SPoD - Mozzarella & Movie

Sam invited me and the girls to her place to learn how to make mozzarella. When we were over her house for interactive pizzas, she had some of her own mozzarella cheese as a topping. She also had taken Thursday and Friday off (which gave me the idea, as well as her "you're taken them off; I made the decision for you" sentiment), so her offer was a 'hey, if you're not doing anything, come over and we'll make mozzarella'. I LOVE doing stuff like that because, how many people do you know/hear that just make mozzarella cheese on their day off?

I love how she has everything prepared - even her chalkboard is pretty and informative. This is how she is to work with: pretty and informative (her work but she is also pretty and informative :)).

She had a big pot full of milk and citric acid. We all tasted it, which tasted like lemonade powder mix without the sugar. The batch looked like we'd have a ton of cheese. I was excited.

After the rennet is added, the mixture starts to 'gel'. It's pretty amazing how quickly this process happens...maybe about 15 minutes? We kept an eye on it so give five minutes or so and we had something that looked like curdled cheese.

After the cheese is pretty solidified-like-tofu, then it's strained. Here Sam has strained it into disposable cheesecloth over a strainer. Who knew there was disposable cheesecloth? OK. Maybe _you_ did but I didn't.

After it was strained, we all tasted the curdled cheese. It tasted like ricotta. Yummmy. Apparently, the whey, or the watery stuff that the curdled cheese left behind, can be used to make ricotta. Sam said once she gets the mozzarella making down to perfection, she'll go on to trying ricotta. Today, we threw the whey out.

She used the cheesecloth to squeeze more of the whey out of the cheese then put it all in a glass bowl and popped it into the microwave for about 30-45 seconds.




After that, she took it out and had the girls hold it from the top to show how stretchy it becomes. Now it's looking like mozzarella.

After stretching it, there's more kneading

and then, Voila!

If it will last, I hope we can use this for our own interactive pizza night.

Later with Tim, we headed to the Rialto to watch Moonrise Kingdom. This would be MiMi's first trip to the Rialto. Maybe we'll wait awhile until we bring her again as she fell asleep. That's too bad because the movie was so beautifully sweet. She made it to the end but I'm not sure if she was able to understand the entire thing. It broke my rule by having too many big name actors: Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Harvey Keitel, Tilda Swinton and Edward Norton...but the stars of the show were two young actors who just mesmerized us all. I teared up a couple of times and almost lost it at the end, just because it ended so beautifully.

After that, we ended our evening out at Yopop, which is my favorite frozen yogurt place. This one is different than all the rest because it has an asian flair to it. It has my favorite flavor, Taro, better known to me and my filipino peers as Ube. And they also have fresh fruit toppings not found at other yogurt places like kiwi. There are also these little round balls that are filled with fruit juices. I don't know what kind but I love them.