A Monumental Day with Chicks and Mozzarella

So I've been wanting to try my hand at making mozzarella for a while. My sister got me a gift certificate which I used to purchase a mozzarella making kit. I made it this afternoon. It was incredibly easy taking less than 30 minutes to make.

We bought a fresh baguette from Panera and had a delicious dinner of bread, cheese, bruschetta and wine.

I've wanted chickens for five years. I even purchased a video four years ago about raising chickens in L.A. It was as low budget and informational as any video could be. However, I never bought chickens unsure of what to do with them or how much work they'd be.

So yesterday I start talking about wanting chickens again (actually, this is a frequent conversation in our home). David gets really excited all of the sudden and hell bent on going to look at some. Because of the season all the babies have just hatched within the last few weeks. We went to Steve's Pets a local store here in Altadena. I held a chick and Ale got to pet her. The young kid working said he'd had chickens on and off for years. He made it all sound so simple...David, a little more adventurous and bit more impulsive said, "Let's buy some!" They had a sign saying a minimum of 3 chicks had to be purchased. I had only wanted two for the sake of not wanting to kill anything and the fewer I have the fewer I could potentially kill. David grew up with chickens in El Salvador. On our way home he became all sentimental as he remembered his grandmother and her chickens. We stopped at the library to jack some free newspapers for bedding and headed home. David rigged up the heat lamp into a large rubbermaid container and got it all ready. Meanwhile, Ale and I played with the chicks.

Each Chick was $3.99. The 25lb bag of feed was $10.00 and the heat lamp was $12.00. We made it out the door for under $40.00. We could buy high quality organic free range pastured eggs from whole foods for a few weeks with that money but this is about process and teaching the kids where food comes from and how food should be raised and treated.

I am very excited about our new project!