food

Sourdough Banana Bread Muffins

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While my husband and I ended up being away for far longer than expected, our daughters did some baking.  Along with the now regular baking of 4 loaves of sourdough bread, they made sourdough banana bread muffins with chocolate chips, modifying a recipe they found for banana bread online.

It was a marvelous treat to come home to!

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Sourdough Banana Bread, with muffin variation

Ingredients:

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 brown bananas
1 egg
1 cup starter
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup nuts, chips, etc.

  1. preheat oven to 350F
  2. cream butter and sugar
  3. add banana, egg, vanilla.  Beat like hell.
  4. slowly mix in starter.
  5. mix in flour, soda and salt
  6. stir in your choice of nuts, chocolate chips, etc.
  7. pour into greased loaf pan
  8. bake for 60 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean.

For muffin variation, add paper liners to 20 muffin cups.  Fill 3/4s full with batter and bake for 20 minutes, or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Slowww….

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A slow day for me today.  So… first, the fun stuff!

I wasn’t around to see if any deer came today, though from the looks of the feeding station, they were certainly here.

So instead, I have a cat picture for you!

20180208DaBoy

DaBoy sure loves the top of the piano!  His mom doesn’t go up there.  She’s not as good of a jumper, and there’s nothing close that she can use to take it in stages.  He was just so adorable, with his face hanging over the edge, I had to get a picture!

Yesterday, I spent a long time stirring a pot to make this…

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It is a delicious failure.  I’d doubled the recipe for a type of cream fudge I’d made recently, and I just didn’t cook it down long enough, I think, even though I’d cooked it for at least 45 minutes, stirring constantly.  It’s an attempt to recreate a type of Polish cream fudge that is so addictive.  It has a unique texture that is hard to match, and this doesn’t match it at all.  Leaving it overnight to cool and set didn’t change the texture as much as I’d expected. It still tastes great, though!

Once I’ve got it worked out, I will share the recipe.

Oh, dear!  One of my daughters just came by to share with me something that had happened upstairs.  They were talking and when she laughed, her sister could actually see her breath!

It’s just a touch chilling up there!!!

They moved the heater into the room they were in.

That upstairs needs a lot of work.

Meanwhile…

Today, I focused on doing something I have been letting stew in my brain for a while; figuring out what to do about the Co-op withholding our shares.  That resulted in my spending what ended up being about 4 hours, working on a letter.  Doing it meant having to revisit a pretty traumatic time, and has left me feeling drained.  Then after a break to help with the bread baking, I went back to it to add in something I’d forgotten, then go over it for typos.  It was difficult, and I am recognizing the damage living there has done to me, and that even though we don’t live there anymore, it is still affecting my mental health.

Now that I’ve written it, though, I have to do something with it.

I am not looking forward to it.

Moving away from there was supposed to end this toxic garbage.  Ah, well.  I’ve never been one to avoid doing the right thing, just because it’s difficult.

The Re-Farmer

 

 

 

Vanilla Sugar

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This is one of the things I tried a few years back and now keep handy all the time.  Making vanilla sugar is super easy, too.  I keep mine in a quart jar in the cupboard, and when it starts to run low, I just top it up with more sugar, give it a shake, and leave it for a while before using it again.

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Ingredients for 1 quart jar

1 vanilla bean pod
granulated sugar, to fill

Take the vanilla pod and carefully cut into it, lengthwise, to split it open.  Cut the entire pod into 3 or 4 pieces.

Pour sugar, with cut up pod pieces, into the jar, leaving an inch or two of head space.  Seal the jar tightly, then shake thoroughly to distribute the pod pieces throughout.

Set jar aside for a week before using.  Shake occasionally.

If you wish to use the sugar in baking, which can be done to replace vanilla in a recipe that uses both vanilla and granulated sugar, make up a larger batch.  If you went up to a gallon (4L) size container, two vanilla bean pods would be enough.

The vanilla bean pods will continue to flavour the sugar for a long time, as fresh sugar is added to the jar to refill.  I’ve had mine for about 3 years, give or take a few months, and am just now thinking of refreshing the vanilla bean pieces.  I rarely use it for baking, but then, we don’t bake sweets very often.  Instead, I keep a separate sugar bowl for vanilla sugar on the table for our tea.

That’s it!  Easy peasy!

 

 

Stocking Up for the Month

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This morning, I got word that the parts for our van are in, but the work won’t be done until Monday.

I had hoped to do our big monthly shop with our own vehicle instead of my brother’s.  We aren’t out of food, but running low on things and have made a few trips into the next town to get enough to tide us over.

Unfortunately, doing that is murder on the budget.

My husband and I headed into town earlier in the day – his first real outing in some weeks – and were able to trade in his sharps container.  I had to decide whether or not to make the trip into The City, though.  Costco isn’t open on Sundays, so it had to be today, or we’d pick up some more “tide us over” stuff before coming home, then do the big shopping on Monday.  Assuming the van can be worked on early in the day.  Which I don’t know.  If it didn’t get worked on until evening, the shopping would be done on Tuesday.

So it was decided to use my brother’s van for another trip to The City, today.  The only thing we picked up on the way home was a couple of bags of deer feed, which only cost $12 each.  I considered picking up more bird feed, too – we’ve still got half a bag – but decided to check out what Costco had.

We’ve been working on an extensive list for the past while, knowing that we won’t actually be able to get all of it.  It all depended on what was left of the food budget.  So after double checking the numbers, both girls joined me for the 1 1/2 hour drive to Costco.  We didn’t go to the closest one, because it sucks – very tiny, terribly designed parking lot, and very hard to get in and out of.  There’s a third one we will check out one of these days, but not on this trip.

So to give an idea of what we get when stocking up for a month, here is a list of what we actually got, as opposed to what was on the list.

Dry cat food – three large bags (for the outside cats)
Wet cat food – 1 large case (for the inside cats, to supplement their dry cat food)
Bird seed – their bag of songbird mix was only about $11; cheaper than the local, single variety seed, bags, but also smaller.
Cat litter
large package of yeast
Milk – 4L homo milk (none of this low fat/no fat stuff! *L*)
Whipping cream – 1L
Butter – 6 pounds
Old Cheddar cheese – one of the giant blocks
Hummus – 2 pack
Peanut butter
Eggs – 5 dozen package
Frozen berries
Frozen vegetable mix
Rye bread – 2 loaf pack (for a baking break!  Plus, I haven’t found a place to buy rye flour, yet)
Tortilla wraps – the big pack of plain wraps
Tortilla chips
Potatoes – 20lb bag of Russets
Carrots – 10 lb bag
Sweet Potatoes – 3 lb bag
Yellow onions – large sack (can’t remember the weight)
Meats.  For this, it’s based on whatever is cheap or on sale.  This time, we got pork breakfast sausages, honey and garlic fresh sausages, a pork loin (aka a meat slug), beef stew, lean ground beef, ground pork, ground turkey, pork roasts (package of 2), pork chops (pork tends to be cheap, so we get a lot of that).  For the bigger package/cuts, they get broken down into smaller pieces to last at least a couple of days.
Laundry detergent
Shampoo/Conditioner
Toilet paper
Tax software
Package of 6 giant, super colorful, gorgeous mugs.  Like we need more mugs!  But they were only $20, and my daughter said she’d pay me back.  Not that I intend to let her!

The grand total was just over $530, but I also had my rebate coupon, which finally came to the right address, so that took off just over $90, leaving me with a grand total of just under $440.

What we DIDN’T get, that was on the list.

Cold drinks; I was hoping to get at least a case of V8.  We also sometimes get a case of Coke Zero.  No room in the flat cart, and for this month, not really room in the budget for it, either.  At some point, I want to stock up on canned drinks, just so I have something to offer visitors besides tea.
Coffee; my older daughter is the only coffee drinker, and she said she still had enough.
Flour; again, we ran out of room on the flat cart.  I’ve also found it at a better (sale) price at the regular grocery store we go to, so we’ll get more from there again, instead.
Crackers; need to have something for the hummus, right?  No room.  We do try to have some sort of snacks or treats, as much for the psychological benefits of having a “treat” as for the actual snack.
Olives; my husband had asked me to get nacho fixings – I got the chips, but didn’t see their big containers of green olives.  Not that we had room for it, anymore.  I’ll pick up a smaller jar from the regular grocery store, instead.
Black olives; for more bread baking.  Will be purchased at the regular grocery store.
Oil; I had intended to get a Costco sized container of vegetable oil, because of all the baking we’re doing, but not only did we run out of room, I never found the size I was interested in.
Popcorn; dang.  Completely forgot that one.  Not that we had room for it.
Canned tomato soup; we like to have canned soups for those days when we need to make something quick, or want something light for a late night snack.  It also works well as an ingredient.  No room.  Mushroom soup and New England Clam Chowder are also canned soups we like to pick up every now and then.
Apples; for things like fresh fruit and vegetables, we tend to get them at the regular grocery store, rather than Costco.  Their quantities are usually too large for our needs, and we’d rather get smaller amounts with more variety than giant bags of things.  Now that we have a root cellar, though, I was able to get the large bags of potatoes, carrots and onions.  They will be okay for the month.
Rice; we still have some, so it can wait this time around, but when we do get more, we like to get Basmati rice.

For the list of things we didn’t get, we likely won’t be able to get much of it this month, anyhow, for budgetary reasons.  As long as we have the basics and ingredients, we manage without.  We also already had a good stock of things like soup, toothpaste, dish detergent, etc.  Other personal grooming/hygiene products will have to wait for either a Walmart trip, the next time we go to The City, or the regular grocery store.  We might be able to get better prices in The City, but not enough to warrant the cost of gas to make the drive.

Next month, I hope to have enough room in the budget to hit a Bulk Barn for things we are starting to run low on.  I prefer to go there for dried goods, as they tend to have a greater variety of choices.  It’s always handy to have things like split peas, lentils, barley, etc.  Especially for slow cooker meals.

So with the big monthly trip, plus supplemental shopping later in the month (we’ll for sure need to pick up more eggs and milk by mid month, for example), we’ll be spending about $700 total, for the 4 of us.  Normally, my budget would be higher, but those “tide us over” trips kyboshed that pretty good. :-(

That’s food, household goods, personal hygiene products, pet supplies, and extras, like the software and those mugs we got, for 4 people, for 1 month.

What I find interesting about that is going back to what I read at Dining with Donald and his Joe Average Buys Groceries challenge.  This is based on the statistic that the average Manitoba spends $241 per month for food.  Times that by 4 and, for our household, that would be $964 average for just food, per month.

I honestly can’t remember the last time we even had a budget for that much food for the 4 of us for one month.  At our highest, we were spending about $1200 a month for everything we got at the grocery store/Costco.  Taking off for non-food items, it was probably more like $800 a month, average.

I’m not sure if that’s “good” or “bad”. :-D

The Re-Farmer

 

Home Made Yogurt and Yogurt “cheese” – Day Two; finished

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Here are the final results of the yogurt and yogurt cheese making process.

You can visit the first part here, with the recipe, and the second part here, with the step-by-step to make the yogurt cheese.

First up, let’s compare the finished yogurts.

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This was after the home made yogurt was in the fridge for several hours.  It did thicken somewhat from when I first put it in the containers, but as you can see, it’s still quite a bit thinner than the commercial yogurt I’d used as a starter.  That yogurt, by the way, was just a house brand of plain “Balkan” style yogurt.  I normally buy Greek yogurt, but it was more than twice the price!

As far as texture went, the only difference was that one was thinner than the other.

I couldn’t really taste any difference in flavour.

After taking the photo, I mixed both together with a bit of brown sugar and cinnamon.  It was quite nice!

One of my daughters promptly claimed the container that wasn’t quite full for herself, and ate it straight. :-D

Now, on to the yogurt cheese…

After hanging for about 3 hours, there was quite a lot of liquid in the container.  Enough that I poured it off into the container I’d already started in the fridge, almost filling it, so that the bag wouldn’t be sitting in so much liquid.

When very little more drained out of it after another hour or two, I decided to take it out and finish the process.

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Look how much liquid there is!  I can hardly wait until our next bread baking day. :-D

Once the bag was on the plate, I could really feel how the middle was thinner than the outside.  If I had a cheese press, I would have been able to get more liquid out, more evenly.  Maybe some day.  For now, I’m happy with doing it this way.

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And here is my yogurt cheese baby.  With the outside being drier, it allowed me to gently roll the cheese out of the cloth.  If that part had broken up more, the softer middle would have got on the cloth and made it much more difficult to get out of the bag.

Guess how I know that? :-D

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Once out of the cloth, I mixed it thoroughly to make it an even texture.  This is a bit on the thin side to be a “cream cheese.”  More like a really thick sour cream.

I had a couple of smaller containers waiting for it…

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I filled one with the plain yogurt cheese, then added some garlic powder, onion salt and parsley to what was left in the bowl.

I admit, I licked the spatula after doing this, and the onion and garlic one was sooo good!

Like the plain yogurt, it thickens a bit in the fridge, but not by much more.

If I had wanted to, I could have left the bag to hang longer to drain more liquid out and have more of a cream cheese texture, rather than a sour cream texture.

We are looking forward to trying some of this on pierogi soon!

If you try making this yourself, please to pop by and let me know in the comments, how yours turned out, and what you think of it!

The Re-Farmer

Home Made Yogurt – Day One

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I hadn’t intended to make this again so soon, but my daughter and I were able to make a quick trip into town and she made a passing comment about how we should make yogurt again.  I’ve been thinking of it since I posted about using the liquid from making yogurt cheese in bread baking, so that was all it took to convince me to get what we needed to make some now.

Making yogurt is really pretty easy.  The main thing is to have a warm place for the bacteria to do its thing for the hours it needs.  I’ve found leaving it in a warm oven with the light left on overnight to be adequate, but there are other methods.

Since that is my preferred method, it’s a two day process.  I use a full gallon of milk, and plan to use half of it to make yogurt cheese tomorrow.

Along with the ingredients, a candy thermometer is needed, and containers you can sterilize to store the yogurt in, later.  Any container that can handle being scalded, with an air tight lid, of the appropriate size for your amounts will do.

The recipe I use is from Whole Foods for the Whole Family, from La Leche League International.  I have a 1991 printing of it.  It’s a very handy cookbook, if you like to make things from scratch.  I modified the recipe for larger quantities, so I’ll include both the original quantities, and my own variation (in brackets).

This recipe uses plain commercial yogurt as a starter.  Make sure you check the label to see that it says something like “active bacterial culture” or “live bacteria” on it.

Do not use the optional gelatin if you’re planning to make yogurt cheese.  The gelatin serves only to make a firmer yogurt.

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4L milk, scalded

Yogurt

4 cups milk (4 litres/1 gallon)
1 cup powdered milk (4 cups)
2-4 Tbsp plain yogurt (1/2 – 1 cup)
2 tsp (8 tsp) unflavored gelatin, softened in 1/4 cup (1 cup) cold water – optional

  1. Scald milk.
  2. Cool to 95 – 155 degrees. (The recipe does not specify, but looking at my candy thermometer, it must refer to Celsius, not Fahrenheit)  Check with candy thermometer to be sure.

    20180128-yogurt2

    Yogurt starter and powdered milk stirred in.

  3. Stir in powdered milk and yogurt.  Add optional softened gelatin.
  4. Pour into sterilized jars, a baking dish with a cover, or a thermos rinsed with very hot water.  (Because I use an entire gallon of milk, I leave it in the same container I heated it in and cover it with a lid.)
  5. Place into or on a yogurt maker or use other heat source.  A thermos just needs to be wrapped in a towel.
  6. Put in a warm place and allow to incubate at 95-155 degrees until yogurt sets.  It can take from 3-9 hours, depending on your heat source.  Check after 3 hours to see if it is set by tilting the container or tapping it with the heel of your hand.  When set, refrigerate immediately.

Maintaining the temperature is vital; too cold, and the milk can go sour.  Too hot, and it will kill the bacteria.  The recipe lists several options for maintaining the right temperature, but a few of them a fire hazards, so I won’t bother including them. :-D

Yogurt cheese isn’t really cheese at all, but is has a texture similar to cream cheese and makes a wonderful spread.  To make it, you’ll need cheese cloth, and somewhere to hang it.

Which I don’t have.  So I have to figure something out for tomorrow.

Anyhow… to make yogurt “cream cheese”…

  1. Line a colander with 2-4 layers of cheesecloth.  Place the colander over a bowl, then dump home made yogurt onto the cheesecloth.  Pull up the corners of the cheese cloth and tie them together so it can be hung.  Suspend the resulting bag of yogurt over the bowl and leave overnight. (Or just a few hours, depending on how thick you want it)
  2. Reserve liquid in bowl for bread baking.
  3. Remove yogurt cheese from bag and refrigerate.

Fair warning: getting the yogurt cheese off the cheese cloth can be a messy job!  Also, the outside will often be drier than the middle, so you’ll probably want to mix it together.  If you wish, you can mix in some dried herbs or garlic or otherwise experiment with it.

More, tomorrow!

The Re-Farmer

 

Quick Sourdough Chocolate Cupcakes

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When we were living in Victoria, BC, and had made our first sourdough starter, this recipe from The Sourdough Cookbook was one of our favorites.  Not only was it chocolatey and delicious, it was one of the few things we could bake in our wonky PMQ oven.  We couldn’t bake a cake, because it had hot and cold spots so bad, parts of it would be raw and parts overcooked, but we could manage cupcakes and muffins.

We didn’t bake very often at all while living there.

Last night, I gave Sir Sour Alot a new home in one of our giant Tupperware Thatsa Bowls.  Since there is so much room in there, I fed it more than usual so that there would be lots left over after my daughters baked bread today.  With the larger amount of starter, it will be good to be able to use it for multiple things, all in one day.  They made 4 loaves of black olive and cheddar bread today.  While the first pair of loaves was baking, I started to pre-measure the ingredients and prepare the pans.  That way, when the second pair of loaves came out, I could quickly start mixing the batter while the oven got to temperature (the bread recipe calls for the same temperature, but with glass loaf pans, we reduce by 25F, so it was already pretty close).

Here is the recipe;

20180127sourdough.chocolate.cupcakes.ingredients

Quick Chocolate Cupcakes
(from The Sourdough Cookbook)
preheat oven to 400F and pre-measure the ingredients.

1/2 cup sourdough starter
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup softened butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup cocoa powder (sifted)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

  1. Grease 16 muffin cups, or line with paper liners; set aside. (note: I prepared 18 muffin cups)
  2. Place all ingredients into a large bowl – do not mix until all are combined.
  3. Beat with electric mixer on high speed for 2 minutes.
  4. Fill prepared muffin cups 2/3 – 3/4 full with batter.
  5. Bake in preheated oven for 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean.
  6. Remove from muffin cups and cool on rack.

The recipe then says to put frosting on them, but I don’t think we have ever bothered! :-D

When I started mixing these today, the batter was MUCH thicker than I expected.  Almost a dough, rather than a batter.  I think perhaps the sourdough starter was thicker than when we’d made it before.  I ended up adding extra milk to it.  It still was really thick, but it turned out wonderfully, anyways.

The recipe said 14-16 cupcakes, but I filled 18 muffin cups (I had three tins with 6 muffin cups each), so they were a bit on the small side.  They turned out very light and airy.  So much so, the first one I tried to photograph didn’t work out because, when I started to break it open with my fingers, the inside was so delicate, the slightly crispier outside just crushed it!  So I got another one and very carefully used a knife to cut it open.  :-D

These have a rich chocolate flavour, but are not too sweet.  So you taste chocolate, not sugar.

As for the sourdough, you don’t really get a “sourdough” taste, but there is definitely something there that’s different.  It adds a depth and complexity to the flavour that is quite nice, and of course, it adds to that light and fluffy texture.

Very delicious.

And, judging from how many are disappearing with the girls upstairs, they might not last until morning.

Ah, well.  I guess I’ll just have to make more…  Oh, the tragedy. ;-)

The Re-Farmer

Black Olive and Cheddar Sourdough variation

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For the past while, we’ve been using Sir Sour Alot to bake 4 loaves of bread, every other day.  Give or take.  We’ve been using the Quick and Easy Sourdough Bread recipe each time because… well… it’s quick and easy.

When it came to the final kneading of the dough, before shaping into loaves, that’s when we would get creative and start kneading in other ingredients.  Garlic powder, grated dry Parmesan or Asiago cheese, or both together (both from the Bulk Barn), rolled oats, shredded cheddar cheese, etc.  Whatever we have in the cupboard that we thought to try.

Yesterday I needed to make a quick run into town, so I was able to pick up a can of sliced black olives.  I used half the can, chopping the black olives up finer, and kneaded it in to half the dough, together with about a cup of shredded cheddar.  (We kneaded rolled oats into the other half.)

We also used warm potato water, drained from the potatoes I’d made for supper, as the liquid.

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This is what they looked like, by the time the other loaves were done in the oven and I was about to put these in.  When kneading the shredded cheddar and olives into the dough, the cheddar basically disintegrates and gets completely worked into the dough.  So you can’t really see it, but you sure can taste it!

It took all our will power to finish off the last of the previous baking we did before going into the fresh loaves!  Two of which went into the freezer as soon as they were completely cooled.

This morning, we tried the olive and cheddar loaf, toasted.

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It was so incredibly delicious, we’re now thinking of making ONLY olive and cheddar bread from now on!

Since Sir Sour Alot expanded so enthusiastically last night, maybe we’ll do some extra baking tonight.  I even picked up more cheese – old, rather than medium, cheddar, for the extra tang.

So, to summarize, to the basic recipe we made the following changes:

  • substituting potato water for regular water in the recipe.
  • adding chopped black olives and shredded cheddar cheese (medium) to the dough during the final kneading.

I look forward to when we can start making yogurt cheese again.  After draining the liquid off the yogurt to make the cheese, I would use the liquid to bake bread, and it’s even better than potato water.

The Re-Farmer

Our Pot Overfloweth

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We need a bigger pot for Sir Sour Alot!

This is what I came out to, this morning.

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No, that is not a ladybug on the counter in the bottom right of the photo.  It’s an Asian Lady Beetle.  And they are EVERYWHERE this year!

Since transforming Sir Sour Alot, we have been using it about every other day, feeding with just flour, water and a bit of sugar, as usual.

Yesterday, I boiled potatoes for supper and kept the water I drained for bread baking.  Because using potato water when baking bread is delicious.

Since I had as much potato water as I did, after I poured out enough starter for a doubled recipe of bread, I figured I’d use some of it to feed the starter instead of plain water.  I’d measured out 2 cups of starter, which left very little behind, so I added about 2 1/2 cups flour and maybe 2 cups of potato water, with about a tablespoon of sugar, to feed it.

There are pretty standard amounts.  I’ve added as much as 3 cups of flour into this container when there was nothing but dregs left after use.  I’ve had it over flow only once before, when the container was placed on the stove, where it was warmer.

While we were working on the bread last night, we noticed that Sir Sour Alot had started to overflow.  Clearly, it liked the potato water!  I stirred it down and figured it had already reached its peak expansion for the night.

Boy was I wrong!

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Not only did it overflow the pot and the bowl under it, it went down the counter, all the way to the floor!

We need a bigger container.

We don’t boil potatoes all that often, but when we do, I plan to treat Sir Sour Alot with some potato water in the future (not to be confused with “rich potato water”, which is potato mashed into the water).  It obviously really does well with it!

The Re-Farmer