It worked!

Okay, so last night around 7:30 or 8 p.m. I checked the yogurt, and it was done. Not curdled and sour, not runny, but real honest-to-goodness yogurt. It smells like vanilla. Curse that vanilla-flavored Mountain High! If I ever do this again, I will buy plain yogurt. The salad dressing that I made was not good. I did eat it on my salad last night, but couldn't handle the vanilla flavor with the spices, so I ended up dumping the rest of the bottle down the sink. I should have done what Josie says she does, and just made half a recipe. So now I have about three quarts of vanilla yogurt, including the one that I bought. What to do with it? Well, I'm going to make one quart of it into yogurt cheese, and see about making a cheesecake. I'll try to eat some of it with some strawberries and/or raspberries and/or bananas stirred--maybe even blended--into it. And, finally, if all else fails, I'll put the rest of it into the ice cream freezer and see about making some frozen yogurt. Some people do like frozen yogurt, and that would be a way of preserving it for those people to enjoy sometime in the future.

Next week: cottage cheese.

In the meantime...

While I'm waiting for the yogurt to do its thing, I've been experimenting with some other food storage recipes. First of all, maybe I should explain that I'm not sure the yogurt will be appreciated around here once it's done. So I need to find creative ways of using it. I'm thinking that I'll try making yogurt cheese, which, I understand, is a good substitute for cream cheese and can be used in cheesecakes. I've also heard that the yogurt will be good to use in making Ranch dressing, something that everyone I know seems to love. While I'm waiting, I decided to try using some of the Mountain High yogurt (that I bought to use as a starter) and make some ranch dressing, using a recipe I found:

Ranch Dressing, or Creamy Dressing

In a blender combine:

1 cup yogurt

1 cup lowfat mayonnaise

1 tablespoon dried parsley flakes

1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

2 teaspoons dehydrated onion

1/2 teaspoon salt

Result: it looks creamy and tastes sort of like, well, vanilla-flavored (*sigh*!!) ranch dressing. We'll see how well it goes over with Jim.

Reading all these food storage books and recipes got me dreaming about whipping up a simple casserole. This is my personalized combination/adaptation of a couple of recipes in one of the books:

2 cans (or pint bottles) of kidney beans, rinsed and drained in a colander

4 cups egg noodles, boiled for about 7 minutes until done, then drained in the same colander (yes, on top of the beans)

In the same pot that you cooked the noodles, combine:

1 cup easy white sauce mix

2 cups water

1 tablespoon dehydrated onion

1/2 teaspoon salt

some pepper

some garlic powder

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a whisk, until bubbly and thick. Then stir in:

1 cup grated cheese

Add the noodles and beans to the cheese sauce mix and stir to combine. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

I also baked some bread today.

And, finally, I've been watching YouTube videos about making cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, and mozzarella cheese. Maybe some day I'll try one of those and let you know how it goes. But, first, back to the yogurt, and tonight's dinner.

Yogurt

Today is the day! About 7:30 this morning I got my powdered milk and water blended up in the blender and put into the crock-pot, turned it to low, set the timer for 2 1/2 hours, and let it heat up. I noticed that there was a brown ring around the inside of the crockpot, just above the milk line. I don't know if that's normal or not. Maybe my crockpot cooks hot. Or maybe I didn't have it perfectly clean. At any rate, when the timer went off, I unplugged the crock pot, re-set the timer for 3 more hours, and let it sit again. At that point, I measured two cooks of the very-warm milk into a bowl, and used a fork to stir in 1/2 cup of Mountain High brand yogurt. Then I stirred that back into the crockpot, put the lid on, and wrapped it in three towels. The timer is now set for 6 hours. I hope that the next time I open it I am met with a sweet smell and a gelled hunk of yogurt. I'll let you know.

One of the things I learned from the video is what to do with that liquid that sits on top of the yogurt. I've always tried to stir it back into the yogurt, but she explains that the liquid is the whey, and it should be poured off the top, not stirred back in. She says that stirring your yogurt is kind of like stirring a bowl of jello. It just liquifies it and does nothing to help. The whey, she says, is full of proteins, and is good to use as the liquid in your next batch of bread. Or maybe a pot of soup. Or it could just be dumped down the sink. I never knew.

homemade yogurt

I'm going to try this sometime in the next week. Watch and see what happens.

Here is the link to her webpage with more information about using homemade yogurt and cheeses in your everyday cooking.

Chicken pot pie #2 report

Keeper!

The biscuits weren't the best, but they were good, and the sauce and filling was really good.

There are many variations that could be done with this recipe. Just so you know, the original idea came from that Cooking for Two Bride and Groom (I think it's called The I Do Cookbook) cookbook that my cousin wrote. She has a recipe in there for biscuits that are made with sour cream, and they are very light and fluffy. Whatever works!

Chicken pot pie #2

This chicken pot pie is also made with canned chicken and frozen mixed vegetables, but instead of pie crust it uses Bisquick. Only I didn't have enough Bisquick, so I supplemented with a little whole wheat flour. And the picture, above, shows just the filling stuff, minus the biscuits. I added them after I took the picture.

Drain a can of chicken from the cannery, reserving the broth and putting it into a pot. To the pot of broth, add 2 cups of frozen mixed vegetables. Put a lid on it and bring it to a boil. Remove from heat. Strain the broth off the vegetables into a measuring cup by pouring the vegetables and broth through a sieve. Put the vegetables, in the sieve, aside.

In your pot, melt a tablespoon of butter, and saute 1/2 cup onion and 1/2 cup celery, chopped, until soft.

Add enough water to the reserved broth to make 2 3/4 cups of liquid. Add a teaspoon of chicken bouillon granules. Use a wire whisk to stir in 1/2 cup of white sauce mix. Dump the liquid in with the celery and onion and heat over medium heat, stirring constantly with wire whisk, until mixture thickens and gets bubbly.

Stir the reserved frozen mixed vegetables into the sauce, along with the can of chicken, and any other leftover cooked vegetables you may have in the fridge.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Prepare a recipe of biscuits according to the Bisquick package directions. If you are about a half a cup of Bisquick short, try adding 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour to the dry ingredients before stirring in the milk.

Pour the chicken-vegetable-sauce mixture into a casserole dish. Pat chunks of dough into biscuit shaped blobs and place on top of mixture. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, or until biscuits are golden brown.

I'll take a picture when it's done and post it and tell you how we like it.

Backward Menu Planning Continued

Sunday January 29

• Meatloaf
• Twice-baked Potatoes
• Green Bean Casserole
• Green Salad
• Ice cream and brownies

This menu would have benefited from some rolls or bread and butter, too. And, of course, fruit instead of ice cream and brownies for dessert.

Monday January 30. The pork chops were from a freezer menu plan of Leanne Ely's. I think they were called Spicy Citrus Pork Chops or something like that. I had put them in the freezer a while ago when we bought a family size package of pork chops. Anyway, maybe I overcooked them, but they were tough and not that good. There were four in the package that I had stashed away, so we'll be having the other two as leftovers tonight.

• Pork chops
• Brown rice
• Carrots, Broccoli, Cauliflower
• Green salad

Tuesday January 31

• Mexican Lasagna, or, in other words, that Chicken Tortilla Bake stuff
• Canned corn
• Carrot and celery sticks, and cucumber slices
• Fruit salad made of fresh strawberries, a pear, an orange, and half a banana

Wednesday February 1

• Leftover pork chops
• Mashed potatoes and gravy
• Green beans (from the freezer) and carrots
• Peach cobbler (maybe)

Since you requested...

Homemade Pizza Pockets

You will need:

1 recipe pizza dough

Your favorite pizza toppings

All you do is:

Roll out the dough into a rectangle. Use a pizza cutter to cut the dough into smaller rectangles (the size is all up to you). Put on the sauce and whatever toppings you want then fold it over to make yet a smaller rectangle. Seal the edges with your fingers or a fork or whatever floats your boat. Bake at 400 for about 10 min. or until it looks done.

The dough recipe I used was from page 57 of The I Do Cookbook and so the dough got all fluffy and tasted like fresh baked bread. We all really liked it. However, if you don't want the dough to poof and be all bready than here is a recipe that you might like to try. It's supposedly flaky, but I made this recipe once to make this ladies pop tarts and it didn't turn out very flaky for me.

Banana Ice Cream

I made this last night along with homemade pizza pockets and the kids declared it the best dinner ever and what we should have every night.

Banana Ice Cream

2 1/2 frozen banana's

5 TBS frozen OJ concentrate (I just eyeballed it)

1 cup milk (I used half coconut and half rice milk because that's what I had on hand)

12 ice cubes

Blend banana's, OJ, and milk until smooth. Add ice cubes and blend until slushy. Serve cold!

I told the kids that it was a slushy and they didn't believe me. They wanted to call it ice cream.

Oh, yummy!

When your picky five year old raves about something, it's probably worth sharing. So here you are:

So Incredibly Easy Black Bean Brownies

1 15 oz can black beans

1 package brownie mix

That's it. I'm serious. Just open the can of beans and blend them in the blender, undrained. Unless you really want to drain them, then you better add about 1/4 cup water while blending. Then just mix it with the brownie mix and bake it like the directions say. Oh, and don't forget to let the kids lick out the bowl because you don't have to stress about any raw eggs.

One of the things I learned in my children's nutrition class long ago was that you don't need to deceive kids. My daughter and I had these first at a food storage activity put on by our stake. When she saw them and asked what they were I told her they were bean brownies. She wanted to try one anyway and then ended up eating about 5 while declaring, "these don't even taste like beans! They taste sooooo good!" (like she would know anyway, she has never tasted beans!) Now hopefully since she knows she has eaten beans, she will be more likely to try them again in the future. She asked if we could make some so I got the ingredients today and we made them for family night. Big hit people, and if you've been putting off trying to bake something yummy with beans in it because it seems too complicated or you think it won't turn out, put it off no more. Go try these.

Recipe 2:

Tortilla's! I finally found my recipe! I mean, I didn't make it up, it's just the one I'll be using from now on. These turned out so good that my same picky five year old was eating them right off the grill as I was making them. And they are even more nutritious than the bean brownies. So here you go:

2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 cup white flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

Mix those and then mix in 1/2 cup softened (but not quite melted) coconut oil.

Then dump in 3/4 +1/8 cup boiling water and stir around pretty good and even knead a little if you want to.

Roll into about 16 little balls and put them on a cookie sheet. Cover lightly with plastic wrap and let sit for about an hour. Then roll the balls out into tortilla's and grill on a hot griddle for about 30 seconds on each side.

You can find the original recipe here: http://www.survivingthestores.com/homemade-flour-tortillas-with-coconut-oil-recipe-meals-with-my-deals.html

I halved it again though.

I have tried other tortilla recipes before and never had this kind of success. These were not only yummy, but behaved the way tortilla's should, you know, wrapping around your fajita's without crumbling to bits.

I gave up on my no dairy experiment and went back to buying cheese today. I feel happy and inspired and excited about making meals again! I really love cheese. And that's all for now folks.

Kefir Bread and Puffy Pancakes

I found a bread recipe that looked easy enough to try with my Kefir. You can find it here if you are interested. But here's how I changed it. I split it in half because I always split new bread recipes in half in case they don't taste that good. That and I only had half the Kefir it called for.

So here's what I did.

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1 1/2 cups Kefir

Soaked for 24 hours

Then I stirred in 3/4 tsp baking soda (not sure why it needed this)

1 1/2 TBS sugar

2 TBS melted butter (I didn't split these in half because I wanted the bread to taste good)

about 2 cups white flour kneaded in.

This made enough for one loaf.

As you can see my loaf is a little flat. I could have let it rise longer but I wanted my friends to sample it while they were here. They loved it and we decided it actually doesn't taste like sour dough at all. The texture turned out really nice and fresh out of the oven it was quite delicious.

We are still struggling through our dairy free experiment and it's kind of hard. Yesterday I made some puff oven pancakes though and the kids seemed to like them. I used rice milk instead of regular milk and they puffed just as well. The texture was a bit different. Lighter and less filling but again, the kids didn't seem to notice a difference.

I'm really missing my cheese. Also, the Kefir seems to be making me not feel so good. So, my kefir is resting in the fridge while I decide what exactly to do. I was told that if you are not used to fermented things then it takes your body about 1 month to get used to it and you should ease into it. Maybe I'll try some kefir smoothies again next week. I love all the different milks we've tried. Rice, coconut, almond. They are all much better than cows milk to me so I don't think we'll be going back to that, but I will be buying cheese next week. I miss it way to much.

A one week challenge and a 3 week challenge! Oh, and some Kefir too

Yesterday I started a one week challenge of going dairy free to see if milk and cheese might be the cause of some problems one of my kids is experiencing. Actually, I should say we are going milk and cheese free. I can't seem to figure out how to cut out butter. I have no desire to buy margarine, and I'm hoping that a little pat of butter here and there won't affect our experiment.

My three week challenge is an exercise challenge. I have an exercise video (which I love!) by Karen Voight and Elle Macphearson. In the beginning of it Elle makes a promise. She says that after doing this video for 1 week you'll feel different. After two weeks you'll look different to yourself. And after three weeks everyone else will notice a difference. I started on Monday (actually I did it a couple times last week too, but we won't count that.) I was too tired to do it on Tue, but I did it yesterday. I plan to do it today and tomorrow and maybe even Sat. too. So my goal is at least 4 days per week for three weeks and see if anyone else notices how good I feel.

Besides all that I am also reading Pres. Hinkley's biography and trying to keep a positive optimistic attitude. Oh yeah, and one more thing. My friend gave me so me Kefir and it's multiplying on my counter! If you want to read up on it and it's benefits check out this site:

http://www.makingkefir.com/ It has a nice little video too.

I have so far just been using it to make smoothies. One of my kids loves these tart kefir smoothies and begs for more. Kefir is supposedly gentle on the stomach but so far it has been a little rough on my tummy. My husband say's, "well duh! You are introducing entirely new bacteria into your gut. Of course it's going to cause some gas!" He won't even try it because he says he's happy with the bacteria in his gut already. So today I am using my kefir to try my hand at some sour dough bread. I'll let you know how that turns out. I'm excited!

Three Berry Pie

Friday night is a ward party wherein we're supposed to bring a pie. Since I was making a pot pie for dinner anyway, I decided to make the pie for Friday. And you can't make one to give away without making one for yourself, right? I have all three of these frozen berries, so it made sense to use them in a pie recipe that I found here. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Meat pot pie

Today I made some cream-of-something soup with the white sauce mix that I talked about a couple of days ago. I thought I needed it thick in order to imitate the can of condensed soup, but realized that I didn't need it that thick for my tuna-noodle casserole that I had for lunch. So I ended up using only half of it. Talena had a great suggestion for the other half: chicken pot pie for dinner. Yay! So that's what we're having for dinner tonight.

I cooked half a bag of frozen carrots along with a cup of mixed vegetables, with a teaspoon of chicken bouillon in the cooking water, then stirred in half a can of green beans (also left over from my lunch), a can of pork that I rinsed and drained (I meant to get a can of chicken, but I guess it was pork) and the leftover thick creamy stuff. Poured it into a pie crust, but a top on it, and now it's baking.

Whole Wheat Bread 2

Another whole wheat bread recipe. This one uses canned milk, something that I came across when I was going through our food storage. We have (had) three cans of it, and the expiration date was October 2010. I don't have a problem with using things past their expiration dates in cases like this. I don't think it's going to poison me. The expiration date doesn't mean that on that day it's going to shrivel up and expire. It just means that the quality of flavor and nutrition is not guaranteed past that time. So I found this recipe, and, of course, included my own modifications: Namely, I added 1/4 cup more water and put 2 tablespoons of powdered eggs in with the flour in order to replace the 2 beaten eggs. I also used a heaping tablespoonful of yeast instead of 2 tablespoonfuls of yeast. Oh, and I didn't exactly measure out three tablespoons of honey. How do you measure three tablespoons of honey? Sticky stuff. No, I just used a knife to scrape three scoops of honey into my 1/3 measuring cup that I had used for the oil so that it was about half full and figured that it was close enough to three tablespoons of honey. Also, the flour doesn't specify whether to use all whole wheat or part white (other than the presumption of the title), so I'm using part bread flour. Because I know from past experience that most whole wheat breads taste best when you use part white flour.

With that introduction, here we go:

100% Whole Wheat Bread from Louise P. Eddy in the book Cookin' with Home Storage

1 1/2 cups warm water

1/3 cup oil

3 tablespoons honey

2 eggs beaten

1 can evaporated milk

2 tablespoons yeast

1 tablespoon salt

7 cups flour

Mix in order and raise in greased bowl, 35-45 minutes. Punch down, divide into 3 loaves. Raise for 20 minutes. Bake 350 degrees 45 minutes. This dough can be used for dinner rolls and cinnamon rolls.

My version:

In a mixer bowl combine:

1 3/4 cups very warm water

1 can evaporated milk

1/3 cup oil

3 tablespoons honey

1 heaping tablespoon yeast

Let that sit while you grind the wheat into flour, then add and mix well, scraping sides of bowl as needed:

4 cups whole wheat flour

2 tablespoons powdered eggs, sifted

Let it sit for 15 minutes. Then add:

2 cups bread flour

scant tablespoon salt

Mix together, scraping sides of bowl.

Add:

up to 1 cup more flour as needed to make a soft dough.

Knead in the Kitchen-Aid mixer for 10 minutes. Lower the bowl and let it sit for 40 minutes, then raise the bowl and turn on the mixer for a minute to punch it down. Divide into three greased loaf pans, cover with a cloth, and let raise for 20 to 30 minutes. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. Turn out of pans onto cooling rack.

Stay tuned while I try this. Later I'll let you know how I like it.