Making Lunch with Hannah - Homemade Grilled Cheese and Squash Soup with Baked Fish

We're making lunch today. We're going to make homemade grilled cheese. I've been craving homemade grilled cheese. We're going to do sourdough bread, some homemade mozzarella, and then we're going to do an acorn sweet potato soup. And then Daniel bought some fish yesterday, so we're going to have fish as well. So that's what we're making for lunch. Let's get started. Lois, do you want to help me add the citric acid? Me? Lois needs a project. Pour it in here. Please pour it in there, sweet thing. Okay, good. First we're adding the citric acid. Then we heat the milk up to 95 degrees and add the animal rennet. Very handy and important in cheese making is a thermometer. Okay, where's that? Okay, I'm going to need you to stir this up again. We're getting there. 91! Four more degrees. Cheese is pretty exact in temperature, so 95. Okay, here we go. Take off the heat. Add the animal rennet. Here we go. I'm just going to stir that in. We're going to slide a lid on it, and we're going to let this sit for five minutes while the rennet and the citric acid do their thing. Okay, so now we're going to cut the curds. Vertical and then horizontal. Make a little grid. This is my favorite part about making cheese, is this step right here. And mozzarella is literally so easy to make. I say that, but sometimes I make it and it doesn't turn out at all. It's easy, but there's no guarantees. The whey is heating up, and we're going to try to get this into some balls here. This looks so good. Okay, so typically I like to wear gloves, but I can never find my gloves when I make mozzarella. So lately we've just been doing it with our hands. Can I do it? And it does get hot, but you know what? What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I don't recommend this. Get gloves, everybody. Here comes the mozzarella into the cool water. Real wet dough today. So one thing that I've been using is this metal scrubber thing to get off sourdough. And I have, you know, a little sheep soap. Dax is our ranch hand that's the best. He's also an entrepreneur. He's got a booming landscaping business down in the valley. You've got bright things ahead of you, Dax. Yeah, we'll see. I don't know. Well, we appreciate you. We're going to miss you. Thank you. See you, Dax. Yeah, Dax has been with us since the very beginning, you know. We've brushed on him the entrepreneurial spirit. Dang it. So he's on to new things, which is kind of sad because we like Dax. I don't want to cry. Cut! Even after five to ten minutes of a rest, the dough looks completely different from the first time you shape it. So now we're just going to build a little bit of tension in the dough. You can see it gets kind of springy. And then we're going to put it in some baskets. I've been using this flour blend for a while, and I love, love it. So now we're signing on the website, and it's amazing. So I just like to sprinkle a little flour on the top so they don't stick to the liners. Now we're going to put these in the fridge for 30 minutes or so to firm up before we score them. We're going to preheat this before we put the bread in so it's nice and toasty when we get it out. Let's start making the soup. So now we're just going to take the seeds out. This will be a chicken treat, this bowl. This is the biggest sweet potato that I've ever seen. Garlic. Garlic's flying everywhere. I always blame the kids for making messes, but really it's just me. It's them too, actually. It's all of us. A couple more, just for fun. Never too much garlic, you know what I mean? Now we're getting some shallots, and we'll roast these on the pan with the squash potatoes. And then we're just going to puree this as soon as it's out of the oven. Oh, it smells so good already. This is like a salt and pepper, French salt blend. It's so yummy. Go in. So pretty in there. Now let's start on the bread. Just do one loaf at a time. Put a little more flour on. It's a little twig. This is what I use to draw my flour with. Cutting the curds and cheese making is my favorite part, and then scoring the loaf and sourdough bread making is my favorite part. So now I've got our little scoring blade. And then I'm going to do a deep score all around. Some rainbow trout that Daniel picked up yesterday. Give these guys a little rinse. Time to make the fish. Lois, in the fridge there's a box of basil underneath. Those green leaves. Yeah, did you find the basil? Yeah, okay, grab it. Perfect. Okay, so we're just going to throw some carrots in too. Put these in the chicken bowl. Dice up some basil. Maybe some tomatoes. That's actually why I got these. Olive oil. I know people ask all the time, like, don't you miss being, you know, dancing, like the art of dance and all the things, and I do love dance and I miss dancing and all things, but there's so many other things you can be artistic with, including cooking. Okay, I need lemons. Actually, that's what I need. Oh, that's pretty. Nothing better than warm bread out of the oven. Now we're going to switch these to the upper oven just to get them a little more toasted. Catch a falling star? Yeah. Put the fish in. Let's make some butter. Wait, wait, wait. We're getting there, guys. Here we go, it's coming. You can start to see the buttermilk separate from the butterfat. This is my favorite part of the buttermaking process. So now you guys know the cheese, favorite part of the cheese, favorite part of the bread, now let's favorite part of the butter. Butter. So you have these fun byproducts. So you got your butter, but now we have buttermilk. We use it for all things, pancakes and waffles and that sort of thing. And then from the cheese we have the whey, and from the squash we got the seeds, the chickens. Fresh buttermilk is much different than store-bought buttermilk because it's not cultured yet. This just tastes like skim milk with tiny little chunks of butter in it. It's really good. We're just going to rinse under cold water and try to get all the buttermilk out of the butter. Our well water is super cold, so it helps not melt the butter. Sprinkle that on there. And salt actually helps release more buttermilk. There we go. Butter's done. Mmm, cooked to perfection. That looks so good. Yum, yum, yum. Put these in there. Chickens are going to be so happy with me. Garlic and shallots in there. Yum. Okay. Ooh, that smells delicious. Go. Yum. Potatoes in. One more shallot. Ooh, yum. Okay. Okay, we got some sweet potato in there. Ooh, that looks good. Okay. Now we'll make the grilled cheese. Yum. Put some salt on there, too. A little bit of butter. Not all for Joe. Let's see how this is looking. We're going to get the fish out now. Okay. Everyone's got to get their two tablespoons of broccoli sprouts a day because that's the ultimate superfood. So we're here. Okay, so now we're going to get a little soup. Fran, do you want to come take a bite? Come over here. Okay, Fran. You weren't expecting the fish. Sorry, honey. You can just eat the grilled cheese if you want. Okay, let's dig in. Here we go. Okay, we've got to dip it in the soup. That's all you're going to dip? Too big of a bite. Try some fish. That's good. So that was lunch. It's a simple, simple lunch, but also, you know, simple things take the longest time, but it's so good. So worth it. Bread was good. Fish was good. Soup is a little thick, I'm going to be honest, but it was still good. Bon appetit.