Cheese Making - Living Better With Less

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 

Little Green Cheese

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

Urban Farming Tasmania facebook page

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.

Reusing and Recycling Also

Today Rhonda is having a link up of recycling and re-using ideas and hoping to create a trail of inspiration. I agree with her and think visuals provide a more lasting or re-callable memory.

Here are some of ours.

Above is where the grapevine grows and looks so lush and green in summer but in the winter, it's a boring old fence. I took some saucepan lids and made butterflies so that I have something bright and happy to see from my kitchen window during the winter. They are simply screwed on. You could make simple art on your boring fence too by recycling waste metal and wood items.

The chook shed itself is the old wood/garden shed recycled. It is fully lined for insulation with recycled building materials like dado removed from the hallway inside and old reject fence palings.  The nesting boxes were made entirely from a wooden pallet that something was freighted on. On the floor of the house we also use shredded paper from my work at the doctors' surgery. It is then recycled again into compost. 

In the chicken "nursery" which is itself made from an old tin sign that can be looped and and clamped into a circle. As the chicks grow, so can the enclosure by un-clamping and making it larger. The warming light is an  old bed head light suspended over. Click on the picture to enlarge and look at the clever water set up and feeder that Craig has made from milk containers. We store the feed in an old milk churn where it is safely secured from rodents and kept dry.

Of course there are all sorts of sewing projects from old curtains, upholstery fabric, buttons,

sheets, towelling and my all time favourite pillowcases. Pillowcases I seem to find regularly in hardly worn condition and for about 50cents.

Also old woollen blankets and scraps.

Much of the iron fencing around our place has been made from old stair and porch railings that we sourced from the tip shop at a fraction of the price of buying new materials.

Including this arch (since painted and looks a treat) that Craig gave me for Christmas one year.

These buckets I sourced from a cafe (they are mayonnaise pots etc) and and they are ideal for picking berries and olives as the little handle slips over the wrist. Come olive curing time, they are handy containers for the brining process too and the perfect size for slipping a bread and butter plate just inside to keep the olives submerged.

What about sheep fat into soap. An otherwise wasted product. 

The list could go on...

You're only limited by your imagination sometimes.

Final Bottling of the Olives

The olives have been having their daily brine bath

(see here)

These olives (don't know what sort) took 11 days.

I tried one and they have lost nearly all of their bitterness.

The next step in the method I am following is to bring enough brine for bottling to the boil.

The ratio for this brine is 1 cup of sale to 10 cups of water

(so it is double what the olives have been soaking in daily)

I gathered together my collection of glass jars with glass lids.

These have been saved from Maccona coffee jars and even as far back as Bushell Tea when it used to come in glass jars. Salt corrodes metal very quickly so I have opted for these jars rather than the clip seal types.

I have seen some clip seal type jars where the wire was powder coated and that may help prevent corrosion if you are wanting to do olives or preserved lemons.

After the boiled brine is cooled it is poured into the jars so that the olives are covered and then a layer of olive oil is poured on top to cover any olives trying to float and to create a seal on top of the brine.

Pop the lid on and store. They will keep at least 12 months in this way now.

When you are ready to eat the olives, pour away the strong brine and fill the jar with plain fresh water and place in the refrigerator for 24hrs after which time they should have leeched out any excess salt.

If not drain and rinse one more time.

Now you can add flavourings at this point to the drained olives.

You could add lemon zest, crushed garlic, chopped chilli, chopped rosemary...

I don't find flavours "infuse" olives so much as they "coat" them.

They really are superb eaten plainly on their own.

It is true what they say about never going back to commercial olives again.

The initial task of washing and slitting was a bit onerous and after two days of brine changing I was thinking "what have I started!"

By day four or five it has become a habit and before you know it the 10-12 days is up.

So worth every second of my time.

The big plus is they are chemical free and organic.

Olive Time

This is my island bench for the next 10 days or so.

Hope you weren't expecting romanticised photos of silky glossy olives in shades from woody magenta to midnight black.

I could have shown you two companions in ponchos, hair slightly lifted by a gentle autumn breeze, their arms lost in silvery foliage as they plucked handfuls of olives at a time and tossed them into little buckets on their wrists.

You would have seen a stunning view of the Tamar river stretched below the companions with bright yellows and autumnal umbers dotting the valley as the sun slanted low, setting northwest as it does this time of year.

Reality Check!

This many olives

(maybe about 10 kilos, not sure, should have weighed them)

will take you

4 hours of washing and slitting

1 paring knife of the finest quality moly/vanadium steel sharpened 4 times

6 pairs of disposable gloves

1 apron

3 glasses of red wine.

The method I use is soak in brine of half cup salt to every ten cups of water changing and replacing this solution every day for 10-12 days till the bitterness is almost gone and then it is ready for the final pack into sterilised jars.

Gavin at The Greening of Gavin has recently done olives too and his less histrionic version is here.

The buckets I use are recycled from a local restaurant and all plastic so there is no salt corrosion.

The plates on top are to keep the olives fully submersed in the brine so they don't go manky.

The final pack will be in recycled glass coffee jars with plastic lids but I notice Gavin uses the clip seal bottles.