Dairy Adventure: Cheese

Another one of my goals this summer was to make cheese. Mozzarella is a cheese I pretty much always have in our fridge and enjoy pretty frequently. I thought it would be interesting to learn how to make it.

Just as it was helpful when I made butter, the book Home Dairy with Ashley English was an amazing resource when making cheese. The author lists lots of different cheeses and provides step by step visuals to guide you. Mozzarella is considered an easy cheese to make at home because it doesn't require any aging. I was shocked at how easy it was.

The key with mozzarella and any cheese in general is beginning with high quality milk.
The challenge with mozzarella is the milk can't be pasteurized. Because we live in Seattle, I was able to find local, raw milk at a market near our home and used that. You can't make mozzarella with the milk you buy from the grocery store...it simply won't work. (Unless your grocery store sells raw or minimally pasteurized milk.)

You need a few special ingredients and tools to transform your milk - rennet, citric acid powder, and a thermometer. You bring your milk and citric acid to about 86 degrees, add the rennet and some water and bring that to 104 degrees. Almost instantly when I added the rennet, the milk began forming curds and whey. Then I separated the curds into a bowl, warmed them a bit in the microwave, and kneaded the cheese. After a few minutes, it was ready.

I enjoyed a sliver and put the rest in our fridge. Tonight we're having grilled pizzas with homemade mozzarella and roasted veggies. I'm looking forward to that!

I probably won't regularly make my cheese. I enjoyed learning how to do it and was pretty amazed with how the cheese turned out. The challenge is the cost. Raw milk is not cheap ($6.99 per half gallon) and the amount of mozzarella I made with a 1/2 gallon of milk was not considerable. I may make it again if the mozzarella was the highlight of the meal, but for day to day eating and enjoying, I'll stick to the great and inexpensive mozzarella I get from my trusty Costco. The taste is very similar.

I'm hoping to try homemade ricotta next. Supposedly that is very simple to make and tastes dramatically different than anything you can buy at a store. I'll let you know when and if I try it!

Dairy Adventure: Butter

This summer I added to my list of goals that I wanted to try making my butter. I'm not sure exactly why...I'd read a few blog posts about people making their own and to be honest, I was intrigued. I've made yogurt a few times now and it is so easy and much more delicious than anything you can buy in a store. I hoped butter would be equally as wonderful!

I checked out Home Dairy with Ashley English from our local library. It is an amazing resource and a book I definitely have on my list to add to my personal collection. In this book, Ashley carefully walks you through each step of the butter making process with careful notes and very helpful pictures.

Butter is made from heavy cream. Basically, you whip it at a very high speed for about 9 minutes and all of a sudden you have butter! My Kitchen Aid mixer did all the work! One tip I read online was to drape a kitchen towel around your mixer as you whip the cream, otherwise you have quite a mess. After a few minutes, the cream separates and you have butter and buttermilk. I poured my buttermilk into a Mason jar and will use it to make pancakes. All you do next is rinse your butter, mix it with a bit of salt and store it.

The taste is unrivaled. We did a taste comparison with the butter we had in our fridge and the fresh butter I made - Cliff was shocked at how he could really tell the difference. I hope to never buy butter again!

 Stay tuned...I'll share about my mozzarella adventures soon!

Extreme Couponing?

In the past few months, I've started reading a few blogs that teach you how to grocery shop using coupons. It doesn't seem like something that would be that hard, but it does take some strategy!

My desire in using coupons is to steward our resources well and be thoughtful about how we spend our money. I am by no means incredibly skilled at using coupons, and I read some blogs where the women are AMAZING! They go to the grocery store and get most of their groceries for free. One of the blogs has a writer whose grocery budget for a family of five is $100 a month. That is impressive.

There is a new show on TLC that is all about extreme couponing...multiple transactions, buying many of the items on sale, clearing the shelves of all 50 jars of mustard, etc. I am not interested in that.

I have a few things I think about as I go to the store:

• What is on sale? I make my meal plan based on what I already have or what is on sale that week.
• Do not buy any item just because I have a coupon for it.
• Don't buy more of any one item than we could use before the expiration date.
• One rule I almost always break is...only buy what can fit in the freezer. Usually what happens is we have to do the "freezer puzzle" once I get home from the store. Good thing Cliff is so good at it!

Today, without much planning, I grabbed my coupon envelope and the weekly store ad and headed to Safeway. I bought everything pictured below for a little more than $9. I saved 67%! It was my most successful shopping trip yet! It was actually fun!

My $9.50 Safeway purchase today!

Green Clean

We recently had a good friend jokingly tell us we are turning into West Seattle hippies...I think she might be right. Well, not really about being hippies, but we are becoming more and more aware of the environment and what we can do to be better stewards of the earth God blessed us with. That's why we've become interested in gardening and growing our own vegetables, raising chickens, and I've recently started making my own cleaning products.

I'm certainly not planning to preach at anyone, but I was pretty amazed to learn how many hazardous chemicals I was using in our home and how easy (and cheap!) it is to use less hazardous products. I was really surprised to learn how few regulations there are around household cleaning products and how many of them are highly toxic.

In making this transition to green cleaners, I'm not planning to throw away the cleaners I already have, but to use them up and not replace them. I've found a number of books at the library full of recipes for all-purpose cleaners, laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, and more. It is kind of like the real food movement, which is all about eating like our grandparents ate. In thinking about "green clean" it is really about cleaning like our grandparents cleaned.

A couple of resources that have been very helpful for me are:

• The West Seattle blog did an article on a local group that had a make your own cleaning products class. Click HERE to read the article and have access to their recipes.
• Keeper of the Home: Non Toxic Cleaners You Can Make at Home
• I also checked out a few books from the library. One that was quite helpful was: Do It Gorgeously: How to Make Less Toxic, Less Expensive, and More Beautiful Products

I'm just starting slowly, but am intrigued at how easy it is to make these products and how well they work. The dishwasher detergent is so inexpensive and works so well! Give it a try. Let me know what you think!

No, I'm not Laura Ingalls...

but I am enjoying my new adventures in canning!

For my birthday last year, my parents gave me a cooking class. I chose from a number of them and selected a class on canning. I loved the class, typically enjoy cooking, and was excited to apply my new learning.

In January I made citrus marmalade and enjoyed the process, eating my creation, and sharing it with friends. Now that we're gardening and bringing in quite a bit of produce, I'd like to take a more serious approach.

My goal this summer is to can most of our tomatoes (we don't really eat them fresh), make blueberry jam with all the blueberries from our bushes, make applesauce from our apple tree, blackberry jam from our blackberry vine (if it produces enough), and pickled jalapenos. Many of our other veggies we look forward to freezing to use throughout the year. I'm also in the process of learning how to dry and store our herbs.

So far this year I've made and "put up" three pints of preserved lemons, four pints of lemon marmalade, two pints of pickled carrots, quite a bit of strawberry jam, five pints of sliced peaches, and I think next on my list will be blackberry jam once our blackberries ripen!

Check out a few of my products...

preserved lemons

lemon marmalade

Ten Things I Like About Costco...

1. COMBO PIZZA - If I ever come home from Costco without their version of a supreme pizza, Cliff will disown me. :) It is huge, $10, has lots of delicious veggies, and warms up beautifully for lunches and leftovers. Hard to beat.
2. MEAT - Their chicken breasts, flank steak, organic ground beef, and rotisserie chickens are all so delicious. I also appreciate that they're prepackaged in meal size portions, so I don't have to come home from the store and separate it into one pound packages. Love that!
3. BEDDING - We bought our favorite sheets ever at Costco. They are flannel and so deliciously soft that we use them even in the summer! Recently we bought a new mattress from Costco and we couldn't be happier.
4. BAKERY - The croissants, apple turnovers, and ciabatta bread are the best around.
5. PRODUCE - I appreciate the huge variety of produce Costco offers, but the prices are what really catch my eye.
6. CAR WASH - I've never been much for paying to have my car washed, but after running one of our cars through the $8 wash, I'm sold. It did an awesome job and was very quick!
7. TERIYAKI SAUCE - The Soy Vey teriyaki sauce is incredible. It will transform any piece of meat into something truly amazing.
8. MOCHA FREEZE - Love, love, love it! Worth every penny of the $1.59. Such a nice pick me up on a warm afternoon...like today!
9. BOXES - I like that they pack my items into boxes and not into bags, which makes loading and unloading the car much quicker. Unique too - maybe that's why I like it.
10. VARIETY - Anywhere I can buy dog food, my mattress, flank steak, rugs, books, organic quinoa, and hopefully one day diapers is my kind of place!

I have to admit, it seems a bit odd that a two person household would have a Costco membership since they sell things in such bulk, but we love it!

What are your favorite Costco finds?

Going Green

I should be afraid to write this, but I do have to say...I've never really cared all that much about where my food comes from, how much electricity I'm using if I can pay the bill, what cleaning products I'm using, etc. My whole perspective is truly changing. I can't pinpoint exactly what has been altering my perspective...
-living in the Northwest around a bunch of "granolas"
-powerful documentaries (we have watched several..."Where does your food come from?" and "Inconvenient Truth" are two favorites)
-the ongoing conversation about our environment
-friends who live "green" lives
-God changing my heart

I've always just bought what was on sale and not worried too much about our food or where it comes from. Lately, we've been getting local organic produce delivered to our front door twice a month (how convenient is that!) by a great company - Pioneer Organics. I'm trying to cut down on our waste as well as the amount of packaging that we use. I am in love with Trader Joe's! :) We're eating better and I'm actually spending less.

My new favorite cleaning product..."Greenworks All-Purpose Cleaner" which is a "green" product made by Clorox. Smells great and does a great job. The cost is not much more if any different. It smells so lemony fresh, but not fake. Check them out: http://www.greenworkscleaners.com/ I bought mine at the grocery store this weekend.

The other day at Costco, I noticed a 10 pack of the compact fluorescent bulbs on sale (major sale) because Seattle City Light (our utility company) was offsetting the cost of the bulbs in a major way. I was able to buy 10 of these fancy-shmancy bulbs for $9! They are usually about $4 each! What a steal. You know I love a bargain! The nicest man was looking at them too and counseling me on my decision. He asked if I'd used these bulbs before and I told him that I hadn't. He really encouraged me to take the plunge. He mentioned how astonished I'd be at the reduction in my light bill. I asked about the light - did it feel fluorescent? He said no, I trusted him, and I bought the bulbs. I am so glad that I did. That was such an easy and quick fix.

Please know, I'm not writing this to pat myself on the back, by any means! Truly this is my new realization...that for me, it is important to know where our food comes from and what little steps I can take to help a major problem. Nothing that I did was hard...I needed new light bulbs, so I bought energy efficient ones; I needed to replace my all-purpose cleaner, so I bought natural products, etc. We're not planning to start hiking to work anytime soon. :)

I live in a city that is incredibly progressive when it comes to the idea of "green", but I was not taking full advantage of all that was being offered to reduce my carbon footprint. We're trying - slowly, but surely...I'd encourage you to try some of these little changes as well.

We're on our way to being "granolas"!!!