Cheese Making Day!!

Aylia and I had the best time at the cheese making class we took at North Seattle Community College on Saturday.  We made mozzarella cheese, which takes a lot of kneading of the cheese to get it soft and pliable, kind of like making taffy.  Here is Aylia with the piece of mozzarella cheese she was kneading.

We came home with recipes to make piima, a Scandinavian culture like buttermilk/kefir, mozzarella, paneer, which is very yummy and can be used in place of tofu, chevre, which we will be able to make if we want to use the goat's milk after they kid, and butter can be made from the piima, which we made at class and it was very yummy!!

This is the pot of paneer after you add the lemon juice to it.  It then gets strained with buttercloth (like cheesecloth, but better quality) and then you wrap it in the buttercloth and press it (in class we used a metal pan filled with water as the press on top of the wrapped paneer).

We also got to sample some gouda the instructor had made (that would be covered in the next class, that I believe Aylia, my mom and I will be taking in May), and it was very yummy also.  The instructor had made a "mistake" with a batch of paneer and it turned out like cheesecake consistency, so she topped it with blackberry and rose jam, and it was fabulous.  (The instructor said there are no mistakes in cheesemaking, just different variables, which makes for different consistencies!  haha)

Anyway, it was a very fun day and ended with Liam winning their game against Tri-Cities 8 to 3 and he had a hat trick (3 goals) and 1 assist.  YAY!!

When we got home, I put my 2 samples of piima in the fridge.  I will be making one with whole milk and one I want to make with heavy cream, cuz then I can make butter!

Have a good one!