Tuesday Twister – June 23, 2009

My Tuesday Twister posts are my weekly round-up of what’s going on in my kitchen and our lives, as it pertains to food. So here we go – I’ll catch you up on what’s twisting in the kitchen this week!

Choke Cherry Tree – This is just for fun! The girls and Mikah have been collecting some berries on our place for some time. But they wanted to know what they were. And Mikah, in particular, wanted to know if he could eat them. So the kids and Jeff got out the field guide on Sunday and identified the tree producing the berries as a choke cherry tree. We are excited! We ate a few berries that day; they are just getting ripe. Perhaps we’ll put up the ladder this weekend and get some more that are higher up.

Feta Cheese – I put my feta cheese, which I started last week, in the brine last Friday. The chunks will age in the fridge for a month, then we’ll test the cheese. I want to test it sooner; Jeff wants to let it go. He’s the scientist and says we shouldn’t introduce oxygen into the jar to mess up the aging. So I’ll let him win that one. We’ll test in a month.

Cottage Cheese - Using the recipe at Fias Co Farm, I made cottage cheese on Sunday. It was super easy, though it kept me chained to the kitchen most all day. Isn’t that how most home cooking goes, though? I am having trouble holding milk to a certain temperature for any cheese-making. But… the good news is that the cheeses are working anyway. So there must be a small margin of error allowed, which makes sense. Thermometers have not been around since the beginning of time, yet traditional peoples have been making cheese for centuries, sans thermometer. I’m thankful that even though we can get very scientific with procedures and techniques, God allows simple food preparations to happen successfully in kitchens all over the globe without alot of fancy gadgets or advanced degrees.

Cultured Butter – I wrote about this yesterday, when I shared my second attempt at making cultured butter from cultured goat milk. The yield is not that high. In fact, it is downright low. But the butter is really good. And now I can say that I’ve tried it. I’m holding out for a cream separator though, so I can make butter and have lots to show for the effort.

Dishwasher Works Again – After writing last week that my dishwasher doesn’t clean the top rack, I am happy to report that it is working again. I went to Bi-Mart and described the funny-looking screw preventing me from cleaning out the bowels of the dishwasher (ooh, bad word choice, I know) and the helpful man said, “Oh, that is a torqx screw.” Then he proceeded to show me the different screwdriver bits that might help. There were three possible sizes. I bought all three (only $1.79 each) so I wouldn’t have to go back in case I picked the wrong one. One of them worked (and I will return the other two this week) and granted me access to the dungeon of the dishwasher, where I found…. get ready! At least 30 toothpicks and dental floss and a chicken bone clogging it all up, preventing water from flowing and keeping the water pressure too low to do any scrubbing. Now that those are out, the water flows freely and we have clean dishes again. Good thing, because I am sure going through lots more jars these days (for milk and lacto-fermented vegetables and kefir) that I prefer to sterilize that way.

Spilt Milk – When milking Paisley last week, she started getting really feisty on me. So I attempted to hobble her for about three days, each day sustaining bruises to my legs and torso (resulting from her kicks). That hobble freaked her out. On the third day, with Jeff’s help, I got the hobble on her. But remember, it freaks her out. So by the end of the milking, she was at her limit and bucked and kicked so high that she spilled more than a quart of milk from the bucket. I was so mad. My sweet Naomi reminded me of what I’d written in Reflections from a First-Time Goat Milker – to be willing to spill the milk. Okay, lesson learned. (I hadn’t lost so much before.) I’m not hobbling her any more and she is as docile and sweet as can be. Turns out her feistiness was a result of me trying to feed her leftover grains from the day before. Those goats can be so picky! They can tell what is day-old. Just so you know… that hobble is a life-saver when milking the other two does. It doesn’t freak them out; they haven’t any reason to buck; and it keeps them from kicking.  Pictured: See the hobble in action while Naomi milks Honey.

Pasture Fencing – For about a year, we’ve had temporary fencing put up just around the perimeter of the people buildings – house and barns. The animals have been able to go everywhere else. We knew it would just be for a time, but still it made life difficult. We were always picking up poop from the driveway and walkways; going in and out involved a million gates; no matter what we were carrying, the goats always thought it was food and would climb on us to get to it; and it just rankled with us that the animals chose the driveway every time over nice green pastures. So… we just finished putting up a longer temporary fence around all the people areas, making them inaccessible to the animals. Boy, what a difference! We feel like we got out of jail and you can read more about it at my family blog, Such Treasures, and see lots of pictures of the whole process.

C’mon – what’s twisting in your kitchen? I would love to hear!