It was fairly quiet this week, although we did get stuff done. Amy has passed her mid-terms. Anja’s been working on blogs and stitchery. Stella’s working on new music and Loren made a bunch of pieces for various projects.
Herbs and Saturday Sewing aren’t going to happen this week. Saturday is Waldport’s Great Garage Sale, so Anja and Loren will be too busy. We’re planning a cheese night during the week, though! (Watch the Facebook group for date/time) The Cheese Ladies are interested in doing the Schiz. 🙂
Sewing Night – At Ancient Light, Thursdays, 6-8pm- Herb Bunch – At Ancient Light, Saturdays, 11am-1pm
- Sewing Time – At Ancient Light, Saturdays, 3-5pm
- Project Day – At Ancient Light, Sundays, Noon to 6pm
- Cheese & Wine – Watch the schedule or the Facebook group! This is going to be irregularly scheduled for when tasks need to occur.
- Next Potluck – 5/21
Here is the direct Portfolio link which has all the past Project Day reports and various projects, original here: https://housecapuchin.wordpress.com/portfolio/ and new one here: https://housecapuchin2.wordpress.com/portfolio/ and number three is here: https://housecapuchin3.wordpress.com/portfolio/
Early Week – Anja spent awhile sorting books in the House library. She also pulled all the stray papers, TI’s, CA’s and all and got them separated. Eventually Loren found some boxes to sort into for those. That’s going to help, we think.
Sewing Time –
…was Stella and Anja. Stella was hemming and Anja first worked on finishing a couple of small pincushions, then stitching on a small coif for largesse, and finally making progress on the embroidery for a large pincushion. Loren fed us fresh bread with butter.
Amy came in for Sewing on Saturday, but Anja got pulled away since one of her suppliers came in with some stones for her stock.
Cheese and Wine Workshop – We found a recipe for Schiz (pronounced Skee, apparently) an Italian cheese that is fried before eating. We had been talking about it all week, but finally managed to get all the pieces together on Friday and started in. It called for heating the milk slowly, and it took 45 minutes to get up to temperature. We added caraway, dill and celery seed to the milk as it warmed.
At 8:30 the rennet went in and at 9 went back and checked. No break! …. so heated the milk back up the 5 degrees it had lost and added an 1/2 tab of a different rennet. Kinda crossed our fingers and prayed. 🙂 …`The next time the curd “broke” so went on with cutting the curd, then cooking some more. By 10:30 the curd had cooked and the whey was starting to look right, so we started draining the whey. We had to use two cloths because the cloth we started with was too thick! (The cheesecloth had gone walkabout….again!) …and re-appeared 10 minutes after we had grabbed something else.
By 11, it was all hanging and cooling. By 11:20 it was still dripping, only molded in the cloth like some of the italian cheeses, but it hadn’t been salted, which it didn’t say in the recipe when to do! We broke up the mostly-dripped-out curd, salted, squoze and re-hung and it went into the fridge, along with the re-bottled whey. It was tasty both with and without the salt, but it’s definitely a damp cheese. I see why this one gets sliced and fried. Ricotta from the whey tomorrow!
…and then fridged overnight to drip some more, which it did very little of. The pot below was dry.
Anja says, “Sunday evening, I pulled out the cheese, sliced it and then fried some. ….omgs…. I haven’t had fried cheese that good in a long, long time! You can only do that with cheeses that don’t melt. My Baba used to get a cheese with a similar texture from a local Czech butcher shop, but they closed before I was a teenager. I haven’t found any cheese that worked as well until now!” The thing is that the not-expensive American cheese *all* melt. We haven’t been able to afford an artisanal cheese and this qualifies.
The process was rather similar to this one, except we didn’t press it.
Schiz – NICOLO SANTORIO·TUESDAY, MAY 2, 2017 – Schiz (pronounced “skee”) is a fresh cow’s milk cheese from the Dolomites in Northern Italy. It’s only good for a few days and is fried in a pan before eating, usually served with polenta.
Ingredients:
- 1 gallon of milk (not ultra-pasteurized)
- Liquid rennet (1/4 tsp) or 1/4 tablet.
- (optional) Calcium chloride for pasteurized cold stored milk
Tools
- Good thermometer.
- Large pot
- Ladle
- Knife or cake spatula to cut the curds
- A basket molds or any other good draining mold.
- Pour the milk in to the clean pot and heat milk slowly to 96° F (35° C), then take it off the heat source.
- Add 1/4 tsp (1.25ml) single strength rennet or ~ 1/4 tablet. Stir for one minute with an up and down motion with the spoon or ladle, then stop the milk moving with a slight back stir.
- Put a lid on and leave milk to set for 30 minutes.
- Cut the coagulated curd in a grid pattern with your knife, with about 1-2 cm between cuts, keeping the knife vertical. Allow this to set for 2-3 minutes while the whey begins to show in the cuts. Then cut again following the existing cuts, but this time hold the knife at a 45 degree angle. Be gentle so you don’t mash the curds up.
- Return to the heat and set to very low, continuing to monitor the temperature so that it doesn’t go above 120°. The total cooking time will be 20-30 minutes. The longer it is cooked, the drier the final cheese will be. The final curds should be cooked well through and should be examined to make sure that enough moisture has been removed. A broken curd should be firm throughout and the curds should have a moderate resistance when pressed between the fingers.
- Remove the whey with a ladle to about an inch above the surface of the curds. Leaving a bit of whey for the transfer will help the cheese consolidate.
- Transfer the curds to the basket mold and allow the whey to drain. A small amount of weight (1-2 lbs) can help consolidate the curd and produce a slightly drier curd, but this is optional. I use just a bit of hand pressure to consolidate the cheese. Turn the curds as they drain and firm up. Doing this several times during the draining will keep the moisture even.
- The draining cheese should be placed in the refrigerator as soon as the whey drainage slows, but with a bowl underneath to collect the small amount of whey that continues to drain. Schiz should be used within a few days at most.
To cook, slice up and fry in a pan with butter and a pinch of salt. Cream can be added. Serve with polenta or wide cut pasta like Pappardelle.
Herb Bunch – Did a little prep during the week of the wax from a local honey supplier. It needed to be melted and heated, drained, strained and melted again in water, repeatedly. We’re not done, even yet. At least it’s fairly simple.
- Drain and strain.
- Add clean water.
- Boil.
- Cool overnight.
- Repeat.
Once the water from step 1 is clear, then the wax chunk gets set aside for aging.
Project Day – We started with digging out the blue velveteen that Anja wants to use for more pincushions and for the inside of the Egil’s prize box. That got cut, plus more for pincushions and maybe a bag, and then Loren spent some time cleaning up the worktable and working in the area around the library.
Anja got going on lining the sewing kit box with the blue velveteen. Once the bottom was in and drying she did a little embroidery and then the back was ready. Loren pulled things out so that we could fry some more cheese and she could show Loren how. …and that was lunch!
Between the two of them, they worked on finishing the other pieces of the prize box, which took the rest of the day. Still needs varnished!
Miscellaneous pix – Some marvelous dolls made by Laurie Rossbach
Music
Links
From the Anja’s Quest blog, a whole series of pages on toys. – https://anjasquest.wordpress.com/tasks/toys/ There are 20 pages on this topic, now.
Updated Pages
Cheese Project – http://wp.me/p8ngGY-l9
Funnies
Anja, Stella, Loren, Amy
Largesse Item Count – (includes gifts, prizes, auction items, etc.)
- ASXLVII = 24
- ASXLVIII = 88
- ASXLIX = 794
- ASL = 2138
- ASLI = 731 plus 3 sewing box (in process), 1 fid, 1 awl, 4 needles, 32 pincushions, varnished stuff (124), 3 hats
- Total as a Household = 3359 handed off
In ministerio autem Somnium! Anja, graeca doctrina servus to House Capuchin
Page Created 4/30/17 & published 5/7/17 (C)M. Bartlett
Last updated 5/7/17
House Capuchin 3 
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