"homemade cheese" news and stories

• You can't get more local than making your own cheese. The Press Herald gets you started with recipes for Whole Milk Ricotta, Ricotta Salata, Baked Ricotta and Flavored Yogurt.
• Want tasty desserts that spare your waistline? Author Jeanne Jones cuts the calories in a Tres Leches Cake and a Scrumptious Coffee Cake.
• What does a $70 wine glass get you? The Press Herald attends a Riedel demonstration that shows just how much a good glass can affect a wine's flavors.
• Forget about bargain-hunting. Now you can scour the Internet and get freebie samples of everything from tea to cereals sent right to your doorstep.
• The artisan wines of California: A peek at tasty, hard-to-find wines that probably haven't been on your radar.

• Five Oregon cheeses that truly stand up above the crowd.
• An Oregonian staffer tries her hand at making cheese. First comes a mozzarella class where she has mixed results, but an attempt at making chevre at home boosts her confidence and readies her for more cheesemaking accomplishments.
  
• Resources for the home cheesemaker. Once you've made the cheese, check out these recipes for ways to use it.
  
• The Market Basket's got tools of the barbecuing trade (perfect since the summer grilling season kicked off this weekend).
  
• Despite legal issues and a few health scares, people still want raw milk (and small dairies want to give it to them.
  
• Pork chops make for a quick, easy and delicious dinner. Pair them with some quickly cooked stone fruit (coming into season now) and you'll have yourself a tasty meal.
  
• Wine writer Alice Feiring is trying to stop the homogenization of wines, advocating instead a natural approach.

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It seems that everyone who read Barbara Kingsolver's memoir Animal, Vegetable, Miracle this summer has been bitten by the cheesemaking bug. I have to admit that I had an itch in that direction when I finished her book (I've been intrigued by making cheese at home since reading the Little House on the Prairie books when I was a kid). However, I've only ever pondered the possibility, over at A Chicken in Every Granny Cart, they didn't just think about it, they took action and whipped up not one type of cheese but two. And they have plans for more. I am inspired.

I don't know about you, but me? I am duly impressed. Sarahparah exclaims, "OMG YOU GUYS! I made CHEESE!" I'll forgive her the capitalizations because it looks marvelous. She reports that it is "sharp" and "crumbly" and "definitely cheese." She has a whole set that describes her process - it took her about a month from creating curds to testing her pretty white cheddar.

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