Tree Identification - North Carolina Conifer (Solved!)

Colorado Blue Spruce! 

Update:  Identified successfully as a Colorado Blue Spruce by the awesome folks at Botany Everyday!

There is a beautiful beast of a tree in my back yard here in Western North Carolina.  It towers above the basketball post that we dug out of the honeysuckle (along with the 20+ foot of chain-link fence, a truck cap, and a dog house).

We've had to fight a constant battle with the honeysuckle in that corner of the yard.  I don't mind SOME of it there - I use the flowers and enjoy feeding it to the goats next door.  It's grown up the blackberry canes, poke stalks, and even the poor tree has been snarled up.

Once we fought the tide of vines back, Eric began doing some maintenance on the tree, a lovely smelling, deep shade giving conifer of some kind. 

I took some of the trimmed branches inside and have been trying to no avail to figure out what kind of tree this is.  So here's what I know:

The needles are green, no silver stripes, no light tips, nothing but solid green.  The cones I've seen on it are itty bitty, as below. 

The trunk is silvery green, and weeps sticky sap.  It bleeds even stickier sap when branches are cut.

There are Carolina Hemlock around here, and they are in danger from the hemlock woolly adelgid but there was no trace of any of them on this tree.  It also doesn't appear to droop like the hemlocks do.

Is it a Spruce?  It doesn't seem to be a Fir.  I'm really curious!

I've put a slideshow of closeup images from the tree below.  If you click an image, you should be taken to a page where you can see it much larger!

Cheese-making attempt #1 - Failure into Soup

Do NOT use heavy cream
when making this cheese.

I love cheese, and have long been wanting to make some in my own kitchen.  I suppose that I am preparing for the future days where I plan to wake up early in the morning, milk the goats that I don't have yet, and spend the morning making fresh cheeses and yogurt...hmmm...sounds nice.

So it makes sense to start with a very simple recipe when embarking on a new project, right?  After reading the book written by the ladies behind "Little House in the Suburbs," (book review coming soon!) I decided to buckle down and try to make the basic "Vinegar Cheese."

The basic concept behind the process is to heat milk just to boiling, add vinegar (or lemon juice) to encourage the curds and whey to separate, and then strain the solids for a few hours.  The end result is a bowl of whey to use in stocks or recipes, and a lump of white cheese that works like tofu or paneer in cooking.

Easy, right?  Hard to mess up, right?

WRONG!

I broke the cardinal rule of trying a recipe for the first time.  I substituted ingredients.  

Instead of whole milk, I decided that heavy whipping cream would make even richer, sweeter, fatter cheese!  However, when I added the vinegar to the hot cream, it did NOTHING.  I added a splash more. NOTHING.  No curds, no separation.  Damn it all!

The consolation prize: Salmon bisque, wine,
and cream cheese pie!

The internet had no advice for me, and letting the pot sit for a while didn't work either.  *sigh*  I dipped my spoon into the lovely, thick cream and tasted it...and it had a great flavor!  Well...what could I do with a pot full of vinegar cream? 

Opening myself to the possibilities to recover this mess into something edible, I dug through my available ingredients until I found something reasonable...frozen organic salmon, red potatoes, Old Bay seasoning...a-HA!

Salmon chowder!

I thawed the salmon, set it to marinate in Old Bay and pale  beer, diced and boiled the taters, and then added it all to the soup and cooked it on low for hours.  At various times, I opened the lid, gave a sample, and then seasoned it to taste.

I cooked up some quick croissants to go along with the soup, and finished the dinner off with Eric's birthday dessert, a cream cheese pie (modified the recipe to go into graham cracker crust with croissant top)!

Oh well....Eric loved the soup, the pie, and the wine, so I suppose that it was a win even if the cheese itself was a failure!

Don't worry, I WILL try again.  Hopefully, next time, there will be cheese!