Less Cheesy Attempt

Having warmed up with the quick stuff, we proceed to the "difficult" stuff as shown here.

In hindsight, maybe we should have started with the basics, but what fun would that be? Well, a lot, possibly.

So, this is about a 14-hr process, spread out over two days. We use active buttermilk instead of citric acid, and the setting, curdling, and acidifying take hours instead of minutes. It's a temperature-controlled, tempermental process and we spend the better part of the afternoon and evening watching milk curdle. We also head out to a local park and toss a baseball around while we wait. PeterE and I are trying to join a softball league and figure we could use the practice. It's so much fun to toss around that we overdo it just a bit. I also forget my awesome fleece hoodie in the park.

We have to leave the cut curd alone to acidify overnight, so we'll see what it looks like in the morning.

This citric acid is really sour and kind of tasty, so I decide to try making fake lemon juice. I boil a cup of water, add a quarter cup of sugar and start mixing in citric acid until it tastes right. The ultimate test is when I make M's "water with lemon" using it and she likes it. That was fun.

We've made a bit of a mess.