Reality Smackdown (Or Leaping Before You Look)

The day after my excited post about hawking my cheese at the Schroon Lake Opening Weekend, the walls of reality came crashing down.

I discovered that I can’t sell my product to the public unless it comes from a licensed and inspected facility, i.e. a kitchen that passes NYS Dept. of Health and NYS Ag & Markets criteria. I’m sure NYS would be less than impressed with the officialness of my kitchen.

This is what happens when I let my enthusiasm race me down the road without taking the time to adjust my mirrors.

I suppose the fact that two folks who were kind enough to give me a gallon of raw milk to play with said, several times, "I can’t sell it to you, but I can give it to you," should have been a tip off. I was dipping my toes in NYS’s shark infested waters.

Yesterday I read up on the regulations and requirements online for a bit. When my head felt ready to explode, I reached out to Essex Co. Cornell Cooperative Extension for some information in laymans terms. When I asked if I was taking a chance of being arrested at Opening Weekend, I was jokingly told I was at risk of being put in handcuffs and chains and put in the stocks in town square. I told her I wouldn’t tell Larry about that, because he might actually volunteer for it.

In the end, a helpful representative from Adirondack Harvest confirmed what I was interpreting - I can make cheese for home use and personal consumption, but to sell anywhere, I need to be licensed. I’d have to have or use a commercial kitchen for my production. Ultimately, I withdrew my application for the weekend.

I do have options. I could produce it at someone’s licensed kitchen, but that somewhat defeats the purpose of my doing it at home, when I have time. I’m not really into having to go somewhere and losing more time from home. Depending on what type of cheese you’re making, this could involve a lot of back and forth. Quite frankly, I’m not really into that.

And that’s okay. My friends and family will continue to be the beneficiaries of my home kitchen-based experiments. We’ll keep cheese production as part of The 30 Acre Wood’s business plan, and make it an aspiration for down the road. Meanwhile, I’ll keep trying different types of cheese and perfect my craft, as it were. I’m keeping it fun, which is what it’s all about!

Taking the Plunge

I filled out the application. I scanned it to my email. I wrote the email to Shelby Davis of Mr. P’s Mountain Smokehouse. I thought about it one more time, looked over the edge, and hit send. That was it. The point of no return.

The 30 Acre Wood has officially become a vendor for Schroon Lake’s 2013 Opening Weekend festivities, where I will be selling my homestead soft cheeses. I’m scared to death.

They say if you wait to be ready for something, you’ll never do it. I’d been debating whether to do a booth for the weekend after Shelby tossed me the idea.

My guest post on The Social Silo garnered more attention that I had planned on. People started talking about it. The post directed people to my blog, and the next thing I knew I received email from Shelby asking to profile my cheesiness on the Schroon Laker blog. The small town network is alive and well around here.

My knee-jerk response was "I’m really not newsworthy." Now, let’s think about this a minute. I want people to be interested in and buy my product, yet I’m afraid to let people know about it.  That makes a whole lot of sense.

Our new logo, courtesy of ubertalented daughter Jessica Jones
 

I approached my coworker, Donna Moses, about sharing a tent with me. She makes amazing crafts and figured if we split a tent, then neither one of us has to make a huge amount of product to have a nice display. It was a good way of taking some of the pressure off myself. Then Donna decided not to participate due to numerous family obligations. Totally understandable, but I did tell her that if I have a total cheese-related freak-out going into this, I’m holding her responsible.

So that leaves me and my half-dozen or so variations of soft cheeses all alone in the spotlight. Or at least in the tent.

Fromage draining
this morning

I’m still experimenting and trying to perfect (to the degree that you can) my cheeses. My first mozzarella/pesto log turned into a watery, gooey mess on the first try, but that’s where troubleshooting comes in. I’m trying different flavors for fromage blanc, which has winners and losers. Larry loves them all, so he’s a poor tester, although he’s good for my ego. Friends have been getting samples with "Tell me what you honestly think" attached to them.

If you don’t leap at some point, you never get anywhere. You stand on the end of the diving board forever, with your toes gripping the edge until they cramp. I dove off my board. I emailed Shelby my application. Needless to say, I receive a very enthusiastic response from her.

Had I not pushed myself to do this, I don’t know what I would have waited for before I went "public." A bona fide production kitchen? A cheese cave? Kudos and atta-girls from those nearest and dearest? That’s stupid. Time’s a wastin’, as June and Johnny would say. If I’m not going to have fun with it, what’s the point? And fun is getting out there with my coolers and containers and samples and chatting it up with folks on a beautiful spring weekend.

Now I have to get cooking!  See you in the park on May 25!

Cheese-Whiz!!

The illustration on the directions was of a happy cow, wearing a cape, and a woman wearing a crown, proudly displaying a tray of cheeses.  My kit stated that mozzarella was the easiest of all the cheeses for the aspiring home cheese maker to produce.  I was encouraged.  I could do this.   

I read the directions repeatedly and watched the accompanying video a half dozen times.  I practiced some visual imagery of lovely curd formation and shiny pulled mozzarella.  I studied my cheese making book and decided to take a careful, scientific approach to this.  I would keep meticulous notes, wear an apron with an air of professionalism.   

I brought the milk to temperature and added rennet, then waited for the chemical reaction of curd formation.  This took about ten times longer than the directions optimistically said it would.  Then I carefully cut and drained the curds and reheated them, pulling the whole mess like taffy to get it smooth and elastic.  With the first batch I went old school and used the hot water bath method to heat the drained curds.  It was a loser.  I don’t think the water ever got the cheese hot enough to stretch properly.  It turned into a rubbery ball that any dog in the neighborhood would fight for.  And it was, to me, bland. 
 

Um, no.

Larry cut a slice off of the mutant white blob and popped it in his mouth.  “That’s good!” he said.  “What’s wrong with it?”  I hadn’t gotten the cheese salt into it and it took on the consistency of bathtub caulk.  Grade: D 

Undaunted, I tried another batch a week later.  The curds took an inordinate amount of time to form, again.  But this time I used the microwave method to heat the cheese to stretch, and it was working well – in incremental sessions it was taking on that coveted shiny, smooth baby-bottom texture – until I got greedy and nuked it a few seconds too long and it suddenly turned mushy and grainy, disintegrating in front of my very eyes.  I stirred it and poked at it and swore at it, and proclaimed it ricotta.  As mozzarella, I gave it an F, as ricotta, B+.  Larry used it in some homemade eggplant parmesan, where it served us well.  A good tomato sauce covers a multitude of sins. 

Larry hit up a dairy farm friend for a gallon of his unadulterated milk, fresh from the cow.  Wiser now, I laid out all my tools in order of need, purchased some different rennet, approached the curds with an air of authority.  They formed in a shorter time and better structure.  I got some salt in it and heated it in the microwave in microscopic segments.  It stretched and formed into something almost resembling two logs.  The texture was pretty good and the taste not bad.  Grade:  B 

Encouraged by these moderate successes, I was jonesing to try some easy cheddar, something that had to be pressed and formed, something that required equipment not yet in my arsenal.  So I went back to the big cheese making book and looked up directions for fromage blanc, an uncomplicated soft cheese akin to cream cheese.  It required a culture which I purchased (I went from “guest user” to “welcome back, Beti!” on the cheese supply website) and some temperature finesse.  It had to sit in the pot “at 72 degrees for 6 hours.”  I wasn’t sure how to do that in a drafty farmhouse heated with wood.  The woodstove is not exactly a steady temperature generator.  I spent the next 6 hours moving the pot from location to location in the house, a digital thermometer tied to the lid, trying to find a spot that was reasonably close to 72 degrees and somewhat consistent.  Much to my surprise, the curds formed beautifully, which I then cut and wrapped up in cheesecloth.  Now it had to drain at 72 degrees for 12 hours.  I finally hung the bag from a living room rafter, low to the floor, above a pot, about three feet away from the woodstove.  It was as reasonable as I could get, and it would have to do.

 

Yummy!!

In the morning, the bag had shrunk by about a third, and opening it felt like Christmas morning.  The curds at the top were a little dry, but the bottom was a little wet, and when mixed – voila! – a beautiful batch of fromage blanc, which I think is French for creamy and tasteless.  But I learned that this is a base from which wonderful things occur – you can add sweet, you can add savory, you can make it whatever you want.  Larry and I heaped it on crackers, on toast with some jelly – and as its natural flavors began to come on, I grew more fond of it with each passing day. 

I may have to add a cheese press to my Christmas list.