Yesterday was a fairly typical Saturday here on Whidbey Island: breakfast at Muk Cafe, browse the Bayview farmers market, and a stop at the farm supply store for whatever. Except this:
“Let’s make mozzarella!”
Our friend Marnie was visiting from Austin, and we talked most the morning about enjoying the fresh produce and meat available locally, as well as the availability to purchase raw milk.
A while back, Marnie had successfully made her own cheese with raw milk from the farm where she participates in a work share program. I was excited to learn how we could do this on our own and we needed three key ingredients: 1/2 gallon of raw milk, rennet and citric acid. The citric acid we finally found, but after searching far and wide on the island, no luck on the rennet so we had to lower our expectations from mozzarella to ricotta.
It took some time to carefully heat, monitor the temperature and stir the raw milk mixture before we saw cheese curds, but it finally happened. And after straining the whey from the mixture, we ended up with more ricotta than we expected.
Delicious, fresh, creamy ricotta.
After mixing the ricotta into a pasta sauce, we discussed other cheeses that were fairly easy to make such as mozzarella and chevre. Savoring the ricotta cheese over dinner, I realized that it may be hard to purchase ricotta cheese at the grocery store. I’m sure one day practicality will make me do it, but this is definitely something I’m going to try again.
Before going to bed, I searched where to find rennet. Why Amazon, of course!
My rennet will be here in a week and if all goes as planned, not long after, so will our homemade mozzarella.
This morning I woke up and picked four quarts of wild blackberries growing in our front yard. They’ve just started coming ripe enough to pick and after my jam making class with Slow Food Whidbey Island, I thought I’d give my first batch a try.
d, I was amazed at how much sugar one batch of jam takes. I know there are recipes with less sugar, but I thought I’d start with the basics and then experiment once I got the process down. For this batch, I decided to strain out the seeds for half of the berry puree. I wanted seeds for texture and for show, but I wanted the sweetness of the blackberries to come through.
t that apparently isn’t acceptable. We only had one clam that was a fraction too small, so she was kind and let us go with a warning.
Last week we signed up for a partial share at 
cking, roosters crowing and other members gathering their own share of the weekly crop.
In the months leading up to our move, I experimented and then grew dependent on meals in a box. Plated became my new personal grocery shopper and recipe planner. It opened up my Sunday to pack or visit with friends rather than go to the store for the week and plan a menu. Gathering groceries and menu planning is a task that I usually love, but as our move date grew closer, time became more and more limited. It was honestly a lifesaver, but now, on the island, we have access to fresh produce through either our CSA or one of four (or probably more) farmer’s markets. It doesn’t seem feasible to continue our Plated subscription now that life is slowing down a bit. And I want to start experiment cooking with as many of the vegetables as possible.
Tonight I went to work, assessing what was already in the fridge, the pantry and what I brought home from Prairie Bottom. Dinner became a saute of green garlic, oregano, and sage with the broccoli, shitakes and fresh spinach. From there, I tossed in some local fresh Alfredo sauce we found in Langley last week and some porcini pasta. Top it with a touch of Parmesan cheese and dinner. is. served.
life in the sound 