Hello from Herts

[Little Lou]

Might have known it was the bl***y cheese...

I do mainly military style reenactment because I like playing with guns. My main period's 17th century (matchlock muskets and campfire cheese) but I also do Crimean War (Enfield rifle and bayonet plus Navy Colt revolver) and that's been really helpful for survival skills too - learning things like digging up brushwood roots when there's literally no other fuel available.

All right, the cheese. The campfire version is pretty nasty actually, being more like cottage cheese than anything else. All you need is whole milk (unpasteurised if possible) and a few drops of white vinegar or lemon juice and you're in business. The recipe is unchanged over centuries, and you can find versions of it here and here. The best flavour I've managed is by adding a pinch of mustard powder and nutmeg along with the salt in the last mixing stages, which seems to make it more 'cheesy'.

I think the key to a smoother harder consistency is really wringing out as much whey as you can. I'm considering making a cheese press to produce proper hard stuff after SHTF, and have found a possible method here but I haven't tried it, and can't vouch for its success. Still worth a try, I think - the prospect of a life sans cheese is truly unbearable.

Just occurred to me - should I have posted this in the 'Food' section? Would it be over-kill to put a version of it there too? It would be good to hear what variants other members have tried, which could well taste better than mine.