Peas and cheese please…

Home grown veg and homemade cheese

 Spring has arrived at The Big Cheese Making Kit’s HQ! All around the city there are copious amount of crocuses, and a host of golden daffodils. On that perfect Edinburgh morning – sun in the sky, a chill in the air – it is ridiculously beautiful.

This inspired us to begin home growing vegetables, to see Spring in action. Seeds were chosen – pumpkin, peas, and beetroot – and containers bought. We created a cloche out of a cola bottle. We popped our seeds and coconut fibre into a peat pot, the pots under the cloche, and then the cloche onto a windowsill. It really was that simple. We then began to imagine the meals we could create using our fresh vegetables and some of our delicious homemade cheese: a pea and mint Crowdie tart or something divine combining the beetroot with the ricotta.

Slowly, over the next few days, shoots began to appear. It is a wondrous thing to watch something grow from nothing into life. The plants now look like this:

Beetroot, peas and pumpkin!

The next stage is to harden them off. This means to prepare them for the cold spring nights by leaving them out in a comparatively shady and protected spot for two weeks, bringing them in on an evening.

It is very exciting. Keep a look out for a future post once we have harvested our crops. We’ll write about the meals we’ve used them in, so if you have any recipe suggestions then we’d love to hear them.  Why not email us at info@bigcheesemakingkit.com or tweet us @bigcheesemaking or get in touch through Facebook /The Big Cheese Making Kit.

In other news, we’ve had some lovely photos sent in by customers using our kits. Here we have one from Mitchells Dairy (‏@MitchellsDairy) who say ‘Busy at home today making ricotta with @bigcheesemaking kit available in our shop.’

And from Michelle Embleton (@MichyEmbleton) we have both a crumbly goat’s cheese, and caramelised red onion & homemade goat’s cheese tartlets:

I’ll leave you with what Michelle said about our goat’s cheese ‘lovely crumbly goat’s cheese from milk bottle to mouth in a few hours!’

Perfect!

Bye for now.

The Big Cheese Making Kit

Xx