Photo by cwbuecheler

You really only need three things to make a simple fresh cheese: milk, heat, and acid. There are some rules to follow, and some kitchen supplies that will make things easier, but in the end it comes down to those three things.

The Milk

It is very important that you do not try to make cheese with ultra-pasteurized milk. Other than that, any milk will do. You could also use the milk of goats or sheep if they are available to you; recently a New York City chef revealed that he’s been experimenting with cheese made from his wife’s breastmilk!

The Recipe

Pour a gallon of milk into a large pot, the kind you would typically use to make a big batch of pasta. Heat this pot of milk over a burner until it reaches the simmering point. Other recipes will specify various temperatures, but using a thermometer isn’t important – our ancestors made cheese for thousands of years without fancy electronic gadgets, and so can you.

When the milk reaches a simmer, it’s time to add your acid. The two most popular acids for home cheesemakers are lemon juice and white vinegar. As long as you use these in the correct ratio to the amount of milk simmering on your stove, you really can’t go wrong.

Photo by juya

Use a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice for every quart of milk; so to your simmering gallon of milk, add four tablespoons of your chosen acid. Stir just enough to blend it in, then turn off the heat. Soon the milk will begin to curdle: you’ll see solid chunks of curd floating in the remaining yellowish liquid, called whey. Leave the curds and whey to cool until you can handle the pot and its contents easily without burning yourself.

In the meantime, get out a colander, a slotted spoon, and some kind of cloth or paper towels. You can buy cheesecloth in supermarkets, but a tea towel, a bandanna, or a few layers of paper towels placed carefully inside the colander will work equally well. When the curds and whey are cool enough, use the slotted spoon to remove the biggest curds. Then pour the remaining whey and small curds through your cloth-lined colander. What remains in the colander is cheese!

If you’re hungry, you can stop here. The resulting soft cheese tastes wonderful eaten plain with a sprinkle of sea salt and olive oil, or a drizzle of honey if you have a sweet tooth.

You can also wrap the cheese in a cloth (paper towels probably won’t work) and hang it over the sink to drain out more whey. After 15 minutes or so, the cheese will have the consistency of a good ricotta which you can use to make lasagna, filled pasta, or blintzes.

Why Make Your Own Cheese

Homemade ricotta is far superior to its supermarket cousin, because the latter is pumped full of preservatives and stabilizers to extend the shelf life and make it easier to transport. Sitting on a shelf in the dairy aisle, ricotta becomes bland and gritty. This is the best reason to make your own cheese at home — fresh cheeses are much better when they’re actually fresh and not artificially preserved for months in a plastic tub.

Paneer Chilly – photo by dainee

Continuing to drain the cheese presents endless possibilities. Left to hang for a few hours, the cheese will be a little firmer, with a spreadable consistency like chevre. This is great spread on a slice of toast or added to a sandwich. If you leave the cheese to hang overnight, you’ll be left with paneer or queso blanco, which is perfect in a curry or used as a filling for enchiladas. You can even brine it for a few days in the refrigerator to make feta.

Community Connection

If you’d like to share a Green Recipe, email neha[at]matadornetwork[dot]com with your piece.

Pete and Andrea; Photo via Wedding Cans

Lots of Matadorians care about the environment. And lots of us have had budget weddings.

But I think we’re all going to be bested by Pete and Andrea.

The Spokane, Washington couple are planning to pay for their wedding by recycling 400,000 aluminum cans.

On their website, Wedding Cans, Pete and Andrea explain the motives behind this unusual way of funding nuptials:

[E]ven simple weddings cost more than a few dollars. We don’t really have much extra cash sitting around, since we’re just starting out. Add that to the fact that environmental responsibility plays a big part in our lives, and we hatched the crazy plan. Pay for the wedding – with recycling. Aluminum recycling is one of the most sustainable and useful forms of recycling. We’re shooting for 400,000 aluminum cans – approximately 5 tons of empty cans. We would like to get married on July 31 – which gives us 7 months to hit the goal.

For neighbors in Spokane, Pete and Andrea teamed up with a local recycler so folks can drop off cans and earmark their earnings for the wedding. For folks elsewhere, Pete and Andrea suggest taking your cans to a local recycling center and kicking a portion of your proceeds to their project after you treat yourself to a coffee or a microbrew.

Read all about the project on their website after you check out this video:

Community Connection:

Maybe you don’t want to collect cans, but if you do want to plan a budget wedding, MatadorTrips’ co-editor, Carlo Alcos, offers plenty of practical advice in A Budget Traveler’s Guide to Wedding Planning.

Photo: Ed Yourdon

I was really at wit’s end last week, when not just one but both of my laptops died the night before a trip. “I’m going to walk over to Staples to check out laptop prices,” I told my husband, who reminded me that we weren’t exactly in the market for making a big purchase.

He fancies himself something of a handy man, so he logged on to YouTube and entered the search phrase: “laptop battery hack.” He found this video, then bought replacement Lithium batteries and a soldering kit for about $20.00. Thirty minutes later, voila: a laptop battery almost as good as new… and for a price that was a lot more comfortable than the cost of a new laptop.

Community Connection:

There’s another reason why the battery hack trick is good: it keeps dead batteries out of landfills. To get some perspective on where your e-waste goes, check out the photo essay, “Intolerable Beauty: Chris Jordan Photographs American Mass Consumption.”

Photo: jsgphoto

And once the bottle is open, you know what to do.

Once you’re finished, you can recycle the bottle or get creative. Here are 10 ways to reuse wine bottles:

1. Turn it into a candle holder.
Every cheesy Italian restaurant you’ve ever visited has the red and white checked oilcloth, topped with a Chianti bottle that’s living its second life as a candle holder. This DIY project requires zero skills: buy a taper candle, shove it in the bottle. There, that was easy.

2. Use it as a flower vase.
This one falls into the super-easy category, too. Scrape off the label (soak in warm, soapy water first) and voila, you have a ready made vase, perfect for a single long-stemmed flower, like a Gerber daisy.

3. Make a dish soap dispenser.
All you need to do for this project is buy a pour spout and pop it into the bottle’s mouth. You can buy a pour stop at any kitchen supply store.

4. Store olive oil, vinegar, simple syrup, or salad dressing.
If you buy a couple of those pour spouts, you can reuse your wine bottles for all sorts of kitchen purposes.

5. Create a garden path.
If you’ve got lots of old wine bottles, you can turn them upside down and “plant” them in the dirt to turn them into a pretty garden path.

Photo: Francisco Collazo

6. Make some windchimes.
Wine bottles can be melted and flattened into wind chimes. The Flat Bottle Company can take your bottles and flatten them, giving the bottles new life.

7. Let it water plants.
Fill the bottle, tip it upside down, and stick it into your potted plants at an angle. The slow drop will keep your plants hydrated.

8. Channel your creative side.
Turn a bunch of bottles into a folk art piece, like this curious bottle tree, found in a garden in Mississippi.

9. Make a lamp.
Using the wine bottle as a base, buy a lamp kit and turn the bottle into a DIY light source.

10. And don’t throw out the corks!
You can make bulletin boards and photo holders out of the corks.

Community Connection:

Reduce, reuse, recycle. What about upcycling? Learn all about it here.