ceelove

I could say, you know it's verging on summer when we're getting multiple things from the garden, but, um, no. Now that's true all the way through the winter.

( A few data points on the garden thus far: )

And here's the tally of what I've harvested already this year:
- winter lettuces, mache, claytonia, minutina
- old-world root crops of scorzonera (liked from last year) and salsify (don't like)
- pea blossoms and tendrils
- kale, chard, cilantro, chives (all returned from their roots)
- spring lettuces and mustard greens
- peas
- straaaaaaawberries
- bok choi, tatsoi, baby kale from the polyculture
- endless smiles

The experiments with food continue! When redheadedmuse started making raw milk easily accessible, starphire and I first made some verygood yogurt with it. Now we can make verygood yogurt out of our ongoing culture, so we needn't involve commercial yogurt at all!

Next up, mozzarella. A gallon of raw milk, in stark opposition to a gallon of ultra-pasteurized milk, made about 12 oz of amazing mozzarella. As per the interstructionets, I heated what remained in the pot to 200F and thus got ricotta out of it. Takes a while to drain out the whey, but it's there - maybe half a cup? What to do with the whey? A lot, apparently (soup stocks, replacement for water in bread, other drinks...), so I froze most of it to play with later. Ask me if you want some to play with: it's liquid gold for a vegetarian. :P

Meanwhile, after the whey drained from the mozzarella, the next thing to come from it resembled cream, about a third of a cup. I put it aside and forgot about it in the fridge. When I rediscovered it several days later, it had a very very thick skin on it. It resembled nothing so much as cream cheese. This seems rather to make sense, what with the name and all. (Wikipedia doesn't mention this as a way to make cream cheese, among the possible routes, and that's as much research as I'm going to do right now, so feel free to correct me if this truly isn't cream cheese.)

It's reassuring to know, when I retire to an agrarian lifestyle, that I can heat some milk and rennet and citric acid (or just lemon juice) and get all that out of it.