Book Review: American Farmstead Cheese

Wow! I have only finished the first few chapters of this book and I have learned so much about cheesemaking! If you are interested in the why and how of cheesemaking, not just recipes, this is a wonderful book.

Since Hubby has a Ph.D. in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, there are often chemistry words floating in the air at our house. Sometimes there are chemistry experiments sitting on the kitchen counter. Sometimes the kids have accidentally eaten some of Hubby's chemistry experiments that were sitting on the counter (nothing that would harm them, don't worry!) Two of our children are studying biochemistry at the University.

Although I am not a chemist, I am familiar with the jargon because of the house I live in, so the first few chapters weren't difficult to understand. I suppose if you have a really hard time with chemistry, then you might have some trouble. But I doubt it, the author does a great job explaining the chemistry of milk and how it affects cheesemaking.

Wonder why your cheese turns out differently in the fall than the batches you made in the spring? It's the fat to casein ratio and the mineral content.

Last week I was wondering why I needed more salt in my Feta this time of year. There is more fat in the milk in the fall!

Lots and lots of information. I haven't taken any cheesemaking courses, although one is offered at a University close by.  I think I saved myself a pile of money by purchasing this book instead of taking a class.

I am thoroughly enjoying this book and can tell this is one that will be on my reference shelf!

Fresnel Lens Cooker

Sheepy's Dad is making some Fresnel lens cookers! Sheepy and her family have been collecting old projection TVs with plastic lenses on the front. Sheepy's dad builds the frames.

Taco showed us one last week. It started a piece of bark on fire in less than 3 seconds.



They look like they are so much fun! Hopefully, we'll get to see one in action soon.

If I ever get one, I'll have to make a cover for it. Taco made sure to cover theirs when it was sitting in the car. It wouldn't be a good thing for the car to start on fire, or anything 

I wonder if there is a safe way to use one of these to heat the animal's water in the winter, or at least thaw it out once a day.

Dehydrated Tomatoes: Update

I've lost count of how many bushels of tomatoes I've dehydrated! There have been alot!

I wanted to write down some of the things I've learned work best so that when I start this project again next year, I'll have a good reference.

1. The tomatoes in cardboard boxes lasted longer than tomatoes gathered and stored in plastic buckets, even longer than the ones in the plastic buckets with drainage holes in the bottom.
2. Lay an old towel down on the counter. It will save clean up time, and save you from slipping on the juice that might drip onto the floor.
3. Spray the trays with some sort of non-stick coating. I only had to do that once, and the tomatoes didn't stick again.
4. Wear gloves! I didn't wear gloves on the first batch and my hands were sore the next day from the acid in the tomatoes.
5. Slice at least 1/4" thick. I can dry more tomatoes that way, and they don't stick to the tray, especially when using the non-stick spray.
6. If the tomatoes are a little soft, make sure you sprinkle them with non-iodized salt. Mine don't seem to turn black that way, and they have a nicer color if they have been sprinkled with salt. 
7. However, sprinkling salt on the tomatoes will make the tomatoes drain juice a little faster, so make sure the tomatoes are done dripping before you put them on the dehydrator.
8. We some of the tomatoes dried with basil, onion granules, and salt. The ones that had marjoram as well, didn't impress me as any better tasting than the ones without. It's nice to have them pre-seasoned, so I'll always put salt and/or other seasonings on before drying.
9. 1 ounce of dried tomatoes = 1/4 cup of tomato powder. Sometimes I want to use crushed or whole tomatoes from a can, if I can weigh out the tomatoes, then I can use my conversion table easily. I found the conversion tables here at Diane Hopkins blog under the title: Power-Packed Nutrition: V8 Powder.
10. Run a fan near the dehydrators. It tends to move the moist air away from the dehydrator and the tomatoes dry faster. The dehydrator also puts out a fair amount of heat, so if the weather is nice outside, you can put the fan in the window and set it to the exhaust setting. If the weather is cold, then the fan seems to move the air throughout the house better than just letting the dehydrator sit in the room and work.
11. The dehydrator is noisy! Put it in a room where it won't bother anyone.

Oregon Trail Quilt: Extra Blocks

I generally like bigger quilts. If a quilt doesn't turn out queen-sized, then I add blocks or change the setting so I end up with a big quilt. It seems to me after all that work I should have something I can use, not hang on the wall!

The following blocks are the blocks I added to my quilt. The next step is to sew everything together and take it to the quilter to quilt. As much as I like a hand quilted quilt, they have to be treated so carefully that I don't finish my quilts like that. If they are machine quilted I can wash them in my front loading washing machine, and we can use them on the beds!

I went through the patterns from a few years ago when we also made 6" blocks and chose some that I thought would fit in an Oregon Trail quilt. I also found a few blocks on the internet to add.

All these blocks look like lots of work, just remember that it took me a year to sew all the blocks in my Oregon Trail quilt. I still haven't put all the blocks together. It just took me a long time to get all the photos and then post everything. Most months I only made the four blocks required for the class. There were a few months when I made a second set of four blocks so that my quilt would be bigger.

Tumbling Leaves. This is a directional block, it looks a little different depending on how you set them into the quilt.

You should be able to click on the image above and then right-click and save as to your computer.

Monkey Wrench.

You should be able to click on the image above and then right-click and save as to your computer.

Sawtooth Star

You should be able to click on the image above and then right-click and save as to your computer.

Joshua's Ladder, another directional block. I haven't decided how I am going to put this one together yet, but it will probably be this way.

You should be able to click on the image above and then right-click and save as to your computer.

Flying Geese

You should be able to click on the image above and then right-click and save as to your computer.

North Wind, another directional block, sort of. I can't really imagine it being put together any other way.

You should be able to click on the image above and then right-click and save as to your computer.

North Wind is another block that I paper pieced. Here is the pattern I drafted. The directions above show a much easier way to make the block, but I really wanted to have the corner triangles solid, and the only way to do that accurately is to paper piece the pattern.

You should be able to click on the image above and then right-click and save as to your computer.

I rough cut the pieces for North Wind before I paper pieced it. It makes for a much more accurate and faster block than the cut-as-you-go method that I've used before.

That's all the blocks, except for the filler blocks that will go between the pattern blocks. As soon as I get my other projects to a point where I can sit and sew, I'll sew up the top and post a photo of that, too.

Snow Before Halloween

A few photos of what we woke up to this morning. It's a good thing that we got some of the leaves raked on Monday! We don't often have snow before Halloween. I don't know if this means we are going to have a hard winter, or not.

The patio.

Beyond the fence you can see the play yard. It has a tarp on the top level and two more tarps on the sides, one on the north and one on the west. It is doing a great job of keeping the wood that is stacked underneath dry.

The maple tree in the back yard still hasn't lost it's leaves, poor thing! I'm glad it is a sturdy tree and we don't have to worry about the weight of the snow on the branches.

We have already had the wood stove going a few times this winter. Our daughter who lives in New England said they run their pellet stove all day and night now because it is so cold there already!

One more thing I wanted to write down so I don't forget... Sparky's tail FINALLY fell off yesterday! We've been checking it every day for a few weeks wondering when it was going to come off. Here is the link to the original post. It took a month for it to fall off. I don't remember the smaller lambs taking this long, but maybe they did. We'll be sure to do it when they are younger next spring.

Time to milk!

Oregon Trail Quilt: Log Cabin

At the end of the journey, it would be time to build a log cabin, so that's the last block the quilt store gave us to do. I like paper piecing, and I like the center square of the log cabin to be the same size as the other strips, so I drafted a paper piecing pattern instead of using their directions.

Photo of finished blocks. This is the way I will put it into the final quilt. Since this is a directional block, it will look differently depending on how it is placed.

You should be able to click on the image above and then right-click and save as to your computer.

You should be able to click on the image above and then right-click and save as to your computer.

I rough cut the pieces for my log cabin and then paper pieced them. I don't cut as I go, I cut all the pieces at once, just like I do for a regular pieced block. It saves me time and frustration cutting them to a little larger than the piece in the block. Paper piecing gives very accurate blocks! I love it!

Oregon Trail Quilt: Prairie Queen

Prairie Queen took some time to stitch together. I strip pieced the small 4-patches used on the center sides of the block. That made it go faster than stitching together so many 1 1/2" squares! I also used a special ruler called a Triangle Square Up Ruler by Quilt in a Day. It made the corner half-square triangles very quick to piece.

This is a fairly old block. A Prairie Queen is a woman who lived, worked, and raised a family on the prairie.

Photo of finished Prairie Queen block.

You should be able to click on the image above and then right-click and save as to your computer.

You can find directions for Prairie Queen at Patterns From History.

Here is some fun information on Prairie Queens found at Prairie Queens.com.

You, or your female ancestor, might be a Prairie Queen if:

• You had any of your children at home, alone, with no doctor or midwife, no medicine and no family member present.
• You learned how to knit, sew, crochet, embroider, quilt, tat AND needlepoint all before the age of 12.
• You have cooked beaver, raccoon, possum, ground hog, squirrels or whatever else was brought home.
• You made mincemeat for pie by starting with a whole hogs head
• You have recipes for souse, hogshead cheese, egg butter and green tomato pie.
• You make your own sauerkraut from scratch.
• You make a poultice to put on your child's snakebite.
• You have six or more children.
• Your cellar is filled with canned vegetables from your garden.