Slow food....S-L-O-W. But REALLY good food!

OK, I guess I have to admit it....I'm part of the slow food movement. Not intentionally though.

It's not like I went out and said, "Think I'll do slow food". I think it started when we finally bought a really good stove/range about 24 months ago. It's got an induction top and a convection oven and I totally love it. It induced us (get it?) to remodel our 20 year old, Formica counter top, old wood cabinets (really blahhhhh) into something a joy to cook in. It's colorful, open, easy to clean, with lots of counter space and I can spend the whole day cooking or baking or making cheese or pasta or yogurt or stew or soup or bread or etc, etc. We did it all ourselves and it's like living inside an art gallery and it's our art on the walls. I simply do not understand why people farm out the design and then the work to have something that's really NOT their vision. I know time is limited, but come on....it's your HOUSE and your KITCHEN. No one else can do that for you. I don't think anyone works more than we do and we did it. Of course, we had to live with it during the transformation. OK, that's part of the discovery process. The estimate for the kitchen re-do was $25,000. Seriously! What did we spend? Less than $4,000. Did we know how to do all of this when we started? NO. Did we learn? YES.

Back to the slow food: While raising 3 boys, we DID occasionally go out for fast food - between games for instance - come on...we were normal. But we never did go out to eat that much. With a family of 5, it was way way too costly. So I learned to cook good, nutritious food that was easy to make and satisfy 3 growing, always hungry boys.

Now that the pressure of just putting FOOD ON THE TABLE (yes, in caps.....3 hungry teenagers is a scary thing to face), is over...I can concentrate on enjoying the cooking process and boy, have I done it....in spades.

yogurt - the REAL stuff

I started making cheese about 4 years ago and haven't done much since until recently. Cheese is all about slow. It's like bread...only slower. Unless you're talking yogurt (and not that sickly sweet stuff you get at the store) or cottage or mozzarella....that's pretty fast.

Mozzarella

Citric acid...also found in lemons

adding rennet to milk

Home made mozzarella is a wonder to behold. Get this....you can add cream.....soooooo goood! Of course you need a few extra ingredients that most people don't have at home. Some of them are citric acid and rennet. The good news...it's all available on line. One of the best sites for cheese making supplies is The New England Cheesemaking Supply Company.
They've been around a long time and have a bunch of recipes on line and all the supplies your little heart desires. They even have a mozzarella kit with every thing you need to make 30 batches! What a deal! I can tell you, once you've made your own...you'll never buy it from a store again.

Cheese making, like wine making is like magic! I often feel like Dr. Frankenstein in the movies when he's just brought the monster to life and yells....."It's ALIVE!" Cheese, bread, wine, beer is ALIVE and you can witness it yourself in your own kitchen. Amazing!