Easy-Peasy Yogurt Cheese!

One of the wonderful things about raising goats is having an abundance of goat's milk to create wonderful things with. Besides drinking the milk, we make soap, yogurt or various types of cheese. One of our very favorite is a combination of those - well without the soap! 

Yogurt cheese is super easy and very yummy. I can't see why you all couldn't try this at home with cow's or goat's milk that you purchase at the supermarket - I have never tried that.. but I can't see why pasteurization would hinder this process. So I thought I would walk you through the steps so that you can try at home... or not. I should add a word of caution, as you are toying with milk, a product that can become nasty if not treated with care. Proceed at your own risk.

We use raw goat's milk.. the fresher the better. After milking we filter our milk to take out as much of the impurities as possible and store in quart jars. The way we make our yogurt is .. oddly enough to add yogurt to milk. We found that using an organic probiotic plain yogurt you can pick up at the grocery store works best. You can use other yogurt or even your own cultured yogurt over again but we found that for the thickest creamiest yogurt, a probiotic culture works well. Of course, if you are then going to make cheese with this yummy yogurt as we do then you want it as thick as possible! 

Take about a 1 1/2 - 2  Tablespoons of yogurt and add to each quart (or litre) of milk. Stir and mix well. Now you need to find a warm place to let the milk stand. Certainly you can purchase yogurt makers that create this environment. We  have found a handy way of using our dehydrator with a towel draped over it. Other ways that we have heard or read about involve heating the milk and then keeping it in a warm place like the oven to cool. You want to be sure its in a place where it is not jostled. 

After approximately 15-24 hours in a warm place, you magically have yogurt! This creamy substance can be eaten now or if you wish to take one more step you can turn it into cheese! We use a variety of methods to drain the yogurt, as you can see from the pictures below. Essentially you want to strain the yogurt through cheesecloth so that you remove the whey and make the yogurt into a spreadable cheese. This can take a couple of days and is best done in the fridge for safety reasons. 

In the end you up with a cheese that is like a soft cream cheese. It has a tangy flavour due to the yogurt base which we really like. You could then whip in all kinds of interesting additions, such as herbs, spice or something like minced sundried tomatoes. We have also had much success with freezing this cheese. We simply put into small tupperware containers and put in the bottom of the freezer. This extends your milking/cheese season considerably (as you can't milk all year.. but you can certainly eat cheese all year!)

Hope this may have been helpful or at least interesting, for you foodie's out there who like to experiment with new food processing methods, give this a try this weekend. You could have a batch done in time for Easter! 

Thoughts about counting days....

The way we look at time is interesting... so much of how we perceive time depends upon our perspective. 

Time seems to go so slowly when we are looking forward to something pleasant, it spills through our fingers when we are immersed in an experience we hope would go on and on and appears to flash by when we are dreading an event. 

Here on the farm we have our 4-H Achievement night in 8 days - something that likely is  being met with some mixed feelings depending upon how ready each of us feels.... This event is the culmination of a year's worth of work for us all - members and leaders alike - and the house is a buzz with preparation. 

This year we have been involved in a wide range of 4-H projects. From blacksmithing to microbiology... from dairy cattle to fashion design - whoever thinks 4H is only about farming hasn't seen the awesome video that Noel made this year... (come to think of it I haven't see it yet either!) 

We are about 75 days away from our first delivery of our CSA (weekly vegetable box) to our shareholders - which we always look forward to with both excitement and stress... made even greater by the height of the snowbanks still on the field! Hard to believe that in 40 days we should be safe to move our plants outside! 

Grace our Dexter cow is due in about 102 days if all goes as planned - which is not typically the case on our farm! Our chicks arrive in 18 days with another batch coming in 60 days. New piglets arrive in 24 days.... we seem to be always counting days around here! All these events will come and go and the rhythm of the farming season will roll on. 

There are other more important days to count however! The days that I am blessed to be alive (15 919) days or married to my best friend (7 623 days) or a mother to smart, funny & healthy children (6 216 days). Yes, time is an interesting thing .... what days are you counting??