Mid-morning yesterday while I was up to my elbows in teaching math to three different children at three different levels at the same time, my husband got busy in the kitchen scrounging up something for all of us for lunch. He is very good at putting together whatever he can find and making a good lunch out of it. At some point, I vaguely noticed that he was in the kitchen making a batch of mozzarella cheese.

We make our mozzarella cheese more or less following Ricki Carroll’s instructions in her must have book Home Cheesemaking - Recipes for 75 Homemade Cheeses. The directions in her book are generally the same as the ones on her web site with the bonus on her web page of there being photos included. (I am only linking to the directions for “30 Minute Mozzarella without using a Microwave” because microwaves are bad, bad, bad!) We have made so much of this quick type of mozzarella over the last couple of years that we can do it almost automatically.

So my husband made up a batch of mozzarella cheese and added basil to it. Then he pulled out the leftover pasta sauce from the night before, sliced the bread in the bread basket, fired up the oven and made us some delicious “toast pizzas”, I guess you could call them.

The reason I mention all of this is that we were scrounging. There didn’t seem to be much to eat in the house and we can’t go shopping for a while yet. When we all sat down to eat, I looked at what was on the plate and laughed. What were we eating?

Organic sourdough bread that had risen twice for 12 and 4 hours respectively;

Flavorful homemade pasta sauce;

and fresh mozzarella made from unprocessed, grass-fed milk and flavored with sea salt and organic basil.

In this day and age, such tasty and nutrient dense food is hard to come by and expensive when you find it. But for us on the old homestead, this was what we came up with by scrounging! There surely are some benefits to living like this…

By the way, I recommend trying your hand at making this quick type of mozzarella. It is easy, satisfying and delicious and a great way to introduce yourself to cheesemaking. Go to Ricki’s web page to learn more or better yet, get yourself a copy of Home Cheesemaking.

Bon appetit from the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,

Leslie

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