Michele and Andrew's Adventures: Signs of spring!

Well, in our minds anyway. All of our lovely "warm" (I use that term loosely) days have graduated into over cast and damp. Supposed to snow tomorrow.

But! That does not stop the intrepid Pfannenstiel household! We've had a busy weekend so far.

I made ricotta for a pan of manicotti for tomorrow. Homemade manicotti is lovely at this time of the year. Warm and filling. Making ricotta is actually pretty easy. Boil milk and salt, add lemon juice, skim of curds and then drain them. On the right in the following picture is the boiling curds and whey, on the left is the draining ricotta. The cheese cloth is the extra fancy, cut up pillowcase variety!

And the finished ricotta. It will be enough for a pan of manicotti. Could also make a pan of lasagna with it! 8 cups of milk produced 3 1/2 cups of whey and about 1# of dry ricotta.

So what do you do with all that whey? They organic milk we use is EXPENSIVE, and I was loathe to throw out the whey. So I made bread with it! Farm house white from an recipe on the internet. It calls for 4 cups of water or milk, and I used my 3 1/2 cups of whey and added an extra half cup of milk. The recipe makes three large loaves of bread. So, for 1 gallon of organic milks ($7.00) plus some flour ($2.00's worth rounding up). I got a pound of ricotta (about $6.00 a pound at the local italian store), and 3 loaves of excellent bread ($5.00 each from the bakery); a savings of $12.00! Bread pictured below, right before it went into the oven.

And we also started our seeds!

Yeah dirt!

Andrew putting seeds in. We started 3 kinds of tomatoes (roma, cherry, and golden) plus ground cherries (supposed to be good for jam and pie) and brussels sprouts!

The cat food cans and trays

And up on the shelves. The shelves are actually in the nursery, because it is the warmest room in the house (we use a space heater for Zach). Andrew is going to add the lights this afternoon! And the diploma is going to come down, because I don't think the seeds are going to be nearly as impressed with my doctorate as I am!