January

My friends who work in restaurants tell me that January is the quietest month. And even when people go out to eat, they're eating light, and drinking light, and trying to undo all the excesses of December.

We had a busy December at Prairie Bounty, too, and true to form, January has been quiet. That's just fine with me.

We have done a bit of experimenting, though, and we made our own cheese for the first time last week. It was fun. It was easy. It uses a lot of milk. I was really surprised by the amount of milk it took to make just a bit of fresh mozzarella. It made me marvel once again at the ingenuity of people who first came up with a glorious food like cheese.

I can just imagine someone thinking... Hmmm. All this milk. No refrigerator. What am I to do? And somehow they figured out that with just a bit of rennet you could control the curdle and make it into something really tasty that had more staying power than fresh milk.

Even though our milk came out of a carton and not from our own cow (or sheep or goat) I felt kind of connected to the people who made cheese out of necessity, not because it seemed like a fun thing to do, and I thought it would be fun to do it some more.