Food Archives - Page 5 of 7

April 9, 2019June 17, 2019

Homemade Frittata Anyway You Want It

I’ve told you about how I look to clean out the fridge when I cook, so I don’t unnecessarily waste food. This homemade frittata is the perfect example of that.

A frittata is basically a Quiche without the crust. It contains eggs, a meat, veggies if you want them and generally some kind of cheese.

The perfect part of this dish, is that the ingredients are anything you want them to be.

You always want to use an oven safe pan, because after you saute the veggies, you’ll add the rest and put it in the oven. I use my cast iron frying pan. I love that thing. Nothing beats cast iron.

The Basics In a Homemade Frittata

Eggs

I always use a dozen eggs. When I make a homemade frittata I make a big one. This way, we eat it as breakfast throughout the week or it can be a breakfast for supper kind of thing, which is always good too.

There are only 2 of us at home, so a frittata of this size will last a few days.

The final frittata mixture just before stirring it all up and adding it to the frying pan.

Meat

I’ve made homemade frittatas with bacon, sausage and ham. I’ve not used chicken or beef or venison, but I don’t know why you couldn’t.

I generally use about a pound of meat. Some people may not want that much meat and that’s okay. But my husband is a meat and potato kind of guy and he like a lot of meat. But, so do I really.

Veggies

This list could be almost endless. Any kind of veggie you like can go into this. I always start with onion, but the list can vary greatly depending on what you have in the fridge and what you like most.

Here’s a list of all that you can use in a frittata. It’s by no means all inclusive, there are just so many things you can use.

Green peppers
Hot peppers
Mushrooms
Squash
Spinach
Any other kind of greens
Green Onions
Asparagus
Tomatoes
Potatoes/hash browns

Sliced potatoes. I never peel my potatoes, I just scrub them. These make great tiny french fries too.

And the list can go on and on. Just look to see what you have in the fridge that needs to be used up, or what you like, chop it up and add it to the skillet.

Cheese

My family loves cheese. I say family because my grandkids LOVE cheese. I refer to my granddaughter as a cheese monster and she agrees.

You can use pretty much anything you can grate, from cheddar of all kinds to Parmesan, goat cheese or ricotta.

Depending on the blending of veggies, meat and spices will depend on the type of cheese you would like to add.

Building Your Homemade Frittata

1. Cook whatever meat you’ve decided to use first. As a rule, a pound will do. If you’re cooking bacon, you’ll want to crumble it after it’s cooked.

2. Chop your veggies and saute them. If you’re using onions, saute them until they become clear. For other veggies, you’ll want to saute them until they just become soft. Remove from heat.

3. Whip the eggs with a whisk. Sometimes I add a little bit of milk because it adds a little bit to it and can make it fluffier, but it’s not necessary. Then add whatever spices you like into the eggs. This could be thyme, basil, rosemary or just salt and pepper.

4. Add your meat and cheese to the eggs and stir just to combine well.

5. Pour your egg mixture into the skillet with the sauteed veggies and then just kind of smooth it out on top spreading everything out evenly.

6. Hopefully you’ve read this whole article before you started so you know to preheat your oven to about 350 deg. Once the oven is ready add your skillet to the oven and cook for about 35 – 40 min. When you insert a knife in the center and it comes out clean, you’re good to go.

Now your homemade frittata is done – what about a topping?

A slice of homemade frittata just waiting for a topping.

After you remove your frittata from the oven, you can add more cheese, or gravy or even salsa, if you like. Be creative. I bet there are a ton of toppings I haven’t even thought of.

A homemade frittata is not exactly a quick breakfast, but is really good and really easy to make. I like that I can run through the fridge and find a way to use up all the little bits of left overs. Therefore, eliminating allowing them to go bad and having to throw them out.

When you make one, let me know what you put into it and how it turned out. Or if you’ve made them in the past, let me know what all you added to yours. How did you do it differently? I’d love to know, so please let me know in the comments below.

Until next time – Health, Wealth & Blessings – Tracey

April 2, 2019March 31, 2019

Beyond Homemade Lasagna

Homemade lasagna is always good, just like every other homemade goodness. This lasagna is “Beyond” because not only is the lasagna homemade so are most of the ingredients.

This won’t be a recipe in the conventional sense. In my usual fashion, there really isn’t precise measurements for the ingredients. It’s really all about what you like which determines how much of each you add

Lasagna is generally a layered pan of meat with sauce, cheese and noodles. The order and amounts are entirely up to you.

I follow that rule with most recipes, hence, I’m terrible with precise measurements.

The Homemade Ingredients of the Homemade Lasagna

The Meat

Lasagna usually contains a meat of some kind, but not always. (We like veggie lasagna too.) The meats used can range from hamburger, sausage or as in this case venison. My husband hunts so we don’t buy hamburger, we use the ground venison from his deer.

I also can venison so when I don’t have time to cook, which generally means I don’t have time to thaw meats too, I can open a mason jar of already cooked meats and mix it however I need to.

I can meat in quart jars and that comes to about 2-1/2 to 3 cups of meat per jar. Again, not an exact measurement but close enough for government work (as my dad used to say).

The Cheese

If you’ll remember a few posts back I had a failure in my homemade mozzarella cheese making. You can see that failure here.

I told you then that the ricotta that came from that would be lasagna soon. And here you go.

I did figure out that I should have salted the ricotta cheese. I rarely salt things, but this is one of those “note to self” things for next time. That was something i didn’t add to the post either, but again, I should have.

The Sauce

The sauce is made from home canned tomatoes. Several years back we planted a lot of tomato plants and almost none of them grew, so we got nothing out of them.

Because of that we planted a LOT of tomatoes a year later and they all produced copious amounts of tomatoes. I can’t even tell you how many pints I canned that year. Thus, I’m just now using up the last of them.

All I did was drain the liquid from them, mash them up and add some salt, basil, rosemary and garlic. I had a partial jar of spaghetti sauce in the fridge that I added too, just to use it up.

The Noodles

I bought them. I haven’t had the pleasure of making that kind of pasta yet. I’ve made the noodles for chicken and noodles, but that’s a different recipe.

The Process

Mixing the Sauce and Meat

As I said before, I drained the liquid from the tomatoes, added salt, basil, rosemary, the other sauce from the fridge and a few teaspoons of garlic (sadly that was from a jar too).

The amounts of each of those are entirely up to your preferred taste, depending on how much you like each. I would generally start on the lower side, tasting every so often to make sure it suits you.

Then I added the meat, mixed it in completely and again allowed it to come to a simmer until all was thoroughly mixed and heated throughout.

The Noodles

As soon as I added the meat to the sauce, I started a large pot of water to boil. After the water came to a rolling boil, I added salt and then the lasagna noodles 3 or 4 at a time. In the end I used 12 noodles.

After they boiled about 8-10 min, I pulled them out and laid them out on wax paper.

Building the Lasagna

Lay 3 noodles in the bottom of a 9 X 12 pan, then layer on the meat and then the ricotta cheese. I also layered in mushrooms in ours, just cause I really like mushrooms. You could add onions, green peppers, carrots or even a spinach or kale if you wanted to. Use your imagination.

If I had it to do again, I would have made more meat sauce, just to make that layer a little thicker.

After the last layer of noodles, I added the remaining meat on top, then the last of the ricotta cheese, then sprinkled about 1/3 cup of Parmesan cheese. Again this was a little bit that was left in a container in the cheese drawer, so I used it up.

The finished build with parmesan cheese sprinkled over the top

Cover with foil and bake in the oven at about 400 deg. for about 40-45 minutes. You’re not really cooking this, but you do want it to heat completely through enough to melt the cheese in the center.

The finished product. Sorry for the fuzzy picture.

After that, I pulled it out of the oven, removed the foil and added shredded mozzarella over the top and placed it back in the oven for about 10-15 min. Long enough to melt and brown the cheese.

We love broccoli. And yes, that is a paper plate. We love them.

Using up Leftovers

Throughout this recipe you’ll notice a theme. I’m a master at going through the fridge and using the last bits of things that seem to fit a recipe. I hate wasting food so when I can find a way to use it, I will. If it fits a recipe I’ll try and find a way to use it.

Although this really isn’t what you would consider a conventional recipe I hope you found some use in it. If nothing else, I hope it inspires you to look through your fridge and figure out how you can use all those little bits of ingredients in a homemade meal of your own.

Do you have a piece mill dish you make? Let me know how you use up the stuff in your fridge. I’d love to hear how you piece mill meals.

Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss a post.

Until next time – Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

March 26, 2019March 31, 2019

Simple Sauerkraut

Writing an article about Simple Sauerkraut actually surprises me. I’ve never liked sauerkraut.

At least that’s what I thought.

As I get further into my DIY, I find I’m willing to try more and more things. I’m slowly realizing how much my tastes have changed as I became an adult. I’ve been an adult for a long time and still find myself afraid to try things I remember not liking in the past.

I’m making a concerted effort to change that.

What’s left from my first purple batch of sauerkraut.

What made me decide to give it a try was reading several articles that said homemade kraut is so much better than the store bought kraut. Many different people said that you couldn’t even compare the two.

How could I resist?

Start with 1 head of cabbage after pulling the outside leaves off, that aren’t so tender.

Quarter and remove the hard center core.

Add salt to the cabbage. I actually added about half again of what you see in this picture.

Mash and massage the cabbage with the salt.

The cabbage is getting transparent at this point.

Some brine at the bottom of the bowl from mashing the cabbage.

Jam pack it in the jars using a wooden spoon or something similar. If you look closely you can see the brine in the jar.

I can’t get a whole head of cabbage in 1 quart no matter how hard I try. Again look closely and you can see the brine from the mashing process.

Add water to the inside of the sandwich baggie and it acts to seal the jar and keep the cabbage submerged under the brine.

Simple Sauerkraut

Ingredients

Cabbage
Salt

Directions

Cut your cabbage in quarters and remove the core.
Thinly slice the the head of cabbage.
Sprinkle approximately 2-4 tsp of salt over the sliced cabbage.
Massage the cabbage for several minutes.
Cover your bowl with a paper towel and let set for 10-20 minutes.
Continue to message the cabbage as it becomes transparent and begins to break down and a liquid begins to form in the bottom of the bowl.
Add your cabbage to quart jars and pound it down to get as much cabbage in the jar as you can. You’d be surprised how much cabbage you can get into a quart jar.
The cabbage should be covered with the liquid from the process. *See tips below.
Cover the jar loosely & let set 14 to 21 days. *See tips below.

Tips:

Covering the Cabbage

You want to make sure the cabbage remains completely submerged in the brine solution. I’ve read several ways to do this. If you screw the lid of the jar on the jar, you must remember to “burp” the jar daily.

Or you can make the extra brine and pour it over the cabbage (2 tsp salt to 1 quart water). Or you can buy fermenting weights to set on the cabbage and hold it below the liquid or buy fermenting lids that automatically releases the gases from the fermentation process.

I found a really cool way of putting a plastic sandwich baggie over the cabbage and add water to the baggie. Make sure the bubbles (all air) has been pushed out from under the bag and you have a seal where the gases can still escape easily.

Try to get all the bubbles out from under the baggie after adding your water to the baggie.

Letting the Cabbage Sit

The first recipe I tried, I let sit for 14 days. That turned out good, but I think the batch I have going now I’ll let set for 21 days. I think it’ll be even better.

The longer you let it set the more “twang” it’ll have.

Options

The first batch I made I used a half head of red cabbage and a half head of green cabbage. I thought it would be cool to have the different colors in the jar. The red actually overtook every other color in the jar, but it was pretty.

This was really a colorful simple sauerkraut. I actually saw one article where someone covered her green cabbage with a purple cabbage leaf before letting it set and it was a really cool effect in the jar. Give it a try.

I’ve read that you can add carrots, onions, radishes as well as other veggies to add to the flavor or to make it your very own. I’m excited to try adding shredded carrots in the future.

I hope you’ll give it a try. It really is as simple as you can get and it really is good.

I hope you enjoyed this one. It surprised me that I did. Tell me about your sauerkraut, if you’d like.

If there’s something specific you’d like me to try, leave a comment and let me know what it might be. I’d love to try something new.

Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss a new DIY.

Until next time – Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

March 19, 2019March 19, 2019

How Mozzarella Became Ricotta

Today’s post was supposed to be all about how to make easy 30 minute mozzarella cheese.

I’ve had the citric acid and rennet for some time. So I got an extra gallon of milk from the store.

I didn’t want to use my good farm fresh milk, just in case something went wrong. I’m pretty sure that was a premonition.

So now I have everything I need. I’d been reading several recipes over and over again for the past week, just to make sure I had it down.

Everything you need for mozzarella, except the water.

This was the recipe I settled on. It’s kind of a combination of several different recipes and information pulled from several websites and videos.

Mozzarella Cheese

1-1/4 cup water
1 gallon of milk
1-1/2 teaspoon Citric Acid
1/4 tablet Rennet tablets or liquid

Directions:

Measure 1 cup of water and add the citric acid to it and let it dissolve.
Measure the remaining 1/4 cup of water and add the 1/4 rennet tablet to it and allow it to dissolve.
Pour your milk into a stainless steel stock pot and stir in your citric acid mixture.
Heat the milk over medium/high heat to 90 degrees, stirring gently.
Once the milk reaches 90 degrees, remove from heat and gently stir in the rennet solution. Stir to the count of 30. Then stop, cover the pot and let it sit completely undisturbed for 5 to 15 min.
After 5 to 15 min the curds should be set to the consistency of a real soft tofu. If it’s not there yet, let it sit a bit longer.
Once it’s set, cut the curd into a grid pattern, top to bottom and left to right, cutting all the way to the bottom of the pot.
Now return it to the stove, medium heat. and warm it back to 105 degrees. Stir slowly trying not to break up the curds too bad. They should begin to clump together and separate more completely from the whey.
Once it reaches 105 degrees, remove it from the heat and continue stirring gently for another 5 min.
Ladle the curds into a micro-safe bowl using a slotted spoon.
Microwave for 1 minute and drain any additional whey off.
Begin to fold the curds over onto themselves. You’ll probably want to use rubber gloves. A new set of yellow kitchen gloves is what was recommended most, to protect your hands from the hot cheese.
Continue to microwave in 30 second increments and continue stretching. Using the microwave is actually about separating out more whey.
Stretch it until it takes on a glossy sheen. Overworking it can make it stiff and it might not melt as well as it could, so don’t over-do it.
You can add a bit of salt now if you want and store it for about a week in some cooled whey in the refrigerator.

It’s not a hard one.

I read over and over that if you are using vegetable rennet, you have to use more than you would if you’re using animal rennet.

I looked over my rennet and didn’t find anything on the label that said one way or another. So I went for it.

I was wrong.

At that point, I went back to Amazon and looked up my previous rennet order. Note to self….ALWAYS check FIRST. Yep, it was vegetable rennet. Instead, I should have used about 2 whole tablets instead of just 1/4 of a tablet.

Not a Complete Fail

Okay, time to step back and punt. So, what can you do with a failed mozzarella. I wasn’t sure yet, but I wasn’t ready to throw it out just yet, either.

I strained it in a tight weave cheese cloth and hung it while I worked at figuring out what I was going to do next.

Then, I started thinking about what I’d read before about making ricotta cheese and I started looking it up.

I’d tried it before with the whey I get from the yogurt I make, but it hadn’t worked.

But this whey was different.

How Mozzarella Becomes Ricotta

I started looking for different recipes for ricotta. What I found out was, there really isn’t a recipe, just a process.

Just gently heat the whey until it reaches about 180 degrees. You don’t want it to come to a oil.

Now you can strain the whey in a fine cheese cloth and let it drain. I tied mine up and hung it overnight.

It came out a beautiful crumbly ricotta cheese. It’s going to be lasagna soon.

The Mozzarella That Wasn’t Mozzarella

My original batch of “not mozzarella” that I strained anyway, turned into a very thick Greek-like type of soft cheese.

It could have easily had some herbs added to it and be used as a spread for crackers.

But, I’ve actually been using it as a breakfast with some granola and honey. It’s yummy.

Because it didn’t work like you thought doesn’t mean it’s a fail, you just have to look at it in a different way.

Let me know about one of your saves, something good that came from a perceived fail. I’d love to hear about it.

Until next time – Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

March 10, 2019March 10, 2019

Homemade Butter

Who doesn’t love homemade butter? Well, truthfully, I didn’t think I did up until just several years back.

The only thing I thought real butter was good for was for popping pop corn. Although, real butter makes popcorn taste awesome, I can’t imagine now, how I ever thought such a thing.

These days I can’t imagine NOT liking homemade sweet cream butter. And in my opinion, it makes everything taste better.

Making butter really is easy, although it can sometimes be a bit messy.

It’s the one recipe I know of where you actually start with 1 ingredient and finish with 2 products. How can you beat that??!!

Your ONE ingredient…Cream.

I get my milk from a neighbor, straight from the cow.

When I get it, there is usually about a cup of cream on top that I dip off and put in a pint mason jar before using the milk.

I’ll generally save this up until I get 1-1/2 or 2 pints.

I have used whole milk before and it worked just fine. It tasted good too. But the butter from actual sweet cream from the top of your milk is just…….sweet.

I’ve found it doesn’t take as long if you let the cream come to room temperature first.

Getting started….

You’ll need a standing mixer. The first time I made butter I used my hand mixer. Mostly, because it was all I had. It worked, but I almost ruined my mixer. The butter just gets too stiff for something that small.

So a standing mixer, that’s your best bet.

I poured all the cream in the picture above in the bowl for this.

You’ll want to start slow so you don’t slosh cream all over. Slowly, increase your speed as the cream begins to turn into something more like whipped cream.

Start on low and slowly speed up as you go to prevent a mess.

I cover my mixer and bowl with plastic wrap to keep from making a mess. You can see why here.

This is why you cover the bowl with plastic wrap. It can get messy.

If you’ve ever made whipped cream, that is all you’re doing, except after it gets to the whipped cream state, keep going.

Here it’s beginning to separate. You can tell by the way it starts to clean the side of the bowl as it mixes.

It won’t take long until the butter fat separates from the butter milk.

Keep going.

Soon you will have what sounds like a watery mess. That means you’re done.

That watery substance is buttermilk. Before to keep that for pancakes, biscuits or anything else you might make with buttermilk. My granddaughter loves buttermilk pancakes.

This is the buttermilk I got from this batch of butter.

Now separate the buttermilk from the butter and wash your butter in cold water.

You can always mark your buttermilk and freeze it until you’re ready to use it.

Now, you’ll wash your butter under cold water until the water runs clear. This can take several minutes. The cleaner you can get your butter, meaning the more buttermilk you wash out the longer your butter will last.

It’s better, but not ready yet. Keep washing.

Now, if you use real butter, you’ll know that it’s much harder than margarine. Your homemade sweet cream butter is no different.

Using this right out of the fridge is not going to spread on bread or biscuits real easy. But if you toast your bread or pull your biscuits out of the oven and put your butter on it and let it slowly melt, oooh yum, it’s heaven.

Now would be the time to add salt if you wanted salted butter.

You want you can add herbs to your homemade butter, making a great herbed butter for more savory uses. It easiest to do this right after your wash it and before putting it into the fridge since it’s not real hard at this point yet.

If you don’t need more butter in the fridge, you can wrap it tight and put it in the freezer. I’m not real sure how long it will last in the freezer, because frankly, it’s never had to stay in there very long. But it’s a good way to keep it for a while. Although, I’ve found that homemade butter lasts a long time in the fridge too.

I’ve always wanted to try adding honey to it too, but just haven’t done that yet. I always loved honey-butter when I was a kid.

If you’ve tried that, let me know how it worked out in the comments below.

I hope you find this useful. if you do, please let me know.

If you try it, I’d also love to hear how it turned out.

Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a DIY.

Until next time….

Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey