As you will see more and more in this blog, home ownership has been quite an adventure so far for us.  It’s all new, it’s a new city (or a new-old city for me at least), and it’s already been a crazy, crazy challenge.   Purchasing in the middle of a housing slump hasn’t really factored in to these decisions, as Buffalo has been largely out of the bubble (as well as the burst).  Still, it’s an interesting article to read.

http://www.versatilevinegar.org/usesandtips.html

After work yesterday, I drove over to the Modern Homebrew Emporium, which is just up Mass. Ave. from Porters Square.  They sold me the basic mozzarella cheesemaking kit from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company.  The kit cost about $25, and it had all the supplies to make 30 batches of cheese.  In hindsight, I should have just purchased the rennet and citrix acid, and spent less than half of what I did.  I have all the other supplies.  I drove home, and was so excited that I tore open the kit probably before I had set my keys down.  Gwen and I started making the cheese immediately.

You can find the steps to do this in many places on the Internet.  Additionally, the kit came with the basic instructions.  Here’s a link to someone else’s instructions that show basically what I did: http://www.instructables.com/id/Great-Mozzarella-Cheese/.

Basically it involves:
- heat up a gallon of whole milk in a thick bottomed pot until it hits 90 degrees
- stir the whole time while heating
- take it off the heat
- add the Citric Acid, which has been dissolved in 1/4 cup of non tap water (chlorine in tap water is bad for it)
- let sit for five minutes until a ‘clean break’ forms
- cut the clean break with a knife, then put it back on the heat
- heat to 105 degrees (Fahrenheit) while still stirring
- remove from heat again, let sit for 5 minutes
- strain out the whey
- heat in microwave for 1 minute
- add salt
- strain out the whey again
- heat in microwave for 30sec, or until it reaches 135 degrees
- stretch out the cheese until it’s stringy and shiny
- chill in ice water

That is more or less how easy it is.  Again, instructions can be found in many places, and there are many ways to do this.

The one thing I messed up was storage.  We stored it in water and the water sorta killed the cheese in the fridge overnight.  I think we were supposed to use some sort of brine solution.  I’ll work on this.  The first batch last night (before the storage step) came out GREAT!  Tasted exactly like the fresh mozzarella that you would buy in the store.  I was very proud of us.  The subequent ones that we stored overnight did not fare well due to the above mentioned mistakes.  I’ll work on this.

We have all the supplies (save for the milk – need more of that an would love to get my hands on some buffalo milk), so we will try again and keep working on the recipe and process until we find one that works perfect for us.  It felt good to succeed at something that I thought would be damn near impossible.

The picture doesn’t do it justice, and we will post some how-to pics later on, but THIS is what good fresh mozarella looks like.  Tasted great, too!

This year, I went at gardening without any major plans, and did things haphazardly.  Even though the landlord gave us permission to dig up a part of the lawn to create a real garden, and that would be nice to do with a raised bed and stuff, I didn’t have a roto tiller or clear any of the grass off last Fall, so I gave up on that idea early on.  Instead, I opted for some container gardening.  It’s a type of gardening that has taken off in the past couple of years, especially in urban areas like Boston.  Apartment dwellers everywhere have gotten into the trend.  I thought it would be worth a try at Chez Cushman this year as well.

I bought a variety of vegetable plants at a couple different stores, as well as started some from seed.  Gwen purchased a little pumpkin seed kit from Lowe’s and started that as well.  I have a patio tomato in a large pot in the yard, a ‘straight eight’ cucumber, some green beans, corn, and a bunch of herbs.  We also have a Topsy Turvy tomato plant that’s hung on a branch of a dead tree in the yard that’s doing absolutely great.  I think it was all that June rain that helped the little guys along.

So far the plants are all showing fruit, save for the pumpkin plant.  We have actually eaten two green beans from that plant already.  I have neglected to transplant the corn and a couple others and really should get to that soon.  Next year this will be a much more organized project.

For starting from nothing this year, and kind of just playing around to get a feel for the stuff, I am rather proud of the progress made so far.  This is something I have always wanted to do, and when I own a house, there will be a substantial gardening effort made.

Oh, and I’d purchased a random Concord Grape vine at Home Depot at the beginning of the 2008 growing season, fully intending to put it in the ground.  I never got to it, and had just discarded the whole thing into the yard last year.  It sat out all winter, and in the spring, while cleaning some stuff up, I just tossed the presumably dead vine into a 5 gallon bucket, which subsequently filled up with water during some rains.  Lo and behold a couple of weeks ago I looked at the thing and there were leaves growing on it!  Hearty freaking plant.  It is now in a pot, still growing, and maybe we’ll see some grapes come off it in a year or two.

Here are a few pics:

Topsy Turvy (upside down tomato plant):

Bad angle of patio tomato plant.  Very hearty and compact:

Another bad angle of the cucumber plant:

Gwen wants to pickle these guys once they have fully grown: