Homemade Vanilla

No, she hasn't been in the vanilla.  She's just a bit odd.

Thrifty, but meaningful Christmas gift idea #1:  Homemade Vanilla Extract

Yummy and SO easy.

I actually shouldn't be posting this because I've given vanilla to friends and family as Christmas gifts and now they'll know that, even though it was a delicious and thoughtful gift which they loved, it really wasn't a whole lot of work on my part.

This Vanilla is not your usual grocery store variety of Pure Vanilla Extract and the only thing it shares in common with Imitation Vanilla Extract is the word "vanilla." (And the word "Extract" too, I guess, but it sounded so much better just having one word in common...)  By the way, did you know that "pure" vanilla extract sometimes has extra stuff like corn syrup in it?

No, the Vanilla I'm showing you how to make actually smells and tastes like vanilla.  It's just amazing!  You'll love what it does to your baking.

It is a useful gift, too.  Those who receive it, unless you give some to your college aged brother or something, will love using it to make those they love happy!  It's a gift which keeps on giving.  They won't ever have to dust it or decide if they should keep it or send it to the thrift store 5 years from now.  That's my kind of gift!



All you need to make Vanilla

 To top it all off, homemade vanilla is easy on the budget.  There are 2 ingredients in Homemade Vanilla Extract - vodka and vanilla beans. 

You don't need expensive vodka.  To be honest, I don't know if expensive vodka makes it taste better or not.  I've only used cheap vodka and have loved the results.  In fact, I've never actually paid for the vodka used in my vanilla.  Around the holidays, the liquor stores in our area all have vodka with manufacturer's rebates which make the vodka free!  A 1.75 litre bottle of vodka will make about 60 oz. of vanilla and costs less than $10.00 or $1.33 per 8 oz.  Pretty cheap!

I've now typed the word "vodka" 8 times in one paragraph.  Pretty sure this about 7 more times than I've ever typed that word before.  Don't tell my Grandma.  I'm not sure she'd understand.



Vanilla pods with ends cut off

I've bought all my vanilla beans off Ebay.  You can get anything on Ebay.  This year I bought 40 organic Madagascar vanilla beans for about 12 dollars including shipping.  They came from France, which was an added bonus because the Young'uns love seeing the French postage stamps.  From all I've read Madagascar beans are best for making extract, but if you want to do some research of your own, go for it.  Google is a good thing.  It takes 2 beans to make 8 oz. of vanilla.  So, the beans cost about 60 cents per 8 oz.
One word about vanilla...technically, you don't buy vanilla beans.  You buy vanilla pods.  They are long, thin, dark brown and wrinkly.  They should be a bit moist and flexible.  The vanilla beans are INSIDE of the pods.  If you cut open a pod, it is filled from top to bottom with very tiny little black dots - these are the seeds.  The seeds can be scraped out and used in your baking and cooking.  I like eating a little taste by itself.  I'm a sucker for vanilla anything!

Are you doing the math?  $1.33 (vodka) + .60 (vanilla beans) = $1.93 for 8 oz. of REAL Vanilla Extract.  This is a steal when compared to buying it in the store!

About 5 years ago, I bought 8 oz. amber colored glass bottles from the Sunburst Bottle Company.  I bought a few cases and gave Vanilla as gifts that year.  I also saved some of the bottles for myself and have reused them every year since.  The bottles cost about $1.75 each including shipping.  This seemed a bit steep for a bottle, but they looked great and made the gift!  Even with the bottle costs, each gift still cost under $4.00.

If your vanilla will be a gift for someone, make a cute or cool label (depending on if you lean towards the cute or cool side) to stick on your bottle.   I wish I still had a copy of the one I made on my computer.  I must say it was cool. I'm not real computer savvy.  So, you can make an awesome one, I'm sure.

Just making vanilla for you own personal use? You can make your vanilla in any old glass bottle you want.  An wine bottle or vinegar bottle that's been well cleaned will work!  Just make sure it has some sort of tight lid because there's some shaking involved.

Homemade Vanilla Extract

2 vanilla beans per 8 oz. of extract you wish to make
vodka (there's that word again)



Beans in the bottle



Cut ends of vanilla so that they fit into your bottles.  I usually have to cut off about 1 inch of the beans.  Place 2 beans in each bottle.  Fill bottles to near the top with vodka.  Place on the lid and let it sit in a cool, dark place for at least 4 months.  6 months is better.  Try to give your bottles a shake every few weeks.  (I told you it was easy.)

I have read about people who cut their beans into small pieces before they put them in the bottles.  This might make the vanilla permeate the vodka a bit more.  I'm not sure.  I don't do it because you'd have to strain your extract before using it if you did it this way.  Otherwise, there would be lots of little black vanilla beans in your extract. 

I leave my pods in the bottle even after I start using it.  When the bottle is empty, I put the pods on the counter to dry out and then stick them in a bag in my freezer.  After I've collected several pods, I stick 4 in a bottle and add some more vodka.  This gives me one more bottle of Vanilla without buying more pods.  Two soakings seems to be about all each pods can take.

This was a very long post for such a simple idea... Enjoy!

Papa Ron's

We eat lots of pizza here on the Farm...lots and lots of pizza.  I can't say all of this pizza is made by my two little big hands, but 99% of it is.  (In fact, we actually had a pizza delivered to our house for only like the 2nd time in our lives just 2 short weeks ago.  It arrived at 12:15 am.  Long story, but let's just say that the things people will do to keep from losing their frequent flier miles is amazing.  Sheesh!)

Homemade pizza is great on so many levels - it's delicious, it's easy to make, it's cheap, it's a great way to use up stuff you've got hiding in your fridge.  You can even use it to sneak some crazy veggies into your kiddo's bodies.  Not that I've ever done that before...

My crust recipe is just your basic french bread recipe - 3 cups flour, 1 cup water, 2 tsp yeast, 1 T salt, 1 T oil.  I can tell you more about that later.

What I'm excited to share is that I think I've finally found it - The Sauce!  I've been searching for a sauce recipe for years.  The sauce is important.  The sauce is the border zone between the crispy, chewy crust and the ooey, gooey cheese.  You don't want it too sweet or salty.  It shouldn't be watery.  There should be some spice to it, but not too much.  It's a tough thing to find, but find it I did.  We've had The Sauce twice now and there have been rave reviews by all.  Yeah!

As a bonus, (you knew this was coming), this sauce is healthy since there aren't any "funny" ingredients and it's cheap.  I "sixed" this recipe (what is it called when you multiply a recipe times 6 anyway?) and got enough sauce for 18 big pizzas.  I think the huge batch cost less than $6.00 which comes out to a sauce cost of only .33 per pizza.  Say that 10 times fast, "sauce cost."

In honor of my Big Guy...

Papa Ron's Pizza Sauce

makes enough for 2-3 pizzas depending on how saucy you are

16 oz can of tomato sauce
6 oz can of tomato paste
2 t sugar
1 t dried basil
1 t dried oregano
1/2 t salt
2 T olive oil

Put all of this in a pot and simmer until the flavors mix.  Wham!  You're done.

You might want to add a bit more seasoning depending on your tastes.  A small shake of crushed red pepper would be yummy if you don't have little ones eating that pizza.

After the sauce cooled, I put 2 cups of it into ziploc sandwich bags and froze them.  Now making pizza for dinner is even easier!  Next time, I'll probably only put 1 1/2 cups in each baggie.  I used one bag tonight on 2 pizzas and had enough to sauce up a 3rd.

Happy Eating!

Canning Applesauce

Last Fall some sweet friends gave us a bunch of apples from their trees.  In addition to the apples, she also loaned me the use of her Victorio Food Strainer.  Oh my!  I loved the apples but the Victorio was a revelation.  I was hooked from my first spin of the handle.  Canning is already fun, but the Victorio makes it even funner (I know that isn't a word...I just like it.)  And, yes, I just said that canning is fun.  My sisters are laughing right now.

This year, I saved up my Swagbucks (I love Swagbucks) and used them to buy my very own Victorio Food Strainer from Amazon.  My very own...sigh.  When the box arrived, the kids just got out of my way...they knew I was so excited to get at that thing.  The Victorio my friend lent me was 20 years old and in great shape.  It was good to see the new strainer I took from the box looked exactly the same - no new parts made out of plastic as most things seem to be these days.  I'm hoping to use this thing for the next 30 years!



We broke the Victorio in by making 45 qt of delicious, pink, no-sugar added applesauce.  Yum!

These are the apples we started with on the back porch.  Please ignore the messy shelves of shoes and miscellaneous football equipment.   Another sweet friend allowed us to come help her get apples at her parent's house.  We ended up with 2 laundry baskets and 3 grocery sacks full!  I forgot to take a photo right at the beginning - thus the front basket is already empty.

Apples, well, part of them, washed and quartered.  No peeling or coring needed because the Victorio does it for me.  From here, these apples are put into a big pot on the stove with about an inch of water in the bottom and cooked until they are a bit mushy.

Here's the Victorio hooked onto our kitchen table.  The big white funnel on the top is where the apples are put.  The handle is on the right side. The applesauce comes down the funnel and through a fine metal sieve which is surrounded by the white thing you see above.  The sauce slides down the white thing and into the big bowl in front.  The silver/white looking cone on the left side is where all of the peels and seeds get pushed out the end of the sieve.  They fall into the small silver bowl I put there.  Clear as mud?

The cooked apples get dumped into the bit hopper on the top of the Victorio.  The red thingy is for pushing the apples down into the hole at the bottom of the funnel so a big corkscrew can push them along through the sieve.  Just in case it isn't clear, turning the handle turns the corkscrew.

The applesauce sliding down into the bowl.  Isn't it a pretty color?  Leaving the skins on while it cooks and goes through the strainer gives it the color.

This is the leftovers coming out the end of the strainer.  Isn't it so cool?  I think I love what's in this bowl almost as much as the applesauce.  It's so much faster to skip the coring and peeling parts.  When this bowl gets full, one of the Young'uns will run it out to the compost pile.

Canned Applesauce!

What a blessing!

Did I mention the Victorio is amazing with tomatoes as well?  If I can get my hands on a bunch of tomatoes (ours are looking a bit sad), I'll be making as much tomatoe sauce and soup as I can can.  (Just a little canning humor. Ha.)

Canning the Bounty

It's been a busy several days around the Little Farm.  Busy in a good way, but busy just the same.  In the past week or so, I've spent about 20 hours in the kitchen canning everything in sight.  Well, maybe not everything in sight, but it sure seemed like it.  These have been some late nights, but I'm thankful to have the work to do and know it will mean good things for our family in the months to come.  Praise God!

Here's what I've been up to:
-45 qt of applesauce canned or frozen (mostly canned)
-48 c of apple slices frozen
-22 qt of apple pie filling canned
-9 pt of apple butter made and frozen
-30 c of green beans frozen
-8 qt of dilly beans
-15 qt of salsa
-30 c of corn frozen

See what I mean?  If you were a fruit or veggie around my kitchen, you went into a canning jar or a ziploc bag last week.

All this time in the kitchen meant lots of time for thinking which means I've got several blog posts rolling around in my head.  Stay tuned!

Canning: Dilly Beans

For Amy, because she asked.

When the green beans start rolling in, it's time to make some Dilly Beans, aka pickled green beans.  I know, you're a bit skeptical about these.  I was too the first time my friend Jess told me to come over and we'd can pickled beans.  However, I love pickles so I was game.  They are delicious!  The Young'uns love them even more than I do, I think.  They can go through a quart of these things faster than Brett Farve can come out of retirement.  So far this year, 8 quarts of Dilly Beans have been put into the pantry.  I'll post a photo as soon as my camera's battery gets charged up again.

I also freeze some of our green beans for eating in the winter.  I don't can plain green beans because I'd need to use a pressure cooker for those and, I'm a big pressure cooking chicken.  Those things still scare me a bit.  (FYI- the reason you don't need a pressure cooker to can pickled items or tomato products is that those things are very acidic.  Plain green beans or corn or carrots aren't acidic and need the pressure cooker.)

Dilly Beans

4 lb. green beans
8 dried red peppers or 8 t cayenne pepper
8 heads of dill or 8 t dill seed
1/2 c pickling salt
8-16 peeled garlic cloves
6 c water
3 c vinegar

Wash beans and trim off ends.  We only trim off the end that was connected to the plant.  Heat water, salt and vinegar to boiling in large pot.  Meanwhile, get your clean jars hot and assemble the garlic, dill and peppers together.  When brine is boiling well, take hot jar add 1-2 garlic cloves, head or tsp of dill, and red pepper or cayenne.  Pack beans into the jar.  You can pack them in pretty tight.  Just make sure you have about 1/4 inch head space between tops of the beans and the top of the jar.  Pour water/vinegar brine over beans again, leaving about 1/4 inch of head space.  Use a spatula to get out any air bubbles, wipe rim, put on lid and process in water bath for about 10 minutes.

You can use either pints or quart jars for this.  If you use pints, it should make about 8 jars.  Quarts will give you about 4 jars.  If you have long beans and are making pints, you'll need to cut them in half when you are trimming them so they'll fit in the jars.

These are pretty spicy.  In fact, around our house they are called Spicy Beans.  If you''re not a big fan of spice, leave out the hot pepper or cut in it half.  They'll still taste great!  Dill seeds work just as well as dill heads, but dill heads are prettier in the jars.  Red peppers also look better in the jars than cayenne powder. 

Let them stand for 2-3 weeks before eating them to give the flavors some time to mingle.

As far as canning goes, I'm not going to get into the specifics.  If you'd like to learn to can, give me a call and come over.  Otherwise, there are lots of great sites online which can teach you how to can. One to try is here.  I'll just say, it's much easier than you think it is.  :)

Cucumbers and More Cucumbers

This post is in honor of Ellie, who asked the question.

Chances are if you've got a bunch of zucchini right now...you've got a bunch of cucumbers piling up next to them!  They seem to go from almost ready to pick one day to gargantuan over night.

We do a few things with cucumbers here on the Little Farm.  If we get them at that stage where the flesh to seeds ratio is just right, we gobble them up raw!  We eat them for snacks and along side meals.  We dip them in ranch (OK, the Young'uns do this) or use them to scoop up hummus.  We slice them to use on sandwiches or tuck them into pita (homemade...I'll post the recipe soon.  It's really fun!) along with the hummus.

If the cucumbers are a little past perfect - meaning their seedy parts have gotten a tad out of control. After all it's really not very enjoyable to bite into a cucumber with big slimy seeds inside. We still use them in lots of the ways mentioned above but we cut out the seeds. 

This is done one of two ways.  The first is to slice the cucumber in half the long way and run a spoon down the middle of each side scooping out the seeds.  It's safest to do this in a bowl with somewhat high sides as sometimes the seeds have a mind of their own.  The second way I get rid of the seeds is to cut the cucumber in fourths the long way.  Then I stand each quarter on end and cut the seedy part off with a paring knife.  You don't get pretty round slices doing this, but the cucumbers still taste great.

Cucumbers without seeds are also great to use in salads!  I usually use the quartered cucs for salad.   We've made several salads with some combination of cucumbers, fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, red onion, a little olive oil, salt and pepper.  However, our favorite cucumber salad around here is made with rice wine vinegar.

Cucumber Salad

serves 2-4

1-2 large cucumbers, peeled, quartered lengthwise, (seeds cut out if they're big) then sliced crosswise

1-2 Tbsp chopped fresh dill, basil, or Thai basil
2-3 Tbsp seasoned rice vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients in a bowl, toss to coat. Serve immediately, or make ahead (up to a couple of hours) and chill.  We like it best chilled and made with dill.  It's wonderful the first day, but not so great as leftovers which usually isn't a problem as it gets eaten pretty quickly.  You have to use rice wine vinegar.  White vinegar or apple cider of balsamic won't work.

Here's a bonus lesson on cutting basil and other leafy things.  You've got to chiffonade the leaves.  Say that with me, "chiffonade."  It's pronounced like "shif - un - nadh."  It sounds fancy, but is very easy and makes cutting up things like spinach or basil or swiss chard much faster. 

I just learned this tonight - chiffonade comes from the French.  Chiffon refers to "rags" or rag-like strips, as in those strips you'd make into a rag rug.  You're family is going to be impressed with all this new knowledge so be sure to call them into the kitchen while you're cutting the basil.  I do! 

To chiffonade:  stack the leaves on top of each other, roll them up like a cigar, and cut thin slices from one side to the other.  At this point, you're done chiffonading your leaves.  However, if you want them in smaller pieces (say for the salad above) just chop the little strips you've made again going across the strips.  Viola!  Now you've got diced leaves!

I've actually never made pickles or relish from cucumbers.  I would think those would also be great options for cucumbers which have gotten a bit large once the seeds are taken out.  We just never seem to have many left after eating them fresh.

Happy Cooking!

Zucchini Week - The Best Chocolate Zucchini Cake...Really THE Best!

Day Five of Zucchini Week and we've finally gotten to the good stuff - dessert!  I love dessert!

Before I get to the recipe for the best zucchini cake I've found, we need to learn a little more about zucchini.  Sorry.  It's the Mom in me; we can't just make a cake, we need to learn what exactly we're using to make the cake.  You want to know what you're eating, right?

I've done a bit of research this week and found out something very surprising.  Zucchini is a member of the squahs family and it is a fruit, NOT a vegetable.  If I had remembered the botany I studied with my younger kids this year, I would have known this already.  Those big green clubs growing out in our garden are the seed containers of the zucchini plants and everyone knows seed containers are the fruit of a plant.  If we want to get really technical, the zucchini is the "immature ovary" of the plant.  (Thanks wikipedia!)

Zucchini or versions of the zucchini we know and love here are grown all over the world and eaten in a variety of ways.  In fact, the blossoms on zucchini plants are loved as much as the squash itself.  It seems they originated in Mexico and have since migrated around the globe, only arriving in the United States in the early 1900's probably coming with Italian immigrants.  If you have a British friend, they'll call a zucchini a courgette.  Isn't this all so interesting?  Even food has history!

One more thing, I always wondered about the nutrition of a zucchini.  They are a vegetable (fruit, whatever) so I knew there were at least a few redeeming qualities to them.  But they seemed to be comprised of so much water, I wondered if there could be room for any great nutrients in there?  Guess what?  They contain lots of good things for us!

In just under 1 cup of fresh zucchini, you get decent amounts of folates, riboflavin, manganese, potassium, Vitamin A.  It also contains very helpful amounts of magnesium and Vitamin C.  As a bonus, this amount of zucchini only has 17 calories, little fat, no cholesterol and a bit of fiber.  I tried to do some research on whether freezing zucchini changes it's nutritional content.  It seems a few of the nutrients might take a bit of a hit, but not that much.  Hooray!

So, after all this, I say, "Let them eat cake and throw some zucchini in it!"  I've tried several cake recipes using zucchini and this one is my favorite.  I love the combination of chocolate and spices it has.  Enjoy!

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

from "Taste of Home," August/September 1998, "Men Who Run the Range"

1/2 c butter, softened
1/2 c vegetable oil
1 3/4 c sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
2 1/2 c all purpose flour
1/4 c cocoa
1 t baking soda
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t cinnamon
1/2 t cloves
1/2 c sour milk  (1 1/2 t vinegar or lemon juice, plus milk to equal 1/2 c.  Let it sit for a few minutes.)
2 c shredded zucchini
1/2 c chocolate chips
1/2 c brown sugar

In mixing bowl, cream butter, oil and sugar.  Beat in eggs and vanilla.  Combine dry ingredients in separate bowl.  Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture, alternately with milk.  Mix well.  Stir in zucchini.  Pour into a greased 9x13 pan.  Sprinkle with chocolate chips and brown sugar.  Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes. 

Only one note about this recipe - I don't mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl.  Doing so would make one more dish and that's just not my style.  I just add the cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and spices to the creamed mixture and mix for a bit.  Then I add the flour alternately with the milk.  It's worked just fine every time.  Oh yes, I also add some cinnamon to the topping as well.  Guess that is two notes...

Happy Eating!

Zucchini Week - Time to Start Shredding

Part of Mt. Zucchini here on The Little Farm

(Yeah!  We got a new camera - for free!)

Day Four of Zucchini Week and Farmer Ron harvested three more of the weapons, I mean beauties, out of the garden.  Do you know what this means?  It's time to start shredding zucchini.

When the zucs started coming fast and furious around the Little Farm, we eat lots of zucchini in lots of different ways - soups, pasta, salads, muffins, desserts - as soon as its harvested.  But there is no way we can eat all of them.  That would be as impossible as trying to keep myself from eating the bar of Lindt Dark Chocolate with Sea Salt hiding from my family in the cupboard.  It just isn't going to happen.

Nope, when we start to get buried under a mountain of zucchini, we get out the food processor and shred the things.  You can shred them with a hand grater, too, and I did for years before my good friend the food processor arrived.  After shredding them, I put them into Ziploc bags in 4 cup portions and off to the deep freeze in the basement they go.  Last summer, we ended up with 180 cups of shredded zucchini down there.  That's a lot of zucchini.  Guess what?  There is none left now!  Yep, we went through it all.

Lots of the shredded zucs ended up in the muffins we ate over the winter, but a good deal of it was snuck into various other foods to give them just a bit more nutrition and bulk.  Saucy Italian dishes and soups are the other places the shredded zucchini end up the most.  No one guessed they were having a little zucchini in their lasagna, spaghetti sauce or chicken soup.  He he he!  (That's my evil Mom laugh.)

A warning about shredded zucchini that's been frozen...it gets really mushy and VERY watery.  If you're using it in a soup or sauce and need some extra liquid, just dump the whole bag in.  If you don't need more liquid or you're using the zucchini in muffins or cake, you HAVE to drain off the water before you use it.  Draining it is easy, just open a smallish hole in the Ziploc bag and squeeze.  You'll be amazed how small the amount of zucchini in the bag is once all the water is gone.

Sometimes the shredded zucchini doesn't head to the freezer.  Last year, I used some of it to make Mock Zucchini Apricot Preserves. Turns out Mock Zucchini Apricot Preserves is just another way of saying, "delicious!"  I loved it on wheat toast.  Mmmmmm.

Mock Zucchini Apricot Preserves

from "Meals of Grace," a cookbook by the lovely ladies of First Baptist Church in Merced, CA

makes 4 pints

6 c. shredded zucchini
1 c. water
6 c. sugar
1 20 oz. can of crushed pineapple
2 T. lemon juice
1 6 oz. package of apricot jello

Wash, peel and shred zucchini.  Put into a large pot, add water and boil for 6 minutes.  Add sugar, pineapple and lemon juice and boil for 6 more minutes.  Add apricot jello and boil for 6 more minutes.  Pour into jars and seal.  If you are going to eat the preserves soon, you can just keep them in the fridge.  If not, process these in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.

Tomorrow we get to the good stuff - Chocolate Zucchini Cake and more!

Zucchini Week - Raw Corn and Zucchini Salad

from Everyday Food at www.marthastewart.com

Day Three of Zucchini Week and we've moved on to salads.  To be honest, I haven't ever made a cold salad with zucchini.  Never thought of eating it raw, but I wanted to cover all the zucchini bases this week so I went searching for a good salad recipe.

I didn't have to look any farther than the magazine rack in the bathroom (is this too much information?) and my June 2010 issue of Everyday Food from Martha Stewart.  I love this magazine!  It's only about healthy food and cooking (no decorating, pets, cleaning...just food), has recipes that contain everyday ingredients (no rare mushrooms that only grow under bamboo in Chinese forests) and the subscription price is great.

I made Raw Corn and Zucchini Salad for dinner tonight and got 2 thumbs up from the Big Guy and 2 of the Young'uns.  I loved it too!  Very fresh, almost sweet.  It is definitely going on the summer menu rotation.  As a bonus, it took me less than 10 minutes to put it together.  We had it with BBQ chicken in the crock pot - great combo.

I actually modified the original recipe (surprise) below quite a bit because we didn't have 2 of the ingredients.  The recipe from the magazine that got my creative juices going is listed below, I'll be trying it soon!  What I actually did with the recipe is farther down.

Raw Corn and Zucchini Salad

from Everyday Food, June 2010

serves 4

3 ears of corn, husked
2 medium zucchini, thinly sliced
2 T fresh lime juice
2T olive oil
2T cilantro, chopped
salt and pepper

Cut off tips of corn.  Stand an ear in wide, shallow bowl.  With a sharp knife, slice downward to cut off kernels.  You should end up with about 2 cups of corn.  Dump corn into a medium bowl.

Add sliced zucchini, lime juice, olive oil and cilantro.  Mix.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Eat away! 

Here's what I did with my version:
-used corn from my freezer.  It was fresh off the cob last September and worked great!!
-used the juice of 1/2 a lemon instead of the lime
-skipped the cilantro
-julienned the zucchini, instead of slicing it.  My goal was to make it look less like zucchini for my non-zucchini lovers.  The disguise didn't work too well, but I really liked how it looked.  Julienne basically means to cut into VERY thin strips like matchsticks.  It's a big pain to julienne veggies with a regular knife.  I used my new favorite kitchen tool to cut mine.  It's like a vegetable peeler, but it has little "ridges" (not sure what to call them) on the blade that cuts the veggie into matchsticks.  It is so much fun!  Makes stir-fry easy, too.  You can check it out here. 

I used some of my Swagbucks (so they were free!) to get the set and love all three of them.  The serrated blade works great on mango and kiwi and such.

Happy Zucchini Eating!

Zucchini Week - Veggie Pancakes and Spaghetti with Zucchini and Lemon

Welcome to Day Two of Zucchini Week!  After looking through my recipes, I'm having trouble narrowing down what to share with you.  Who knew I've cooked so much zucchini over the years?  (Not me!)

Today, I'm giving out two recipes - Veggie Pancakes and Spaghetti with Zucchini and Lemon.  Both of these are vegetarian recipes.  However, they do contain dairy and eggs.  The whole family here on the Farm likes the Spaghetti recipe.  The youngest Young'uns are not so found of the pancakes.  Ron and I love them.

So, without further ado...

Veggie Pancakes

from Miserly Moms by Jonni McCoy

3 cups veggies, grated or finely chopped  (Use whatever you have - our favorites are zucchini and carrots)
1 cup potato, grated
1/2 onion, grated or diced fine
4 eggs
1/2 to 1 cup bread crumbs (if you don't have these you can use crackers or flour)
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup grated cheese

After grating the veggies, stick them in a colander and let them drain for 15-30 minutes.  Press the veggies a bit to get out any extra water.  Dump veggies in a bowl add eggs, salt and pepper.  Mix.  Add bread crumbs and mix until dough forms.  This won't be a dough like bread dough - it will be very wet.  You just want it all to be sticking together and not really runny.  Add cheese and mix again.  Form into patties and cook in a frying pan (might need a bit of oil on the pan) or on an electric griddle.  Feeds 4 people.  I double this for sure when I make them.

A few notes
-a food processor makes this one much faster
-feel free to add fresh herbs
-we usually use cheddar cheese but others are great too
-never buy bread crumbs! I save the heels of our bread in a bread bag in the freezer.  When the bag starts to take over your freezer, I run it through my food processor.  Viola!  Bread crumbs.  You can put them into a Ziploc bag and keep them in the freezer until you need them.  I've also spread them out on a cookie sheet and baked them at 300 for about 10 minutes or until they were crispy.  I freeze them this way too.
-these aren't nearly as good if you use all flour when making them, but using some to firm up the dough is fine
-you can make a Greek version using all zucchini, some mint, and feta cheese.  Oh my yummy!

Spaghetti with Zucchini and Lemon

from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home

1 lb spaghetti or linguine
1 T olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
6-8 small, tender zucchini, sliced (about 4 cups)
dash of salt and pepper
juice of 1 lemon
6 large fresh basil leaves, cut into thin strips
1-2 cups grated cheese, Parmesan is best, but mozzarella will work

Cook pasta according to package directions. 

While pasta cooks, heat the olive oil in a large heavy skillet.  Add the garlic and zucchini and saute over medium high heat until the zucchini begins to brown.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Add lemon juice and basil, stir, and remove from heat.  This should be done just before the pasta gets done.  Drain pasta and toss in a big bowl with about 1 cup of cheese.  Top with the zucchini and serve right away.  Serves at least 4 people.

A few notes
-this one is really fast to make!
-dried basil works, too
-to cut fresh basil - stack the leaves and roll them then cut across into thin strips
-the zucchini mixture (without the pasta) works great as a side dish, in soup with chicken broth or even in an omelet

Happy Eating!

Zucchini Week - Come and Celebrate!

It's that time of year...you are in the garden one day and everything looks good.  You go out the next day and trip over a green thing the size of your thigh hiding amongst the zucchini vines!  They are amazing things those zucchini. In fact, I think there is probably a PhD thesis somewhere waiting to be written on the extraordinary growth abilities of these squash.

We've begun harvesting zucchini here on the Farm - 5 last week and at least 4 more ready tomorrow.  And they'll just keep coming.  Did you know August 8th is national "Sneak Some Zucchini onto Your Neighbor's Front Porch Day?"  I'm not making it up.  You can google it yourself.  Long about August 8th, we'll be ready to take part in the festivities.  For now however, we've got all sorts of ways to use up our bountiful supply of zucchini. 

So this week has been declared "Zucchini Week" here on the Little Farm.  (Cue music here.)  I'll be posting a zucchini recipe and maybe even some zucchini facts and fun all through the week.  Hopefully, these posts come just in time for you, as your garden or CSA box are probably starting to overflow with your own zucchini. 

Our first recipe is for Summer Garden Zucchini, Tomato and Cheese Casserole.  It's a pretty long title and it doesn't sound all that great, but oh my!  It's delicious and SO easy.  The whole casserole thing is rather misleading, too...maybe I should rename it someday.

Summer Garden Zucchini, Tomato and Cheese Casserole

4 medium zucchini, sliced thin (I never know what is meant in recipes by medium zucchini...I usually think zuc's about the size of my forearm are medium but that's just me)
3 big tomatoes, sliced thin
a white onion, sliced thin
dried or fresh oregano and basil
salt and pepper
olive oil
parmesan cheese, grated (The real wedge stuff is best, but you can use the cheese in the green bottle as well.  I totally understand the food budget sacrifice thing.)
shredded mozarella cheese
chicken breast (cut into strips) or boneless chicken thighs (I usually use thighs.)

In large frying pan, saute oil with onion and zucchini until it's soft but not squishy.

Add salt and pepper to taste.  Add few dashes of dried oregano and basil.  If you are using fresh, and this time of year you should be, I'd use about 2T of each.

Put zucchini mixture into a 9x13 baking dish with slices of tomato on top.  Sprinkle with some parmesan cheese.  Then sprinkle with some mozarella cheese.  You decide how cheesy you like it.

Take the pan you sauteed the zucchini in and saute the chicken until golden brown (flip it part way through).  Place the chicken down in amongst the veggies in the 9x13 pan.  Sprinkle with a bit more cheese.  Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes.

Yum.

This turns out VERY moist with lots of broth around the veggies and meat.  You can serve it many ways - as a soup, over pasta, over rice or just as chicken and veggies (leave the juice in the pan).  We usually eat it over pasta or as a soup.  If you go the soup route, please, I beg you, please have some good bread to eat with it.  Using the bread to soak up some of the juice as you eat is just amazing.  One of the great tastes of summer.

Until tomorrow...

Need an easy and good bread recipe?  Check out this one...

Fiesta Corn Relish - Let Canning Begin!

Canning season started today which is exciting and a bit daunting at the same time.  Exciting because I love taking veggies (especially ones from our garden) and turning them into jars of lovely things to feed my family all throughout the winter.  Daunting because canning is a bit of work.  I'll be logging quite a few hours in the kitchen over the next two months, but when it's all done, I'll have shelves of good food ready and waiting.

Today I made Fiesta Corn Relish.  This is a new one for me, but what I tasted is delicious!  Kind-of a cross between a true relish and a somewhat vinegary corn salsa.  It'll be great added to tacos or nachos.  I'm sure I'll add it to black beans for a quick salad.  The relish will also be tasty along side some pork or beef.

Just in case any of my fellow Mid-Westerners are experiencing garden envy because you haven't gotten any corn out of your garden yet, don't worry.  We haven't either.  The corn I used today was some I had cut off the cob and frozen last summer.  A very generous friend gave us a TON (not really, but it was close) of fresh corn which we ate and ate.  When we'd eaten our fill, we froze the rest and enjoyed it all winter.  Amazingly, there is still a bit left.  I need to defrost my freezer before I fill it again, so my solution to using up the corn was to can it up.  Actually, not many of the ingredients I worked with today started in our garden, only the jalapeno peppers.  This will change as the season goes on.

Fiesta Corn Relish

makes about 2 pints

5-6 ears fresh corn
1 hot pepper, seeded and finely chopped (leave the seeds in if you like it really hot)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 1/2 c cider vinegar
3/4 c sugar
1/2 c red onion, chopped
1/2 c sweet red pepper, chopped
1/3 c green onions, chopped
1 t ground cumin
1 t pickling salt
1/2 t ground black pepper
2 T cilantro, chopped

Bring a large pot of water to boil over high heat.  Add corn and cook for 6 minutes.  Drain and cool until you can handle it.  Cut off the kernels until you have 4 cups of corn.  Put the corn into a large pot (not aluminum).

Add hot pepper, garlic, vinegar, sugar, red pepper, red onion, green onion, cumin, salt and pepper to pan with corn.  Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat and let it boil gently for 20 minutes.  Stir in cilantro and cook for 2 more minutes.  Take it off the heat.

Ladle the relish into hot jars and process for 15 minutes using standard canning procedures.

Frozen corn can be used as well.  Just make sure to cook it before you add the other ingredients.

I quadrupled this recipe and ended up with 7 pints canned and about 3 more pints in the fridge for eating in the next couple of weeks.  I would have processed the rest in hot water, but I my canning pot only does 7 pints at a time and I ran out of time to process that last 3 pints.  Drat that soccer!  It's OK though because my oldest two sons are gobbling it up with tortilla chips as we speak.

By the way, I found the recipe for Fiesta Corn Relish in The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving.  I discovered this book at the library and am loving it so much it's made it's way into my cart at Amazon.  Someday...

Yum!  Yum!  Yum!

Kombucha...It's What's Brewing on the Farm

I'm a home brewer.  Not a home brewer of the traditional home brew type, much to the Big Guy's dismay.  But a home brewer all the same.  We're brewing kombucha here on the Farm.

Komb-whatcha, you ask?  Kombucha.  Here's the dictionary definition:

(kŏm'bōō'chä')
n. A lightly sparkling beverage made by fermenting black or green tea and sugar with a culture of various bacteria and yeasts.

I first read about kombucha in a catalog from the Bulk Herb Store.  For some reason, I found it intriguing.  It sounded like an interesting experiment - taking two regular everyday things like tea and sugar, combine them with some mysterious bacteria and yeasts and get something new, supposedly yummy and maybe even good for us.  Hmmmmm...

Kombucha popped up in my other readings online and in Nourishing Traditions.  It seems lots of folks find the drink helps with any number of ailments from skin problems like acne to cancer.  I was mostly interested in kombucha's probiotic qualities and the claims that it helps give some increased energy (for some reason a bit more energy is always something I'm looking for).

I was game to give kombucha a try, but there was a catch.  You can't just brew some tea, add some sugar, throw in some yeast and, viola, get some kombucha.  You've got to have special bacteria and yeast; you've got to have a SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) or mother or mushroom as they're also called.  To be honest, I'm not all sure what magical bacteria in a SCOBY, I'm just trusting the system on this one.  So when I "overheard" a conversation between friends on facebook regarding SCOBYs, I butted in.  Isn't facebook great?  It's the one place in the world where it's not impolite to interrupt a conversation.

One of the said friends graciously agreed to share one of her SCOBYs with me.  Every time a batch of kombucha is brewed, a new SCOBY or "baby" is produced.  Isn't that amazing?  Thankfully, this friend has a great blog, Common Sense Homesteading, which had all the directions I needed to get my home brewing experiment going.  She also has helpful explanations about the science of what's happening during the whole process.  If you are interested is how to make kombucha and see some great photos, go here.  She's said it much better than I ever could and, besides, my camera is broken so I've got no photos.

I gathered my materials and off we went a brewing.  Ten days later, we drank our first kombucha and it was pretty good.  The kids aren't big fans, but the Big Guy and I have been drinking some everyday since.

Currently, our fourth batch of kombucha is sitting on our kitchen counter.  Let me say that the mother and baby (the old SCOBY and the newly forming SCOBY) are not the most attractive things to have sitting on your counter.  Think tannish-slimy-pancakey-placenta-like looking thing floating around in a big pot of tea and you'll get a pretty accurate picture.  I could put them up in the cupboard, but I think it's rather fun to watch the fermenting take place.  Besides, it's certainly a conversation starter and most folks don't think we're freaky enough yet. So, it's helpful on the counter.

We drank our first batch straight, no flavoring.  I tried adding a bit of fresh ginger to brew number two (yes, I have read a lot of Seuss over the years).  It was good, but I think I went a bit overboard on it because it was pretty spicy.  Batch three was again plain and was the most bubbly so far.  Very yummy.  The Big Guy has requested I try the ginger again with a bit lighter hand.  So, the plan for what's currently brewing on my counter is to flavor some with ginger and the rest with some frozen blueberries.

Have we noticed any big miraculous changes in our health over the past weeks?  Well, as a matter of fact I have.  Check out this photo the Big Guy took of me last weekend:

How amazing is that?    Seriously, neither of us have noticed any dramatic differences, but I'm not willing to say that it hasn't been helpful either.  Right about the time we started drinking off our first brew, I was told I had severe anemia and started taking iron supplements.  One of the side effects which come with such supplements is, um, how to put this...internal stoppages.  Without telling you more that you really want to know, let's just say such stoppages haven't been a problem.  I'm chalking it up to the kombucha along with my gorgeous new blond hair and amazingly straight white teeth.

Getting Ready to Can - Reusable Canning Lids

OK.  This photo is of a snap pea, not a green bean.  My camera recently broke so there are no bean photos for the moment.  If you squint your eyes a bit, the pea will lengthen and look bean-like.  I promise.

We harvested our first green beans this week!  Oh the joy and deliciousness!  It was pretty much unanimous around the table last night that green beans just picked and steamed with a bit of butter on top is one of the best vegetables of all time.  Yum.

The beans currently ready to be harvested are just a trickle right now.  By the end of this week, it will be an onslaught.  This means I need to start thinking about canning.  I don't actually can plain green beans.  Canning green beans means using a pressure cooker and, to be honest, this device frightens me.  Something about amazing high pressure and boiling water and glass...call me a wimp.  Maybe someday when I'm older and more mature, I'll be able to handle it.  Besides, everyone around here prefers frozen green beans.  So, we'll freeze a bunch.

The beans we do can are pickled first.  Dilly Beans.  Yum. Big Yum.

Dilly Beans might just be a Midwest thing because I'd never heard of them until we moved to Wisconsin, but those little things are tasty and easy to can.  No pressure cooker is required because Dilly Beans are pickled.  Pickling involves vinegar which is an acid and high acid foods like tomatoes and pickled things don't need a pressure cooker.

All of this canning stuff was foreign to me four years ago when my dear friend Jessica took me under her wing and taught me to can.  Her lessons opened a whole new world to me and have allowed me to help feed my family well.  Jessica is a kitchen adventurer, too - she can use a pressure cooker. 

I'm not going to attempt a "How to Can" blog post because the internet is filled with great sites that can teach you all you need to know.  I do plan to post about the things we're canning here on the Farm, including the recipes.  I'd also be more than willing to teach someone how to can if you live in the area or want to fly in for a visit...hint hint hint...to those in the West or South.  Just ask - canning with other folks is great fun!

Back to my thoughts about getting ready to can...I've acquired more jars in the past few months so things are looking good in that regard.  I think I have about 50 quart sized jars and 30 or so pint jars empty and waiting in the basement.  Now my thoughts have moved to lids.

The lids on canning jars are what make the seal.  They are metal and have an inner rim of reddish plastic which heats up and makes the seal on the jar.  Very key in the whole process.  However, the lids are the one thing about canning that has bothered me.  They aren't reusable.  One use and you have to toss them.  This seems to fly in the face of canning where you grow or get fresh food, grab a jar and rim (both reusable), do some work and are rewarded with a useful thing of beauty.  When you get hungry and pop off the top on the work of art, you've got to throw said top away.  It just doesn't seem right.

OK.  The lids are reusable for some things.  I could use them to make some sort of punch art Christmas ornament with a ribbon hanger glued on.  But I don't and I probably won't...ever.  So, then I've got that guilt to live with.

I've found a solution for canning (and undone craft guilt)!  The Tattler Reusable Canning Jar Lid!  Oh my goodness!  Not only are they a dream come true, they've got an awesome name, too.  I mean, come on, The Tattler.  That's a great name.

According to their website, the plastic lids and rubber seals can be used for 20 years.  I took the time to read reviews on several blogs and the Tattlers seem to be the real deal.  They are more expensive than regular lids at the start, but they'll be cheaper in the long run.  Also, regular canning lids have BPA in them.  Something I prefer to avoid, if possible, when feeding my crew.

All in the Tattlers seem to be a good investment.  Besides, I'll get non-crafty guilt monkey off my back, too.

Strawberries and Balsamic Vinegar

We've been enjoying strawberry season here on the Farm.  We don't actually have any strawberry plants here, but we've been to our favorite strawberry farm and picked pounds and pounds of our own.  The difference in taste between a strawberry just off the plant and one which has taken a journey from California to our local grocery is amazing!  I've tasted berries straight from the field in California and they are delicious, too;  it's the whole truck thing that just doesn't cut it in the strawberry department.

Thus far, we've eaten strawberries in smoothies, on cereal, over shortcake, with rhubarb and, of course, just plain.  Yesterday, however, I found a new way to enjoy them  - with balsamic vinegar and fresh ground pepper!

I admit.  It doesn't sound very good, but it is quite yummy.  I am not sure how to describe the taste.  The vinegar just seems to bring out even more "strawberriness" or something.

The recipe is, of course, simple.  We pretty much only do simple around here, especially with fruits and veggies.  In my humble opinion, the less you mess with fruits and veggies, the better they taste.

Here's how to get some strawberry yumminess:

Cut some strawberries into a bowl.  Sprinkle with just a bit of sugar and balsamic vinegar.  Give a twist or two from your pepper grinder.  Stir it up and let sit for at least 10 minutes.  An hour will give the flavors even more time to mingle.  Grab a fork and eat it up!

I know that the amounts in the recipe above are, well, they're pretty much missing.  When I made it yesterday, I used about 1/2 lb of berries, 1/2 t of sugar and 1 T of balsamic.  You'll have to give it a shot and decide how strong you like the flavors. 

These berries would be amazing in a salad with some goat cheese!

Will it Roast? Potatoes

Cue the music.

Turn on the funky, blinking colored lights.

It's time for everyone's favorite Little Farm game show - Will It Roast?

If you're new to our series you might be asking, "Why roast a vegetable?"  Well, first and foremost, because it makes veggies taste amazing!  It's also EASY and healthy.  What's not to love?

Tonight's contender is potatoes which, of course as everyone knows, will roast.  Potatoes will roast and they'll be delicious doing it.  Any type of potato will roast - russets, red, yukon gold, fingerlings - you name it.  Roasted potatoes are tender and creamy on the inside and crispy on the outside.  They are also a very economical side dish.  Mmmmm. 

The same basic recipe we used in our other Will it Roast? posts applies to potatoes - Veggies + high heat + oil = some veggie deliciousness.

Roasted Potatoes

Potatoes with skins on, I probably use about 3 lbs for our family
Olive Oil - a few tablespoons
Salt and Pepper
Extras:  onions, garlic, spices like thyme or rosemary

Line a pan with aluminum foil.  (Not necessary, but it makes clean up so much easier and, as such, make your veggies taste that much better.)  Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.  Cut potatoes into cubes.  They shouldn't be some small diced sized.  Ours are usually on the larger side of bite sized.  If you are using small red potatoes - just halve them or leave them whole if they're really small.  Spread the potatoes out on the baking sheet.  Drizzle oil over them and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.  At this point, you can also add some minced garlic or a slivered onion or both to the baking sheet.  Herbs are also a great addition.  I'd try a single herb the first you do it.  If you want to get really crazy - roast some potatoes and carrots together.  It will probably take about 30 minutes for your potatoes to get those crispy browned bits on their edges.  If you are making a bunch of them, you might want to spread them on two pans.  Your cooking time will also be longer if you up the quantity.  Giving them a stir or two while their cooking is a good idea also.

You're going to love these things!  Eat them with beef, chicken, even burgers.  I've even had salads made with roasted potatoes.  Oh. My.  Yummy.

Stayed tuned for our next episode when we ask - Lettuce, Will It Roast?

Just kidding - lettuce will NOT roast. 

Best Birthday Cake!

It's my birthday today. I don't want to lose my Mom card, so I won't reveal my true age. Let's just say I am not 40, yet...

In honor of my birth (Thanks Mom!), I thought I'd share my very favorite cake recipe of ALL time. Seriously-this cake is a little bit of heaven. It is especially delicious with some sort of fruity sauce - like rhubarb or strawberry- and some REAL homemade whipped cream on top.

Oh. My. Goodness. It's to die for.

This is not a cake for those who shun fat and calories, but, even if you are one of those type of folks, you should make it anyway. Afterall, you don't eat cake everyday - it's for celebrations! So, you can afford a few extra calories now and then.

Kentucky Butter Cake
(How can it be bad with the word Butter in the title?)

Cake
3 c flour
2 c sugar
1 t salt
1 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1 c buttermilk (or 1 c milk "soured" with 1 T vinegar or lemon juice)
1 c butter, softened
2 t vanilla extract
4 eggs

Butter Sauce
3/4 c sugar
1/3 c butter
3 T water
2 t vanilla extract

Grease and flour a 12-cup bundt pan. Do NOT skimp on the grease! Trust me, I of what I speak. In mixing bowl, add butter and whip until fluffy. Add sugar and mix well. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix again until fluffy. Add dry ingredients and milk a bit at a time, alternating between the two, and mix on low speed until just moistened, then mix for 3 minutes on medium. Pour into prepared pan and bake at 325 degrees for 55 - 70 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean from the middle.

In small saucepan, combine all butter sauce ingredients. Heat over low heat until butter and sugar are melted.

Using the end of a wooden spoon or a long tined fork, poke about 20 holes all over the bottom of the cake (which is still in the pan at this point). Slowly pour the sauce over the cake and watch it soak into all those holes. Remove cake from pan as soon as sauce is absorbed. Just stick a plate over the cake, hold the plate and cake together and flip the whole thing over. You may have to give it a couple of knocks on the counter. You can eat the cake either warm or cold, plain or with sauce, with or without REAL whipped cream.

I just have one birthday request- if you use Cool-Whip, please don't tell me about it. Thanks.

Making Yogurt

Yep, you read that correctly. I make yogurt. Why in the world would I do that you ask? I mean, really, this is taking the freakiness a bit too far.

There are several reasons for such freakiness: we think it tastes better (I can even eat it plain), it has no junk in it like store bought yogurt (just look at the side bar of the yogurt in your fridge), it means fewer plastic containers cluttering my cupboards and in the landfill, it works great as an oil substitute in baked goods, and, you knew it was coming, it cuts the cost of eating yogurt by more than half if you usually buy the big tubs of yogurt. If you typically buy those little containers, you'll save a bundle! Oh yes, did I mention it was easy?

The list of ingredients needed to make your own yogurt is small - just a gallon of whole milk and 1/2 c of plain whole milk yogurt. These ingredients will make 4 quarts of plain yogurt! A small single serve container of yogurt should be enough to get the 1/2 cup. After your first batch, you can just use some of the yogurt you've already made instead of buying more. Whole milk is currently running about $2.20 here in town so that breaks down to only 55 cents per quart of yogurt, plus a bit extra for your first container of yogurt.

Homemade Yogurt

makes 4 quarts

Ingredients:

1 gallon whole milk - cannot be ultra-pasteurized milk, look at the label

1/2 c plain whole yogurt

Supplies:

4 quart sized canning jars or 4 quart sized glass jars (spaghetti sauce jars would work)

pot large enough to fit the above jars

a washcloth

candy thermometer - found at Target or Wal-Mart for a few bucks, not necessary though - keep reading

wooden spoon

Make sure you jars are very clean and dry - a trip through the dishwasher is great, but not necessary. Fill each jar to about 2 inches below the rim of the jar. I've filled them higher but always end up with milk all over the counter. Place the pot on the stove, lay the wash cloth on the bottom and set the jars on top of the cloth. Fill the pot with water to about 2 inches below the tops of the jars. I use a pitcher to fill the pot. Take your starter yogurt out of the fridge and let it warm on the counter.

Stick the thermometer in a jar of milk in your pot and hook it over the side. Heat the pot and jars until the temperature of the milk reaches 185 degrees. At this point, the milk will have a "skin" on it, just scrape it off and throw it out. Actually, if you don't have a thermometer you can still make yogurt - just look for the skin.

You can't harm (burn) the milk by heating it this way because the water acts as a buffer. I love this part! It means I can walk away from my pot and fold some laundry or clean a toilet or, let's be honest, check out facebook. The washcloth gives your jars a firm slip-proof base to rest upon. Also, if you have a cloth which smells a bit odd - using it to make yogurt will take the smell right out.

When the milk reaches 185 degrees, remove the jars from the water and put the lids on them. I put them on top of a dish towel on my counter. Now you want to cool the milk down to about 100 degrees. Actually, anywhere between 95 and 120 degrees is fine, but I like the thickness of the yogurt cooled to 100. No thermometer - just pick up the jar! If you can only hold it for a few seconds, it's still too hot.

How to cool your milk? You could leave it sitting on the counter, but it will take quite a while. You can put it in your fridge, but it will take a great deal of energy because it will make your fridge work pretty hard. Also, you won't be able to see your yogurt and might forget about it while you are folding that laundry. I usually add some water - not too cold, just verging on cool - to my sink and put the jars in there. After a little bit, I drain that and add cold water and sometimes even ice. Why not just use cold water right off the bat? Hot jars + cold water = cracked jars.

If you spend too long on facebook, I mean reading to your kids, and the milk gets too cool. Just reheat it again. It's only milk at this point. Don't you love fail proof recipes?

Next, gently stir 2 Tablespoons of starter yogurt into each jar. Yogurt is a living thing and you need to be nice to it so go gentle. Also, more using more yogurt at this point will NOT give you thicker yogurt. It will make it thinner because you'll be adding too many bacteria to the party.

Now it's time to incubate! Isn't that amazing? You are incubating milk and bacteria to turn that milk into something totally different and new. Not to mention sometime healthy and yummy. God made a good world! There are other methods for this portion of the recipe, but I like incubating my yogurt in the oven.

Turn you oven on to warm for a few minutes. Set your jars in the oven as close to the light as possible. Cover the jars with a towel. Turn off the oven and turn on the light. Let them sit over night or for at least 9 hours or so. I've gone anywhere between 8 and 10 hours and have gotten great yogurt. You'll just have to experiment a few times; you might want to go longer. At this point, your yogurt will still look a bit strange. It needs to cool before it'll look "normal." Really. Don't judge your yogurt at this point. It won't fare well.

Either stick the jars in the freezer for an hour or so or put them in your fridge. When you look at your creation after it cools, you might find some pale yellow liquid around the top. This is whey - a by product of the fermentation that just took place. It isn't anything to be alarmed about. Just pour it off or stir it back into your yogurt. Whey is actually good for you.

The last thing to do is take out 1/2 cup of your new yogurt, put it in a clean container and stick in the fridge. Now you are all ready to make more yogurt when your current batch runs out.

I've done some pretty wonky things while making my yogurt - like forgetting about it while cooling in the water or forgetting it in the freezer too long or forgetting it was incubating in the oven and starting to preheat said oven to make bread. Hmmmm...all of these have to do with forgetting...we've got issues here. Amazingly, the yogurt still turned out. It's very forgiving stuff.

It took me a few attempts to get yogurt just right, but even the failures weren't bad. If we didn't want to eat the botched tries, I just used the yogurt to replace some of the oil in muffins.

If your first attempts are less than perfect, keep trying! Soon you'll be filling your fridge and your stomach with yummy, healthy yogurt that is worth the extra effort.

Will it Roast? - Carrots

It's time again to visit our veggie friends in the every popular series - Will It Roast? [Are you hearing the background music to some sort of variety show in your head right now? Because it is playing in mine.]

Today's veggie competitor is CARROTS!

Eating carrots raw is always good. What is better than a crunchy carrot? I try to have some in the fridge peeled, cut up and ready to munch at all times here on the Farm. They are a budget friendly, healthy snack. Young'un - "I'm hungry!" Me - "Grab some carrots.

We go through pounds of carrots each week around here, yet you will rarely find any of those "baby" carrots in our fridge. There are a few reasons for this. First, they seem pretty hit or miss to me on flavor while the big ones taste great all the time. Second, it just seems odd - baby carrots. They aren't really babies you know. If you've ever planted carrots and then picked one when it was only a baby, you know baby carrots are only about 1/4 of an inch thick. Nope, the baby carrots in the store are impostors. Third, they are so much more expensive than just peeling and cutting your own. I've read in several places that doing this extra step computes to about a $50.00 per hour wage. Yep, I am pretty sure I can cut some carrots for 50 bucks.

But I digress...

We eat carrots raw, but how about cooking them?  Not one person here on the Farm will eat them boiled. Nope. Not too tasty. The Young'uns will eat steamed carrots - a bit of butter makes them even better. Guess what our favorite way to eat carrots cooked is? [More corny music here.]

Did you guess roasted? You are so smart!

As with the other posts on roasting, let me say Roast Carrots are easy and delicious! The recipe is basically the same, too. (Are you seeing themes here? Veggies + high heat + oil = yumminess.)

Roasted Carrots

Carrots - whatever amount will feed your crew

Olive Oil - a few tablespoons at least

Salt and Pepper

Garlic - crushed or sliced and optional

Peel carrots and cut them into whatever shape floats your boat - rounds or sticks. Just remember that the smaller the pieces, the quicker they'll cook. Cover a rimmed baking sheet with foil (not a necessity, but clean up in much easier). If you are making a ton of carrots, you might want to use two sheets. Spread the carrots on the sheet, drizzle with oil. Salt and pepper to taste. Add the optional garlic now, if you'd like. Give the whole thing a quick stir and slide it in the oven. About 20-30 minute later, depending on the size of your carrots and the amount of crunchy dark parts you like, they'll be ready to devour.

And that's what your eaters will do - devour them!

By the way, you can totally make this with baby carrots. They don't like the high oven temperatures and might cry a bit, but they'll cook up just fine. And if using baby carrots is the deciding factor in whether or not you give Roast Carrots try - by all means - use the babies!

Good Gooey Cake

My Young'uns

I was treated like a queen on Mother's Day - lots of hugs (even from my big guys), good food (which I didn't make or clean up), some flowers and homemade cards, and 2 hours of me laying on my back reading a good book. It was nice!

Two of the young'uns made me one of my favorite, completely bad for you, chocolaty, gooey, cream cheesy dessert. I only make this cake every few years, but when I do...oh my! It's so good. Sunday it was extra good because Jake and Ellie handled the whole thing. All I did was eat!

I know I've shared recipes for basically healthy foods so far, but well, sometimes you just gotta eat cake!

St. Louie Gooey Cake

Mix with spoon in bowl:
1 chocolate cake mix
2 eggs
1 stick of melted butter
(Don't follow the cake mix directions. Just use the mix in the box with the eggs and butter.)



Mix in another bowl (you might want to use a mixer for this part:
80z of cream cheese-softened
2 eggs
a bag of powdered sugar

Spread chocolate in 9x13 pan. This stuff is thick and it is sometimes easier to just wet your fingers a bit and spread it that way. Pour cream cheese mixture on top and spread to cover. Bake for 30-35 minutes in a preheated 325 degree oven. It should get pretty brown around the edges and the middle should be set- sort of.

And there you have it, Good Gooey Cake that even a kid can make!