Mozzarella Cheese
Add 2 teaspoons Citric acid to 2 gallons milk. Stir. Heat to 86 F. Remove from heat. Add 1/2 teaspoon. liquid rennet to 1/4 c. water. Stir until dissolved. Add rennet/milk mixture to milk. Stir about half a minute. Then let sit undisturbed for about 20 minutes. A firm curd should be formed by then, floating on the whey. Cut up the curd with a knife. Heat slowly to 100 F (takes about 10 minutes), stirring gently. Remove from heat. Let rest five minutes. Pour off whey. Place curds in a bowl. Heat in microwave oven for two or three minutes (until it becomes soft and workable). Pour off whey. Knead cheese like bread, working in 1 teaspoon. salt. Cool. And eat!
Old-Fashioned Cottage Cheese
Heat 2 gallons of fresh farm milk to 85 F. Add 1/2 c. buttermilk, kefir, or yogurt for starter, and 2 teaspoons rennet. Stir and let sit in warm place for two hours. By then it will have clabbered (separated into curd floating on top of whey). Cut curds into as nearly as possible equal-sized cubes. Heat cubes in the whey to 140 F (higher temp gives you tougher curd, lower gives you more tender curd), stirring often. Drain off whey. Put curd into clean, thin cloth and let hang and drip for several hours. Break up curds into a bowl. Flavor to taste. When I was a little girl I liked it in a bowl with cream and sugar, but my daddy preferred it with salt and pepper.
Instant Split Pea Soup:
for Folks with a GrinderMill split peas into flour. Mix 1 cup of the split pea flour with eight cups of water. It thickens immediately. Add shredded vegies as available, and serve. Delicious!
Obituary
(Found on a Presque Isle, Wisconsin, library table): Veteran Pillsbury spokesman Pop N. Fresh died yesterday of a severe yeast infection. He was 71. Fresh was buried in one of the largest funeral ceremonies in recent years. Dozens of celebrities turned out including Mrs. Butterworth, the California Raisins, Hungry Jack, Betty Crocker, and the Hostess Twinkies. The graveside was piled high with flours as longtime friend Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy, describing Fresh as a man who “never knew how much he was kneaded.” Fresh rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with many turnovers. He was not considered a very smart cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes. Still, even as a crusty old man, he was a roll model for millions. Fresh is survived by his second wife. They have two children and one in the oven. The funeral was held at 3:50 for about 20 minutes.
Astonishing Tree Growth
A Kentuckian who married an immigrant from the Dominican Republic dreamed of a tropical farm, saved enough to buy it, and took her back home to live on the land. After four years, he wrote a friend:
Greetings from the sun-dappled, rainswept hills of Quisqueya! What to highlight from the past year? The romps in the surf of a nearby beach, naked infants darting up and down the sandy slope at ocean’s edge like so many terns and gulls? Selling coconut juice out of our pickup, machetes blazing before the thirsty clients flush from sun and sand? Truck loads of mangos, avocados, oranges, grapefruits, sweet potatoes, peanuts, yogurt by the gallon moved to nearby towns, earning our cooking oil and gasoline and sugar? Somehow we managed to get all the coffee picked, all the peanuts shelled and sold, all the gardens planted, watered, and weeded. Best garden ever last year!
I could mention the various illnesses, the breast fevers, the flus, the staph infections, the poison ivy, etc., we suffered collectively this year, but we’re all healthy and hearty now.
The “hidden agenda” in my initial desire to farm in the tropics--the regreening or reforesting of the land--seems to be manifesting itself at last. Acacia mangium trees make beautiful lumber and I’ve never seen a tree grow so fast (8” across and 40’ tall in 3 years), so I planted 70 of them. Neighbors asked for seedlings. Other neighbors want to buy some of our current timber. Unannounced, unpromoted, unspoken, the “agenda” is no longer an agenda, but a sensible outcome of life itself.
God blessed the past year: a year of abundance and labor! The weeds never rest. Nor does a baby’s bladder...
Pilgrims’ Bread
This recipe gives you the natural flavors of whole wheat and rye flours plus yellow cornmeal. It’s a crusty loaf which is especially good sliced thick and buttered. Or toast it. Or use to make sandwiches.1/2 cup yellow cornmeal 1/3 cup packed brown sugar 1 tablespoon salt 2 cups boiling water 1/4 cup cooking oil 2 packages active dry yeast 1/2 cup warm water (110 degrees) 3/4 cup whole wheat flour 1/2 cup rye flour 4 1/4 to 4 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
Thoroughly combine cornmeal, brown sugar, and salt; stir gradually into boiling water. Stir in oil. Cool to lukewarm (about 30 minutes). Soften yeast in the warm water; stir into cornmeal mixture. Add whole wheat and rye flours; mix well. By hand, stir in enough unbleached white flour to make a moderately stiff dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface; knead till smooth and elastic (6 to 8 minutes).
Shape dough into a ball. Place in lightly greased bowl, turning once to grease surface. Cover and let rise in warm place until double (50 to 60 minutes). Punch dough down; turn out onto lightly floured surface and divide in half. Cover; let rest 10 minutes.
Shape the dough into two loaves and place in two greased 9x5x3-inch loaf pans. Cover and let the shaped loaves rise in a warm place until almost double (about 30 minutes). Bake the loaves at 375 degrees till done, about 45 minutes. (If bread browns rapidly, cap loosely with foil after first 25 minutes.) Remove bread from pans and cool on wire racks. Makes 2 loaves.
