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| Whole Milk Mozzarrella--Deeeelicious! |
Yesterday, Denver told me that one of his favorite YouTubers made cheese and he wanted to make some, too. Uh . . . Okay.
Being both a nerd and a Momma, I actually know how to make mozzarella cheese. So at Denver's request, we made cheese this afternoon.
Mozzarella cheese is easy if you have the right ingredients. Denver loved stirring the rennet into the milk and watching it metamorphosis from milk to something vaguely like watery ricotta cheese. From there, we pressed out the whey from the curds (and yes, we recited "Little Miss Muffett"), heated and kneaded the cheese, added salt, and soon we had our beautiful ball of mozzarella.
During our experiment, Denver asked questions about what chemistry was at work, the effects of the various ingredients: milk, rennet, lipase, citric acid. He asked about the history of cheese making and I told him how it benefitted people by preserving milk for a longer time; and we wondered at how people may have learned to make cheese.
Later in the day, we all stood at the kitchen island and ate it on crackers. YUM!
It occurs to me that learning should not be separated into categories: math, language, science, history. Those categories are misleading, and lead people to believe they're not learning anything important when their learning cannot be easily categorized.
What did Denver and I learn today? Was it science? Cooking? History? Yes. Yes. And Yes. But it won't be tested and it doesn't count as "important" on the Homeschool Records file. Yet . . . we laughed and learned together. We fed the family mozzarella cheese. Real learning. It seems more important than remembering state capitals. You know? I'm just sayin' . . .
