We’ve had quite a bit more rain the past few days than we’d been having recently. I had thought we might be heading into drier times, but it looks like we’re not quite there. Today has been drizzly most of the day.
I’m happy to announce that the yogurt I made yesterday, the stuff I had pasteurized, turned out perfectly. The flavor was greatly improved, not nearly as acidic as the earlier batches. I’m rather happy about that. I think I should be able to repeat the process pretty easily. Once I hit upon a cheese recipe that works this well, I’ll be set.
Steph is an excellent cook. Her passion lies in pastries and such. She has made some incredible things in the past dozen years I’ve been eating her food. However, this week has not been her week. She got into a let’s-try-new-recipes! spree that has ended in a series of flops. She is not used to such things, at least not in series. (If you want to send her a hug, she likely wouldn’t turn you down.)
Despite her tribulations (and ours… ahem…), she was not to be daunted. Today she set out to make cream cheese. She has tried this before, but it hasn’t been pretty. I slipped into the kitchen this morning to check up on her. This time it’s going to work! She told me she had looked up four different recipes. And they were all different! But she’s going to do it! She was grinning as she told me, maybe grinning a bit too much, perhaps grinning somewhat maniacally.
A while later I ambled back through. For no reason, really. I found her staring mournfully into a pot of slop that was not turning into cream cheese. “It’s not doing what the recipe said,” was her wooden reply to my queries.
[Dear recipe writers, you can thank your lucky stars that Steph cannot get hold of you when your recipe fails to deliver. Please take care.]
I trouble-shot (Is trouble-shot a word?) the recipe with her and thought I saw a hole in how they had directed the culturing to be done. I suggested trying something else–once the milk was no longer boiling. Seriously, recipe?
And happy day! It seems to have worked. The slop turned to cheese. The next step is to drain off the whey. Following that, she has to press it some to get the traditional thickness. I did a preliminary taste test, and I think this batch will actually turn out. I’m hoping so; Steph needs a victory to close out her week with.
I spent my morning studying for a sermon tomorrow; it was a difficult one to compose. I have been preaching from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5-7 the past few months. This is the concluding message of that series, and it has trodden heavily upon the toes of Yours Truly.
Lord willing, we will have a service at our house tomorrow with Lamar’s joining us. Lamar was also thinking to invite Perci and Lucrecia, our neighbors. They are believers, but they normally attend Quechua services in Izcuchaca. With the quarantine, we are all stuck here on the farm.
Speaking of Perci and Lucrecia, they are my rams in the bushes. Lamar had not found a suitable helper to care for his cattle upon his departure to the States. This would leave me the default caretaker. That looked doable for the first while, but if several goats come into milk soon, I wasn’t sure how I’d get everything done. Lamar checked with Perci’s yesterday, and they were more than happy to have the job. God is good.
Lamar is still waiting for a call to the airport. He said it feels a bit like waiting for the coming of the Lord: It could be at any moment, and they must be packed and ready to leave. There are three flights per day scheduled to leave Peru over the next three days. Please pray with Lamar that he, Juanita, and Joel are on one of those flights.
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Juan David 