Wedding and Cherries

We did it.  We finally got married!  It took us months to actually set the date, and then a week to plan the wedding.  It was perfect, and very low-cost! A friend of mine painstakingly made my dress, and it turned out graceful and beautiful.  The groom's suit was found at the thrift store.  We paid for a photographer with a veggie share, and the dressmaker's work with a work day at her house, home-made cheese, and herbs.  Seating was on home-made benches...boards supported on log sections, covered with a length of unbleached muslin.  My bouquet was collected from my parent's backyard.  A close friend made the cake, her sister did my hair, my sister made the flower decorations, bouquet, and some of the refreshments, and my mom made the rest of the refreshments.  That same sister also played the piano for the ceremony, perched up on the back of my brother's pickup truck.  I rode to the wedding in the back of a Madsen, pedaled by my father.

The ceremony was on land we lease, under a spreading cottonwood tree.  We had no attendants, a friend did the 'marrying', and there was no reception; just a simple dinner with family.   

We did take a short little honeymoon at Allegany State Park, in a rustic cabin beside a babbling brook.

 It was just what we needed...a little break before diving back into work on the houses and garden.  

I do thoroughly enjoy married life!

While my Dear Man and I were busy marrying and making merry, all the plants in our garden were busy growing...and the fruit trees were fruiting!  We recently picked the biggest Chinese Cabbage I've ever seen... 

Such a lovely head...it is very satisfying.

We also have Kohlrabi that is getting too big, broccoli and cauliflower growing to picking size, and cabbages swelling.  Frustratingly, varmints are getting into our fenced-off garden, and doing their best to destroy our crops! 

This spring we discovered four different cherry trees on our land...and they are all loaded with cherries!

And, for a day, with children...

We harvested quite the bounty!  Yum! Yum!

Apple Blossoms!

The apples are in bloom!  Casting their sweet scent abroad and beautifying the view...

Preparations and Plantings

Tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, celery, onions, eggplant, leeks, radicchio, cauliflower, cabbage, and ground cherries.  All these veggies we've started inside on the plant shelf my Dear Man threw together.

Tiny tomatoes...

Baby brassicas...

And the onions were finally planted out in the garden...somewhat overgrown and rootbound, but healthy!

My Man, with help from my brother, turned under the sod in the garden area, and we discovered that most of the ground is saturated with large railroad gravel!  We'll be pulling out rocks for years...but the dirt is lovely!

Pruning season is over, and we got more work done on the trees than we expected!  We did stretch the pruning season in order to get some of the most urgent cuts done...
Now to wait and see how they respond!

On another note...isn't the spring weather lovely, when it isn't pretending to be winter?

The Beginnings of New Beginnings

It is a new experience, planning a whole garden, just for two people.  I'm accustomed to planning the peppers for Mom's big garden (you can read about it here... Wilson Street Urban Farm) and helping out with the rest of it, but planning my own? and for just 2 people?  I'm trying, with plenty of help from my Man...

We started our onions and leeks earlier in March, and they are growing merrily on the mostly-assembled plant shelf with super-bright grow-lights.  

We started celery too, which is also growing...

Last fall we rushed a few garlic bulbs into the ground, and they are starting to grow, but unfortunately the frost heaved them out.  Next year we hopefully will have mulch to keep that from happening.  I don't know if they are salvageable...maybe once the ground thaws we'll be able to shove them back in.

  

On a different note...but not really that different...

My perfect future home with my Dear Man is in a little dilapidated city home (that was free!) at the end of a notorious dead end street in an area of Buffalo that few people want to move to.  The other thing that makes this ideal is the fact that there is a plot of land beside the house...and this plot of land is 6 acres of open grass, old apple trees, and tall cottonwoods.  Surrounding everything are train tracks.  Don't you agree?  Perfection.

The apple trees are old, neglected and in desperate need of tender loving care.  They have many broken and dead branches, and diseased and overcrowded limbs that we are trying to figure out how to start pruning.

The orchard is a little piece of heaven in the congestion of Buffalo for those who love and long for wide open skies... 

Our future garden plot....the orchard is behind the photographer (me).

I think I mentioned the house needs work....but can you see the new life thriving within?

It is amazing, being in the city, but feeling like I am in the country.  

A new chapter is beginning...and spring is coming.  Life is good.

For those with concerns:

The street retains its bad reputation from a few years ago.  Now all the drug houses have been demolished and 'those people' are gone.

It is Finished!

One thing fun about Camembert cheese is the short aging time.  The other is the transformation facilitated by the Penicilium Camemberti mold.  The cheese goes from being mild, firm and boring, to having a snow white exterior, and flavorful, lusciously silky inside.

Yes, the Camembert is already done!  

Actually, it could stand to go another week or two, but it tastes amazing and has lovely texture as it is.  I would like it to get a little oozier, but am also wondering if letting it go longer will cause it to develop an ammonia flavor.  The last batch I made had a hint of ammonia, and this one has none!  The rind on this cheese was even delicious...and I don't normally appreciate rinds.

Camembert Update!

The Camember are well on their way to being runny, flavorful cheeses!

Here are the four wheels, just starting to develop whiskers of mold...

And then a little more mold...

 

Once the mold became thick, I patted it all down, to limit its growth slightly.

Technically, I was supposed to wrap them in cellophane, but since I didn't have it, I had to do without.  Patting down the mold has pretty much the same effect as wrapping in cellophane...

I am very pleased with their progress so far!!

Fancy Cheese...Camembert!

Soo....I started making cheese again a couple weeks ago.  

An interesting cheese I just made is Camembert.  For those that may not know, Camembert is a mould-ripened cheese.  The mould causes the inside of the cheese to become runny, and develop a flavor quite a few people enjoy.  It can be difficult to get right, since you only want one kind of mould to grow on the surface of the cheese.  This particular mould is called Penicillium Camemberti and is bright white and fuzzy.  You can buy it freeze-dried, in the form of yellowish powder...

Camembert cheeses are made in small rounds in order to let the mould do it's work all the way to the center of the cheese.

     

I started making this cheese by heating two gallons of whole, raw, cow's milk to 90F.

As soon as the milk reached 90F I inoculated the milk with mould powder.

I stirred it in for a minute or two; basically until I was sure the mould powder was thoroughly mixed.

After adding the mould powder, I added starter culture.  Starter culture is the bacteria cheesemakers put in the cheese to develop flavor and acid levels.

I made 'mother' culture by sterilizing milk, inoculating it with store-bought, freeze-dried bacteria, and then freezing the resulting coagulated, bacteria-laden milk.

Here are the culture cubes...

I added 4 of them...about 4 ounces of culture.

After adding the starter culture, I allowed the cheese to 'ripen' for 90 minutes.  

In that time of waiting, I prepared a place for the cheese to age.

I already had a Gouda and a Cheddar

 

and a sausage, down in the cheese room. 

I decided to age the Camembert in a tiny fridge in the room, in order to be better able to control the temperature and humidity.

I wiped it down with vinegar to hopefully remove any residual unwanted moulds.

After allowing the cheese to ripen the proper amount of time, I added 30 drops of rennet dissolved in 1/4 C water.

The milk rested for an hour (which was probably too long, considering that I seemed to have added a little bit too much rennet).

After that, I cut the curd into 1/2 inch cubes, stirred it for 15 minutes, let it rest for 15 minutes, then ladeled the curd into Camembert forms.

I used four cheese molds to drain the cheese....four small cheeses!

...and a funny contraption to catch the whey.

I allowed them to drain for five hours, turning them once every hour.

Then I took them out, spread Kosher salt all over the outside and let them sit 10 minutes.

Finally, they went into the basement, into the mini fridge, to grow mould and become runny...

What a Long Hot Summer!

For the first time, I am actually looking forward to Autumn!

This summer was the hottest and driest most people can remember.  We had to lug water for the garden nearly every day...in order to actually produce produce.  The heat was great for peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, and some of the other veggies though...
Look at the size of those Lemon Drop pepper plants!!

Since the harvest has been coming in, I have made a few varieties of hot sauce, dried cayenne, dried sweet peppers, smoked varieties of hot peppers, a couple ristras, and sold and eaten lots of fresh peppers.
I even made a connection with a local hot sauce maker to piggyback onto his bottle order to make my hot sauces look professional!
5oz Woozy bottles with Cayenne sauce and The Redheaded Stepchild hot sauce mix!! (we haven't finished making labels...)

I sure do enjoy working with peppers!  Next year I plan on trying some rather unusual types of super-hot peppers...

Something else that has been making this summer busy is my dating/courting someone!  I've been trying to keep up with my responsibilities at home, and do as much as possible with 'My Man'.

Just recently we decided we wanted to get married, so are working on figuring out an appropriate date for that event.

Wow!  It is strange to think, at this time last year, I had no idea this was coming!

I didn't end up taking any bike trips this year, and haven't ridden as much as I would have hoped.  I even got my driver's license...

  I am not getting a car, though.  No way!  Bicycles are the way to go!

The milk supply I was using for cheesemaking stopped, since the farmer ended up with calves...but hopefully this winter I'll be able to start that up again.

Sorry it has been so long since I posted....I'll try to post more regularly, but I really can't promise anything....especially when my life is busy with unblogworthy stuff...

The Gorgonzola is Finished!

Yesterday I opened up the Gorgonzola!

It had aged just over 60 days.  Sadly, there wasn't much blue veining inside the cheese, but it still tasted quite good!  It was sharp and creamy, but just a little saltier than I preferred.  

I consider this a success!!