Food Archives - Page 4 of 7

May 14, 2019May 13, 2019

Why Do I DIY

I know people ask why should I DIY? It’s so much easier to just go to the store. There are more and more organic choices all the time and there’s so many more farms these days where you can buy fresh garden vegetables and even meats, milk and eggs.

So, why do I DIY?

In my opinion, there are a ton of reasons to DIY, but here are my top 10 reasons to DIY.

1. Taste!! Nothing taste better than homemade. You can use fresher ingredients and it’s not set on a truck for days or weeks on end going from factory to the store shelf.

2. Knowing what’s in my food, lotions and cleaners makes me feel better about eating or using them. Have you ever read some of those labels? You can’t even pronounce most of it. When I make these things myself, I know every ingredient that’s in it and I never have to wonder what those unpronounceables are.

3. I can adjust a DIY recipe to suit me and my family perfectly. Sometimes it takes a bit of trial and error, but I can adjust foods, body products and cleaners to suit my own tastes, smells and needs. I can personalize anything.

4. There’s no unnecessary chemicals, preservatives, or coloring in your DIY stuff. I hate all the extra stuff they put in the stuff you buy.

5. When I attempt a new DIY, I’m learning something new. I love learning new things, it just feels good.

6. Some DIY skills I’m learning are becoming lost or forgotten skills in our new modern world. I like the idea of keeping these skills alive to teach to my grandkids. You never know, someday some of these may come in handy again.

Dandelions from my yard for dandelion jelly.

7. You get to choose where your ingredients come from. While they don’t always have to be organic, you still want to know where they come from. You can research the companies you buy from or maybe you can source them locally, near where you live.

In any case, whatever you are making, you have the choice from where you would like to purchase the ingredients to make whatever it is you are making.

8. When I make a new food item like butter or sauerkraut or breads, I always have such a sense of accomplishment. I figured it out, I was able to do it and it tasted good. I like that feeling.

9. When I make something, whatever that might be, I tend to appreciate it a bit more. I know the work and thought that’s gone into it.

Likewise, if I know someone else has put that same kind of work and thought into a product that I buy locally, I will appreciate that product just a little more than something I would pick off the shelf at a grocery store.

10. Last but not least, every time I make something new, I build a bit more confidence in what I can do. Even if a project doesn’t work exactly as I wanted it to, I learned from it and will try again. The next time I’m one step closer to where I want to be.

It was Thomas Edison that said something like, “I didn’t fail, I just found 10,000 ways it didn’t work.” I don’t know if I have that kind of patience, but I agree with his sentiment. You got to try or you’ll not get anywhere.

My granddaughter’s beautiful corn dolly.

When I DIY, Making Mistakes Means Learning Lessons

I told my grand daughter when she was very young and just learning to color and draw pictures, that I didn’t like perfect. The imperfections of what we do is what makes them unique to us. That’s what makes them special. She remembers that, and to this day will remind me of that if a project we make doesn’t come out just right. Because her imperfections are perfect for some, especially me.

I know sometimes it’s easier to go to the store and just buy the things I like to make and post about here. And sometimes I do that, but when I have the chance and the supplies to make what I need, I will try every time to make it. But if I can’t then that’s okay too.

In my opinion, if you can do it yourself, know what’s in it or how it’s built and potentially make it to your particular liking, then why not?

Why do you DIY? I’d love to hear what makes you want to make it yourself instead of buying at the store. Let me know in the comments below, what you’re working on.

Thanks for dropping by.

Until next time – Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

May 7, 2019May 7, 2019

Making Homemade Yogurt

Homemade yogurt really is pretty easy to make. It take a bit of time, but it’s really not hard.

The hardest part of making homemade yogurt is waiting for the milk to heat up and then to cool back down again. And because you are looking for specific temperatures, it’s not something you can just walk away from.

In making homemade yogurt all you need is some milk and some active live yogurt cultures. This sound intimidating but it’s really not. Go to the store and read the label of the plain yogurt. If you’re getting the right one, it will say that it contains active live cultures.

You need active yogurt cultures for making homemade yogurt.

You’ll need about a cup of your live cultures. I generally buy one of those little serving size cups and that works fine.

I have found that different brands produce different tastes. So try different ones. You may find one tastes better to you.

In making homemade yogurt, you’ll heat your milk up to 180 degrees making sure you stir a lot to ensure you don’t scald your milk. You want it to heat up, but you don’t want to burn it.

Once you’ve heated your milk, remove it from the heat and let it cool. Some have suggested you can set your pan in a sink with some cool water in it to help move this step along. I’ve not done that, but I can see where it would work.

This is just a bit too hot yet. Give it another 20 degrees or so.

When your milk cools to about 90 degrees, you add your yogurt with the live cultures. Stir your yogurt until that is all dissolved.

Bits of undissolved yogurt. Almost done.

Now, I have a yogurt maker. I bought it 4-5 years ago and found it to be really easy to use. But, there are a lot of recipes out there showing how to set your yogurt in your oven with just the light on and let it set over night. I’ve never done this, but I really need to try it.

If you’d like to try that, I suggest you do your own research to ensure everything is just right, so you don’t waist a half gallon of milk.

I used raw milk, so I removed the cream first. There was about a cup of cream, so this is a bit shy of a half gallon. Usually a half gallon will fill this container.

I pour my dissolved yogurt with live cultures and milk into my yogurt maker and plug it in. It keeps it at a very low temperature and I set the time on it for 8 hours. You’ll note on my machine, there’s not actually a timer, it’s just numbers. You move the pointer to the number corresponding to the time you’re to take it out. This is just a reminder, so you still can’t just forget it.

My yogurt was due to be finished at 8:30 pm.

After 8 hours, you have yogurt. You’ll find that there is a LOT of whey in your container as well. I like my yogurt really stiff, almost like a soft cheese.

Look at all that golden yellow whey!!! Just hang it and let it drain to whatever consistency you like best.

You can make your yogurt any consistency you like. I add all the yogurt into a clean white dishtowel, and tie it up to let it drain. The longer it drains, the thicker it will become. So this is completely up to whatever you like.

As a general rule, I will tie mine up and let it hang overnight.

2 Cups of whey from that just less than a half gallon of raw milk.

After you have removed as much of the whey as you would like, it’s done. Put it in a container and put it in the fridge.

Now you can use a cup of this yogurt to make your next batch. I’ve read that you can’t do that forever, but I can’t say from experience how long you can use your last batch to start the next. I have a bad habit of forgetting to save some for my next batch. But I have done that up to 3 different batches.

Homemade Yogurt

Ingredients

Half gallon of milk
About a cup of plain yogurt (Be sure it contains active cultures. It will say on the label).

Directions

Heat your milk to 180 degrees slowly. Make sure you stir regularly so ensure it doesn’t scorch or stick to the bottom.

Once your milk reaches 180 degrees, remove it from the heat and let it cool. You can set your pan in a bit of cool water in the sink to hurry this along if you’d like.

Once your milk has cooled to almost 90 degrees, add your live cultured yogurt and stir to dissolve. This works better if your live cultured yogurt is at room temperature.

Add your mixture to your yogurt machine and plug it in. Let it set for 8 hours.

Then drain the whey to your liking.

I haven’t written anything on the uses of whey yet, but I’ll have to do that in the future. There are a ton of things it can be used for and it’s really healthy.

So many ways to eat your yogurt

There are so many ways to eat your homemade yogurt. You can eat it with fruit or sometimes I will pour honey over it or I add granola to it. Sometimes all three. I’m sure there are plenty of other ways to flavor it.

The way I make it, it could actually be used as a cheese too if you wanted. You could add some herbs to it and spread it on crackers or a bagel.

Or you could just mash some fruit into it and flavor it that way. I’ve not tried that yet, but it sounds good, so I may have to give that a try. I usually just add my fruit on top.

I’d love to hear your experiences with making yogurt. Let me know how you’ve flavored your yogurt.

If you’ve used the oven method, I’d love to hear how it turned out. I’ll be giving that a try soon too, just to see.

Don’t forget to subscribe. I have some good stuff coming up that you won’t want to miss.

Until next time – Health, Wealth & Blessing ~ Tracey

April 30, 2019April 29, 2019

Homemade Potato Salad

Okay, so homemade potato salad isn’t so over the top or different, but it is practical and better yet, it’s customizable to suit your own tastes.

My husband loves potato salad, specifically dill and red potato potato salad. We actually only found it in a few places and he really didn’t like those. He didn’t think they had enough dill in them.

So I set out to make my own.

This has several spices in it as well as real mayo. I think next time I make it though, I might exchange some of the mayo with sour cream,maybe about 1/2 cup, just to see what it’s like.

As I was making this it occurred to me I didn’t think to weigh the potatoes, but I did count them. We started out with 16 new red potatoes that were smallish to medium size.

We don’t peel our potatoes, so I just chopped them into small pieces before I boiled them. It would be easy enough to peel your potatoes if you don’t like the peel. You could also use another kind of potato if you wanted to. Maybe you have a preference.

In this recipe I used dijon mustard. You could use regular mustard or whatever suits your taste best.

I also used lemon juice instead of apple cider vinegar, which I think I’ll try out a little later. I’m curious to taste the difference.

I used the spices we like the most that I thought would suit this recipe, paprika, garlic and onion powders, dill of course, and salt and pepper. Pretty easy and straight foward.

I also found that mixing the mayo and the spices before adding to the potatoes made sure that everything was mixed evenly and actually made everything that much quicker. I just mixed them all together while the potatoes were cooking.

I have to say when I added the mayo to the potatoes I was a little nervous. As I mixed it up it seemed like there was way too much mayo mixture. But as it turned out after it cooled in the fridge for a while, it was just right. My husband like a creamier mix, so it was fine. Again, this is something you can adjust to your own liking.

I will say it does taste much better after sitting for several hours.

Homemade Potato Salad

Ingredients

Please think of these as suggested measurements. Suite them to your family’s taste.

2 Cups Mayo or salad dressing, your choice
1 Tsp. Paprika
1 Tsp. Garlic powder
1 Tsp. Onion powder
2 Tsp. Dill seed
1 Tsp. Salt
1 Tsp. Pepper
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
16 small to medium red potatoes, peeled or unpeeled, your choice.

Directions

Cut the potatoes in smaller pieces. I tried to get mine cut to about 1/2 pieces or smaller. I don’t want them to go to complete mush when you stir them up. We both like chunky potato salad.

Add them to your sauce pan and cover with water. You can see I didn’t get a big enough pan. I made a mess I had to clean up later. Boil your potatoes to fork tender.

While your potatoes boil, mix all your spices together and pour into your mayo and mix well.

Once the potatoes are done, drain well and put into your bowl. Pour your spiced mayo over your potatoes and mix well.

Put in the fridge to cool and to allow all the flavors to mingle.

When I was growing up, my mom made homemade sweet pickle potato salad all the time. I learned to do that as a matter of course. I’ve never measured anything I ever put into it, I just knew what was there.

This homemade potato salad was a little different. We didn’t use dill much for anything except for the canning mom did and I didn’t know much about that.

I’ve discovered I really kinda like it. So I planted some dill. I know it’s only an annual here where we live, but I’ll be planting it every year from now on, I think.

I hope you’ll give it a try. Mix it up and make it your own. Let me know what changes you made, I’d love to hear them.

If you haven’t subscribed yet, now’s a great time to do that. I have some good stuff coming up.

Until next time – Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

April 23, 2019April 5, 2021

Making Dandelion Jelly

I love making dandelion jelly. Besides the fact that it tastes great, people just look at you funny when you tell them you got some dandelion jelly made this weekend.

It makes a bright yellow jelly that’s almost as bright and yellow as the actual flower and has a slight honey taste.

It’s really good and really easy to make. Here’s how.

Ingredients

About 3 cups of dandelion flowers
6 Tablespoons of pectin
6 Cups of sugar
3 Tablespoons of lemon juice

Instructions

You’ll want to pick flowers that are fully open, at least I did. I picked about 3 cups or so.

I didn’t really measure, I just filled the bowl I had.

I’ve seen recipes that say you need to pull the petals out of the green bottoms and only use the petals because the green parts can taste bitter.

I’ve never separated the flowers when I made it and I’ve never had an issue with bitter. But to each his own, I suppose. So you can do try which ever way you want. I would guess you would need more flowers if you’re going to pull the petals.

Side note: Did you know each “petal” is actually it’s own flower? Cool hu?

Once you’ve picked the flowers, you’ll want to wash them well, of course. Tiny little bugs get down into those petals and sometimes, they don’t come out easily. I use the sprayer on my faucet and it usually works pretty well.

After thoroughly washing your flowers, put them in a sauce pan and cover with about 3-4 cups of water. Bring your water to a rolling boil and let it boil well for about 10-15 min.

Straining dandelion flowers — Straining your flowers. I’ve used a strainer and a coffee filter to ensure no floaties.

Then strain your flowers from the water. Make sure to squish all that liquid out of the flowers. Then you can compost the flowers. You’ll notice the water that’s left isn’t that pretty yellow color. That worried me the first time I made this recipe. Don’t worry, it’ll look better later.

Let the water cool back to room temperature. I’m not real sure why this is, but I’ve seen it in more than one recipe and I just haven’t tried it another way yet. It’s always been convenient to let it sit while I got something else done so it’s not been an issue.

Dandelion juice in a cooking pot. — 4 cups of dandelion juice.

In the end you’ll want 4 cups of liquid. If you didn’t get 4 cups from the boil, you can add some kind of apple juice or just add more water to make 4 cups.

Add your liquid back into a sauce pan or a stock pot and add your sugar, pectin and lemon juice.

Dandelion juice, sugar and pectin in the cooking pot. — Melting the sugar and coming to a boil.

Heat this up slowly to melt the sugar and once you get to a boil, boil for 2 minutes while stirring constantly so it doesn’t scorch or burn.

Foam from the cooked jelly. — This is the foam I removed from the top of my jelly before I put it in jars.

After this boil, there may be some foam that forms on the jelly. If so, just spoon it off into a bowl. You don’t want that in your jelly jars.

Filling jelly jars with dandelion jelly. — Filling my jars and getting ready to can them.

Now it’s done. Pour it into your jelly jars.

And now you’ll notice the pretty yellow color. I told you it would look pretty later.

Jarred jelly ready to be canned. — I canned 3 pints and put the rest in the fridge.

At this point you can add it to the fridge, give it away or can it. If you don’t can it, you’ll want to refrigerate it and share with others, cause this recipe makes about 4 pints. That’s a pretty big batch of jelly for me anyway. I’m the only one in the house that eats jelly.

The pretty color of dandelion jelly. — Look at the beautiful color.

I water bath canned most of this jelly, and put the rest in the fridge to use. I’ll give some away and have some sweet golden goodness for later too.

For canning I water bathed them for 15 minutes.

I’ve talked before about how great dandelions are here. I hope you’ll learn to love them as much as I do.

Let me know if you’ve ever made dandelion jelly, and if so, how it turned out. Did you like it? Did you separate the petals or did you just use the whole flower? I’d love to hear.

Until next time – Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

April 16, 2019August 7, 2019

Making Homemade Chicken Broth

Did you know you could use all the stuff you don’t eat from your roasted chicken to make some awesome homemade chicken broth?

Jars of broth. — Homemade chicken broth.

When you make some kind of a chicken dish and you have all those left over chicken parts that you generally don’t eat, don’t throw them away. There’s a lot of goodness left in them parts.

Besides chicken parts, chicken broth really doesn’t take much of anything to make except time and a few vegetables. Throw everything in the crockpot and let it sit on low for a few days and you’re done.

Step by Step Homemade Chicken Broth

I actually bought a roasted chicken at the store because I just didn’t have time to cook supper after work.. But if it’s one of your own or one from a neighbor it’s even better.

Scraps from a roasted chicken. — Chicken parts and pieces.

After making as many meals from your whole chicken you can get, pull out the crockpot and dump everything that’s left, bones, skin and everything else. into it.

Add Your Veggies

This time I used some celery heads I had in the veggie crisper of the fridge. I eat celery a lot and in the summer I’ll cut those celery heads off and add them to a salad. But I haven’t eaten much salad over the winter months.

Cut veggies for the broth. — The veggies I used. Remember you can use whatever you like. I forgot to put a clove or 2 of garlic in this batch.

I had saved from the last few batches of celery I had bought knowing I’d make some kind of broth soon.

Tip: If you wrap your celery or just the celery heads in foil, they’ll last longer.

I also had some baby carrots and a few onion scraps. The onion ends just weren’t enough onion for me, so I decided to add another small onion too. Be sure to add in any herbs you may want too. I added a few peppercorns and just a touch of salt.

Veggies wrapped in cheese cloth for the broth. — A bundle of veggies.

I bundled all those veggies up in a cheese cloth, tied them with some cotton string and dropped them into the pot as well.

Add Water

Cover everything with water. Put your lid on and turn your crockpot to low.

Crock pot of chicken stuff and veggie packet. — Add enough water to cover all your stuff.

Now we wait. I let it simmer on low for about 48 hours, give or take, I didn’t watch the time that closely.

Strain Your Broth

I suppose there are several ways to do this. I used a ladle and poured into a fine mesh strainer. Whatever works easiest for you is perfect.

Dipping out the broth. — Scooping it out of the crock pot.

Straining the broth. — I use a fine mesh strainer when putting it in the jars.

I strained it all into mason jars, let it cool and put one of those jars in the fridge and the rest in the freezer for later use. This broth can be canned in a pressure canner too. How you preserve it is entirely up to you.

What's left from a whole chicken. — There’s not a lot left over to throw away when you’re finished.

There’s really not much left after you’re done. This recipe is so easy I hope you’ll give it a try. The good thing about this is you can use the veggies you love the most to create the broth that is perfect for you and your family.

Finished Homemade Chicken Broth

I’m sure if you look you can find an exact recipe for this broth. But the reason I enjoy making it is because it’s so versatile and I can make it different if and when I want.

Do you make your own broth? What kinds have you made and what did you add?

It’d be great to compare recipes and get new ideas, so I hope you’ll share. Let me know in the comments what you use when you make chicken broth. I’d love to hear.

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Until next time – Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey