Hard: Times, Cheese and Tack

Wow, what an incredible week!

Hard times a-comin'? 

Food prices have been steadily going up as is.  Now we're having the floods along the Mississippi, and incredibly, the Army Corps of Engineers actually blew up levees/dams to protect the city streets in one state.  The problem is, it required the flooding of farm land in another state.

Missouri officials said the incoming water would crush the region’s economy and environment by possibly covering the land under sand and silt and rendering it useless.

Oh.

Hey, no biggee.  It certainly makes more sense to purposefully flood food producing land in lieu of streets that could be cleaned up with a Shop Vac.
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Sleep well, Pennsylvania.  The FDA is on the job.

A yearlong sting operation, including aliases, a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and surreptitious purchases from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, culminated in the federal government announcing this week that it has gone to court to stop Rainbow Acres Farm from selling its contraband to willing customers in the Washington area.

The product in question: unpasteurized milk.

Whew!  Dodged a bullet there!  Imagine the death and destruction that could have ensued if these obviously ignorant people had been allowed to make the decision about the food they choose to consume.

Double-whew!  Those radical Amish now know who's boss, huh?  Damned food terrorists.  Glad we got those lactose-based WMD's off the street...
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Gold and silver took quite the shot to the chin this week, no?

Interesting set of circumstances that amazingly [sarcasm alert] came together - all at the same time - which caused this.

More on this in an upcoming post.
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Hard cheese


After my first attempt at making cheese from powdered milk, I made another batch with a bit more salt and some liquid smoke.  I also rigged up a cheese press of sorts -

That, my friends, is my handy-dandy Alton Brown measuring tube thingy.  I packed the bottom with cheese curd, balanced a couple of cans on top for weight, and placed it on a plate with a paper towel to sop up the squeezed out whey.

Here's the little puck that emerged after 5 hours or so -

As you can see, it compacted quite nicely -

I followed the "smokey" recipe I posted earlier ("Gettin' Cheesy").  Quite nice.  Very good on crackers with a cold beer.  I might mess with the recipe and produce a Parmesan cheese version.
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Hardtack

I ate one of the hardtack bricks I made a couple of weeks ago ("Hardtack").

Holy crap.

I made up a bowl of Japanese-style noodles.  I added extra water and nuked the noodles for 5 minutes.  When it was done, I threw in one of the bricks and let it sit for 5 minutes.  I wanted the hardtack to absorb the boiled water and spices mix, maybe breakdown, and be kind of line a handful of crackers smooshed up in the bowl.

LOL!

After 5 minutes, the brick had barely absorbed any liquid.  It had loosened up the very exterior, but had virtually no penetration into the brick.

So, I let it sit another 10 minutes. 

The brick actually spoke to me, and taunted me with, "Is that all you got, girlfriend?"

I was eventually able to consume the brick, noodles and broth after about a half hour.  Clearly, these things need to be baked up much more thinly - no more than 1/4 inch thick.

More tests and humiliation to come...

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