Wood Stove Cooking & Spoiled Kitties

Wood Stove Cooking:














Back in October we had early snow, 2 weeks of snow storms. During that time we also had a short (4 hrs) power outage. It occurred to me that it would be a good idea to try cooking on the wood stove that keeps us warm. So I found my dutch oven and put it on the stove with water to see if it would get hot.....it boiled nicely.

So the next day, out came the onions, carrots, celery, chicken, noodles and broth. The soup simmered nicely on the stove all day. It turned our really well and once the cold weather returns I will try cooking on the wood stove again.














The kitties in our house have become very spoiled. It used to be that they were not even allowed in the house, now they have taken over the sofa. Here is Missy Mew taking her afternoon nap in my chair (I cover it with a sheet to keep the hair off). She looked so cute I just had to share. Me Moew, has his spot as well, so when you come to my house and see sheets all over my sofa it is because of the kitties. LOL.

Got Cheese?

I almost forgot to get pictures of this first batch of cheese, but it works out ok because you really didn't need to see me mixing the milk with the citric acid or rennet.

So here is the process;

1 gal. milk (I used raw whole cows milk)
1/2 to 1 cup cool non-chlorinated water
1-1/2 tsp. to 2-1/2 tsp. Citric Acid (depending on milk type)
1/4 Rennet Tablet. (1/4 tsp if using liquid rennet)
1 to 2 tsp. Cheese Salt (to taste)

Note: I found this kit at www.cheesemaking.com and you can see Ricki making this Mozzarella there in much more depth then I am sharing here.

1. Crush 1/4 rennet tablet into 1/4 cup cool water until dissolved, set aside.

2. Into a 4 qt. pot pour 1/2 cup cool water and stir in 1-1/2 tsp citric acid until dissolved.
Pour in 1 gal. milk stir and heat to 88 degrees over medium heat. At 88 degrees take your pot off the burner and add your rennet solution, stir gently for 1/2 minute. Allow the curds (solids) to set for 5 to 8 minutes. At this point the entire curd will look like custard and will leave a clear yellow whey (liquids) when cut with a knife. (If the curd is still to soft, let it set for a few more minutes.)

3. With a knife that reaches to the bottom of the pot cut curd into about 1" cubes.















4. Ladle the curds into a microwavable bowl and pressing the curds gently together with your hand pour off as much whey as possible.

I used my hands for this process instead of the ladle, it was easier, the ladle was helpful once there was more whey then curd in the pot.















At this point, and what takes the most time, you knead the cheese and squeeze out as much liquid as possible. Here are the instruction in the recipe.

5. Microwave your curds on high for 1 minute, drain off any excess whey. Knead quickly with spoon or hands into a ball until cool. Microwave again for 35 seconds, drain, knead as you would bread dough, and reheat for another 35 seconds. continue to drain your whey and work your cheese into a ball. As the curds cool, reheat as needed for stretch. For a proper stretch the curd must be at least 135 degrees F internally.































6. When the curd is shinny and stretches like taffy it is done. You may add 1 to 2 tsp cheese salt to taste while kneading and stretching.

I used 1 tsp salt, but we think it needs more salt, so next time I will do 2 tsp.

7. When your cheese is smooth and shiny, place it in ice water until cooled down. It is now ready to eat.
















Below is the kit I ordered from Ricki at www.cheesemaking.com
It includes the cheese salt, citric acid, diary thermometer, vegetable rennet, butter cloth and recipe book, I also got her DVD and book.















The process of making this cheese is easy and it produce a tasty product. Thank you Ricki for your website and the kit.

Yogurt and What are YOU doing to PREPARE

Over the last several weeks I have been experimenting with making yogurt. I really don't want another small appliance in my small kitchen so I wanted to find a way to do it without a yogurt maker.

There are two schools of thought that I have discovered. Heated and unheated. The unheated kind is really different from what we are used to. With this method you add your 'mother' to the unheated milk and leave it on the counter or place into a oven with a pilot light for about 24 hours. The yogurt is good but runny with curdles in it, more of a drink.

What is a 'mother'? Like making sour dough bread you need a starter, the same is true in yogurt making. You can use either a powdered starter, or part of a commercial plain yogurt, or an earlier batch of your own.

Heated yogurt is like what we are used to. You bring your raw milk up to 180 degrees, slowly and gently, then take it off the heat and allow it to cool to about 110, add your 'mother' and then either wrap in blankets or place in the pilot light oven. In 8 hours you will have wonderful yogurt that you can add fruit, honey, etc. to.

For an excellent article on this go to the Weston Price Foundation
The article "To Heat or Not to Heat: A Yogurt Question" is full of info, also while you are there you might enjoy "A Simple Change in Mindset, Learning to Maximize the Use of Your Real Milk and Cream".

Now this leads me to ask a question and with this question I want to start talking about some things and would like you to share with me also.

What are you doing to prepare? Prepare for what, you ask? With the economy getting so shaky, and talk of a recession or even a depression. I want to know what things people are doing to prepare for hard times.

Please leave a comment and lets get some discussion going, and perhaps we can help each other with common sense ideas on how we can protect our families in these times.

Raw Milk

Several have asked where they can get raw milk. Here is a link for the Weston Price Foundations page on some raw milk producers. This list is no a complete list because as they say, some producers did not want to be listed for fear........well you can read it for yourself.

http://www.realmilk.com/where5.html#ut


I hope you find some wholesome raw milk near you.

Making Butter

Fresh raw milk, WAHOOOOO. Finally a source for raw milk, I have been looking for 2 years now. Now I can make butter, yogurt and ice cream with this beautiful, live milk. It is so full of flavor and wonderful healthful things, I can hardly get enough. So my first venture is making butter, which I have not done before. After some research, I found I could make it with my Kitchen Aid mixer. Some use their blenders, still others just use a jar.

Each picture has the time on it, you will find it took a little over 30 minutes. The pictures are of my second batch, having never done this before I was more interested in the process then taking pictures with the first go round. So here we go.

I am making this with cream, you can also make the butter with milk but I had nice raw cream so figured it would be perfect....next time I will make ice cream (need a ice cream freezer).

With the whisk on the mixer, I put 1 1/2 cups of cream (or there abouts) in and started it on med-low (didn't want cream all over the kitchen).















After about a minute, I turned it up to med-high and as you can see it is getting thicker and......















thicker, yep, whipped cream. Now on to high. The volume has doubled now and it is getting really thick. I stopped it about every 30 sec to minute to scrap down the sides. This is going at high speed (the camera did good at catching the picture even at this speed).















Another scrapping and you can see how it is clinging to the whisk.














More mixing, then the volume started to fall.






























and change color, this cream color cream is now turning yellow (looks peach here), it is starting to separate which is just what we want. We are waiting for the buttermilk to separate from the butter. This took a few minutes.















Look there, buttermilk and butter.......cool. Now I can separate them. Just reach the hand in














and grab the butter chunks and squeeze the butter milk out, and the butter clings nicely together.














after getting most of the butter out, I then strained the buttermilk into a glass, this is the result of two batches and I will make buttermilk biscuits with it since we are not to fond of just drinking it.






























Taking all the butter, now you squeeze out the buttermilk, rinse in water and squeeze some more, getting all the buttermilk out, which will give it longer shelf life.
Next add some salt, mix in and then taste, if good form into logs or put into a mold.














As you can see I got 2 nice logs, weighting in at 3/4 lb. I am ticked pink. Lovely fresh raw milk and lovely fresh raw butter.