Taunting To-Do's

My husband made his favorite thing yesterday — pepperoni.  He thawed out six pounds of hamburger, mixed it with curing salt and spices, and let them cure in the frig for three days.  Then he rolled out logs and dried them in a warm oven (170F) all day long.  This morning he'll slice them up and pizza is on the menu for dinner.  He's still perfecting the recipe and we'll post it as soon as he's happy.  After his first sampling, he says these need a little more hot, but the pizza tonight will be the real test.

I made a jack cheese yesterday, my 11th cheese.  I keep a notebook of each cheese, referencing the book and noting any changes or problems.  This is my first set of notes that doesn't include the word, dang.  "Temperature shot up too fast, dang!"  "Accidentally used mesophilic instead of thermophilic start, dang!"  "Lots of matting, dang."  But this time it went pretty smoothly and the cheese looks beautiful.

The three gallons of whole milk we started with gave a nice big block of cheese, about 5" high in a 6" diameter round.  It also produced over two gallons of whey, the yellow fluid that comes out of the curds.  This whey still has some good protein in it.  We'll give it to the chickens, who need good protein and don't get much this time of year.

Our cow shed opens towards the back, toward the pasture.  Every morning my husband cleans out the dirty straw, throwing it in a pile just outside the back.  During the summer, these piles were small and we cleared them out about once a month.  This pile is huge!  It's probably been two months since we've cleared it out and with the cows hanging out in the shed all day long, there's a lot more going into it each day.  This will be fantastic fertilizer for the garden — I'm fantasizing about the big healthy vegetables — but right now it's just nasty looking.  It's a great big to-do just taunting us... and making us long for a tractor with a bucket.  I never thought I'd have tractor lust, but I sure do now!

We were reading about mountain men and their leisurely winters.  It's winter and we're not very leisurely.  We finished shelling the last of the dry beans yesterday, along with milking, making butter, cream cheese, jack cheese, and tapioca (we have to use up that milk!).  They are full days; every day has a lot of somethings that need to be done.  I guess the mountain men didn't have milk cows.  Of course, I'll don't think they ate cheesecake and tapioca while enjoying their leisure, either.