Quilt and Cheese

Quilts and Cheese!  A strange combination, but it is what it is.

Inspired by Jenny Doan's Half-square triangle quilt.

 Ignore the wrinklies, please.  This is the flimsy on top of my bed, and it is not smoothed out.  Any real wonkiness will be quilted and crinkled out.  Yay, washing and drying quilts and getting quilty crinklies!

I liked doing this very much, but had trouble with my seams not nesting in certain spots.  Some of them were going in the same direction.  I have to work on my pressing. 

That's the quilt part of this post.  Here is the cheese part.

Home made ricotta cheese.  A soft, spreadable, creamy white cheese.  (Ignore the parts that look yellow.  It's my photography.  The real cheese is creamy white color).

I've been making paneer, a simple Indian cheese for decades.  Mindlessly easy to make.  Milk with lemon juice as a coagulant.  The other day I found  One-Hour Cheese: Ricotta, Mozzarella, Chèvre, Paneer--Even Burrata. Fresh and Simple Cheeses You Can Make in an Hour or Less! at the library and checked it out.  Holey Moley!  What a book.  Incredible photographs describing every step of making simple cheeses at home.  Not the kind that need to ripen, just the stuff you make and eat within an hour.  

So yesterday I tried a ricotta.  It looks crumbly, but isn't, even after being refrigerated for 18 hours.  It is creamy, spreads well, and is so delicious, I don't have the words to describe it.  The best soft cheese going.

I used lemon juice as my coagulant, but the process is different from making paneer, and I think that changes how the cheese comes out.

In paneer, you bring your milk to a boil.  Shut off the heat, and add in lemon juice.  You can substitute vinegar or lime juice, or even yogurt (which gives a lot of milk solids).  Strain it and let the whey drain off.  And there you have it:  a lovely crumbly cheese which you can then press to make nice firm shapes.

In the ricotta, you add the lemon juice to the milk before cooking it, and then you have a slow cook until it hits 190 degrees.  The curds form much slower than in paneer.  Drain, etc, etc.  It's an awesome cheese.  

I used 2 % milk.  Didn't want all the butterfat of whole milk, but wanted a certain creaminess that skim milk doesn't give.  A total of 6 cups of milk produced about 2 oz of cheese.  

I can see me experimenting with this cheese.  How about putting in a cheesecloth bag of rosemary, simmering it along in the cooking process, then removing it, this giving the cheese that gorgeous rosemary flavor.  Mmmm.  Yummy.

So that's it:  a quilt and a cheese.  Not half bad.

Design Floor Monday

Here is my HST quilt so far.  I'm loving doing this.  Not that my HST skills have gotten better, but it is still a lot of fun.

I'm now at the I'm getting bored phase and am starting to think of the next quilt.  Might be an I Spy quilt for Benjamin.  Or not.

Quilt Monday

Half Square Triangles!  I am determined to master them, and this quilt has only HSTs, so it's now or never.  I'm using a video from the Missouri Star Quilt Company as my guide, and I understand it.  That doesn't mean that I can cut a straight line or sew one either, but the bias from the squares helps me match my points.   Real Quilters will howl with laughter or shake their fingers at me, but hey, I'm enjoying this, so if I have to fudge, I don't care.

My pressing also leaves something to be desired, but here's what I've learned from the few quilts I've finished:  When you wash and dry them, all that lovely quilty crinkly stuff happens and then my wonky cutting, sewing and pressing all work out.

Why is knitting so easy for me and quilting is not?  I tried hand piecing for a little bit, and couldn't get that to line up either.  Oh piffle, I'll just do my thing and enjoy it.  I am getting pretty good at nesting my seams and such.

If only I were not such a perfectionist.  I may be the only quilter who like bias.  It helps me match points.  I guess I'm just biased in its favor.  Groan.

Go away, Quilt Police, I'm never going to be great at this.  But it's fun, and I like it, and I'm the only quilter (such as I am) in the family, so no one has anyone to compare me to. 

Off to clean.  Passover starts next Monday, and I have a ton of cleaning to do.  Yesterday we tackled the living room.  Benjamin, who is now 15 months, is coming.  We have to baby proof.  Today I start the sewing room.  I hate cleaning.  Elder DD told me that we need a focal point for our decorating.  Focal point?  In her dreams.  We just have too much stuff.  So we're tossing like crazy.  I really hate doing this, but with a toddler who will assuredly get into trouble, I have to do this.  It's probably good for us.  Sigh.