Ginger

I'm linking this post to something I just read here:

http://www.garden-nz.co.nz/plants-and-products/plant-of-the-week/show-us-your-ginger.html

While I think the 'Hug a Ginga Day' sounds daft (I had to look up what it meant, see here if you're in the dark like me)......the info about actual Ginger (the plant that is) is quite interesting.

At the moment I've got a tropical arrangement on my kitchen table, which includes some flowering galangal, that's it there with the yellow/white flowers and fabulous green foliage. I've put a bird of paradise flower in there too, another of my favourite tropical plants.

But I truly hope and trust that this is in fact galangal, as it is quite rampant and comes up even if you think you've dug it all out as is the case with me! It is beautiful though, the flowers are divinely scented. The rhizomes are pink, see here.

Can anyone verify that this is actually real galangal? I read somewhere that sometimes another type of ginger is sold and either intentionally or mistakenly called galangal...

Mozzarella cheese

Yesterday I mentioned I was going to make mozzarella cheese. Well this is how it turned out. Now I'm a total novice at cheese-making. I've made ricotta cheese twice before and that's all. I've always fancied having a go at mozzarella, especially as I enjoy making homemade pizzas fairly frequently.

I used my Mad Millie Italian Beginners Cheese Kit again, which provides the steriliser solution to clean all my utensils and pan prior to starting. It includes the citric acid, calcium chloride, and the rennet which I added to the raw milk at certain stages of heating the milk/curds.

Cutting the curd

I'm not exactly sure why my mozzarella came out with the texture it did. If you look closely at the top picture you can see it looks a little grainy in places instead of smooth and shiny all over. Whether I didn't stir it enough during the heating process, or heated it too quickly, I'm not sure. Or maybe it was some other factor.

Any tips from more experienced cheese makers?

In any case, the cheese was just fine on the pizzas. And I still have this much again left over. While it was reasonably time consuming, I would definitely make it again. And the chooks love the whey!

It's a beautiful day

And the bees are enjoying the flowers in the garden. Here's a bumble on my Nerine flowers:

And they're buzzing all around the borage, which is growing everywhere in the vege garden:

 

I'm both indoors and out today, gardening while it's so glorious, and also trying my hand at making mozzarella as I have raw milk to use. Will let you know how it (the cheese that is..) turns out, as it is my first attempt!