At some pretty fancy prices.
I neither have the disposable income for a press, nor the place to put it.
If I had a place to put it, I might be more inclined to find the disposable income needed to get it. Or beg it for a gift. Or something.
In the meantime, we...actually, Eric put his head to the problem and came up with this cheese press.
He's freaking brilliant.
Brilliant, I tell you.
And this is how it works:
It didn't matter that there was a ring in the middle. We were kind of worried about it, but when we put the cheese basket inside it, the top of the basket rested comfortably just touching the inner ring and fitting perfectly right inside it.
Perfectly.
Here is the cheese in the cheesecloth in the basket in the press.
It's beautiful, isn't it.
So, after we put the cheese in the cheesecloth and then the cheese filled cheesecloth in the basket and the basket in the press, it was time to put the weights in.
And what weights did we use? Why the weights that hang out in the back room where they are not used by anyone for upper body development but rather contribute to the overall clutter of the back room, of course.
Yep. Those weights.
We have little ones and bigger ones.
And guess what?
They fit right inside the press.
Perfectly.
But before I put the weights in, I put an old plastic lid over the cheese.
And after that, I put a ziploc bag, so the weights wouldn't touch the cheese at all.
At all.
And then, finally, I put the weights in.
I put the little ones in first in case things pushed down below the ring in the center of the pvc union.
Because the big weights fit inside that pvc union just perfectly.
Just like this.
Those big weights fit right inside, but if they jiggled a little, I was afraid they'd get caught on the inner ring.
And so my cheese got pressed at exactly 35 pounds of pressure for the 6 hours required.
And it was delicious.
And Eric got the first taste because he's brilliant.
Brilliant, I tell you.
Amen.