Mozzarella

Last week I ordered some cheese-making supplies from cheesemaking.com which seems to be the authority on home cheese making. I got 2 kits and a recipe book for whatever cheese you can imagine. I saw a recipe for Muenster cheese in there and I think I will try it as soon as I get the bacterial culture and refrigeration equipment. I decided to make the 30 minute mozzarella. We were having pizza for dinner so I thought it would be a perfect time to try. It actually took a little longer then 30 minutes, but it was my first time and I'm sure I did some things wrong.

Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures. I was so focused on following the directions exactly that I didn't pull out my camera even once. I will be making it again soon, so there will definitely be pictures later.

As far as the finished product goes, I would say it was a moderate success. They say Mozzarella is one of the easiest cheeses to make and I would have to agree. It's quick to make by cheese standards, about an hour as opposed to 3 months. It's ready to eat as soon as you pull it and stretch it. The flavor was decent, but I don't think I put enough salt in it. Next time I'll add more. I'm excited to try new kinds of cheeses. I LOVE cheese so I think I will like this adventure best of all!

Oh, and once you're all set up to make the cheese it is SO much cheaper! You buy the gallon of milk for $3, which makes roughly a pound of cheese, and a pound of mozzarella goes for around $6 or $7! It's so worth it.

My First Official Harvest

So today I went out and picked my first official harvest. I'm not counting the 3 apricots and 4 peaches we ate directly off the tree. Or the random jalapenos we've picked here and there. I'm talking about the first batch of tomatoes!  I was worried we weren't going to get many tomatoes because I saw blossom after blossom wither away with no tomato. Fortunately the bees have found our plants and are pollinating like crazy. These 2 tomatoes I picked off our celebrity tomato plant. My heirloom tomatoes are doing fantastic and are producing some good looking tomatoes, but none of them are ripe yet.

I do have to make a confession. One of these tomatoes has been pecked by the birds. I cleverly turned it over in the picture. It turned red a while ago, except for one little part that I was waiting to change color. I guess I waited too long. Oh well, now I know not to do that.

Doesn't this picture make you want some salsa?

Update

Yesterday I experimented with a few things to see if they would work. For dinner I made pasties, but I had an eggplant I wanted to use up and hadn't planned on using it in any of my dinners. I thought I'd try chopping it up and cooking it with the filling for the pasties. I added it in and it didn't change the flavor much at all. My kids still gobbled them up not even knowing that they were eating eggplant. I thought that would be a great way to get some extra nutrition in the meal and also stretch the meat a little farther. Because the eggplant made more filling, it meant more pasties. That's especially important to me as I see meat prices going higher and higher.

The second thing I experimented with was making yogurt with whole milk instead of skim and using yogurt from the last batch I made. It turned out great. Not only was it nice and creamy, it was less tart and there was no whey accumulated at the top. I had some with breakfast this morning mixed with some strawberry jam and it was delicious. I'm pretty excited that both things I tried worked out well in the end. Now that summer is in full swing and I'll be getting a lot more fruits and veggies, I'll be trying to incorporate those more into my meals. Happy eating!

Homemade Yogurt

 I've had this yogurt maker since I got married. It was either a wedding gift or we bought it with some gift cards we got. I made yogurt back then, but for some reason I stopped and didn't touch it again until earlier this week. My kids are always asking for yogurt at the grocery store, and I thought to myself, why am I buying this junk yogurt when it's not that hard to make it myself?

So I decided to make some. The great thing about yogurt is that all you need is some milk and some cultures. I get my cultures from (what else?) yogurt. I'll buy a small one serving container of yogurt, roughly 6 oz, and use that to make more yogurt. The only catch is that it has to be plain yogurt and it has to have live and active cultures, otherwise it will not work. Here's how I made my yogurt:

Heat 42 oz of milk in a saucepan until it boils and starts to climb the sides of the saucepan. Remove from heat and let cool until it's room temperature.

 Once milk has cooled, pour into a pitcher through a sieve or mesh colander. This will get rid of any skin that forms on the top.

 Mix the plain yogurt with some milk. I also added a spoonful of dry milk. I've heard it makes it creamier, so I thought I'd give it a try. It also adds a little extra calcium.

Pour the mixture into your jars and place in the maker without the lids. It's really more of an incubator. It keeps the temperature just right for those cultures to get working. I left mine in for about 8 hours.

After the 8 hours, they looked like this. The yogurt had formed and whey accumulated on the top. You can mix the whey in with the yogurt if you like yours a little runnier, or you can pour the whey out and use it for other things. With out the whey it becomes more like greek yogurt. 

I put all the whey in a mason jar and stuck it in the fridge. Never throw it away. It can always be used for something. You can use it in the place of buttermilk in recipes or you can use it as plant food.

Plain yogurt is not my cup of tea. It tastes a lot like sour cream and I'm not big on eating that plain, so I'll usually add something to make it a little sweeter. Here I put in a scoop of strawberry jam and it was delicious. I've also added fresh fruit or you can even just add a scoop of sugar. I really like that our maker makes it in these convenient single serving jars. I just save 1 jar and use it in my next batch. I've heard that you can only do this a few times before it doesn't turn out, so I'm interested in seeing how that goes.

I realize that not everyone has a yogurt maker, but you don't really need one. You can incubate your yogurt in the oven, or in a cooler with a heat pad, or some other creative way. If it's around 100 degrees outside, you can even put it outside. Another great website on how to make yogurt without a maker can be found here.

I used skim milk when I made it this time and it was a little bit grainy. I've heard that if you use a fattier milk is will be creamier, so I'm going to try that next time. Also, yogurt is supposed to freeze well, so you can freeze the starter for your next batch if you don't plan on making it very often. All of this makes for cheaper, healthier yogurt because you control what's in it.

Happy Father's Day!

In our house, Father's Day gets Craig whatever breakfast he wants. This year he wanted green egg breakfast burritos. So I whipped them up for him Sunday morning. I made a quick batch of homemade tortillas, cut up some potatoes and fried them in a little butter until they were nice and crispy, fried up some bacon, and made my own version of green eggs. I used some eggs from our backyard, beat them together and added a little milk, some red scallions, and a giant handful of fresh spinach, chopped. I topped it off with a little Tapatio. These breakfast burritos are so good. If I had time, I think I would make them for breakfast more often. I figured this was the least I could do for the man who supports our family. :)

Oatmeal

A while back I stopped eating cold cereal in the morning for breakfast and switched to either oatmeal or eggs. I was trying to gain some control on my portion sizes, since only a giant punchbowl of cereal would satisfy my ravenous hunger in the morning. When I switched to oatmeal, I made sure I only made 1 serving, which was mentally hard for me. I also wanted to make sure I wasn't adding a bunch of sugar to it, either. I used to add a ton of brown sugar, but I was on a quest to be healthier, so I skipped the sugar and started putting fresh fruit in. I started with cut-up bananas or raisins. Then strawberries and blueberries came into season and my little world of oatmeal has never been the same. I also started cooking the oatmeal in milk, which I think makes it taste better, too. I finally decided to take a picture of this breakfast, because on this day it looked and tasted really good. I think this is the best way to eat oatmeal.

I also discovered in this little adventure that it's not much harder to make oatmeal with rolled oats then to open a packet of oatmeal and cook it in the microwave. I always assumed you had to make it on the stove, maybe because that's always how my mom did it. Now in the mornings, I scoop a half cup of oats out of my oat bin, put 1 cup of milk in it and microwave it for 3 minutes. Then I throw in whatever fruit I have and viola! Breakfast is served. So easy and healthy. All that fiber keeps you full until lunch. And as an added bonus, since I made this switch I have lost 10 lbs! (Does that tell you how much cereal I would eat in the mornings??) This is with no exercising. I would say it's one of the best changes I've made.

T-Rex vs Shark

Today is my son's 3rd birthday. For my kids birthdays, I like to make them whatever kind of cake they want. When I asked him what he wanted, he said he wanted a T-Rex and a shark cake. I had to think about this one long and hard, trying to figure out the logistics of that kind of cake. I knew I wanted a 3D T-Rex, because it's so much cooler. I turned to my friend who has a cake business for some tips and here you see the finished result! I'm pretty pleased. I thought the best way to incorporate the shark in is to have the T-Rex eating him.

 I made a chocolate sheet cake and covered it with cream cheese frosting, coloring half blue for the ocean. I used marshmallow fondant for the grass and leaves on the palm tree. The entire shark, teeth, and eyes are also marshmallow fondant and I added the detail by painting on the fondant with food coloring. I used some chocolate-covered sticks called "Pocky" that I found in the international aisle at the grocery store for the palm tree.

 The entire T-Rex is made out of rice crispy treats and molding chocolate. It was really fun to work with. I got to mold the rice crispy treats into the shape I wanted and covered it with the chocolate. I did the legs separate, and the body and head together.

 The chocolate is fun, because it has the consistency of clay. I shaped everything and attached the legs with some more chocolate and then carved in some scales with a toothpick.

This took a loooooooong time. Let's just say it took me a few day to create this cake.

 I made some teeth with the fondant and stuck that shark's tail right in there.

The hands,  I partially submerged in the water, because I though that would be easier and less work, which it was.

I finished it off with some more grass on the sides. I believe this is my most ambitious cake to date and it was 99% home-made! I made the cake, frosting, fondant, and molding chocolate from scratch. I only bought those chocolate sticks already made. I am pretty proud of myself and have to thank Brynn and google for all the help!

p.s. My son's birthday always takes me back to his birth, which was the most exciting one I've had. If you don't already know, you can read about it here. Be warned, it is a graphic story. :)

Dark Chocolate Beet Brownies

I'm always looking for new ways to utilize beets in my cooking. Lately, we've been adding it to our pot of beans with great success. I also found this recipe for dark chocolate beet brownies online and had to try them. I love dark chocolate and I love brownies. Let me warn you, though, this recipe is far from healthy. There is a ridiculous amount of fat and sugar in it, which is probably why it tastes good and doesn't have any real beet flavor. You can find the recipe here. I wanted to put chocolate chips in it too, but I didn't have any when I made them. I bet it would taste even more delicious with them. Does anyone out there have any beet recipes they'd like to share?

Chickens and Citrus

I've discovered recently that laying hens should not eat any kind of citrus, not even the leaves. I had been told this earlier, but had read on the internet (and you KNOW everything on the internet is true!) that this was an old wives tale and that a lot of chicken feed actually has citrus in it. Well, my chickens have been snacking on our orange and lemon tree leaves and their laying has been drastically reduced. We're talking 1 egg a day, if we're lucky. So this morning I went out and bought some more chicken wire and put a little fence around the trees to keep those birds away. And guess what? We've already gotten 2 eggs today! I'm hoping by the end of the week we can be up to 4-5 eggs a day.

I have to say, I didn't think we could get and more white trash, but here we are. I felt a little bad about fencing this tree because this is where they would take refuge from the heat. But not to worry, these little hens are resourceful. They've found a new shady spot as you can see.

They've even started snacking on the little shrub, which is actually fine by me. Come fall, this plant loses all it's leaves and it's quite messy. Does that make me lazy, having my hens do the yard work for me?