Next on my quest to truly ‘kick it old school’ I am going to try my hand at home cheese making. I’m starting simple with Fromage Blanc, a cream cheesey soft cheese. Then maybe move on to some more complicated aged cheeses once I get this one down.
At some point we got lazy and buy everything pre-made to save time. What do most people do with that extra time? Work and stress out. What a waste.
When I was a kid my grandmothers both had big gardens and cooked a lot. In the fall they would spend days canning vegetables and making huge vats of tomato sauce to can and put on the shelves on their basements to use over the winter.
I miss that. I miss that tradition. It really bothers me that parents feel their day is so busy that they can’t even make a “peanut butter sandwich for their kid’s lunches”:http://www.smuckers.com/fg/otg/uncrustables/default.asp
I think the frozen peanut butter sandwiches was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. Before that I have to admit I was the queen of convenience, but over the past couple years I’ve gotten into inconvenient, time consuming things. Now I’m hooked.
The processes and techniques are what fascinate me more than anything. People have been making bread forever, same with curing olives and cheese too. There have been a few improvements as far as equipment and technology but basically it’s the same process. Especially if you’re doing it on a small scale. Most of the recipes I found for curing olives still were pretty vague with things like add enough salt to the water until you can float an egg in it. No specific measurements. Thats the kind of stuff that makes it fun.