Spring Break and Birthdays

3/17/2016

This past week, Mom has been on Spring Break, and it has been wonderful. The puppies are very glad to stay in bed until it's light outside. They are also very happy to help Mom with the projects she has been working on since being off of work. Mr. C and Miss M were only too happy to hold the quilt in place while Mom was working on it. When they saw Dad with the camera, they were a little worried that he was going to make them get off of it. Mom reassured him that they weren't laying on the part that she was working on.

I (Mom) like to make a lot of things by hand. I got tired of trying to find bread that was non-GMO. None of the breads in the local stores are non-GMO. As far as I can tell, the closest store that sells bread without corn or soy in it is Whole Foods, and that's not very close. So in the interest of not eating GMO corn or soy, I've been making all of our bread for over a year. I was making a basic white bread until Grandpa gave me a sourdough starter. The sourdough bread is really mild and perfect for sandwiches. So lately, I've been making a lot of sourdough bread. One of the things I hadn't tried making at home was cheese. Well, that all changed a few days ago. My sister, Aunt P, had gotten a cheese kit a while back, and since I have had a little more time on my hands than normal, I decided to try it. The puppies of course were all to happy to help. I started by heating up two gallons of milk and then adding all of the ingredients. You don't realize how much two gallons of milk really is until you pour it into what you think is a really large pot. Here, the curds are starting to separate from the whey as the mixture sits in warm water in the sink. Note that the sink is normal size, and this is a big stock pot. That's how much milk there was.

After a while, the curds were transferred to cheese cloth and had to be hung up to drip dry for an hour. I didn't really think the hanging up to dry part through. While the milk was doing its thing, I had started another project- painting the kitchen cabinets. I only had one cabinet door left with the knob still on it, so that is what I used to hang up the curds. Mr. M was very curious about the dripping bag hanging from the cabinet. Notice the primer on some of the cabinet doors.

After letting the curds sit with weights on top for 24 hours, we were left with a block of cheese. Well, okay, almost cheese. It has to air dry for 3 to 5 days and then I will wax it and age it for 6 months. So maybe around Christmas time we will have actual cheese. Hopefully by then I will have finished painting the cabinets.

Between all of the cheese making and cabinet painting, something amazing happened. Mr. C and Miss B turned 2!! How did that happen?! It seems like it was only yesterday that we brought them home. It is hard to imagine that we have had them for almost two years already.
Of course we had to do something. We got them a little birthday cake and some toys. Everybody shared the "cake" because they wouldn't understand it if we only gave the birthday pups a treat. They don't understand birthdays. We put Mr. M and Miss S in their crates and let Mr. C and Miss B their toys. Normally when we get toys, the little ones take them away from Miss B and Mr. C. Since it was their birthday, we wanted to make sure that they had first pick of the toys and that they had a chance to pull them apart before the others came and took them away. They LOVED it. Miss B was so happy with her toy that she even rolled over onto her back to chew on it. Mr. C spread out on the couch and went to town on his toy. Miss M, who was out with them, was happy to chew on her ball.