I have string cheese around pretty much all the time. Because instant-cheese satisfaction makes sense to me. I wondered if mozzarella stuffed meatloaf was a thing, and of course it was. I had the ingredients and I made it. It was fairly heavy for a warm day meal, but it was delicious, so I'm writing it down.

Cheese Stuffed Meatloaf

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 lb ground beef
• 1 pkg (12oz/4ea) Isernios Hot Italian Sausages, removed from casings
• 1 stalk celery, fine chop
• 1 large carrot, fine chop
• 1/2 cup Italian panko breadcrumbs
• extra rosemary as desired
• 1 egg
• sat & pepper
• 4 sticks string cheese, um...out of the packaging. :)
• 3 Tbsp ketchup
• 2 Tbsp dijon mustard

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Heat oven to 350.
2. Line a loaf pan with foil, leaving edges up like a sling
3. Mix all ingredients, save for the string cheese, with your hands, combining ingredients well.
4. Take about 3/4 of the meat mixture and form a sort of "tray" in the bottom of the loaf pan about 1-1.5" thick with slightly raised sides.
5. Lay mozzarella sticks out in this trough, tuck the rest of the meat mixture on top of and around the mozzarella sticks.
6. Bake uncovered in oven for 1-1 1/2 hours
7. Mix together ketchup and dijon to make a simple glaze (alternately, try a splash of some leftover favorite spaghetti sauce)
8. Brush top of meatloaf with this sauce and broil until starting to bubble and brown
9. Remove from oven, lift meatloaf out with sling and place on cutting board to rest for 3-5 minutes
10. Slice and carefully transfer to plates.

I feel like the "rubberiness", for lack of a better term, is wha makes the string cheese a good candidate for filling. It doesn't all spill out when you cut it. Resting it helps as well, letting it cool down a smidge so it regains some structure.

In the future I could see adding some veggies to this middle zone, maybe some red peppers, spinach, etc. I didn't have them for this go-round.

Browned Butter Rice Krispie Cheesecake with Bourbon Caramel Sauce

INGREDIENTS
Browned Butter Rice Krispies
4 Tbsp butter
1/2 a stick
8 cups Rice Krispies cereal
1⁄2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp sea salt
16 oz mini marshmallows

No-bake Cheesecake Filling
16 oz cream cheese 2 packages
14 oz sweetened condensed milk
1⁄4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract

Bourbon Caramel Sauce
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1⁄2 cup Heavy cream
1 Tbsp bourbon

DIRECTIONS
Make Browned Butter Rice Krispies "Crust"

1. Heat a large nonstick sautee pan over medium heat until hot. Add cereal and stir occasionally until lightly toasted and fragrant (5-7 minutes). Remove from heat and set aside. 
2. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring constantly. It will begin to foam, and soon after will brown, emitting a nutty aroma. Turn off the heat and add the salt and vanilla.
3. Add half marshmallows at a time to browned butter, stirring regularly until marshmallows are melted. If you need to, return to low heat to aid the melting process. 
4. Add rice cereal to marshmallow mixture and mix until cereal is evenly coated with marshmallow mixture. 
5. Transfer 2/3 to a glass pie pan/dish or springform pan, and the rest to a separate baking dish. Using the bottom of a flat bottomed glass, press rice mixture in pie pan into a "crust" about 1/2'-3/4" thick. Press the other portion of rice mixture to a similar thickness--we will cut this up to use as a garnish later, so it doesn't need to reach the edges of the pan. Set aside to cool while you make the cream cheese filling and sauce.

Make the Cheesecake

1. Beat cream cheese in large bowl until smooth using electric mixer or Kitchenaid mixer. 
2. Blend in the condensed milk a bit at a time, scraping down sides periodically. Add in lemon juice and vanilla. 
3. Pour filling into Rice Krispies crust, smoothing the top. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerator for 2 1/2-3 hours until firm. Meanwhile, make the sauce.

Make the Sauce

1. Simmer sugar and 1/4 cup water over medium heat, swirling pan rather than stirring for 15 minutes until a deep amber color. Keep a close eye so it doesn't burn.
2. Turn off the burner. Remove pan from the heat, and slowly add cream while stirring.
3. Add bourbon and optionally a pinch of salt, then put back on burner with residual warmth and stir all together. 
4. Transfer to a heat-safe dish or bottle to let cool (canning jars are great for this). Sauce can be covered and stored in the refrigerator. When ready to use, bring to room temp, heat in a warm water bath, or microwave opened jar for 30 seconds in the microwave.

One fun thing about my studio is that I get to play with automation, aka Smart Home Stuff, a lot. My goal from the beginning was to make things run as smoothly as possible even when I am not there to troubleshoot. Yeah, sometimes technology just complicates things (and I've had my share of hiccups already), but hopefully in the long run it will make the studio a more comfortable and enjoyable place for everyone with minimal regular intervention in some areas.

Case in point: The Warehouse came with a very dumb thermostat--like, I haven't seen one like it since I was a kid. Also, it is a VERY big room, and this winter I learned that in colder months, it costs a lot to maintain a palatable temperature, and it takes several hours to raise the temperature even a few degrees. We're working on better insulation to help with these issues, but in the meantime, I was having to show up two to three hours prior to my classes to turn the heat on. I was trying to figure out how to deal with that when other people rent the room, so I don't have to go down and turn the heat on for them, or expect them to arrive that early.

So far I have a two part solution; pardon me while I geek out a bit:

First, Chris gifted me a Nest. I wasn't going to splurge quite that much on a smart thermostat, but the pricing has come down on their lower end model, and it's a familiar ecosystem for me since we have one in our home. This allowed me to set schedules by day of the week, so I was able to stop coming in so early so often, and this worked well for other regular weekly renters as well. However, there is no app currently available for scheduling by date (why is that?! this is a no-brainer!). So I had to wonder, what about a one-time rental? Was I going to have to set myself reminders for every event, make sure I was near my phone or computer to turn the heat on personally for every renter? That was not going to fly...

Second, enter IFTTT, aka If This Then That. It's an incredibly robust platform for programming specific triggers to perform actions--known as "applets"--seamlessly integrating systems which don't necessarily "talk" to each other natively. There are many technologies which partner with IFTTT, and make pre-programmed applets to perform functions, from simple to complex. In this case, I leveraged multiple applets to achieve what I was trying to accomplish. I am now able to use my Google Calendar to trigger my Nest thermostat. But my situation was unique, and I needed a trigger to happen BEFORE the event takes place. Thus I was able to use my Google Calendar, talking to my Gmail, which IFTTT then recognizes and then sends a command to my Nest. The solution wasn't immediately obvious, but here's how it works:

I have set up separate calendars for each room I rent out at the studio. This allows me to see availability at a glance when renters are inquiring about renting. Additionally, I preface every calendar entry with a room designation, like "JB - Shay Rental" for me renting the JewelBox studio, or "OR - Susie Rental" for Susie the Orange Room, WH for Warehouse, etc.

Each calendar has various settings you can tweak, and in this case, I set this calendar to e-mail me a reminder notification two hours before the start of any event added to that calendar.

Over in Gmail, I set up a filter such that any e-mail that comes in from "google-notifications@google.com", and has "Notification: WH" in the title, gets immediately labeled "Warehouse Nest Trigger" and is archived (aka skips the inbox). This is so it doesn't ping my inbox and send me push notifications every time it happens, nor do I have to go archive them all the time. This is important because I hope to have more smart thermostats in the future, all with similar automation in place, and I don't want my inbox clogging up and "ding! ding! ding!"ing me notifications constantly.

I set up an applet in IFTTT to regularly scan my Gmail for anything with the label "Warehouse Nest Trigger". If it finds a new message with this label, I instructed it to turn the Nest to 65 degrees.

Thus, two hours before an event in the Warehouse, my Google Calendar sends a message to my Gmail, which IFTTT then sees and triggers the Nest to turn up the heat. Not the most elegant solution, but it means all I have to do is enter rental times into my Google Calendar as I normally do (no change in behavior on my part from here on out), and the thermostat takes care of itself.

And to make this all a nice neat package, there was already a native applet which will trigger Nest to turn the heat back to its lower holding temperature at the end of any event. So when BillyJo's event ends at 5pm, IFTTT tells the Nest to lower the temp back down.

In related Smart Studio news, I already have some smart plugs in place which schedule lights and space heaters to go on at certain times related to when I or other renters are regularly there. In particular, I have a set of lights that go on at dusk every day and then shut off at midnight, so there are always some lights on when it's dark out, making us feel safer as we come and go. But when I visit the studio, I like to have some of those lights on even in the daytime, just for inviting pooled lighting in darker corners of the space. While tweaking my smart apps, I have finally set up some presence triggers at the studio such that when I arrive, key lights will turn on no matter what the day/time. Unfortunately, a limitation in the system is I can't do the reverse, and have them turn off when I leave. Otherwise if I leave them on for a renter and then go away...they will turn off. So I will have to remember to turn them off manually.

It is interesting to probe the logic which drives smart technology, to suss out the strengths and weaknesses. Unexpected outcomes are certain, and thinking through what a given string of triggers will accomplish is necessary to also reveal unintended consequences. I often read posts on forums by people who want to use presence sensors to unlock their front door, for instance. Sounds pretty cool, except in my personal use case with triggers at home, there were times I was driving past my house (not even on my street, but close by) and my house recognized my "presence" and triggered automations. In this case, harmless ones like turning on lights and a push notification, but if it were unlocking my front door...!!

It's been an interesting journey, studio ownership thus far, and this is just one fun facet I am working on to make Studio Deep Roots even more unique, special, and welcoming.

Thanks to Sous Vide Everything's recent video on making Queso Blanco cheese with sous vide (see video at end of post), I decided I wanted to give it a try. All I needed was a gallon of milk, which was easy enough. I already had the vinegar, cheesecloth, and circulator. In researching a few other similar methods, I also discovered some options for goat cheese, which I also wanted to try. So I stopped by Central Market, where I knew I could get good organic cow's milk as well as goat's milk. On the way home I swung by a homebrew shop to get some chevre starter and a mold/form similar to the one in the video. I also grabbed some rennet for future cheesemaking attempts, and grabbed a couple chef pans from Seattle Restaurant Supply to make the process a little easier to set up now and in the future, since I don't have a good large shallow pan for larger sous vide operations.

Once home, I set straight to work on the Queso Blanco. Immediately I got the sense the this was a more labor-intensive way to do this than the good old fashioned stovetop. Setting up sous vide is worth it for the right applications, but is just trading stove-tending time for set up and break down time in other cases, as well as a lot of wasted water (in summer I will water my garden with it and it isn't so wasted, but in winter...it tends to just go right down the drain, which I am not pleased about). Such was the case here. I simply had to bring the milk up to about 180 degrees without scalding it, then add the acidic element--in my case apple cider vinegar--to form curds. Then strain with cheesecloth, season, and set into the mold. Voila.

I started with hot water from the tap, but in a large shallow container like this, it was cooling as I was filling. So it took a bit of time to get the water up to temp, and even longer of course to get the milk to come to 180. I just went and watched a movie, knowing that I couldn't possibly scald it or overheat it--that was the one good reason to have it sous vide. Unfortunately partway through, our Nomiku decided to just stop working. Luckily I was nearby to see the screen tell me as much, as it gave no other warning. Luckily, we had our Anova nearby so I swapped it out and kept going, but now we may have a dead Nomiku? Hrm... No time to troubleshoot.

Basically everything went just as demonstrated in the video. I added significantly less vinegar however, as most recipes I saw called for 1/4-1/2 cup compared to their fully 1 cup serving. I ended up using a half cup and it was plenty. Any more and I think the cheese itself may have tasted vinegary. At this point, we had plenty of curds...and a very bland cheese.

I poured it into the cheesecloth, squeezed out excess moisture, then turned it into a bowl. I seasoned with Kosher salt, stirred with my fingers to incorporate it, and pressed it into the mold. Today I have a beautiful little cheese. Probably a beautiful little bland cheese.

Edited to add: I did finally try the cheese. Despite feeling like I salted the hell out of it, the salt is very very light. I remember this from a cheese-making class we took maybe 10 years ago, now. Salt it more than you think, as it will mellow. The vinegar flavor is coming through, not in an entirely bad way; but if we had used an entire cup I think it would have been unsavory to us. Ultimately, the cheese is pretty...plain. I mean, I guess that's the point of queso blanco--to be a more neutral kind of base cheese? I think if I made it again, I would a) add more salt definitely and b) herb it up. We're going to try it on tacos for dinner tonight (using the whey from the process to marinate the chicken, which is also a new thing we're trying), and will see how it goes. I can also make a flavored dip from it

I can say the mold was nice to have, for aesthetic results, but is entirely unnecessary.

So on to the goat cheese. This one needed to be heated to a much lower temperature, 87 degrees, and then had to be held at 73-ish for 12+ hours. This is where I thought the sous vide would really shine, being able to hold the cheese at a precise temperature all night long, letting the cultures do their work in an optimal environment.

I washed the the inner liner from the cow's cheese and poured in the goat cheese. Since the water bath was coming down from over 100 degrees, and the milk coming up to try to reach 87, I set it in right away. After 45 minutes, the milk was getting close to 87, but the bath was still over 100, so I dropped in some ice cubes and voila. The happy medium occurred and I hit 87. Dropped the sous vide temp, dropped in more ice cubes to bring it down, and then added the chevre starter. I THINK this may be where things went awry...?

I don't buy cookbooks, because most everything you want to make has free recipes online. Cheesemaking is no exception...except! Lots of people using lots of different methods and different products, all which require subtly different treatment of the materials at hand. So I had a chevre starter which didn't require rennet or extra citric acid, but doing searches for "goat cheese home made with starter" and similar, I was getting a lot of people who had different starters, or combinations of starters. Looking without the starter or culture in the search terms, I got the same farmer cheese methods as the queso blanco, with lemon or vinegar to trigger a curdle, which supposedly has less flavorful results. Only a couple had done theirs with a chevre starter, but none mentioned the brand, so I couldn't be sure it was the same. But both of them used half the volume of milk the packet was to cover, so they used half the starter. That seemed logical and I did the same, erring on the side of more starter.

I set it to go for the night, watched some television, and went to bed, expecting a "goat yogurt consistency" by morning. 13 hours later...it was very very thin. Some culturing (is that a verb?) had occurred, but it seemed like a watered-down yogurt at best. But looking at videos, other people's results were from a regular yogurt to a thicker custard consistency. I tried to find ways to fix it, but none of the recommendations had any insight for me other than "next time", including one site I found that I hadn't the day before saying using less than a packet of starter, even if you use less milk, will cause it to fail. So perhaps my culture was more like the one in that company's line, and I should have used the whole packet? I don't know. But as soon as I started spooning out the "curds" it was dissolving into slippery milk. It wasn't holding.

I tried pouring it through a cheesecloth, and it was thickened enough that it wouldn't go through without squeezing, but it was not whey coming out but plenty of the fats as well that hadn't properly cultured/curdled. I tried adding some lemon juice to see if it would curdle further, but it didn't do a thing.

I gently squeezed a while, getting goat milk all over the inside of my sink as it squeezed out of any ready hole in the cheesecloth. I got it down to about half volume and decided to string it up and hang for the morning anyway, to see what comes of it. Probably I will just have a pot filled with milk and a limp wet cheesecloth, but we'll see in a few hours...

So ultimately? I don't think the sous vide is necessary. Even the goat cheese, which could be held at precisely 73 degrees, most people just set the pot on a counter with a towel over it and the residual heat, while sitting at room temperature, does the trick. So the water, power, and effort to set up/teat down sous vide for that seems unnecessary.

Sadly, the non-homogenized organic local goat milk cost me $10 for a 1/2 gallon, so I am not just running out to the store to try again when I can get really delicious local, organic, farmstead cheese sold to me in a neat package at my store for less. I will try again sometime, but at that price point, I am not sure the result will be "roll my eyes back in my head so worth it" kind of cheese...?

EDITED TO ADD:

Here is the video from Sous Vide Everything, for those interested