's not like I'm making an artisanal cheese, incorporating herbs or fruits. I'm not the Beekman Boys, after all; although I wish I had their talent. (Incidentally, I have a photo from Farmer Ron's farm--Scapegoat Farm--on their Web site. Go back and click on "Beekman Boys" to check it out, along with their Web site. It's the photo of "Sen" and "Kimi" goats hiding in their house on chicken butchering day).

The last time my dad gave me goat milk I poured the required 3/4 cup of white vinegar in the vat of 190-degree milk and didn't stir it in. As a result, I made one tablespoon of goat ricotta cheese out of one gallon of milk! How frustrating.

This time, I stirred that vinegar in--gently--and we had considerably more success as illustrated with the little pictorial below:


Gettin' our curdle on: little Ms. Homer's curds and whey.

Milk does not cool fast. Once it gets from 190 degrees (F) down to about 100 degrees, it is supposedly safe enough to handle. I then cut some tracks through the big curdled chunk in the middle of the steel soup pot to release a little more whey. Then, we call the husband over to assist--you know if Mr. H hadn't helped, I would have second degree burns on 80% of my body.



The Curd

 Here's the fresh curd safely dumped into a cheese cloth of sorts. Now we gather the sides up and start squeezing the liquid out. This is going to end up like a ricotta cheese and I've used it before(when my dad made it) for lasagna. Yum!

Draining the whey away. That's not my hairy arm: it's Mr. H being ever so gracious by helping.



Farmer Kimi squeezing fresh goat cheese

I wanted to take over squeezing the liquid out of the cheese so that I could say that I was the one that actually made cheese! (No, I'm not stoned in this picture. I was at work all day and my brain had been working overtime; hence, the tired, lost look).


Dangling Cheese

The cheese had to dangle in the fridge overnight to finish draining. Having no idea how to execute this, Mr. H stepped in again to rescue the cheese and used office equipment to do so: there are clippies and zip-ties incorporated in the process.

Incidentally, for those of you who have internet access and are reading this: tell Grandma Debbie (my mom) that our refrigerator has no food in it since she left and that she needs to hurry and return to Wisconsin. I'm starving!

More goat milk please!