Thursday, January 12, 2012

Back to food and wellness

Here's a local website that delivers fresh, local, organic produce to your door!  It's not produce from one farm like a CSA, it's a group of farmers with varied meats and produce.  I just found out about it!
Organicfood2you it's more expensive that Weaver Street (and that's saying something) but if you go together with other people you can receive a 5% discount on your order.  How cool is that?

This week I found out I'm behind the pop culture times again.  I thinks it's because I never really watched Oprah.  Kris Carr was diagnosed with a rare and incurable stage 4 cancer in 2003.  She went on a "deep healing pilgrimage" and is still here talking about it!  A lot of what she's talks about food and health wise are things I already know and practice.  I'm not sure I'll ever be into enemas (flashbacks to surgery when I was five!), but I'm all about detoxing and green foods, so you never know!

I was doing pretty well exercising before the back injury/tooth removal/severe cold/burn and then with the holidays I got back into baking.  I had a three week affair perfecting a chocolate scone recipe.  It's top-notch, but I didn't need all those scones.  Last week I HAD to make a Ukrainian poppyseed cake and then regretted we ate it in two days (mostly me, I admit it).

Richard and I have given up alcohol (before the holidays) and I'm happy to report I'm sleeping better.  Well, I would be but for Steve's small bladder. I'm back to bursting (45 second bursts of running with one minute fast walking recovery for 17 minutes) and it feels good!

Today I woke up with a severe headache from dehydration.  I realized yesterday my total fluid intake was a pot of English Breakfast Tea (I shared) and a glass of water at lunch.  Duh.  In order to cure what ailed me today, which includes mental/emotional angst as well, I drank lots of hot water with lemon, practiced meditating and yoga which I haven't done seriously for years.  Boy have I lost flexibility!  I still had the headache for most of the day and was mighty blue for most of it, but I think I'm back on the upswing.

I'm thinking bursting three days a week and yoga the other three and I'll be well rounded.  Meditating is something I should go back to doing whenever I can.  My mind needs practice being still.

And just because Steve is my BFF these days.  Here's a little video of him, he's figured out how to use a pull-string on a cat toy.  Tiger-Cato and Button never liked it,but Steve thinks it's the bomb!


Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Making mozzarella...yum!

This past Christmas I asked for cheesemaking kits from The Cheese Queen.  Everyone that I've told that  to looks at me oddly.  Do you think that means cheesemaking isn't at the top of everyone's list?

So far I've made ricotta and mozzarella to put in my favorite spinach calzones.  The hardest part about cheesemaking for me is throwing away the whey.  A gallon of milk yields about three-quarters to one pound of cheese and almost seven pounds of whey. There are recipes for making pizza dough out of whey (which I did for the calzones) and last night I boiled my manicotti in it and is worked fine.

Here's what mozzarella looks like after the rennet is added and it sets.

Mozzarella in process

After you slice it in the pot and stir the curds around for a while you lift them out with a slotted spoon and have a lovely, silky, puffy pile of curds.

Mozzarella curds

Then you dip the curds in very hot water and stretch them like taffy.  After a bit you have a luscious hunk of mozzarella! How amazing is that?!


Mozzarella


This is the leftover whey.

Whey

See what I mean?  That's a lot!  I'd save it, but that would take half gallon canning jars and more storage space than I will ever possibly have in my lifetime.

Because I'm playing with cultures again, I remembered all my kombucha and kefir making from last year.  I didn't save my kefir grains, so I ordered some more and they arrived yesterday.  My kombucha mothers have been living in the back of the refrigerator in a tightly sealed Mason jar.  When I took them out they looked and smelled the same so I made two batches of tea and their brewing their little mothers out!

Today I'm dyeing twenty more skeins of yarn for Cozy!  I can't wait to see the "re-do" of the place.  Deb and Emily are working hard to everything ready for re-opening on Friday.  I'm very thankful they're letting me have more space for yarn.  It should keep me busy for a while!