Monday, January 14, 2008

Yogurt Cheese

I was inspired by Alton Brown on Good Eats about making cheese from yogurt. I have done this before to some reasonable success so I bought some plain yogurt and started the process.

Problem one: I did not have cheese cloth. I strained it through some nylons and too much yogurt was getting through. I then put another layer around it using a jam straining bag. Still too much yogurt getting through.

Problem two: Flavour - the flavour was just too acidic and strong for my liking.

I would like to try this again and set up a proper press for cheese making. I also would like to work with kefir.

For a few months in 2005 I had a good kefir culture going. I was producing too much yogurt and started to make cheese and it worked well. I unfortunately killed the kefir culture and need new grains to get things going again.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Shocking, good raspberries!


We were out at Costco today and bought some raspberries. Normally I am loath to buy raspberries in the store even when they are in season locally. The only way I can properly control the quality is to pick my own. But today we saw a rather amazing batch of them at Costco.

Costco is a place I rarely buy any produce. Their stuff is not local, it is not cheap, and it is typically the worst sort of bland flavour one can think of. But there they were, 375 grams of what looked and smelled like good raspberries. We risked the $4.69 and bought them.

Low and behold, they actually are as good as they look.