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I took advantage of a Mother’s Day sale to buy some kitchen equipment for Courtney. Courtney started making homemade cheese not long after Elgin was born, but has been limited by lack of a cheese press, which is necessary for certain cheeses. Because of the lack of a press, Courtney has been mostly limited to mozzarella. Mozzarella is delicious, but in the interest of expanding varieties I’ve been looking for a good, quality cheese press for some time now. Most cheese presses on the market are unable to be used for anything else, large, clunky, not particularly good looking, and not cheap.
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Eventually, I settled on a cheese press made by LEM, which can either be purchased as a complete unit, or as an adapter for a 5 lb sausage stuffer. Originally, I was planning on buying the complete unit, but as we’ve moved further into self-sufficiency, we’ve started to have large amounts of ground venison on hand. Also, over the past year, Courtney has experimented with making homemade bologna, shaping it in a bread pan rather than a sausage casing. During Lent, she even made some homemade vegetarian hot dogs, which she rolled and cut in order to shape. So, with the Mother’s Day sale, I decided to buy the 5lb sausage stuffer and the cheese press adapter. Total cost with shipping was $275. Hopefully I’ll be able to post some results from its use soon.