Cheesy Playdate

Nicole and I made cheese today. That's right, I said cheese.

We followed this mozzarella recipe, adding citric acid (courtesy of Whole Foods Market) at 55 degrees . . .

. . . then some liquid rennet (also courtesy of WFM) at 88 degrees. You can see that the milk is already starting to curdle.

At 100 degrees we scooped out the curds . . .

. . . then microwaved them a few times, squeezing out more whey each time. We then kneaded them a bit . . .

. . . and rolled the resulting cheese into balls. Considering that we started out with a gallon of milk, we didn't produce very much cheese. Now I know why cheese is so expensive.

We ate some of the cheese for lunch with bread and fresh basil. It was pretty good for a second attempt (our first was last week, using a different recipe, and the milk never curdled), but the flavor and texture left a little to be desired. Practice makes perfect, they say. My next dairy-related project will probably be yogurt, though--I hear it's easier, and we love it even more than cheese.

Speaking of home dairy production, we didn't want the kids to feel left out, so Nicole gave them jars of heavy whipping cream to shake until it turned into butter. The result was pretty soft and needed salt, but they seemed to have fun, which was the whole point.

Incidentally, Daniel's jar privileges were promptly revoked when I informed Nicole that he can open childproof caps. Fortunately, there were plenty of light switches to occupy him in lieu of the butter jar.