Yesterday my inital plan was to stay in bed. All day. The Boy didn't like this plan, and literally handed me clothes and told me to get dressed. Plan B was to do some sort of cooking/canning. I wanted to make French Dip Sandwiches, and I've been wanting to make Au Jus for sometime. But for Au Jus you need beef stock. And if I'm going to have beef stock around, I might as well make it myself.
I hit up Stewart's and got a bag of frozen beef bones (swear to goodness, it's huge. Probably 10 lbs.) and also a lb of stew meat (I figured some for the beef stock for flavor, the rest in... stew?) and a butterflied chicken breast (I wanted chicken strips for dinner since the Beef stock was going to take 8 hours or so).
On my way home, I was kindly reminder of a previous engagement I had made. So I was forced to scratch the beef stock until later that night. I figured I wouldn't be able to give it a full 8 hour cook, but at least 6 or so. Instead, I ended up taking the Boy to the hospital (he's fine) and we didn't finish up there until 0500. We finally got home about 0615, and I slept on and off for most of the morning.
Hopefully I will be able to whip something up tonight and pump it out. Not sure if I'll can it tonight, but we'll see.
Showing posts with label organic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organic. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Holy Home Compost, Batman!
My sister sent me an email last night with the subject "I think you need this". This could have included many things at this point; some sort of kitchen device, a baby chick, maybe anti-psychotics? Instead I was delight to see a picture of a home compost bin and the words"You can make your own dirt!".
The really sad part is, I honestly got really excited. I've been looking into home composting for awhile, and just hadn't found anything practical yet. Like I've said many times before, I'm on a limited budget, so spending $300 on a home version just isn't in the cards (regardless of it being $50 off).
The version my sister sent me appears to be a Keter 120 Gallon Composter. That is an optimum size for me, and a great price (about $60-70). I really didn't have a ton of organic scraps when I started this adventure. But now that I'm canning and cooking almost exclusively at home, I'm starting to get a good size pile (and right now that's what it is, discreetly hidden under a tree in my side yard). I'm going to head to the local big box store where she saw it this weekend, and depending on my paycheck this week, I might make the investment. I was also thinking about getting a kitchen bucket because well, I'm lazy. I don't want to have to run out to the big bin every time I have a handful of scraps.
Hopefully this works and doesn't just turn into a pile of rotting gross.
The really sad part is, I honestly got really excited. I've been looking into home composting for awhile, and just hadn't found anything practical yet. Like I've said many times before, I'm on a limited budget, so spending $300 on a home version just isn't in the cards (regardless of it being $50 off).
The version my sister sent me appears to be a Keter 120 Gallon Composter. That is an optimum size for me, and a great price (about $60-70). I really didn't have a ton of organic scraps when I started this adventure. But now that I'm canning and cooking almost exclusively at home, I'm starting to get a good size pile (and right now that's what it is, discreetly hidden under a tree in my side yard). I'm going to head to the local big box store where she saw it this weekend, and depending on my paycheck this week, I might make the investment. I was also thinking about getting a kitchen bucket because well, I'm lazy. I don't want to have to run out to the big bin every time I have a handful of scraps.
Hopefully this works and doesn't just turn into a pile of rotting gross.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
It's Market time!
I don't give a hoot about April Fool's Day, April showers, blah blah blah. But I'm super excited that today is April 1st! Why? Because that means the Farmer's Market is opening tomorrow!
Our local farmer's market is open Thurs-Sun from April until Oct., and weekends in Nov. and Dec. I'm very excited for all the fresh produce, flowers and meats! Even honey! We have a quite large farmer's market that actually has it's own allotted space by the city, and is housed in an honest to god open air building!
One of the best things about this is that all the local places I would normally go to (or not, because some aren't open to the public) are all in one place! I can get my hand-ground meats, veggies and flowers for my table all in one place! Another good thing is that the majority of the merchants at the Market are small family-owned farms and ranches. They grow as much as they can, and sell what they can't use themselves. Some even have co-op programs, or buy-ins; where you pay a small deposit and two or three payments pre-season and from July through October you have a batch of veggies dropped off on your doorstep each week.
This summer, I'm making a very big effort to eat as natural is possible, with buying as little food as I have to. I don't have my own garden yet, and frankly don't have the know-how to implement a large enough one in the near future. I'm hoping to start small this season, planting some Walla Walla's, maybe some corn, and a few strawberries. Maybe I'll lose my mind and go a bit further, but for right now, that's the general plan. But since there is no way in hell I'll be able to realistically self-sustain the Boy and I this year, I'm going to try to take weekly trip to the market, and hopefully buy anything I need there.
An amazing friend of mine and I had a conversation last night, and we ended up at one point discussing how we didn't want to eat organic, we wanted to eat food that was more then that. Grown by people who grow it because they love it. Food pollinated by bees, and feed by sunlight and good ol' dirt. Both of us are fairly health conscious, and have been slowly moving left on the food spectrum. My friend is expecting her first child, and has even bought a food processor with the plan to make her own baby food, and I don't blame her. With the recent outbreaks of nastiness in everyday foods (tomatoes, peanut butter, pistachios) it's a bit scary to think that basically anything I'm feeding my son can potentially make him sick. I'd rather risk a bit of the "you're losing your mind" and know what it going in his mouth, where is came from, and where it has been.
Our local farmer's market is open Thurs-Sun from April until Oct., and weekends in Nov. and Dec. I'm very excited for all the fresh produce, flowers and meats! Even honey! We have a quite large farmer's market that actually has it's own allotted space by the city, and is housed in an honest to god open air building!
One of the best things about this is that all the local places I would normally go to (or not, because some aren't open to the public) are all in one place! I can get my hand-ground meats, veggies and flowers for my table all in one place! Another good thing is that the majority of the merchants at the Market are small family-owned farms and ranches. They grow as much as they can, and sell what they can't use themselves. Some even have co-op programs, or buy-ins; where you pay a small deposit and two or three payments pre-season and from July through October you have a batch of veggies dropped off on your doorstep each week.
This summer, I'm making a very big effort to eat as natural is possible, with buying as little food as I have to. I don't have my own garden yet, and frankly don't have the know-how to implement a large enough one in the near future. I'm hoping to start small this season, planting some Walla Walla's, maybe some corn, and a few strawberries. Maybe I'll lose my mind and go a bit further, but for right now, that's the general plan. But since there is no way in hell I'll be able to realistically self-sustain the Boy and I this year, I'm going to try to take weekly trip to the market, and hopefully buy anything I need there.
An amazing friend of mine and I had a conversation last night, and we ended up at one point discussing how we didn't want to eat organic, we wanted to eat food that was more then that. Grown by people who grow it because they love it. Food pollinated by bees, and feed by sunlight and good ol' dirt. Both of us are fairly health conscious, and have been slowly moving left on the food spectrum. My friend is expecting her first child, and has even bought a food processor with the plan to make her own baby food, and I don't blame her. With the recent outbreaks of nastiness in everyday foods (tomatoes, peanut butter, pistachios) it's a bit scary to think that basically anything I'm feeding my son can potentially make him sick. I'd rather risk a bit of the "you're losing your mind" and know what it going in his mouth, where is came from, and where it has been.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Homemade Cream Cheese
I'm not a big cream cheese person (although I am a big cheesecake person) but I saw an article on making your own cream cheese on Little House in the Suburbs and since I'm always down for easy ways to create new things, I figured I'd give it a shot.
I went to Wally World and purchased some plain active culture yogurt. I forget with brand, but I basically picked the one that had only "Milk" and "acidophilus" as ingredients. I picked up two cartons, and also got some cheese cloth. I snagged several yards of cheese cloth as it's used for a lot, and well it's cheap so why not.
When I got home, I realized I still had an unreasonable amount of strawberries left over from the Jam Wars, and decided to try and make myself some strawberry cream cheese. I admit I pretty much set myself up for another good-intention-gone-awry but it all worked out in the end. I cut up, mashed and drained about a cup of strawberries (My intent was to add this to 32 oz. of the plain yogurt), then toss them and said yogurt into a blender.
This is the step I will scratch off on my next batch. My thinking at the time was blenders are for blending, therefore I will have uniform strawberry cream cheese. The theory worked, but also thinned down the yogurt ridiculously. I ended up adding the other portion of yogurt to try and get a somewhat thicker consistency, which didn't work. I just ended up with more strawberry milk-like stuff. Next time I do this, I'm going to directly mix the strawberries in with the yogurt. No blending.
I pour a small amount of the strawberry smoothie into a bowl lined with cheese cloth. Gathered the edges (so much as I could) wrapped it around a wooden spoon, being sure that the bottom of my ball was about 2 inches off the bowl bottom to allow it to drain. Obviously this wasn't the most secure, so I threw on another spoon for balance and threw a heavy glass lid on top just to be sure. It looked fairly ghetto, but hey it worked.
NOTE: I started with a fairly small amount as I was unsure of my success, and I'd rather screw up small, then big.
I let this hang over night (the longer you hang it, the thicker it gets) and was very surprised by how good it look this morning. I didn't get a ton of cheese from it, as a lot seemed to be trapped in my ineffectual cheese clothing. It tasted good, sweeter then I figured from the initial smoothie-thing tasting which was a pleasant surprise. Nice texture, and overall very yummy.
This foray gave me enough confidence to tackle the remaining smoothie-thing. I had it in a regular mixing bowl covered in my fridge, so it had a chance to re-establish a bit of it's yogurt like qualities. I tossed in a couple tablespoons of sugar because I like my flavored cream cheese sweet. Well really, I like anything sweet. I also decided to switch out the cheese cloth in favor of a tea towel. I haven't used cheese cloth enough to really know my way around it, and I seemed to lose a couple of tablespoons of the original batch that way.
I plopped the whole mess into a bowl, this time when I gathered the fabric I rolled it hobo-pack style before tying it on the spoon. This worked much much better. In hind sight considering how much smoothie-thing I used, I probably should have used my crawfish pot, seeing as it's much deeper, so I don't have to drain the whey occasionally.
Overall, I think it worked pretty well. And I will definitely add this to my regular to-make list.
I went to Wally World and purchased some plain active culture yogurt. I forget with brand, but I basically picked the one that had only "Milk" and "acidophilus" as ingredients. I picked up two cartons, and also got some cheese cloth. I snagged several yards of cheese cloth as it's used for a lot, and well it's cheap so why not.
When I got home, I realized I still had an unreasonable amount of strawberries left over from the Jam Wars, and decided to try and make myself some strawberry cream cheese. I admit I pretty much set myself up for another good-intention-gone-awry but it all worked out in the end. I cut up, mashed and drained about a cup of strawberries (My intent was to add this to 32 oz. of the plain yogurt), then toss them and said yogurt into a blender.
This is the step I will scratch off on my next batch. My thinking at the time was blenders are for blending, therefore I will have uniform strawberry cream cheese. The theory worked, but also thinned down the yogurt ridiculously. I ended up adding the other portion of yogurt to try and get a somewhat thicker consistency, which didn't work. I just ended up with more strawberry milk-like stuff. Next time I do this, I'm going to directly mix the strawberries in with the yogurt. No blending.
I pour a small amount of the strawberry smoothie into a bowl lined with cheese cloth. Gathered the edges (so much as I could) wrapped it around a wooden spoon, being sure that the bottom of my ball was about 2 inches off the bowl bottom to allow it to drain. Obviously this wasn't the most secure, so I threw on another spoon for balance and threw a heavy glass lid on top just to be sure. It looked fairly ghetto, but hey it worked.
NOTE: I started with a fairly small amount as I was unsure of my success, and I'd rather screw up small, then big.
I let this hang over night (the longer you hang it, the thicker it gets) and was very surprised by how good it look this morning. I didn't get a ton of cheese from it, as a lot seemed to be trapped in my ineffectual cheese clothing. It tasted good, sweeter then I figured from the initial smoothie-thing tasting which was a pleasant surprise. Nice texture, and overall very yummy.
This foray gave me enough confidence to tackle the remaining smoothie-thing. I had it in a regular mixing bowl covered in my fridge, so it had a chance to re-establish a bit of it's yogurt like qualities. I tossed in a couple tablespoons of sugar because I like my flavored cream cheese sweet. Well really, I like anything sweet. I also decided to switch out the cheese cloth in favor of a tea towel. I haven't used cheese cloth enough to really know my way around it, and I seemed to lose a couple of tablespoons of the original batch that way.
I plopped the whole mess into a bowl, this time when I gathered the fabric I rolled it hobo-pack style before tying it on the spoon. This worked much much better. In hind sight considering how much smoothie-thing I used, I probably should have used my crawfish pot, seeing as it's much deeper, so I don't have to drain the whey occasionally.
Overall, I think it worked pretty well. And I will definitely add this to my regular to-make list.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Composting on the Small Scale
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not looking for some sort of rotting trash pile hanging around my house. Especially because I rent, and I can see my landlord having an issue with it. I found an interesting blog on Little House in the Suburbs, but it seems a bit more of a large scale operation that what I'm looking for.
My dad has a 'compost pile' (and I'm using that in the loosest terms, because I'm not sure what he thinks that actually entails.) but what he adds to it seems to me to be pretty haphazard.To me, it just looks like a giant mound of mole-hole dirt, dead Christmas trees and random rotting food.
I'm looking to do something very small, I'm just sick of throwing away egg shells and everything else because my place doesn't have a garbage disposal. From my research, it seems everyone suggests having a compost be at least 3x3x3, which really seems a bit ridiculous for me. Our family is 1.5 (The Boy only counts as half) and since I generally cook from scratch, most our food doesn't go to waste. I don't really drink coffee anymore, and tea bags seem fairly innocuous.
However, I am planning on doing some gardening this year, and having some nearby insta-plant food cannot be a bad idea. Another friend of mine is very nicely offering to donate a chuck of his land to me for use as my own personal garden as long as he gets a portion of the spoils (I'll detail this out in another blog). So it might be nice to be able to throw some compost at that endeavor as well. I even have a friend who owns a coffee stand (this is the Pacific NW) so I'm sure I could ask from some of their grounds.
I'm going to roll this idea around a bit more, I'll be sure to keep you updated.
My dad has a 'compost pile' (and I'm using that in the loosest terms, because I'm not sure what he thinks that actually entails.) but what he adds to it seems to me to be pretty haphazard.To me, it just looks like a giant mound of mole-hole dirt, dead Christmas trees and random rotting food.
I'm looking to do something very small, I'm just sick of throwing away egg shells and everything else because my place doesn't have a garbage disposal. From my research, it seems everyone suggests having a compost be at least 3x3x3, which really seems a bit ridiculous for me. Our family is 1.5 (The Boy only counts as half) and since I generally cook from scratch, most our food doesn't go to waste. I don't really drink coffee anymore, and tea bags seem fairly innocuous.
However, I am planning on doing some gardening this year, and having some nearby insta-plant food cannot be a bad idea. Another friend of mine is very nicely offering to donate a chuck of his land to me for use as my own personal garden as long as he gets a portion of the spoils (I'll detail this out in another blog). So it might be nice to be able to throw some compost at that endeavor as well. I even have a friend who owns a coffee stand (this is the Pacific NW) so I'm sure I could ask from some of their grounds.
I'm going to roll this idea around a bit more, I'll be sure to keep you updated.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Canning for Dummies, or more specifically... Me.
One of the strongest memories I have from my early childhood is of my grandmother's strawberry freezer jam. Sadly, I wasn't smart enough to be interested in how she did it before she passed away, but now it seems to me like something I should know how to do.
I started out by google-ing 'freezer jam' and got a lot of mixed information. Lots of recipes, not enough of 'start with a jar, you idiot'. I stumbled around a bit until I found Canning Pantry and Canning Food Recipes. Both of these have fairly straight forward 'how-to' sections, and Canning Pantry has all the supplies you would need, from pressure cookers to jars themselves. Canning Food Recipes has (as obvious from the title) tons of recipes from basic fruits and veggies to salsa and spaghetti sauces.
Canning veggies and most fruits seems fairly straight forward once you have the supplies and a general know-how. Water Boiling and Pressure Canning seem to be the two big methods, the method varying with the PH level of whatever you are canning. the general pattern I'm seeing is: Fruit is water boiled, everything else (veggies, meat, dairy etc.) needs to be pressure cooked. The canners themselves run quite a gamete, from about $70-300. This doesn't include any of the extra supplies like jars, lids and such.
I would love to make my own spaghetti sauce, as it's something I use a lot, and frankly I'm sick of shelling out $5 a pop for a bottle of spaghetti sauce when I can make it myself for a fraction of the cost. The same goes for salsa and jams. Pickling also seems interesting and fairly simple, and who doesn't love a nice pickle?
I started out by google-ing 'freezer jam' and got a lot of mixed information. Lots of recipes, not enough of 'start with a jar, you idiot'. I stumbled around a bit until I found Canning Pantry and Canning Food Recipes. Both of these have fairly straight forward 'how-to' sections, and Canning Pantry has all the supplies you would need, from pressure cookers to jars themselves. Canning Food Recipes has (as obvious from the title) tons of recipes from basic fruits and veggies to salsa and spaghetti sauces.
Canning veggies and most fruits seems fairly straight forward once you have the supplies and a general know-how. Water Boiling and Pressure Canning seem to be the two big methods, the method varying with the PH level of whatever you are canning. the general pattern I'm seeing is: Fruit is water boiled, everything else (veggies, meat, dairy etc.) needs to be pressure cooked. The canners themselves run quite a gamete, from about $70-300. This doesn't include any of the extra supplies like jars, lids and such.
I would love to make my own spaghetti sauce, as it's something I use a lot, and frankly I'm sick of shelling out $5 a pop for a bottle of spaghetti sauce when I can make it myself for a fraction of the cost. The same goes for salsa and jams. Pickling also seems interesting and fairly simple, and who doesn't love a nice pickle?
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