Cheese!

A hobby that fits neatly into "having to hang around the house all day" is CHEESEMAKING! 

We are lucky enough to live within five miles of a farm where I can pick up fresh clean  milk every week.  Anticipating this, I asked for a Dutch cheese press for Christmas.  Since then I have been putting it to work with small batches of hard cheese, such as Colby, Wensleydale, and a basic farmer cheese.  (My attempts at soft cheeses have been less successful...)

It’s ALIVE!  The added culture is working in the warm milk—the movement is probably convection, but could it be the cultures propagating???

we ate my first cheese without aging--not bad!

waxing the cheese before aging

We ate the first aged waxed cheese this weekend--perfect since we had lots of visitors to share it with.

One frustrating thing is that you need to wait weeks and weeks before you know whether the batch is any good... 

Drum roll:  

IT WAS GREAT!

cheesy smile to go with the cheese