Melodi's First Day

I dropped Melodi off for her first day of Junior Preschool with no problems at all.  Her backpack and lunch were packed last night, all I had to do was put ice packs in the bottom of her lunch box and slip in her easylunchboxes container.  We had a pretty easy morning, we had pb&j toast for breakfast, got dressed for the day, and did our hair.  I built in enough time for some pictures, and got some good ones! 

Cream cheese, ham,and cheese mini bagel.

Mixed fruit cup.  Grape tomatoes.  Mini Oreos.

Lunch is ready to go.

My favorite pictures from this morning.  

One of the four vertical 4x6 pictures (left two and top right two) will go in the big blank spot on the sign.  I made the sign using the Cricut Craft Room, the free font within CCR, and some paper.  It says "1st day Jr Preschool, September 4 2012."  I cut the brown paper, trimmed the negative down a little, and glued it to a piece of purple paper.  The sign will go in whatever I use to organize her school stuff, probably a binder or a file box.  There were so many different ideas on Pinterest for how to do first day of school signs: free printables, chalk board, white board, lay on the driveway/sidewalk/street with chalk writing.  I didn't find a chalk board or white board I liked, and I would have to get multiples to do group pictures once Erica starts school.  I'm really not sure where I got this idea, I don't remember seeing a direct inspiration, so I probably just came up with it.  I might do a last day one on the other side, or a separate one to cap off the binder section or put on the back side of a file.

Mozzarella from a Gallon of Milk

WOW!  This was so fun to make and absolutely delicious to consume.  A couple weeks ago I came across this pin on Pinterest which took me to Simple Bites post about The Best Party Trick Ever: How to Make Thirty Minute Mozzarella.  I'd like to share some notes about our first two attempts to make this.

#1.  Our first attempt turned out a little tough and dry.  We used 2% milk, and think that it was heated and handled too much.  It was possible to shape it into a nice log to cut.  Sorry no pictures, I was having a rough day.

#2.  The next day our mozzarella turned out amazing, it was nice and soft and gooey.  This time we used whole milk, and heated and handled it much less.  This time it was hard to get it to shape into a log, but if we let it cool a little it probably would have been possible.

I'm working on editing the video so it's not 30 minutes long.  There are some really cool points in the video that you can really see stuff happening.

Finished Caprese Salad.

Even my 2 year old ate the cheese!

My hubby did some research on what to do with the "leftover" whey after our first attempt because he didn't want it to go to waste.  He found The Prairie Homestead's post "16 Ways to Use Your Whey" decided that he would try to make ricotta (using this recipe from Fias Co Farm/Dairy) with the second batch.  While we didn't do anything with the ricotta it turned out well, although it needed some salt and a lot of the cheese got stuck in the cheese cloth.

Ricotta Cheese.

We got about a pound of mozzarella each time even with the changes, and between a quarter and a third of a cup of ricotta was produced from the resulting whey.