Sometimes, it's the journey

That sounds really pretentious.

At least some of the time, though, it's true-- sometimes the cheese doesn't cheese, or you spend five hours making something that will be eaten in... rather less than that, or what have you.

This, for example, is my second batch of goat cheese resolutely not becoming cheese. I did everything right this time! I didn't mess with it! And yet, somehow, after two days of straining through cheesecloth in the fridge, I ended up with cheese spread, not a firmer cheese. This is totally and completely fine. It's going to be delicious (roast garlic, mmm), but it's not what I was necessarily looking for. I guess next time, it's back to the OMG, must add more rennet/citric acid/agh what can I put in this cheese. Because sometimes, the process tells you that it's okay to mess with things, that you were totally right about the curds needing to be bigger and the whey to be clearer.

And then sometimes you spend all afternoon watching something (pretty) closely, and it turns out that it is both a) gorgeous, and b) totally going to be under-appreciated. This, my friends, is my lovely tomato paste, made from the tomatoes I bought last Saturday from Happy Boy Farms. I made yellow tomato sauce this summer (see below!), and while I usually like to add a can of tomato paste to my sauces for texture, and so they're less like soup, it's entirely impossible to find yellow tomato paste. The box from HBF, though, had several pounds of yellow heirloom tomatoes. So on Sunday, with the beef broth simmering on the stove, I made yellow tomato paste, for the sauce I canned this summer.

I don't know if anyone out there has ever made their own tomato paste, but going from about eight cups of raw cut tomatoes to one half-pint of paste is something of an experience. It's a lesson in patience, in having something else to do when you're waiting and stirring and waiting and checking the heat one more time. Because eventually, you're going to have yellow tomato paste for your yellow tomato sauce, and this winter will be good. (And sometimes, there's also a jar of red tomato paste to be made, as well.)