Roasted asparagus and spring onions

Pasture raised ground beef cooked in marinara I canned last summer.

Roasted mushroom caps

Topped the mushroom caps with the beef sauce, cheese and spring onions.

Dinner!

We stopped at Intelligentsia Coffee in Pasadena on the way to the airport.

What a hottie.

View from our sweet room at the Omni (which I totally recommend! Great service, clean room, really comfortable and nice).

My grandma!

Thumbs up!

We ate a lot of salsa in San Diego.

Ha!

San Diego Zoo!

Bus time!

Mama and baby hippos!

Skyfari!

I was scared.

Less scary the second time.

I love the zoo!

Lots of iced tea in my future

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And the Mexican food is amazing.

I started a new blog in an attempt to chronicle what I’m eating every day. It’s not the most glamourous, but you are welcome to follow it!

http://whatelizate.com/

I’ll still be posting recipes, cat pictures, and chicken shenanigans here on itseliz.com.

Enjoy!

Step one: rinse the kale. I get dinosaur kale/Lacinato kale because it’s dark green and delicious.

Separate the leaves from the stems. I don’t like the stems. Put them in the compost bin.

A pile-o-kale.

Cut up the kale into small, bite-sized pictures. Put the kale into a bowl.

The dressing is really simple. Lemon juice. Olive oil. Salt.

Juice a whole lemon on top of the kale. Drizzle olive oil (maybe 1/4 cup?) on the kale.

Mix it up with your clean hands. Some people call this “massaging” the kale. I call it delicious.

It’s good for your hands too.

Add a few pinches of salt.

Grate up some cheese. I used an Irish cheddar, because we had some left over from St. Patrick’s Day. Any hard-ish, nutty, sharp, cheese would be delicious.

Almost ready!

Walnuts! Other delicious nuts in this salad: macadamia, pine nuts, brazil nuts, all the nuts!

All done! Oh my goodness this is the best salad ever. Make it!

All you need is half a gallon of goat milk, 1/2 cup of cider vinegar, cheese cloth, and a thermometer.

First gradually heat the goat milk up to a temperature of 175-180 degrees. This takes a little while, but keep an eye on it and stir frequently to prevent scorching.

Hold the temperature at 175-180 degrees for about 10 minutes.

Stir in the vinegar slowly until curds begin to form.

Curds did not form in my milk! I decided to turn the heat back up, and let it get to aboout 190 for a few minutes.

Much better.

Remove the post from heat. Ladle the curts into a cheese-cloth lined colander.

Tie the corners into a knot, forming a bag, and let the whey drain for 2-5 hours. Keep covered in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.

This cheese is so delicious! It’s definitely “goatey,” but sweet (I may add salt). It’s absolutely delicious! It would be really good with a drizzle of honey and strawberries. Or maybe with some fresh dill and crackers.

Next time I’d also get some finer cheesecloth (or maybe muslin?), because I think that I lost some of the cheese in the straining process. Anyways, you should absolutely do this!