Making Feta

One of the things I have started to make is cheese. Mostly soft cheeses like chevre and feta although I have a test brie aging at the moment.

Making cheese turns out to be easier than bread. Yesterday I got stuff out to make a fresh batch of feta. You see here - two liters of goat milk (I usually use four); a pot, two basket molds and a drain tray, my collection of cheese molds (little packets) and two coagulants - vegitable rennet and Calciam chloride, and a thermometer.


First I heat the milk to about 96 degrees so its nice and cozy for the bacteria - which is what is in that blue spoon.

Goat milk comes from Trader Joes. Even though I'm surrounded by goats from here to Bodega Bay I can't get any fresh goat milk unless I suddenly become best friends with a goat herder. Fortunantly TJoe's sees fit to sell regular pasturized goat milk. Ultrapasterized milk won't work, it doesn't coagulate and form curds.




After the bacteria has a chance to spread out and enjoy itself, I added the two coagulants which very swiftly resulted in a nice firm curd here. The knife is holding back a wall which means we're ready to finish cutting and then transfer to the basket molds.


Here they are when I first put them in - and here they are about four hours later. Much smaller. But very yummy.


I keep them in a brine in my refrigerator.


A much better set of directions can be found at the Fias Farm website.

If you want to make your own - there are places to order stuff from if no one is selling local. The Beverage People, which is local to Santa Rosa and does wine, apple cider and beer, is starting to do cheese stuff and perhaps sausage. I make sausage too. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to build a cold smoker for the cheese and a hot smoker for the sausage...

Across the country and back again

Hello from Atlanta!

We have both been awfully slack about posting, in fact even joining this blog since we left California. I guess it only makes sense that as we are now moving back across the country we should join the blog. That is correct, we are moving to Portland, Oregon as soon as we get jobs or our lease runs out, whichever comes first. After our holiday visit to Heather's family in Portland we decided it was a good idea to be around her family for the next couple of years. Heather's mother isn't getting any better, her grandmother and grandfather aren't getting any younger, and did you know you can't see a single large body of water in Atlanta? Really we had no idea, otherwise Heather never would have moved. (note sarcasm) Except for a river with a funny name, and it's dirty. So if anyone knows anyone hiring for anything in the Portland area, please talk us up to them and them give me their phone number.
Roux is excited about the move, I have promised her that I would take up snowshoeing so that she can play in the snow. She also enjoys destroying the duck she got for Christmas. That seems to be all of our news.

Alexis

A holy kiss?

I'm back in Geneva after a whirlwind Christmas break in Portland, and today (being the first of the month) was communion day at the Church of Scotland. For some odd reason, the only time the C of S passes the peace is when there's communion, and I've missed some previous communion Sundays...so I was interested to discover today that many people at the C of S use the standard Geneva greeting when passing the peace: three kisses on the cheeks. So, if you greet five people, that's 15 kisses. It becomes a bit ridiculous after a while - especially as with each new face you have that moment of deliberation when you're trying to figure out if this will be a handshake or the kissing ritual, if kissing, which cheek to head for first, and whether or not there will be lip-to-cheek contact or just the "mwah!" sound in the air.

I don't think we covered this in our sexual harassment seminar; in any case, my usual trick for avoiding unwanted hugs - clasping both hands of the incoming parishioner - doesn't work in this scenario, as people come in for the kiss anyway.

I'm not sure this is quite what Paul had in mind when he told the churches of Rome and Corinth to greet one another with a holy kiss...