grass magic: the whole truth

Remember a post from our family week two summers ago?  Where my Farmer led the children in a glorious cheese-making venture involving fresh mozzarella and a certain artistically paraffin-coated round?

We were remembering at breakfast this morning ... and I realized that my glowing post gave a prematurely positive impression of our success.  Here's what really happened:

The mozzarella started out so nicely ...

And their little hands had so much fun squeezing and shaping ....

... that no one noticed that those lumpy little balls showed no resemblance to the silky orbs of fresh mozzarella that we've enjoyed from the store.  It was our mozzarella, after all.  Never mind that it tasted, well, cooked.

So that was the mozzarella.

Then there was the beautiful, carefully waxed "soft cheese" that aged for 90 days on my Farmer's dresser (naturally, you've heard of "dresser-aged" cheeses....):

Unfortunately, this gorgeous cheese developed some suspicious molds.  It must have been an amazing cheese, though we never got to taste it once it "matured", because every mold in the vicinity jumped on board - we had pink mold, black mold, green mold, brown mold, even orange mold.  My Farmer tells me that you really don't want to eat pink or black molds.  I guess the others are okay - ??

So that's the rest of the story.

I just wanted you to know.