Misadventures in cheese

So my friend Brenna calls me up and says "Hey! I have this great recipe for mozzarella we should get together and try to make it!"  Of course I agree as I've always wanted to make cheese and hanging out with Brenna is always fun.  So we make arrangements to meet at my house today after she hits the Carbondale Farmer's Market and the Co-Op.  I get up get dressed this morning and realize I had forgotten to pick up milk.  At about the same time that I realized this my phone rings and it's Brenna.

"Stephie darling, they are out of rennet at the Co-Op. Im running over to Rural King to see if they have any."
Since I was on my way to the store myself I told her I'd check there also.  Kroger's was a bust, so was Rural King (which suprised us) but then Brenna hit up Schnucks and found rennet tabs and all was good. We used the "30 minute Mozzarella" recipe found in HobbyFarms magazine.  But I encourage you to visit the author's website Cheesemaking.com and use her updated recipe.

We had a great time but unfortunately our cheese making escapade did not work out as intended.  Instead of mozzarella we ended up with a cheese spread that we herbed up.  According to her website the problem wasn't us but our milk.  Nowadays a lot of companies are pasteurizing the milk at higher than needed temperatures but just under the temp that would put it into the "ultra-pasteurized" catagory. Sad indeed as we were looking forward to mozzarella. So I do believe that we may be looking into different sources for milk. If you have any tips on store bought brands we would love to hear them.  I wouldn't mind finding some local cow or goats milk but I don't know anyone in the southern Illinois area. Otherwise we will be running to get raw milk from The Family Friendly Farm just north of Cape Girardeau, MO. It's illegal to openly sell raw milk in Illinois I guess.  We are completely up for doing this again though.

Here are some pictures of our misadventure!