Steamed Milkbath
It’s no secret I love my milk baths ~ a gallon or two of surplus Daisy milk dumped into steaming water in my outdoor cast iron tub with a few drops of lavender oil and aahhhhhhhhh under the stars.
But the other evening was windy (not to be confused with breezy, which is quite lovely during an outdoor soak), too windy for a comfortable bath outside, so I grabbed a gallon o’ milk and trekked to Mike’s house.
I was having a nice mellow soak, but then thought, why not put the jets on for a moment? An innocent whim that turned into a PARTAY, party in the bathtub.
The milk began to froth and grow and soon I was swirling in several inches of FOAM!
When I turned the jets off, the noise was deafening: the sound of a million tiny milk bubbles popping. Within minutes, the water was back to its glassy state.
And with another press of the jets, it frothed back up into foam!
Like bathing in a giant cappuccino. I’m easily amused.
Final Ride
Houdini died yesterday.
He was Mike’s horse. These men and their horses…. it’s something to behold.
The relationship is so intimate.
Mike raised Houdini from birth; I can only imagine how many thousands of miles those two traveled together over the course of three decades, breaking trails through true wilderness, through youth and love and birth and death and new wildernesses, new challenges, new loves, more death.
Words don’t solve the pain of loss, but the words I heard myself saying to Mike – words I didn’t know until I heard myself speaking them – were words I knew I would need to remember:
It would be worse if they lived longer than we did. If they did, we would never know – and never be able to control – how they were treated when we were gone. That would be harder to bear.
rainbows for lunch
Truly Easy Homemade Cheese
Ten years ago, I read a profile in The New Yorker about a cheesemaking nun. I have always remembered the piece, the accompanying photograph (just found it online!), and the profound feeling it left me with: I was like, that’s what I want to be when I grow up.
I’ve now taken the first step down that path. I have made my first cheese.
(I don’t count my previous failures as cheese. They were failures.)
Cheese, on the one hand, is complicated and intimidating. On the other hand, it is simple and intuitive. I’m quite certain that milk wants to become cheese. Through my failures, I have realized the most important part about making good cheese is to take it slow. Respect the milk. DO NOT RUSH THE MILK. And the cheesemaking books never tell you this, at least not the ones I’ve read. And the cheesemaking websites act like you must shell out hundreds of dollars on specialty supplies if you wish to make cheese. Not so. A basic stainless steel pot will do the job just fine, or, in a pinch, a calf’s stomach ~ people have been making cheese for thousands of years, long before fancy accoutrements existed.
Last year, I tried to follow the rules and ended up with so many cheese failures that I had given up. But when I started milking Daisy again last week, and found that familiar surplus overtaking my fridge ~ multiple gallons of milk that we couldn’t possibly drink ~ I decided to try again. I needed something simple and gentle and intuitive to ease me back onto the cheese path. In a case of perfect timing, I was inspired by this post on a blog I enjoy. Since I only had fresh milk on hand, I altered her technique just slightly and the results are incredible.
OK! On to the cheese!
It starts with one gallon of milk.
This is fresh milk from my cow. This particular gallon is the equivalent of whole milk; I placed the pink tab at the cream line in case it didn’t show up in the photo. If you’re using store-bought milk, I think using 2% and maybe even nonfat would be fine, though I’ve not tested it out. You certainly don’t have to start with a gallon. For my first batch I used half a gallon of milk but Mike and I loved the resulting cheese so much I went for a gallon this time.
You will also need a pot and a spoon and a lemon and a thermometer.
That’s it.
I plugged my hot plate into an extension cord and brought it outside because it was a beautiful day and I prefer being outdoors.
Pour the milk into the pot, cover, and set over low to medium-low heat. LOW TO MEDIUM LOW. Stir the milk every now and then; I found that just rocking the pot with the lid on did the job well. Heat the milk to 170-175 degrees Farenheit. This takes a long time at medium low heat; I timed this batch and it took close to an hour. However, do not rush this part. If you do, your cheese will be gummy and flavorless.
Once your milk reaches a temperature of 170-175 degrees, squeeze the juice of a lemon into a cup and slowly pour it into the milk while stirring. When I used a half gallon of milk, I used the juice of half a lemon (about 3 Tablespoons) and with a gallon of milk, I used a whole lemon.
Almost immediately after adding the lemon juice to the milk, it will separate into curds and whey.
At this point, take the pot off the heat and let it sit for a few minutes just to give the curds time to separate from the whey.
Scoop the curds into a bowl; you could also pour through a tight strainer. I just spoon the curds into a bowl and then mash them with the slotted spoon to press out any remaining whey. At this point, you can add salt, herbs, garlic, whatever you fancy. Just mix it in to the curds and taste as you go.
And this is cheese! You could put it in a square of cheese cloth (not the whispy kind; real cheese cloth has a tighter weave, like flour sack cotton) and hang it to drain all the whey for a harder cheese, but I just mash out whatever whey I can, then pack the soft cheese into pint jars. The miniscule amount of remaining whey does not adversely affect the cheese, and I noticed it fully integrates back into the curds and kept it soft and creamy.
One gallon of milk makes two pint jars of cheese. It stores well in the fridge and the consistency is amazing and hard to describe – it’s dense but spreadable and creamy. I like it with a little pink himalayan salt mixed in, spread on toast with fresh ground pepper on top. Try it – and leave a note in the comments telling us how it went! It’s really easy. And REALLY good.
And Then There Were Kittens
Feral Kitten Girl arrived at my door one sunny autumn day, as had become her custom, but this time, she had her four kittens in tow. And she didn’t leave again. The kittens had a nest under my deck to which they would flee if they were frightened, but most of their time was spent exploring my home and the immediate surroundings, or sleeping in a pile: inside, on a huge pillow beside my desk, or outside, in the sun beside the woodpile. Feral Kitten Girl luxuriated in doing a whole lot of nothing, her responsibilities having dropped down to nursing. She’d gaze at me with a look of blissed out gratitude: “thanks for the food, for the safe haven, for watching my babies for me…. and now I’m going to take another nap.”
Eli, in contrast, was DISPLEASED.
Nevermind that they were probably his kittens (please don’t yell me an email about neutering Eli, it’s a waste of time. Eli has me under mind control. Though he has said when they start performing reversible vasectomies on all 16 year old guys, he, too, will have the procedure).
Though the four kittens and their mama worshiped Eli and eagerly surrounded him when he came home each morning, Eli responded to their swarm with a vicious hiss as he sprung over them in a flying leap to the stairs, and, with another great leap, escaped to the relative peace of the loft.
Some people assume that Eli is not an affectionate cat because he is so tough, but in truth, Eli loves attention. He needs it. I made a point of keeping Eli’s Love Quota steady and certain, and, thankfully, within a month, he had warmed to the new residents, and it soon became common to find them all napping together on my bed.
Feral Kitten Girl was no longer an appropriate name. It was never a proper name and now even more so, as she was no longer feral and, a mother many times over, no longer remotely a kitten or a girl. I named her Rue, short for Ruger. Beautiful Rue.
The kittens got names as well. There were two males: one solid black and the other a gray on gray stripe; and two females: one a soft mottled gray and the other tan and black tiger striped.
Gray girl had, from the very beginning, an absolute handful of flub ~ extra skin and fat and fuzz at her belly between her hind legs ~ which was (is) so much fun to smush. I started calling her Mushy. Though I’ve noticed very few people pronounce her name properly. It is not “mushy,” with the vowel sound of “LUSH.” It is “Mushy,” with the vowel sound of “PUSH.” Mushy! She looks like a cartoon in every way.
The other female was also quickly named. Her name is Kettle. Months before, Mike had found an old cast iron kettle out in the hills and, knowing I love that sort of thing, lugged it home for me. I keep it next to my woodstove and throw all my paper trash in it to use as firestarter. Kettle loved to climb into the kettle and curl up inside and sleep. Mike called her ‘the kettle kitten’ which I shortened to “Kettle.”
As for the boys… in the early days, I always referred to the black one as “the black one,” and then, one day, Mike remarked how the other male, the gray striped one, was “so gray he was practically blue.” And it was true ~ his fur was a cool, steel blue color. And so I declared the boys would, henceforth, be called Black and Blue.
I wanted to take Rue and all the kittens in to get spayed and neutered once the kittens were old enough to be weaned, and before they went off to their new homes (which turned out to be not much of an adjustment ~ Black and Blue now live with Mike; he’d been wanting a kitten for ages and I told him he really should take two, so they would have company, and my sister was going to take the girls but she changed her mind so they are here with me, along with Rue and Eli, and it’s hard to remember life before they were a part of it; I’m so glad she changed her mind).
However, in that tiny space of time between the kittens being weaned and my getting them all to the vet, I noticed Rue’s belly starting to get round and full again! “HOW did she manage to get bred again so fast, and without my noticing?” I thought to myself. I couldn’t believe it. But there she was, getting rounder and rounder by the day. And so I started feeding her more ~ raw meat, endless dry food, and treats ~ to make sure she stayed nourished through her pregnancy.
She got HUGE. Her head and hind legs remained dainty, but her body was a sphere. Mike called her Mama Football. I prepared a nesting box for her, filled with blankets, which she rarely left. Mike and I were certain she was going to have her litter any day. And then she went into heat. Which, if you’ve ever witnessed, is impossible to ignore or mistake for anything but a cat in heat.
Rue was not pregnant. She was obese!
I called the vet and got them all in immediately and, when I explained that Rue was a feral who had adopted me, they said they would check her teeth to determine her age. I kind of brushed it off, thinking she had to be about three, since she was so, so small when I first met her at the corrals. I was wrong. She is seven. She lived hard and rough for seven years. And now she has it made. But she is on a diet.
MY NEW BOOK!
More, Elsewhere
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