Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle made cheese-making sound like so much fun, I bought a copy of Ricki Carroll's Home Cheese Making, got even more inspired, and ordered a variety of basic supplies. (My version of the $64 tomato? Could be.)
The bonus prize nobody mentioned is that making cheese is magic - true alchemy! 30-minute mozzarella seemed the best recipe to start with - quick, pretty simple, and yielding a key ingredient for our favorite summer dish (caprese). We read the instructions and also visited YouTube, looking for demos. The best one we found was about 5 minutes, not too polished, and was the only we could find using the microwave method for a small batch.
We expected the point where the hot curds turn into a shiny ball of cheese that you can stretch like taffy, roll into little balls, or even tie into a knot to be the highlight - but no. The coolest part was painstakingly heating the pot of milk (nice, fresh Clover milk from happy pastured cows not far from our home) and seeing the conversion of liquid into curds and whey. It's nearly indescribable - so I plan to make my own short video. Then no one will be able to resist being able to witness this revelation for themselves (or at least, if they resist, they'll know what they missed).
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