Weekend Recap- Raw Chevre and Animals in the Applegate

wow, i guess it's been a little bit since i've posted on here...my days home have been so full of good times i've hardly sat down at the computer. so here i am writing at the office :)

last week, jordan and i ventured into cheesemaking, and made our own totally raw chevre! a whole half-gallon made two little pints, heehee! but, now we have tons of whey stored in the freezer to use for fermenting things! that should be fun to figure out!

we bought a goat-cheese-making kit that came with recipes, but all of them instructed us to "sanitize" the milk to by boiling it, then cooling it to make the cheese...jordan ended up finding a good, simple recipe online for "totally raw goat cheese"...i'll have to find the information at home and post it if anyone is interested.

we basically added the culture and rennet to milk and let it sit on the counter for at least 24 hours, then drained it through butter cloth (or multiple layers of cheesecloth) for another 24 hours at least. i think we let ours drain for more like 48 hours, and have really crumbly dry cheese, which makes it really easy to crumble it for salads :)

in one pint jar, we added lavender and rosemary, in the other went rosemary and chives, all from our front garden :) so anyway, this weekend, we finally got around to buying some greens to try our own lavender rosemary chevre out on a salad.

mmmm, so good with walnuts, olive oil, and balsamic :)

on saturday, we managed to squeeze in our first weekend escape-this was the first time i left the ashland area since we moved here! (not counting jordan's graduation and our trip to hawaii, which happened about 2 weeks after our move...and jordan had the priviledge of an overnight trip to portland to meet the chiropractic board)... but this was our first weekend outing in our new homebase! :)

we drove about an hour northwest of ashland to the beautiful little applegate valley, where the majority of the farms we see at the farmers' market come from.
destination #1: cowhorn winery-southern oregon's only biodynamic winery and farm, which goes way beyond the label of organic-the owners' do all they can to make the place a "closed ecosystem" by using everything they can from the location (i.e. using the rocks they pick to line a pond and make raised beds), and put as much back into it as they can as well (i.e. lots of composting). i didn't take any photos there, unfortunately, but it's pretty early in the season, so there really isn't much to see, mostly dirt, rocks, and bare grape vines :)

destination #2: sanctuary one- a little farm that houses rescued domestic and farm animals. elle has been absolutely LOVING animals, to the point of screeching when she sees a dog walking down the street! so, we found out about this farm and thought it would be a fun way for elle to meet all kinds of animals.

waiting in line for dinner! :)

we all had a fun time meeting cats, goats, horses, ducks, geese and even a pot-bellied pig! lots of fun photo ops there :)

in the "cat house" :)

The Miracle of Life

i made a very interesting and amazing observation this morning when i was planting some new seeds in my egg cartons, and i just have to share it! so, i label what i've planted with pieces of tape attached to toothpicks. in one carton i filled 2/3 of it with sage and tomatoes, so there was one section that was open for more seeds. being me, i was of course second guessing which side of my markers i had planted the seeds in (i had labeled both sides of the tape, so it really could've been either side...)

i had just watered the seeds, so the whole thing was wet. i started poking around in the section i was pretty sure was open, and of course didn't see any seeds, but i wanted to confirm that there were indeed tomato seeds in the next section over.

i poked my finger in, and the dirt was hot!! a little more poking, and sure enough, there was a tomato seed...not yet sprouted...but life was happening! the little seed seemed to be making its home warm all by itself! the section right next to it that i had been poking in was cold!!

i don't know about you, but i was amazed! just another example shown to me of how perfect the nature of things really are.
=D

Raw Goat's Milk Ice Cream

we ended up with some amazing ice cream the other night! i know goat's milk to a lot of people does not sound amazing, but our source is exceptional! we stopped at the grocery store earlier that evening to pick up a couple things (walked out $83 poorer, of course) and were sooo tempted as we walked by the ice cream case, as we had just run out the day before. we always mean to make our own, but most times we break down and just buy it. i think there is no perfect ice cream to buy, at least at the stores we shop at. one ice cream is organic, but adds fillers, another is wonderful and has no filler whatsoever, but the milk is conventional. the goat milk ice cream you can buy costs about $7 a pint! so, we gathered our will power and walked by without the goods, telling ourselves, we will make some ice cream with our goat milk!

and we did!! and it is AMAZING!

this is an improvised recipe, made delicious by two things in particular:
1) we added some goat cheese we had had in the fridge because we had no cream. goat cream is really really hard to come by, we learned from our supplier of raw goat's milk, "hunt family farm", mostly because goat milk doesn't separate like cow's milk.
2) it was inspired by the flavor, "rosemary pinenut praline" at "ici" in berkeley. the owner was a pastry chef at alice water's restaurant, "chez panisse", so her ice cream is out of this world, of course.

what we ended up with was "cheesy rosemary almond"... here it is, enjoy!

-3/4 c goat cheese (the chevre kind)
-2/3 c sweetener (maple syrup, sorghum syrup, turbinado sugar, etc... for my sake, please steer clear of agave...it really is no different than high fructose corn syrup, made from the starchy root of the plant (not the nectar) and chemically processed to death)
-2 fresh eggs

*blend these until frothy

-add raw goat's milk to make a total of 1 quart
-1 tsp vanilla
-1 tsp finely minced fresh rosemary
-1/4 c roasted, salted almonds

*gently pulse in the blender until it is mixed (it's important to be gentle with the raw milk, to keep its integrity)

chill for a bit, then put it in whatever ice cream maker you have, and you have some lovely tasting cool, creamy, sweet and salty raw ice cream!