Thank you for the cheesy welcome! Geez, I suck...
We're in Valdez, home of the famous earthquake and infamous oil spill. Such a RELIEF getting out of the hell called Southern California and going far north!
The 'hybrid' cheese is looking great - nice covering of snow-white mold, and nice feel when you squeeze it. I'm gonna let it go for about a month and see what happens. Since just about any cheese can be sprayed with molds, why not? Our milk source has been trading us 'cheese milk' for chocolates (we have a small specialty chocolate company) so I get to play with 3 to 5 extra gallons on occasion, in addition to the w2eekly 2 gallons we get for drinking etc. I'm real curious about how it will turn out, since it spent time in the press, unlike the cams and coulommiers I recently made which shrink naturally.
I did another cheddar a couple days ago. this time I tried adding 1 gallon of re-hydrated dried milk to 2 gallons fresh so I could make a bigger cheese. The texture looks good, doing some drying right now before the wax. I love doing new things! One of these days I need to do a recipe over that I like, so far I keep making new things.
Our favorites so far have been:
the feta recipe on leeners.com
Steve Shapson's Camembert recipe (done this about 5 times now)
Ricki Carroll's queso fresco (normal and now molded)
Don't remember whose manchego recipe I've got, but it kicks ass!
you people have any experience using ash? I just bought some and want to have some fun with that next. Make some 'Valdez Fog' blue....