Collapsed Cheese

So cheese making occurred this weekend.

This has been something which I have had to temporarily suspend due to our impending move, and then our move, and then our unpacking.  The situation with cheese making is not so much that it requires a lot of time - it does not - as much as it requires focused attention at certain points in the process:  hold for this long, slowly stir for this long, press for this long, etc.  It requires focus which can happen as an adjunct to other activities but they need to be able to be dropped at a moment.

I was making English Farmhouse Cheese, a relatively simple cheese that I have often made:  hold 75 minutes, cut the curds, drain into molds and flip.  The first three steps went perfectly.  The last was a bit of a problem, as it often seems to be.

The nature of the cheese draining is that it is accomplished by gravity:  as the whey settles out, the curds are pressed together.  At some point one turns over the mold to get the cheese out.  Herein lies the difficulty:  wait too long and the cheese will not drop consistently but rather in pieces, wait too short and the cheese will loose its shape as there is still too much whey in the curds.

This was one of the too short days:  the cheese either collapsed or completely lost its shape.  It is initially very disappointing of course, as the cheese looks terrible.  I started mentally kicking myself and reminding myself of how I cannot do anything.

And then I tasted it.  Still tasted the same.

I took a moment to reflect - the cheese is going nowhere but in our house.  The Ravishing Mrs. TB and Na Clann do not care how the cheese looks, just how it tastes.  Yes, it would be better if it was visually attractive - but for the purpose for which it was to be used it was just fine.

It was good reminder to myself not only of how sometimes the end result is not as important as the process. It was also a good accountability as to continuing to do something - to often I fail in executing and then suddenly retreat from an activity, decreeing that I am not good enough - and never will be.

The reality is this:  sometimes it looks good, sometimes it does not.  The cheese, however, will still taste the same.