• food - Making - other

    Lamb Braised in Milk

    Okay — this one I really went off the reservation. I had some lamb shoulder that I needed to use up, especially since this year’s lamb should be ready soon (I need to check with my dog groomer/lamb rancher when I take the dogs for shots on Tuesday). And as I’ve noted, I have a glut of milk — especially since my first delivery was Thursday, but I’m going to be on the Tuesday delivery from now on — which means I didn’t have a lot of time to use up a gallon of milk over the weekend. So, I…

  • other

    Out of Office ….

    Off to Billings today for some routine errands — so to keep you all entertained in the meantime, here are some links: Barbara Kingsolver on “Dirty Work” Tikkun tackles the spirituality of seed saving in Be Fruitful and Save Seeds Step-by-step directions for saving tomato seeds Michael Bauer blogs about chefs who grow their own produce (and the commenters get incredibly snotty about it.)

  • food - gardening - life skills - Making

    Cheesemaking Kit

    I have another gallon of real milk coming today, and because a gallon of milk a week is really more than I can use, I ordered this nifty cheesemaking kit from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company. Last week I made yogurt from the fabulous unpasteurized milk and I was shocked at how fabulous it came out. I followed these terrific instructions and they worked like a dream. In three hours, as the instructions claimed, I had really great, thick yogurt. I’ve been eating it all week. A quart and a pint of milk, plus a cup of yogurt as…

  • food - Making - other

    Ruhlman Pancetta Challenge

    Here’s the beginning of the pancetta. I had to buy commercial pork, which is kind of a bummer, but our local organic pork people won’t have another pork belly until the next time they butcher (in about a month) and I wanted to get going. So, here it is, the five pound section of my whole commercial pork belly that seemed to have the most even thickness. It’s pretty thick — I think rolling it might be more of a challenge than I’d anticipated, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. So far this was really easy. I…