Italiano, Cheese & Sewing

Have you heard of a cheese cave?  This is what I think of typically.

A nice stockpile of cheeses waiting to age and cut into.

The one below is mine.

This is my second attempt at making cheese and PLEASE don't say Third time is a charm because I don't want to waste anymore milk!  I skimped on the last hour of heating the curds the last time and it showed, literally.  Mold started growing within a week and not the good kind.  I had kept it too moist.

THIS time I followed the directions to a T and it took about 5 hours, not including the 2-3 hours of letting the milk sit on the counter to get to room temp.  And not including the cheese press process of 12-15 hours.  And the green pan above is actually for growing microgreens but just perfect for this.

Also, with my little cheese press, it was awkward to put a 10 pound weight on top, I'm using some dumb-bells and they kept sliding off the rounded upside down metal pan I had on top.  So I devised a way to put the press inside the big metal bowl with towels around it to keep it steady.  Then a stone pizza pan and THEN the 10 pound dumb-bell on top.  That worked great!  and the sudden slamming of the dumb bell sliding off onto the table stopped.  It had to sit like that for 12 hours!

So this is my cheese cave!  In a few days after it's not weepy anymore, I'm going to seal it up in a vacuum seal bag and store it back in this "cave" for a few months.  In the meanwhile, I'll probably try some more, but only if this is looking good.  Online, some people paint the cheese wheel with wax but others swear by the vacuum seal bags.  Hey!  "I" have vacuum seal bags!  So that's what I'm doing.

I got back into sewing, as I mentioned earlier.  I made Aggie a dress that she hates so I COULD have entered it into the fair, but did a short cut on a few areas of it so it's not quite fair quality. 

Eh - live and learn.  It should have been pink.  

Or yellow as she'd requested when she saw the fabric I'd already cut out.

Hey Aggie, do you like this dress that I'm making for you?

I like yellow.

sigh.

I repurposed a t-shirt that I'd thrifted that sports Mickey on it!  She loves Mickey Mouse!

And cut it out the other day.  I was hoping to get back to it yesterday but the cheese took so long and I had my Italian conversation table to get to so it just didn't happen.

The Italian table last night was so fun!  There were only 4 of us there so the conversation didn't flow past so quickly that I couldn't get a word in.  We took turns reading Italian song lyrics out loud and translated them.  Some of the phrases were funny.  Caldo come il pane.  Hot as bread. as in, you're as hot as bread.  lol!

Those Italians!  Bread is EVERYTHING!

Back to sewing, this is the dress I'm making with the Mickey Mouse t-shirt, in her size.

Maybe I can get more done on it tonight!

Have a wonderful weekend!