I don't know where the time went, but we had two pool parties one week after the other, then the week after those Jeff had two Navy buddies down for a weekend. We played catch up, gardening, yard work, barn work the next weekend. And here we are going into another weekend. Mead Day Celebration is Saturday in Charlotte. Lance and Beth are coming up for it and Janet and Mike are going with us.
I've been experimenting with different draining times for my Chevre. Also got some Fora Dancia culture and used in in a batch I started a few days ago. It drained in the bag for 9 hours and has a sweet mild taste. It seems like the longer you drain it in the bag, the less acidic it tastes. I've drained from 6.5 hours up to 9 hours. I like it best drained at least 8 hours.
I also made some feta last weekend and it is wonderful. I'm experimenting with that also. I dry salted all of it, then put 1/3 in a container filled with olive oil. It's supposed to keep for a long time in oil. I put 1/3 in a brine solution (1/4 cups kosher salt to 2 cups water) and the rest of it I left dry, wrapped in cheese paper. We've used a little of the brined cheese and it tastes salty, but similar to what you get at the grocery store. You are supposed to age the dry version 5-7 days, so I'll be tasting that today. The brined cheese was great crumbled over salad.
I want to try a pressed cheese next, just a straight farmer cheese. My notes from the cheese class, said to use the same feta recipe, but press it. Before I salted the feta, the cheese had a mild taste similar to some Amish Farmhouse Cheese I bought a while back. So I think the recipe will work for that type of cheese. Gotta save some milk for it. In two days, I ususally have a little over 6 quarts of milk. That's enough for a nice batch of Chevre. The batch I made yesterday came out to 2.25 pounds of cheese from 6 quarts. That's pretty good, actually very good. Normally you estimate 1 pound per gallon.
A friend of mine gave me some figs and I made fig jam which tastes like a cross between peach and strawberries. Picked up some more figs yesterday and will be doing a little jelly today.
