CHEEEESE!!!

http://fhif.wikia.com/wiki/Cheese

CHHEEEESE!

I love cheese.  Making cheese, eating cheese, cooking with cheese, sharing cheese.  But let's talk about making cheese.

I can't say that I have a lot of experience making cheese, but we use this recipe for Farmer's Cheese to make a boatload of different things.  It's super easy to make, the blogger calls it "Easiest Cheese Recipe" and it really is.

Here's the breakdown:

• Boil a gallon of milk.
• Add 1 cup of cider vinegar.
• Strain out all your curds.
• Add 1 Tablespoon of salt.
• Squeeze out a lot of the liquid.
• Add whatever you want.
• Squeeze out the rest of the liquid.

TADA!  Cheese.

You get about a pound of cheese from your gallon of milk, so unless you add expensive other stuff, this costs about $4.  I happen to think $4 is a pretty good price for delicious cheese.

Usually we add some dried oregano (about a teaspoon) and sundried tomatoes (cut in little pieces, maybe an ounce?) but this weekend we had a whole bunch of stuff we wanted to try, so I divided the pound into 3 more or less equal amounts and made 3 totally different cheeses.

From Left to Right:  Fresh Garlic and Oregano, Brown Sugar Cinnamon, Honey Raisin

The beauty of the Farmer's Cheese recipe is that it makes a savory cheese as easily as a sweet one.

The Garlic has a healthy sprinkling of oregano and 4 cloves of fresh garlic.  We crumbled it into our rice for dinner tonight, and it was delicious.

The Brown Sugar is a little over a half teaspoon of Korintje Cinnamon (which is my new favorite) and a small handful of Brown Sugar.  I'm not gonna lie, we ate the whole container with a fork while we were watching tv 2 nights ago.  It was absolutely lovely.

The Honey Raisin has healthy dollop of honey and a handful of Golden Raisins.  We're really happy with it, and I had to take it from Obes before he ate it all.

So I would call all three a success.  Making tiny amounts of a bunch of different flavors required a little more planning than I usually do ahead of time, but it was worth it to know that if any of it turned out awful, we wouldn't be wasting much.