Here's what you need:

plain ol' liquid rennet. (you can order it from NE Cheesemaking - see Sources)

STAINLESS STEEL (SS) bowl. (NOT aluminum - no aluminum can touch milk that you are trying to turn into cheese).

Clabbered milk or Cultured buttermilk from the store (or make your own - see recipe # 2)

Raw milk

Pour in 1/2 gallon (or whatever) of raw milk. I skim most of the cream off mine - but it's your call on that.

Add a "glub" (that's unofficial for about 1/4 cup) of CULTURED buttermilk (just any old cultured buttermilk from the grocery store, until you get where you make your own out of raw milk -but that's lesson # 2). You have to add a little cultured buttermilk to raise the pH of the milk. No worries if you have a milk allergy, it's not enough to affect you and it's cultured so there's little lactose left in that stuff anyway.

Stir the concoction to distribute the Buttermilk throughout your milk. Use a wooden spoon or a SS one (just NOT aluminum). Even plastic is fine.

Turn on the stove and heat the milk til it's "baby warm". You want it the temperature you would feed a baby - a little past tepid. Technically I think it's 88 degrees, but who wants to fool with a thermometer. Stick your clean finger in there and if it feels warm, it's ready.

Now for the rennet: Dilute 5 drops of liquid rennet (for each 1/2 gallon of milk you're using) in a little bowl with about 1/3 cup water (again, just "some" water, this isn't an exact science). Stir the little bowl of rennet water for a second, then SLOWLY sprinkle your rennet water over your warm pot of milk while stirring with your wooden spoon.

Stir, stir, stir, make sure you get the bottom of the pot. Stir pretty good for about 30 seconds as you really want to distribute that rennet throughout the whole pot of milk. It's OK if your stove is still on while you're stirring this. You have a reasonable temperature range here for this cheese. (But if your milk ever gets so hot that you can't hold your finger in there for a good 10 seconds, you've killed it. )

OK, shut off the heat, cover your pot with a towel, or I have a tray I use. Just something to keep out the dust. Leave the whole mess sit undisturbed for 30 minutes.

Now, take off the cover (towel). Tip your pot one way or the other and you should see that the whole mess is one giant curd.

Take a long knife (really long, like a bread knife, it has to be able to cut through to the bottom of your pot). Cut 1/2 inch slices, through the curd. Turn the pot, cut the other way, all the way through. You are making a giant checkerboard. You can even cut again at a slight angle.

Leave the whole thing for a minute while you go scrub your hand and forearms good with soap - cuz you're at the fun part.

Roll up your sleeves. Stick your left arm down into the pot and GENTLY start stirring the curds around. Pull the long pieces up with your left hand, and cut them with your knife you have in your right hand. (It's not hard, use a dull knife if you need to). Keep stirring and cutting. You're trying to make little sugar cube sized curds.

Stir, cut, stir, cut. Turn the stove on if you need to to keep the temperature pretty warm - like a nice hot bath. Keep doing this for 12 - 15 minutes. You will see the curds have shrunk a LOT. Cut any giant plump ones. When about 98% of your curds have shrunk - to your satisfaction, you're finished. What you have now is the infamous pot of "curds and whey".

Pour the mess through a plastic colander lined with real cheesecloth (not the gauzy stuff they sell at the grocery store - use a worn flour sack kitchen towel or old pillow case if you don't have real cheese cloth)

Run cold water over the mess in your sink. Stick your hand in there again and squish, squish to separate the mess so it doesn't form one big curd. Rinse well to remove all whey.

When it's cold, sprinkle generously with sea salt, squish a few more times to distribute the salt. Sample it. Add more salt if you want. It's done. Drain well (put papertowels under it in a bowl)

You can pour a little whole milk or cream on it to make it more like the store stuff, but I like mine dry. When you set it in a bowl, you'll have to dump whey off it after about 5 minutes as more settles out. Some people line the bowl with several layers of paper towel to absorb the whey.

Have fun. Hope it turns out for you. It really is easy.

FARMERS CHEESE What my family LOVES, is to let all that drain for 12 hours in the cheescloth over the sink(don't rinse the curds, just hang them warm, but salted), then I press it between 2 plastic containers using a 5 pound hand weight for 12 more hours and - viola', farmer's cheese. Delicious.

It's so easy to be confused by "buttermilk". First, there is REAL sweet cream buttermilk and REAL cultured /sour cream buttermilk and store bought "CULTURED buttermilk". They are not the same critters at all!!!

You can't use sweet cream buttermilk (that leftover milk from sweet butter making) to adjust the pH for cheese. You have to use "CULTURED BUTTERMILK" - either the store stuff or home made (The store buttermilk is not buttermilk at all, but simply a cultured sour skim milk. The only reason I can figure out as to why that stuff in the stores is call buttermilk is I guess they couldn't sell the name "sour milk" )

So, what kind of buttermilk do you want? Most people prefer cultured buttermilk for baking, and for a "starter culture" for your cheese.

To make CULTURED BUTTERMILK you're going to have to break down and go get the grocery store version in the beginning. (or use "Clabber" - see below for directions)

EASY, "cheater's buttermilk" - used as the stuff in the store for baking / culturing:

(this is basically just sour milk). Pour about 1/2 cup of store bought Cultured Buttermilk into a quart mason jar. Fill to the top with raw milk (warm from the cow, if you've got it that way, otherwise refrigerated milk will be OK, just takes longer).

Shake the jar and let sit in a warm spot for about a day or so. I lift off the lid periodically to see if it's sour enough. In the winter I set it on my wood stove or put warm water in my crock pot, set it on "warm" and leave it there.

When it's thick and sour, you have fake cultured buttermilk. Use it for making cottage cheese, or baking or salad dressing or any recipe that calls for cultured buttermilk. When you get down to about 1/2 cup in your jar, just refill with milk and re-culture it for another day. You can go several times re-culturing it, but once in a while I go get new store buttermilk and start over.

By the way, this is EXACTLY how to make sour cream, but use cream instead of milk. Put about 1/2 cup of cultured buttermilk in a quart jar (you can use your homemade cultured buttermilk now), add cream, and let it set out in a warm spot for a day or so with the lid ajar or covered with a towel. Just take the lid off periodically and smell it. When it's sour enough for you, it's done.

REAL Buttermilk

Take your cream jar out of the frig. Stir in 2 or 3 large spoonfuls of clabbered milk (see below). Stir well. Let sit out for the day on your counter - uncovered - either cover with a towel or leave the lid VERY loose. Check peridically to see if it has thickened. You may have to leave it overnight. Use this thick cream to make butter. The resulting "buttermilk" will be thick and yummy and excellent for baking or culturing cheese.

Clabber

Clabbered milk is a staple in my kitchen. I have a jar of it sitting out all the time. Whenever I use any, I just add a bit of milk back into it.

Clabber is naturally soured milk. Take a 1/2 quart of fresh milk and leave it out (cover with a towel or cheese cloth, but it must be able to breathe). Wait for it to clabber. Depending on the termperature in your house this could take one to three days. You are looking for it to be thick like pudding. It will smell very sour and while you can use it at this point, it's probably too sour. Dump half the jar out and replace with fresh milk and mix. Let that sit a day till it "clabbers" again. It won't be so sour now. You could even dump half of this and make a 3rd generation if it's too sour. I leave mine out, but it can be refrigerated. When I need some, I scrape the clabbered cream off the top and toss that, then spoon out whatever clabbered milk I need and refill the jar with fresh milk. Just keep the little clabber garden going. What do you use it for?

• Starter for cottage cheese
• Starter for sour cream
• Starter for cultured butter
• Add texture to baked goods such as pancakes, bread, muffins.

When the quart cream jar is full, set it out on the counter and let it come to near room temperature. (about 62 degrees actually). Pour the quart of cream into a 1/2 gallon mason jar with 2 piece metal lid, and start shaking.

(OK - I own a butter churn AND a food processor and yes, you can make butter in either of these, but I prefer the shaking method as there's lots less clean up. If I ever end up with 2 or 3 quarts of spare cream, I'll use the churn).

Shake, shake, shake. This can take 8 - 20 minutes. If it's too cold, it takes longer. Give it to the kid who is sitting in front of the television and tell them to make themselves useful!

The cream passes through several stages. First, thick cream, then fluffy "whipped cream" something about the consistancy of Cool Whip. It gets hard to shake now, but keep schleping it back and forth, as it's just about the "break" free. Then you have little butter pieces form with buttermilk.

Shake till the pieces are about pea size. Try to stop before it's one big clump as it's too hard to clean.

Remove the metal band, slide the flat lid off slightly (use it as a strainer of sorts) and pour off the buttermilk into a jar for bread, pancakes, bisquits, etc. (don't you dare throw it out, it's VALUABLE and RARE).

Fill the jar with cool water. Hold the metal lid on and shake a few times. Pour off the milky water, again using the lid as a strainer. Fill with water, shake, pour off. Repeat about 6 times. You want to keep at it til the water is clear, not milky.

Dump it in a big bowl. Sprinkle generously with sea salt. Take a flat wooden paddle (hardware store) and press the butter. Turn it, press it, turn it press it. You're "working" your butter. This gets out the extra water (which you can dump periodically as you work it) and makes the butter creamy rather than grainy.

Cut off chunks and wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in a freezer bag in your freezer for long term storage or the frig for short term storage. If it gets old or too sour for your taste, use it in baking. Sour butter makes the best bread and bisquits.

Pour 2 gallons of skimmed milk into a BIG Stainless steel bowl. (DO NOT use Aluminum - cheese will fail)

Sprinkle 2 tsp of Citric Acid over the milk (1/2 tsp for each jar of milk I use) Stir thoroughly (with plastic, wood or stainless steel - never aluminum utensil)

Let sit for 12 - 24 hours with a towel covering it to keep out dust / flies, etc.

Place bowl on top of a large pan w/ an inch or two of water in it (to make a double boiler thingy). Turn fire to high for 10 minutes. Stir the pot of milk and check to make sure it is warm (like a bath temp). You want it to feel like a tepid or warm bath - never too hot for your hand.

Drop 20 drops of rennet into a small cup of water (about 1/3 cup cold water - 5 drops rennet for each jar of milk). WHILE STIRRING, sprinkle the rennet water over the pot of milk. Stir well. Turn on the heat again, and keep stirring while the mixture heats up a bit. Eventually, the cheese will "fall out" of the whey. When it looks like most of the cheese has fallen out (the whey is kind of a milky green clear color), turn off the fire and move the bowl to the sink area.

With your clean arms, reach in and pick up the blob of cheese. It may be pretty "blobby" but do your best, hold it over the bowl and bounce it around a bit to wring out all the whey you can. Transfer to a large glass bowl.

Heat in a microwave for 35 seconds. Move the bowl back to the sink and try picking up the hot cheese. It may be very hot, so I run cool water to run my hands through while playing with it. Pull it out like taffy, fold, pull, fold, pull, knead, etc. pour off the whey as you work.

Then microwave again for 30 seconds. Repeat the pulling, kneading thing, keep dumping off the whey the comes out.

Microwave a 3rd time for 30 seconds. This time I sprinkle liberally with salt before the final taffy-pull event. Roll it up. Run cool water over it to cool it off. Put in bowl and cover with plastic wrap til it's pizza time tonight. Peel the fresh mozzarella off in sheets for the pizza.