Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

This is interesting! But I am confused about your temperatures. What is your 
cheese temperature?
You also say you add to the milk and then cook until separation??? Normal 
cheese is a fermented milk product. We warm raw milk to blood heat and then 
add rennet. A normal enzyme works at this temperature. Our cheese never gets 
warmer than that. If you cook...boil?? you loose all enzymes and cheese 
bacteria.

Of course I can see that boiling would do the trick. You can make "green 
vegetable cheese" by dripping vegetable juice in boiling water and then 
scooping out the solidified  vegetable juice until you have enough to press 
and make a cheese shaped green food.

However, cooked meat or milk or any other cooked high protein food becomes 
easily infected with pathogenic micro organisms and is definitely unsafe to 
keep for months. Recipe for killing yourself. I think any temperature over 
65 C makes it unsafe because over this temperature your good bacteria will 
all be dead while some pathogens will trive.

Soft cheese can be made with lemon alone or any source of acidity, just 
letting the milk stand and let lactic acid bacteria that are always around 
if you milk animals will separate milk into solids and whey but this is not 
curdling. In curdling the milk proteins are cross linked through enzyme 
action almost as in a plastic making process. In soft cheese the proteins 
curl up into little balls that become hydrophobic. You can spread soft 
cheese on a slice of bread with a knife unless it is dried rock hard.
Hard cheese made with rennet can not be spread on bread ever even after only 
a few minutes of rennet action.

And also, one of the most basic facts in ecology is that it roughly takes a 
hundred liters of milk to make ten kilos of meat and if the young animal is 
very active physically probably more. If you look at the human food value 
you are better off with the milk. Also to get an animal into peak meat 
condition after birth takes about three years while mothers milk will be 
flowing from the start. Can you in a survival situation wait months or years 
to optimise your meat production while doing all the while without milk?
We had 12 billy goat kids born here this year. Who in his right mind wants 
12 mature meat billies who will all begin to stink to high heaven come 
autumn? You can avoid that smell with castration but that is to my mind more 
cruel than humane killing.

john

> I've learned that, to make a harder cheese, which keeps longer, the
> trick is to hang it longer or use a cheese press. You can use enzymes
> of course but killing such a young animal is very wasteful, in my
> opinion. Especially in a survival situation. A grown or larger animal
> would produce so much more meat and goods than a very young/small one.
>
> As for rennet, stinging nettle works wonderfully. I've been using it
> successfully for over a year. here's how I do it ....
>
> You can use the nettle fresh or dried, tied in cheese cloth or muslin.
> Add to the milk when you reach cheese temp and cook until separation.
> The amount I tried was varied but roughly a tight handful fresh,
> coarsely chopped or 3/4 handful dry.
>
> Or, my preference, make a strong nettle infusion. Around 16 cups of
> fresh nettles in a pot, cover with water and bring to boil, reduce heat
> and simmer just under boiling for 30 minutes or so. Allow to cool then
> store in a glass jar in the fridge. For cheese I use about 1 cup nettle
> rennet for 1 gal milk.
>
> To make cheese, you can use anything that will coagulate the milk and
> you can combine things for flavor. Lemon juice and nettle makes a very
> good cheese. There's an old pioneer recipe for just sitting a covered
> gallon of milk in the shade for a day or two, to curd, then salting and
> hanging the curd to harden.
>
> Juli
> WildMoonCottage.com
> SimplySelfSufficient.org
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: livingontheland-request
> <livingontheland-request@lists.ibiblio.org>
> To: livingontheland <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Wed, Jun 20, 2012 11:03 am
> Subject: Livingontheland Digest, Vol 352, Issue 3
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 23:04:02 +0100
> From: "John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>
> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] living on the land
> To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing"
> <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <C385A12534DA43D8B911749F6EAD832B@Targadc5fefe82d>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> To make a "hard" cheese that will keep for many months if not more than
> a year you need "leb ferment". In other words the enzymes a suckling
> animal produces in it's stomach to process milk it has just drank.
> (these days a lot of the rennet is "suitable for vegetarians" iow gmo
> rennet made by E.coli microbes that had the gene implanted) In fact
> after drinking milk a "cheese" is formed in the stomach. I suspect that
> our ancestors got the idea of cheese making by seeing this after they
> had killed a calf, lamb or goat kid.
>
> I don't at all like killing young animals a day or two old but in a
> survival situation that is what one may have to do. Today it is
> possible to buy concentrates and milk replacer to rear these young ones
> while milking the mother but when the going gets though that is not
> possible. Leave all the young alive and suckling and you will not have
> a drop of milk after the first few weeks after birth. Apart from the
> fact that most cows will refuse to give the human milker a drop when
> they know they have a calf waiting. Some will defend their milk and be
> very dangerous. And even if they allow you to milk them then there will
> never be enough left to rear the offspring into a decent adult.
>
> So practically you give your newborn baby calf, kid or lamb a very good
> last meal and then kill it. (humanely of course)  Take out the leb
> stomach fast as you can and tie off at front and back with a string.
> Put this stomach in plenty dry salt and store in a container in a cool
> place. About one teaspoon of the cheesy contents will curdle 20 liters
> of fresh milk. Take out tea spoon of cheese in a cup of luke warm water
> and work with spoon  to homogenize and get rid of lumps then add to 20
> liters of milk. The stomach rennet keeps for well over a year and a
> calf's stomach should be enough for at least 40 hard pressed cheeses. A
> goat kid for about 25. Goat kid rennet will give a sharp - peppery
> taste to the mature cheese. Calf is more neutral tasting. Lamb in
> between.
>
> After pressing these cheeses should mature for a minimum of 4 weeks
> during which they are regularly turned and washed with salt water. But
> they get better with aging for a year or longer. Fresh curds taste of
> nothing much and have a rubbery consistency.
>
> j
>  So, tell us what to do no matter how disgusting.
>
>  Sent from my iPhone
>
>
>
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