Curds and whey

I made a feta today, thanks to mizzly wet weather which kept me out of the garden.

Here the curds and whey had separated and I was ladling the curds out of the pan into a cheesecloth-lined colander to begin the draining process.

Three hours later, the curds have now been salted and put into a mould where the cheese will remain for the next 24 hours before going into the fridge to mature for five days.

It’s been a quiet and uneventful day.

There are terrible scenes of flood devastation in west Auckland. It took everybody by surprise and it took a while before the seriousness of the situation was properly understood last night, by which time lives had been lost, vehicles and properties were underwater.

The Council is coming in for a lot of criticism, and the new Mayor didn’t inspire much confidence at today’s press stand-up. In a previous existence I was involved in Emergency Management (during Christchurch earthquakes) and it is utterly chaotic at the beginning of an emergency as the information starts to flood in about what’s going on. That notwithstanding the response in Auckland seems to have been slow at first…and remarkably disjointed.

It was very hard not to compare our new PM’s performance at that stand-up with that of our previous PM. Less than a week in the job and he’s dealing with an emergency. He did okay I thought. I wouldn’t do that job for quids.