{"id":1509,"date":"2011-08-01T15:23:36","date_gmt":"2011-08-01T19:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/?p=1509"},"modified":"2011-08-01T15:23:36","modified_gmt":"2011-08-01T19:23:36","slug":"we-harvested-our-first-cherry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2011\/08\/01\/we-harvested-our-first-cherry\/","title":{"rendered":"We harvested our first cherry!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, so there are only six cherries on the Meteor cherry tree! But they&#8217;re ripening and it&#8217;s our first harvest from this young tree, so we&#8217;re tickled. Will ate half and I ate half. Tart, but so very good! We can&#8217;t wait till next year and the years after that. The tree looks so strong and happy.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/Cherry.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1510\" title=\"Cherry\" src=\"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/Cherry.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"446\" height=\"360\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve been harvesting peppers from our wonderful hoop house. Just take a look at this Giant Marconi I picked to use in an Italian baked chicken dish last night. Everything was from the homestead: chicken, onions, peppers, tomato sauce, and even the herbs (basil, garlic, and oregano). And I topped it off with homemade mozzarella cheese. Wow that was good!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/Marconi-pepper.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1511\" title=\"Marconi-pepper\" src=\"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/Marconi-pepper.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"446\" height=\"360\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been making cheeses like crazy with the help of our wonderful cow, Lace. Even after feeding two calves, I still get at least a gallon and a half a day of the best-tasting milk in the world. So every day or two, I&#8217;m making something different from it. But I have to say I make a lot of cottage cheese. It tastes so great I&#8217;m addicted! And it&#8217;s so easy to make too. I just warm the milk to 80 degrees and stir in 1 cup of cultured buttermilk. Then I add 1\/4 tsp. liquid rennet to 1\/4 cup of cool water and stir that in. It then rests for about 5 hours to set the curd. I cut the curds into 1\/2 inch pieces with a long knife, then let it rest for another 30 minutes. I slowly bring the temperature up to 110 degrees, using a two gallon stainless steel kettle inside of a three gallon kettle with some water in it, like a double boiler. I stir often so the curds don&#8217;t mat together. They are held at 110 degrees for about 30 minutes or until the curds are cooked and firm inside the curds. I line a colander with a clean old pillowcase and slowly pour the curds and whey into the colander, set over a large pail. When they are drained, I dip the curds into warm water to rinse, then drain and dip into cold water to rinse again. Then I set them to drain for half an hour. I add salt to taste and stir in some cream until it is of the consistency we like.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/Cottage-cheese.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1512\" title=\"Cottage-cheese\" src=\"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/Cottage-cheese.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"446\" height=\"360\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This cottage cheese keeps in the fridge, in a covered container, for about a week. But we never let it sit that long; it tastes so good we gobble it up pretty darned fast! How good life on the homestead is! &#8212; Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, so there are only six cherries on the Meteor cherry tree! But they&#8217;re ripening and it&#8217;s our first harvest from this young tree, so we&#8217;re tickled. Will ate half and I ate half. Tart, but so very good! We can&#8217;t wait till next year and the years after that. The tree looks so strong [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}