Food week at school

Here they are separating cream in the classroom

Last week the students were very excited because Garry taught them cream and cheesemaking, Ukrainian style. Many Ukrainian households make extra money by milking a cow or two or three and making the milk into value added products. Sleevki, cream thick enough to spread like butter on bread and cottage cheese made from the skim milk, is then sold in the market or along the highway, Ukrainians love to eat them.

We bought an electric cream separator a couple years ago, the students had to learn how it works and how to take it apart and put it back together, too. Their favorite part of the lesson was sampling it on a loaf of bread and taking a 500 ml jar full back to each group home to enjoy eating.

you can see how thick it is in the jar

And on the bread too!

Tuesday they learned how to cook the skim milk to make the curds, they had to come into our house for that part of the lesson, I took a photo of them straining the curds through an old lace curtain. The whey is falling into a big pot, then it hung overnight to drain, and they got to take bags of dry cottage cheese home with them.

making cottage cheese

Friday the students had an anatomy lesson on work day when they got to see the inside of a cow. There was a young cow in the barn that was not able to get pregnant and was not giving much milk, so they had decided to butcher her. The students were not upset by the idea of watching the cow become dinner (there is no butcher to call to kill your cow and cut it up in the village like in Canada, it is a DIY project.) Garry thought the girls might not like it, but Karina was jumping up and down in excitement with the idea of eating liver. In the afternoon the boys were helping cut up a front quarter at their house (the girls did their quarter Saturday) except Valera, who helped Garry all day, the girls came in the afternoon, too, and worked in our kitchen, too, except Julia, who was scheduled to help with milking. Now everyone will have meat to eat for a while, hopefully months.

Valera in foreground, Garry and Max Rudei in back

Nastya running the electric meat grinder for Hamburger

Karina cut meat. too.