I think Tina is getting inspired by our recipe book on our site and getting active in baking all kinds of things.  Here is a Lemon Tart she made.  Was very good I must add.

Tina baked this Mushroom Cheesecake with our cheese today - Celery soft cheese, Cheddar and Mozarella on the top.  Will post recipes soon in our Recipe Book.

Here is a excellent article by Vandana Shiva that reiterates the need of the day - return to non-oil based, non industrial farming that respects the basics of soil and diversity.  Read it at Soil Not Oil - Why We Need to Kick Petroleum of Our Farms

If you are in Coimbatore, Coonoor or Ooty, look out for the Acres Wild Cheese poster shown below.  It also has a list of other outlets at the bottom.

Tina finally made Mozzarella the way she says is the correct way to make it.  Here are some photos.  Tomorrow we will eat it!

A panther was spotted along with the bisons this morning inside Acres Wild by our staff.  Have to ask a few more questions to figure out the details which I will post here later.

One thing is for sure, they are coming for the ducks and hens and goats.  None have been attacked so far.

In case you need a program to read out the text on your screen or in some documents including word and pdf files, you should try out Text Aloud.  It is absolutely fabulous.  You can also get the program to make an mp3 file of any text you want and store it on your computer to play back later or email it or put it on your website as I have done for some pages.

I went for an English-Indian voice that you have to buy separately.  Very pleasing to my ‘Indian’ ears and must say the reader, a female voice that the programmers call Sangeeta, manages to get a lot of the pronunciations correct.  Including pretty good attempts at proper nouns.

Here is an example of her reading out the Main Page of our website.
Text to Voice of Acres Wild Index Page

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

We have made and stocked Ricotta Cheese at Baker’s Junction in Coonoor.   It went very quickly and good too as it has a short shelf life of only about a week.  About 4 weeks if vacuum packed which we are now doing.

Ricotta Cheese at Acres Wild Cheesemaking Farm, Coonoor.

Ricotta is a cheese made from the whey that is left over after any other cheese is made.  Below are 2 photos of skimming the Ricotta from the top of the whey and pouring it into a plastic basket to form.

2 days back a local lady spotted a panther near the road at the entrance of Acres Wild Farm and promptly fainted.  Some 15 jeeps of forest officials descended to trap the poor animal and another panther that was spotted at the same time managed to escape.  Much excitement though for a minute the scene looked more like they had found a terrorist ‘holed up’ in the bushes :-).

Anyway it confirmed once again that panthers are around Coonoor and definitely at Acres Wild.  And yes, we have to be a bit more careful.

As a surprise, Tina suddenly rolled out our version of a popular cheese that we call Acres-Fetta Cheese.  However she made it of cow’s mik.  It was very good as far as I could make out but we were reassured by our neighbours who bought it from Baker’s Junction, Coonoor.  They said it was………. well better you get some and find out

Acres-Fetta from Acres Wild Cheesemaking Farm, Coonoor, Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India.

After a long gap since we first made Camembert, Tina has now got back into action finally.  And the result is very good. First 2 pieces sold out within 24 hours so there are definitely some Camembert lovers around.

Camembert at Acres Wild Cheesemaking Farm

Our Camembert is in regular production and we will be keeping it from Baker’s Junction Coonoor for the time being.  In a short while we will introduce it in Oxford Bookstore, Coimbatore too as we have got good response from there too.

Camembert Maturing in Temperature Controlled Fridge

Our Video Collection

The above media player will have a complete list of videos on this site.

These videos will also be available from other relevant places in the site for eg. Cheesemaking videos from the cheese pages etc.

Check out the Sept Issue of Outlook Traveller for an article on Acres Wild Cheese by Brinda.  Printing the excerpt relating to Acres Wild Cheese here below……………….

THE BIG CHEESE
Brinda Suri on Coonoor’s quiet cheese revolution

Move over Niligiri tea, Niligiri cheese is the current flavour of the quiet, blue hills. After Ooty and Kodaikanal cheese, the latest hill station to make cheese news is Coonoor.The tucked-away town unexpectedly held new meaning when a department store salesperson in Bedford, Upper Coonoor, asked whether I needed ‘hard or soft cheese’. Standard grocery shops don’t usually offer such options. A little probing revealed…………………………………… quite a variety in Colby, Gouda, Gruyère, Camembert, Havarti, Monterey Jack, etc.

I’m always sniffing around for fresh and natural-rind cheese, a subject of many a discussion courtesy my grandfather, a dairy specialist. I’ve relished his numerous cheese tales, the most delicious being those about his official bungalows with cellars full of cheese and I’ve always rued the fact that I wasn’t around then.

Acres Wild cheese, shares its name with the farm where it’s prepared. It’s also widely known as ‘Tina’s cheese’, a compliment to someone who started on a modest scale. It all began in 2006 when Tina Fonseca and her husband Mansoor Khan decided to move from the bustle of Bombay to the quiet of Coonoor. “The farm is largely our effort to shape a self-sustaining, organic lifestyle—to whatever degree that’s possible. So initially we kept cows for fertiliser, so came the milk and now the cheese,” says Mansoor, reflecting on a way of life far removed from his days under the arc lights. Yes, you do know him, as a film director who’s tasted success with blockbusters like QSQT, Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander and as co-producer of the latest hit Jaane Tu…

But today he would rather be associated with the Acres Wild concept of farming and its cheese which has built up a reputation with connoisseurs. The couple zealously logs in all experiences on their website which has become an interactive platform for those with similar interests.

Only select stores in Coonoor, Ooty and Coimbatore retail………….  The result is cheese that’s a must-buy on your next trip to the Nilgiris.

Contact
Tina & Mansoor Khan: No 1 Tiger Hill, Coonoor, Farm Address: 571, Upper Meanjee Estate, Kannimariamman Kovil Street, Coonoor; www.acres-wild.com

Our friends Richard and Amy Wolf invited us to visit a Kota village where Richard has done extensive work in researching for his book ‘The Black Cow’s Footprint’. So we went there this morning and stayed for lunch too.

Sacred Ground in Kota Village with House of Gods.

Our host was a yound Kota man called Duryodhan who is a musician and plays the traditional Kota musical instruments.  He was enthusiastic in showing us all around.  Luckily Duryodhan speaks pretty good english.  Richard gave us an extensive backdrop on many aspects of Kota life, history and traditions.  I will be adding more info on all the local tribes as we discover more ourselves.

The lunch had their traditional dishes that we ate in the kitchen of their house pictured above.  It consisted of a dish make of rice and ‘raagi’ combined and a gravy that had beans and potatoes made in Kota style of course.  Very simple yet very tasty.  You can see the photographs of our visit in the Photo Gallery.

The Hindu Metro, Coimbatore covered the launch of our cheese at the Oxford Bookstore.   The reporter is Pankaja, Senior Correspondent an old friend from our early days of hacking at making cheese.  Pankaja had done another article on Acres Wild cheese in 2006.

Photo: K. Ananthan (courtesy The Hindu)

In this new article Pankaja has conveyed the idea behind our cheesemaking very accurately and with her characteristic sense of humour.  READ THE ARTICLE HERE.

A big event for us was our cheese launch at Oxford Bookstore and Cha Bar in Coimbatore.  Thanks to Rajeev and Priya the owners, there was a great turnout of a wide cross section of people.  Most of them are patrons of their bookstore and avid readers.  So most of them were very knowledgeable about cheese and had lots of questions to ask Tina about the process of making gourmet cheese.

After the talk the guests got a chance to sample our cheeses that included our new range of flavoured hard cheeses like Smoked Gouda and Caraway Gouda which were instant hits.  We are most encouraged and looking forward to experimenting with more flavours in hard cheese.

The Happy Owners - Rajeev and Priya.

Oxford Bookstore stocks lots of books on Cheese, cheese recipes, gourmet food and wines.  Apart from that they have an excellent selection of books of all kinds, books and games for children.

And the Cha Bar part is excellent too.  We sampled some delicious grilled sandwiches and different varieties of tea made to perfection.  Do check them out when you are in Coimbatore at Ground Floor, Red Rose Chambers, 1437, Trichy Road, Coimbatore 641 018.

Phone: 91-422-420-4804

email: oxfordcoimbatore@yahoo.com

This guy predicted the credit crisis way back in 2006 and here he is addressing this to a group of mortgage bankers and trying to make them wake up. Wonder how many of them did.

Ok we have hit the main street in Ooty and that is the place most people go to buy all the stuff that Nilgiri and Ooty has to offer.  So now they can even buy Acres Wild cheese from Shivani Stores that is right in the centre of Commercial Street in Ooty.

Just one cow can raise crops on 30 acres. This news article about Shri Subhash Palekar of Maharashtra is worth reading as he calls his method ‘zero budget farming’.  In the age of mindless and reckless chemical farming he stresses the importance of just a single cow to manage a field of upto 30 acres.  Sounds a little too much for all of us who were brought up on industrial concepts of productivity and agriculture.