Homemade Cottage Cheese Recipe

Making your own dairy products at home can be an easy and satisfying task.  And with the recent news that “Big Dairy”* wants to add aspartame to your milk without labeling it we might all need to brush up on a few dairying skills.

On Friday we made both butter and cottage cheese, and today I’m going to share with you how we make cottage cheese.

Ingredients:

• 1 gallon raw milk
• 1 cup vinegar
• salt to taste
• cream or milk

 

Equipment:

• Stainless steel stock pot
• Stainless steel spoon
• Thermometer
• Stainless steel colander
• glass bowl with lid for storing

 

1. Place your gallon of raw milk into your pot.  Bring the temperature up to medium, you want to gently bring the milk to around 190 degrees F.  The hotter the milk the harder the curds will be.  I like a firm curd so I make sure that I go all the way to 190 and just a tad beyond.  During this process stir the milk often to prevent scorching on the bottom of the pan and a skin forming on the top.
2. When your milk has reached 190 degrees F remove from heat.  Add your vinegar and stir well with the steel spoon.  You will immediately begin to see your milk separate.  Let the milk rest for 1 to 2 hrs.  After this time you can strain your curds from your whey (some people keep the whey as there are many recipes that call for it).  Break up your curds if need be and salt to taste.
3. Transfer your curds to your glass bowl for storing and mix in cream or milk until you reach your desired consistency.
4. Enjoy!

 

* I would like to clarify that by “Big Dairy” we are not necessarily talking about decisions made or even shared by your local dairy farmers.  We are talking about the people who purchase the milk from your local farmers and then package, bottle, mix and add to the milk and sell it to your local grocer.

Homemade Cottage Cheese Recipe

High Tunnel Update.

The high tunnel is complete!

It’s pretty wet & muddy inside currently.  Too wet to do any work.  Hopefully a day or two of sun will help raise the temperature inside and dry out the soil a bit.

In anticipation of being able to work inside I ordered seeds today.  First, let me say that seed catalogs might be one of my favorite publications to get in the mail.  The pictures are a welcome reminder of the beauty that is to come.  They make it look so easy too!  No bugs, no weeds, just perfectly planted rows of crisp lettuce in various shades of green and red, plump tomatoes without a hint of blight, zucchini and cucumbers picked at just the exact size for perfection.  In reality, gardens have weeds, they have pests, they have blights occasionally and it is virtually impossible to make it through a summer without finding one morning a swollen zucchini which the day before had been only 3 inches long.

I ordered a selection of herb & vegetable seeds to start in the greenhouse, including a few that just struck my fancy like huckleberries.  Because I was on a “let’s pretend it’s spring” kick, I also ordered some chicks, turkeys, and muskovy ducks.

High Tunnel Update.

Farm Setbacks.

Inevitably in life, and more so in farming, you are going to have days when it seems that Mother Nature feels it necessary to remind you who is in charge.

On Tuesday we rushed to put the plastic on our new hoop house.  The temperature had risen to around 60 degrees which we hoped was warm enough to stretch the plastic tight.  With the help of several guys we got the 48′ x 100′ sheet of plastic “film” over the metal frame of the hoop house and began securing the sides and ends with wiggle wire.

Unfortunately, the wind began to pick up, and we were not able to finish tightening the sides nor were we able to finish one end wall.

The next day the rain came and it was a little windy, but the plastic held.  However, the following day the cold front moved in and the temperature dropped from the 50′s to the low 20′s and the wind began to gust upwards of 42mph.  The wind and cold temperatures were too much for the plastic which tore on either side of where we had placed temporary wiggle wire.

I took this picture yesterday morning and I wish I had taken a video now because the snapping sound that this plastic was making in the wind was unreal.  Like the sound of a gun going off, you could feel the percussion in the air.

Yes, this was a costly and unfortunate event.  We are out time and money, but as my husband said, it’s already done so there is no use in anger or frustration, we’ll simply have to do it again.  So we’ll buy another role of plastic and hope for a couple of warm calm days to put it back together again.

 

Farm Setbacks.