Some Cheese Updates!

We opened our 3-month aged Cheddar the other day! I made this cheese way back in July and it was time to try it! I wrote a more detailed post on Rainy Day Cheese Making, but in a nutshell...that icky orange plastic coating left an unnatural taste on my lovely little wheel. We cut the outer rind off and it's now "airing out" so hopefully in a few days we won't taste that plastic anymore. Otherwise, the cheese was very tasty! I'm confident to make more but definitely NOT with the orange coating!

This isn't my cheese...this is a photo I got from the internet of factory-made curd cheese for poutines. This consistency is smooth and slightly rubbery, which is spot on for a poutine curd.

The cheese on the left of the cutting board is my fresh curd - which is very nice tasting, but by no means a poutine curd! I personally do not understand how the factories make their cheese so perfectly without aging it. From my little experience, I know that fresh cheese is soft and more like a Feta consistency at first unless you start to age it. Curd isn't supposed to be aged...I've tried 7 different recipes for curd cheese over the last few months and they never get to that same consistency as the ones I showed above. I kept asking myself WHY do people say that their recipes make "the perfect curd"? Anyway, I know when I'm licked! I won't be making curd anymore, but, the cheese on the right of the cutting board is my aged Mozzarella, we used that for the poutine instead.

With a homemade gravy (that still isn't perfected!), it made a great curd cheese substitute and that's what we'll be using from now on. I took this photo too fast because I wanted to eat my chicken burger lol...but the cheese actually did melt under the heat of the gravy!

I am currently in the process of making my first cream cheese! I want to make a pumpkin cheesecake for Halloween tomorrow and decided NO MORE STORE BOUGHT!!! It's currently in the draining phase and I'll post an update on Wednesday! So far though it smells and looks right! But my gosh...there is SO MUCH of it lol...I must get some bagels!!

Oscar silliness. He's been sleeping with his head face-first against the pillow lately. It's very cute! Our pets are always entertaining to watch!

We are in the middle of a nasty Nor'easter and the wind is shaking the cottage, at least that's how it feels! We've had power loss off and on all night...I'm hoping it'll all settle down soon, it's too dangerous to walk the dogs in the woods during wind storms. 

I'm going to make the best of my day today, I have some paintings planned, I'm carving pumpkins, decorating and making my cheesecake! I think I found my energy again. :)

Tired...

I think the weather is getting to me...I have zero energy this morning! It's very overcast, cold, windy and damp out. I have had a mystery zap! pain up and down my left leg for a few weeks now. I'm doing a daily yoga routine to help my body limber up some more. I also started a regimen of omega fish oil supplements, a B-Complex, and a fruit/yogurt shake every morning. I'm hoping that in a few days I'll feel a difference. If not, I'll be buying some Glucosamine (thanks Harry) and hope that helps my aches and pains. I separated my right knee in 2008 in a skiing accident. Some little dweeb was "hot dogging" between lanes on the ski hill to show off to his ski-boarding buddies and rammed right into me. I think that my desire to ring his neck was more intense than the pain of separating my knee lol...It's been nearly 10 years since then and I still feel that pain this time of year in my knee. Not to mention my hands ache too lately...I'm falling apart lol! 

As you can see, Pavlov agrees about the windy day! :) I have some great news though - at least it's great for me! After 5 weeks of slight chaos in our home since picking up Pavlov and Stella...I am finally back to another one of my important routines...morning dog walks on the mountain!!

This is so important to me...not only do I get my daily exercise, but the dogs get to be out in the woods and on the mountain. I do, however, have to make TWO trips...I can't possibly handle all five at the same time! I take our three first, then the two fosters/adoptees! Alex and I still walk them after dinner, but it's really just a small stroll around the village. The morning walks are for exercise! 😊

We "fall back" an hour next weekend in November, so it'll make the mornings lighter earlier. I was out at 7am and the woods were still dark, the sun was just peeking out as we got to the top of the mountain - on the first walk! I'm speechless about how grateful I am to live in these mountains...I missed my Nature Therapy! :)

Boo!

The theme for the Scribble Picnic this week is Boo! How appropriate for this time of year and also for me! I love anything scary, spooky and creepy! I woke up SO early yesterday morning, it was still dark out and I was on a roll alright! I started off painting some zombies with acrylics. Zombies definitely have a Boo! factor!! I remember the first zombie movie I watched was in 1984 at a second-run movie theater, Night of the Living Dead. It scared me REAL GOOD.

I haven't done a watercolour in a while, and I felt like painting some more. I looked out the window and all I could see was dark blue and black. It was pouring rain so there was no sunrise and it was drearily dark out. I remembered seeing an image like this online a while back so I figured I'd paint something like it! Walking in the pitch dark with just a lantern can be quite spooky! When I lived more up north many years ago, I would walk my pugs at night and all I had was my headlamp for light. Once in a while I'd hear a sound on either side of me. In the dim light of the headlamp, I could never see what was making the sounds. It got me spooked enough that I'd jump through the roof when a mouse ran across in front of us!

I'm a big fan of Poe as well. When I lived alone, I used to read his short stories by candlelight and scare myself silly. :) This is my Raven, another acrylic painting.

And I did this one just for fun! What's a Boo! theme without ghosts?? :) This is another watercolour.

Gasp! My October Wall of Horrors is full! I still have another week before Halloween too. This was so much fun to do, and I loved the theme this week Michael! :)

And just to end this post without giving you nightmares ;) here are our sleepy little angels! :) No nightmares here. :)

Jack

Leo

Charlie and Dana

Stella

Oscar and Marlene

Pavlov

Winter Garden Done!!! :)

WHAT A RELIEF...I will admit to my Blogging friends that my winter garden was making me sad lately. With the added responsibility and expense of our new doggie guests, my budget got cut in half. Alex and I went out the other day to buy some plexi-glass for my cold frames. We had to buy the cheapest stuff we could find sigh...very thin...I do hope it can handle the winter and snow fall...but I'm nothing if I'm not always trying to see the bright side, so I did my best with what I had and came up with some very basic cold frames. This is lettuce land which is already blossoming with winter lettuces!

Root Veggie Land is also starting to push through. For each "cold frame", I planted in containers. Then I measured what plexi-glass we had to make the covers. Finally, I covered the lattice-fences that were already there with a double layer of poly-tarp to help shield the containers from the cold. I'm really hoping this will work out. 

With the scrap pieces, I was JUST able to cover carrot and beet-ville. I had much more ideal plans for my cold frames, but when life takes a turn, you have to turn with it right? :) At least I managed to make do with a lot less!

My garlic patch is all planted and under poly-tarp. When it starts to snow, I wonder, should I take the tarp off? I know they have to "winter" but do they need more protection? I spent a good 6 hours in the garden today, it was fun, but I'm sore. I feel a sort of relief that the garden is done. I just have to concentrate on watering and making sure the plants don't sizzle under the plexi-glass now. When winter comes, I'll be very happy to go out daily to shovel snow and check on my garden!

A few weeks back I made some pickled cherry tomatoes with the last of the harvest. I didn't want them to go to waste. Well, we tasted them last night and ooooh! Can your cheeks get any more hollow??? This was an experiment recipe and boy oh boy, the recipe maker LOVED vinegar lol...it was really over the top...

...so I strained it about six times and now we have a flavoured vinegar. Alex said it tasted like the bruschetta I make so I officially now have some Bruschetta Vinegar! :)

Leigh from 5 Acres and a Dream posted about her cheese making yesterday.  She posted a photo of her grilled cheese and being the suggestible type...I HAD to make some kind of grilled cheese for dinner last night! The photo doesn't give it justice, but this was awesome! I kind of made it up as I went...I breaded some chicken breast and we made a chicken-parmesan-grilled cheese. With the breaded chicken, we added bacon, Mozza (homemade!) and a very generous sprinkling of Parm. Whoa...and I made some Marinara Sauce for dipping too. It was amazing! :)

My Marinara recipe makes enough to fill almost 4 Mason jars, so I decided to can the rest. I only have a water bath canner at the moment and I had a little guilt about filling it with water for just two jars! But our freezer is full, so I figured why not? Do you can just a few jars when you have some leftovers? Do you think it's worth it? 

Next week is an early monthly shopping day, so if I find more tomatoes on sale, I may just buy another 60 pounds for sauces!! (obsessed??? yes.)  :) Tomorrow I would usually post my Year of Projects update, but sadly I have done zero knitting. But...I have faith! :) I have every other little daily routine back in place, including my daily exercise and yoga...I've done some painting..now I need to make knitting more of a priority! Like I said above, when life throws you a curve ball, you just have to duck or try to hit it!!!! I'm aiming for a home run lol! :)

Scribble Picnic and HEADS

I don't normally write TWO blog posts in one day but I didn't realize that the Scribble Picnic had been extended again and I wanted to include my painting in the weekly challenge! If you'd like to read about yesterday's Homemade Pasta Adventure, feel free to click on the link! :)

But first, I have to show you my HEADS. How I would love to use these noggins for Halloween, but we ordered them to hold our new beloved hats! These heads are wonderfully creepy though! :))) What would you do with them??? Reminds me a bit of a horror movie...if I come down for a glass of water in the middle of the night and find one out of place, I will freak out lol...

So this week's Scribble Picnic's theme is Fill In The Blank (follow the link to see other artist's interpretations or to join!)...and this is the idea we were given...to fill in the negative space.

As it is the season to be spooky...of course, I couldn't help myself by doing a graveyard scene. That was the first thing that came to mind...my very macabre mind lol! ;)

So this painting will join the other two I did this month on the "October Wall of Horrors". I still have more space and we are only half way through the month!! :)

Homemade Pasta: Labour of Love

After yet another store bought, cardboard-tasting pasta experience a few weeks back, we decided NO MORE! From now on, I'll be making my own pasta at home. As I said in the title, it IS a labour of love. It's a long process but I found it really enjoyable! My idea was that I wanted to make fusilli pasta for our dinner, so that's what I started off with.

Making your own pasta is inexpensive and easy. It's eggs, flour, salt and a wee bit of olive oil. I posted my recipe: Homemade Pasta. I found many recipes call for way too much flour, so I kind of made up my own and it worked very well!

After mixing everything up, you knead the dough until it's smooth and let it rest at least 30 minutes. I read a trick online, if you cut it in half and it's got lots of air bubbles...like this:

Then it needs more kneading.

So I continued to knead...I'm developing new muscles from this pasta and my pizza dough kneading! :)

Of course, I had to make my own Ricotta. :) What's a homemade dinner without homemade cheese?

This is a wonderful tool! My pasta maker. I love it. I bought this eons ago and it still works very well. It has an attachment on top for linguine and cappellini as well. 

After the rest period, I cut the pasta dough in four and started to stretch it out with the pasta maker. We like our pasta thin so I stretch it out a good 2 feet per dough ball.

Here's how I made the fusilli. Once you get going it feels like an assembly line! A fourth of the pasta made enough for our dinner.

I had lots of dough left so I decided to make ravioli also for the freezer.

My Ricotta made 2 cups, dinner called for 1 cup, so I made ricotta ravioli. Homemade pasta is very filling, so this amount will make us two dinners. I used up two more balls of dough for this.

With the last ball of dough, I made cappellini. This dried pretty fast on the hangers! You are only supposed to keep fresh dried pasta for a few weeks in an air-tight container. Makes you wonder what they put into the boxed pastas to keep them going for months and years huh?

So that I wasted nothing, I took all the little scraps and made some noodles for chicken soup. This experience was a lot of fun, but it did take a good 7 hours NOT including clean up! :)

We only got dinner on the table around 10pm! That's usually my bedtime lol...It was very good! Fusilli with Ricotta and Ham Sauce. Next time I'll use more chives though, they kind of got lost in the sauce!

Good thing we had dessert ready beforehand! I made individual Trifles. This time though instead of raspberry jam we decided to open up one of our preserved cherry pit with rum concoctions and it was really nice!

Aaah...the canines taking over our bed. Aren't they lazy-looking?? Believe it or not, Alex and I can still squeeze in there and have Oscar the cat on one of our laps too, though it's a tight squeeze!!