Things I did today: – made a batch of experimental pancakes. The blueberry sauce helped make them a bit more like breakfast and less like raisinless oatmeal raisin cookies. Caitlyn didn’t like that we told her she couldn’t have syrup on them. – made some colby cheese. This cheese was less than 6 hours from initial pot sterilization to cheese in press. Either this recipe was simpler or I’m getting better at this. We’ll know in 2 months after this one is done aging. – finished assembling 3 dozen confetti eggs. Must remember to take a picture of them all …
Category: homesteading
What’s new in the photo above?
I opened up one of the half-rounds of the Monterey Jack cheese I made in March. It doesn’t taste anything like Monterey Jack cheese. It’s not bad, just dry and crumbly and on the extra-sharp side. And it’s only been aging a month. I don’t know if I over-heated, or heated too fast, or over-handled the curds. It could also be the effect of letting it sit in the press three extra hours, but I doubt it. I seem to remember thinking that it was pretty dry when it went into the press. Also, there was some mold on the …
I’m not sure what went wrong, if anything. Maybe I’m short on patience. Maybe this is how the cookie crumbles. But I don’t have nearly the number of pea seedlings emerging as I should. Of the three rows of spinach I seeded back in February, there are 2 little plants. It’s been so warm this spring, I figured for sure I’d have better results than this. Maybe I didn’t water them enough, forgetting that all this warm weather meant it wasn’t raining. In the p-patch, there seem to be only two asparagus crowns left. I can’t find signs of the …
It’s time to finish off the kale. To that end, I harvested all that remained in the garden Tuesday afternoon, filling two plastic produce bags. Half of that was converted into Kale & Roasted Red Pepper Quiche on Wednesday: We’re down to our last jar of roasted red peppers. And I can see part of the bottom of the freezer in the garage. There some carrots and broccoli, zucchini and pasta sause left out there, but mostly it’s green beans and flour and berries. But, it’s the beginning of April, and our farmers’ market starts back up at the end …
I spent three hours at the p-patch this weekend, doing community garden weeding (weeding in places that aren’t in my plot). There have been a couple plots that have been neglected for a year or more, and these needed to be cleaned up so that they could be reassigned to new (hopefully better, more involved) gardeners. The other factor is the enormous pile of compost that our p-patch received this year. It’s all got to get up to the various plots before it gets in the way of the Habitat for Humanity people who have generously let up take up …