Rhonda with Earl and Louise
Rhonda is a professional artist with many talents. When she was younger, she made her living any way she could – by hanging wallpaper, waitressing and cleaning houses. Now, she’s a painter, a potter, a jewelry maker, a yoga teacher, a bass player, a whole grain sourdough bread baker and a cheesemaker.
On top of all that – When she was living on Ocracoke Island in 1994, she won the North Carolina Release Award for catching the most Citation Red Drum Fish in one year. She tagged and released 87 big fish. To be a Citation they had to be 40 inches or longer(!)
Rhonda’s Story
I’m in North Carolina on the OuterBanks on Hatteras Island. I’m married and I have two grown boys and one six year old granddaughter.
My granddaughter, Kloe
My youngest son Austin and his first homemade sourdough bread with Kalamata olives
Chris, at home in Hull, Massachusetts
In 2000, we built our wood burning kiln and my painting studio and then our house in Frisco. We’ve been here for 20 years.
Twelve years later, after renting different retail spaces, we finally bought an old cottage that had been lifted up after Hurricane Emily in 92. The whole underneath is a big open space that we turned into a theater and now it’s a yoga studio. It also has a kitchen where we might do some bread baking and cheese making classes.
My husband, Wes is an amazing banjo player and plays guitar and has a beautiful voice. He also writes songs. Did I mention that he teaches yoga? Yes, he’s a yoga instructor!
With Wes, playing in our band, Banjo Island. We used to have a show every Wednesday night. We seated 80 people and often played to a packed house. Our band was also the host band for the Outer Banks Bluegrass Festival. Our big thrill one year was presenting two large tiles to Rhonda Vincent on stage. She’s a famous Bluegrass star. They depicted my interpretation of a song she wrote called “Blue Sky Cathedral.” We also opened up for Ricky Scaggs, another Bluegrass legend. We have an old school bus and we would bring it and set it up as a green room for the musicians to relax and have some refreshments. Wes organized band competitions and late night jams. He also organized a fundraiser for the infamous Tony Rice.
I’ve been making whole grain sourdough bread for about 5 years. Cheese making is very new.
Pottery and painting are my job. I have a shop called Red Drum Pottery and a website – reddrumpottery.com and another one – Batesgallery.com.
In my studio, I’m always coming up with something new. I’ve created over 600 molds to make our relief tiles (and over 100 ornament molds).
This vase is from a mold of a carving of a scene I did. I rolled it around and seamed it up and threw a base and a top and attached it on the wheel.
My vegetable man (below) and my turtle is a two part mold I made from a real (dead) sea turtle.
Last August I had a showing of my paintings sponsored by our local arts council in the old court house in Manteo, NC (on Roanoke Island). Painting is my true love!
I’ve mostly painted in watercolor but my show was with a new and exciting medium- water mixable oil paints.
This is a watercolor painting.
My bread is mostly whole grain spelt. I have a Mockmill so I can buy fresh organic grains and grind my own. I make a young levain with rolled oats and a rye starter I make the night before.
My spelt loaf, baked in a Dutch oven
I also bake with Kamut, Emmer, Einkorn and different white and red whole wheat. Sometimes I add all of them. Sometimes I add other things like buckwheat millet and sorghum.
I make cinnamon raisin bread with spelt. And I add pumpkin seeds and other seeds and nuts to some of my loaves.
In 2021, some of my bread friends on Wholegrain Sourdough Baker (Alfiya Todd and Shirley Hampshire) started making cheese and posting pictures and I became intrigued.
Years ago I had made some yogurt cheese (I guess back in my old hippy, back to the land survival days. Back then, I had a big garden and canned a lot. I started making bread, too, but I didn’t get into sourdough until the last 5 years.
So, now, I’m hooked on making cheese.
Getting ready to cut up some feta to put in the brine
I’ve been collecting tools and cultures, etc.
I have a cheap press I got off of Amazon. I’ll eventually get a better one. It’s kinda flimsy.
I happened to already have the cheese cave.
Alpine tomme, blue cheese and Gruyere
Mainly, I like learning new things and I love a challenge. And it’s opening up a whole new world. I’ve been watching videos and I’ve bought 3 books so far. I’ve bought a lot of my supplies from New England Cheese Making Supply Co. (Thanks for being there!)
It’s a new challenge for me. And I find it really interesting and kinda like caring for a pet. I flip my cheese and wipe it and watch it change. It’s fascinating.
Curds that have just been cut.
Curds that have been stirred for 45 minutes.
Curds draining in butter muslin.
My first goat’s milk Cheddar cheese
My goat’s milk Cheddar air drying for a couple of days
I started with Belper Knolle, cream cheese, feta and whey ricotta.
Pressing cream cheese. After that, I put it on a bamboo mat and into the regular refrigerator to drain. That makes it thicker, like Philadelphia Cream Cheese only better. I wrap it with cheese cloth to hold its shape while it’s draining in the refrigerator.
Whey ricotta after pressing
Then, I got bold and made a blue cheese from Stilton Crumbles – a type of crumbly delicious blue cheese with a natural rind which I bought at Fresh Market. I took a few pea-sized pieces and broke them up into tiny pieces and whisked it into my milk when I put the mesophilic culture in. I also took some and smeared it on a piece of sourdough bread and let it grow on the bread. Then, I dried it out and put it in a jar.
Now, I have blue culture to inoculate future batches. I have a blue cheese ripening in my cave right now. It’s been in there for 12 days and it’s getting blue. I’ll poke holes in it today to get the blue veins to form. I made it with the blue mold I grew on the sourdough bread. It worked really well, much to my amazement!
Holes poked in the blue
I’m going to share some of my blue cheese with a friend this weekend. She’s a cheese enthusiast. So, I hope she is impressed.
I’ve signed up for the Blue Cheese Challenge in the Learn to Make Cheese group of Facebook. It’s so much fun.
I also just got a yogurt maker and some special bacteria that’s supposed to help you in every way (L-Reuteri). It has to be cultured at 100F for 36 hours. My friend’s husband who has Parkinson’s is eating it and it’s supposed to help with autoimmune diseases and osteoporosis and dementia and it makes your skin young again. I had to try making my own.*
My goal is to have a cheese tasting party. I am in a meditation group. Every Tuesday night we meet and every time, I bring something to share – gluten free cookies or homemade bread. And I’m wanting to share something different. I think everyone would love to try my homemade cheese.
I didn’t realize how rare it was. I posted my blue cheese on Facebook and all my friends were very complimentary and amazed. I guess cheese making is not something everyone does. And my friends are curious.
I might get some more converts. I might even do a cheese workshop at my shop. I have a kitchen below and I’ve had a few people ask about it.
I love cooking, baking and making new things. I’ve always loved cheese and now I can make and experiment with natural rinds. I might even come up with my own unique cheeses!
Red Drum Pottery
reddrumpottery.com
Bates Gallery
Batesgallery.com
*It’s just like making regular yogurt but you use the L.Reuteri culture and 2 quarts of half and half. And you add Inulin powder as a prebiotic. I make a slurry and add it to some yogurt from a previous batch and some half and half then add in the rest of the half and half.
If you watch Dr. William Davis’s YouTube video he explains how fermenting it a long time makes the L.Reuteri grow a lot more than conventional yogurt.
