Throwing Down the Gauntlet

This month for book club, I’m reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsovler. Among other things, the author (who also wrote the Poisonwood Bible) describes how her family lived on homegrown or locally grown food for one year and how their perspective changed as a result. As she narrates the year she throws out little tidbits of information, recipes, and ideas to increase the reader’s self-reliance. She presents many of her views and practices as being outlandish in today’s society but to me, a gal who ones a solar oven, her ideas aren’t that far off base. So, as I was reading today, I came to the section where she reveals that she makes her own cheese. The idea intrigued me, especially when she described the ease of the process. So I called Lisa & Kristin and asked if they’d ever heard of modern-day cheesemaking. After some research we’re committed to give it a whirl. The website we consulted suggested starting off with yogurt so here’s the challenge…who will join us as we progress from yogurt to making tasty Mozzarella, Neufchatel and eventually cheddar cheese? You probably have most of the supplies in your kitchen for yogurt so the deadline for step one (i.e. yogurt completion) with pictures, is August 21.