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3.18.2013

cream cheese anyone???

well hello there fellow farmers/homesteaders!  i hope you all had a rockin' weekend.  we had some great weather here and believe me when i tell you, we took full advantage of it, but that is for another post. 
 
one thing i did do this weekend that brought me to giggles was...make my very own homemade cream cheese, from yogurt.
 
please believe me when i tell you that homemade cream cheese is ridiculously easy to make.  all you need is...
 
some yogurt
a cheese cloth, or in this case a poor man's cheese cloth
a bowl to catch the whey...and that is it!
 
nice right?  anyhow this is how i did it.  i took some of my cultured yogurt and poured it into this silver strainer.  let me back up.  i lined the inside of the strainer with coffee filters, since i didn't have a cheese cloth or a tea towel, and then i poured the yogurt in...
 
 
then i placed the strainer in the blue bowl (pictured below). there was a 1-2 inch gap from the bottom of the strainer to the bowl.  in this gap is where my whey dripped from (sorry no pic).  it is very important that the whey be allowed to drip from the yogurt as it sits.
 
(my poor man/no cheese cloth yogurt set-up)
 
i covered the strainer with a clean dish towel and left it on the counter until i went to bed.  i then moved it into the fridge, and left it over night.  in the morning i woke up to cream cheese! 
 
i carefully scrapped it off the coffee filters and put it in a glass jar.  i then took the whey which was sitting in the blue bowl and put that in a glass jar.  not to sure what i will use my whey for, but you can find all kinds of good uses for it here.
 
 
 
so needless to say, this is one less thing i will be buying at the grocery store and one more thing i will be making myself.  learning things like this makes me super happy because it is one step closer to self-sufficiency and most importantly i know exactly what is in it.
 
now if i can just find a good gluten-free bagel recipe then i will be set!
 
i am linking this post to The Homestead Barn Hop,  The Clever Chicks Blog Hop and Raising Homakers Link-up  . hop on over and check out all the cool links.
 
peace and love to you all!
 
 

4 comments:

Trish said...

What time of day did you begin this? Just wondering how long it sat on the counter before you put it in the fridge and went to bed! Thanks.

Unknown said...

trish
great question. i started at about 5ish in the evening. i am not a patient person at heart so when an idea comes to me, i act on it then and there. silly, i know but so true.
i put it together at 5, let it sit on the counter for a few hours, covered, before i went to bed and then popped it into the fridge.
when i woke in the morning i pulled it out.
very simple and very easy.
thanks for the visit!

Trish said...

Heehee I'm the same way! (drives my hubby crazy) I just wasn't clear if this was an all-day thing or a couple-of-hours thing. Thanks again!

Unknown said...

seems as though we have a lot in common trish. :)
thanks for stopping by!