At our Living Better With Less group meet up last Thursday night we had an introduction to cheese making from the incredibly organised and engaging Neville who timed this visit with us to coincide with his formal class teaching of the same this week. Not only did we have a great informative discussion but we also got some student samples to try for inspiration.
Neville explained in a very easy manner, the chemistry involved in cheese making, the properties of milk and the characteristics of altered proteins. We discussed common terms that you commonly hear in the cheese world like, rennet, curds, whey and he stepped us through the two characteristics of soft cheese and hard cheese and their properties.
It's a big subject and we would like to thank Neville for giving us a great snapshot of the basics, the pitfalls, joys and realities of this hobby.
We had lots of books to pour over and we discussed the merits of kits. Though there are a couple of home brew shops in town with basics, most supplies are thoroughly catered for on line.
Afterwards we had some wonderful cheese tastings with a cuppa
Here are the cheeses made by the students.
The golden yellow one is a mozzarella cheese infused with saffron.
The other is a home made curd cheese called Paneer which has had seeded mustard added.
If you would like to step further into the wonderful world of cheese making I would suggest you start here at
a blog dedicated to cheese by Gavin Webber. He has podcasts, videos, an e-book and lots of posts.
Now, some important dates!
Next month we have organised a date for an
olive picking day
on Sunday 26th July.
More details to follow on our Facebook page
Which leads me to our next news
we have a brand new facebook page here so you can follow along woth our activities and events and keep up to date with meet up reminders. Living Better With Less is open to all interested and like minded people and is a non-profit informal group meeting on the last Thursday of each month except December and is totally free however we do donate a gold coin to cover tea/coffee/power etc at the Urban Farming Seed Studio where we made possible by the kind sharing of Bridget and Peter. We meet at 3 Charles St south in Launceston Tas. and hope to see you one day.
Later in October on the 17th
we will join Urban Farming Fiesta in Yorktown Square. We'll have a stall showing examples of our various industries and endeavours and be on hand for some chatting. More details closer to the date and may I also recommend the
Also coming up in November we have been kindly invited to tour Steve Solomon's garden which I am very excited about. Steve is a bit of a growing cold climate vegetable guru here in Tasmania and has written several books. His "Growing Vegetables South of Australia" is particularly popular here. Can't wait for that and again...you guessed it...more details closer to the date. But it will be in November and we will also take the opportunity to have a little end of year break up afternoon tea party too.
So much to look forward to!
Hope to see you next month.
Man I wish I lived nearby. I have the Ricky Carroll Cheese book and am learning more and more each time I try a new cheese.
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