epic cheesy success!!!

       i'm not sure which derogatory category i currently fit into, but for now i'm going to go with "nerd." forgive me for being one, but i just removed a three-pound wheel from my little makeshift cheese press and i'm pretty proud/excited/relieved. it's not perfect, but it still looks good. it's salted and wrapped in sterile bandages getting all happy and aged in the fridge, so i won't be able to taste it for another two weeks or so, but then i'll be able to slice it up, wax some of it for longer storage, and break off a hunk for myself. i'll let you know how it is. the pic on the left is my little press, made up of a very large stock pot, a #10 tin can with the ends cut out set atop an inverted glass plate to keep the cheese out of the pressed whey, a sterile "bandage," a mason jar with my mom's home-canned tomatoes (mmm), a box of paraffin for added force (which will later be used for waxing), and my rubber resistance tube. the curds are packed into the bandage and the cut-out ends of the can are placed on top of the curds to keep them in place. the rest is as you can see. the pic on the right is the finished wheel wrapped in a new bandage in front of another stock pot full of the whey. i started with 2.5 gallons -- 20 pounds -- of milk to get roughly 3 pounds of cheese -- the rest becomes whey, which i'll make into ricotta tomorrow (and raviolis on sunday! mmm...). sorry they're just cell-phone quality. i'm not rich enough to have a decent digital camera yet.

           

       what else am i going to do with my friday night, eh?  ah, well... someday i might be lucky enough to be able to write one of those "100 reasons" posts...  anyway, more later. getting sleepy. later taters!