A LITTLE BIT CHEESY

I did not accomplish any “projects” this week. I just did a bit of this and that.

When I was younger, if you needed shredded cheese for a recipe, your only option was to grate it yourself. When the (more expensive) bags of shredded cheese (with anti-caking agents added) were introduced to the grocery store, I put up quite a fight to resist them. In the end, though, I lost that battle and succumbed to the lure of convenience.

I’ve tried several times over the years to cross back over from the dark side, but I don’t like using a cheese grater, I do like leaving the skin on my fingers, and, honestly, I really like just dumping shredded cheese from a bag.

Recently though, I added a rotary grater to my stash of kitchen tools with the intent of making my own convenience foods – in the form of shredded cheese.

This thing works great! It attaches to my countertop, plows through a block of cheese in no time, and is easy to clean as the parts can be put on the top row of the dishwasher.

Other than my little cheese experiment, I started a new batch of bedding for the worms this week. It usually takes me a week or so of tinkering with the coconut coir and peat moss to get just the right moisture level before I can start a new layer in the tower for them.

I won’t do it this time but, I’m considering starting a second worm tower. Since I started feeding them Uncle Jim’s Worm Food back in October, their population has exploded to the extent that they seem to be over-crowded. It’s really amazing to flip over a scoop of dirt and find a massive wad of worms.

I started using the Uncle Jim’s because I just don’t generate enough kitchen scraps for both the worms and the chickens. (Yes, that translates into I don’t eat enough vegetables). I spent $20 for a 4-pound bag of food in October. I still have half the bag left! I sure hope my garden appreciates all the hard work the worms have been putting in to make fertilizer.

Tonight, I made pizza with the pizza sauce I made back in August. I’ve tried once before using a Boboli pizza crust from the grocery store but wasn’t very impressed. I used a pre-made crust again tonight that I like better. I still need to find an easy to make pizza crust recipe.