We figured the best way to use our homemade mozzarella cheese was to make Margherita pizza. My wife decided to make pizza dough to keep with the ‘fresh’ theme. We used this pizza dough recipe. Here she is manually dissolving the yeast:
Getting your hands dirty is the key to good dough.
A few weeks ago, my wife and I tried our hand at making mozzarella cheese. This kit from Leeners.com cost $25 and will make 6 pounds of cheese:
The kit cost over $30 after shipping and handling, and we'll have to buy six gallons of fresh milk. That might sound like a lot of effort and money for so little product, but it would cost us over $90 to buy that much fresh mozzarella from the grocery store. So we think it's a good deal — if the cheese tastes good.
For Valentine's Day this year, my wife and I cooked live lobsters. I wanted them to do battle for the privilege of being cooked last, kind of like my own personal Thunderdome, but the lobsters, sluggish from their fridge-induced coma, just flexed a little.
This weekend my wife and I decided to try our hand at making butter. We heard it was easy, but weren’t sure what to expect. All you need is cream and a stand mixer. We poured in one pint of heavy whipping cream and set the speed on low for a few minutes:
When it gets frothy like the foam on a cappuccino, you can turn it up to medium.
My in-laws were enamored with these rocking chair footrests at Mast General Store:
They dropped a lot of hints that they wanted them for Christmas, but I didn't feel like paying $43 a piece for these tiny things. Plus, the store only had them in stained oak, and my in-laws have white rocking chairs. So I decided to make my own.
Last Christmas my wife and I took the Handmade Pledge and were largely successful. She made ornaments, stuffed animals, and tote bags to give away, and we tried to buy handmade products whenever possible. I made seven of these wine bottle holders for Christmas gifts:
They seem to defy gravity.
I can’t stand the thought of paying for firewood. It’s like paying to water your yard even though rain falls from the sky for free. Anyway, I’ve noticed that people give away firewood for free on Craigslist throughout the Spring and Summer, and I could season it myself if I just had a place to put it. So I decided to build this firewood rack:
It holds about 1/3 of a cord of wood and will give our yard a little more privacy.
I’ve been meaning to build a coffee table for years. I wanted it to look like something store-bought, since it was going to be in the middle of our living room. I’ve come close to building it a few times over the past few years, but never could pull the trigger on it. I’ve actually gone to buy the wood and walked out empty handed because of a lack of confidence. Last weekend I finally got around to building it. This was the design:
It’s more complex than it looks, since almost all the boards have to be routed in some way. Sometimes it’s hard to remember the exact order in which everything has to be cut, sanded, glued, and assembled when everything is scattered around a messy garage.
