Biscuits!

I believe I've mentioned it before, but I am an utter failure when it comes to brownies. And actually, as Alann pointed out, most desserts kind of fail. Sure, I can make yummy bread, but brownies end up awful. Cookies I am ok at, but they aren't grand. Pie crust comes out good one time and bad the next. And fudge- don't get me started on fudge. See, look at my poor brownies:

Because of these baking downfalls, I've always tended to look at certain things as out of my reach- pie crust for example. I just started trying to find a good recipe for that. And biscuits. I believe I tried them once, and it just made a big sticky mess. We both love those "southern style" crumbly biscuits, like the kind you get on a McDonald's breakfast sandwich (except fresh and not all weird and rubbery). I've been afraid to make them myself, so we buy the frozen kind when they are on sale (and then we ration them, because otherwise, we would eat them every time we make a hot breakfast). I would love to make my own biscuits. I know that pretty much any premade bread product is cheaper and tastier if you make it yourself. $2 for a package of 12 is what I usually pay. Not awful, but they also have preservatives and strange words in them. On Saturday, I cleaned the kitchen, which always makes me want to cook something elaborate. So I got brave and looked for an easy recipe. And look at what happened:

Isn't it gorgeous? It tasted good too. In case you can't tell just from looking at it, it's half whole wheat flour too. (I've got Alann trained to where he can tell just by looking if I used whole flour or not.) I froze half the batch to make later, to see how they turn out. These were surprisingly easy though. The recipe is from All-Recipes. It's called Fluffy whole wheat biscuits in case it doesn't come up. I followed the recipe exactly (I actually do that when baking, since I don't want to screw it up). The only thing I did differently was mix in about 3/4 of the milk at first, and then added the rest, since some of the reviews said it was soupy, and I hate kneading really soft doughs. I didn't find that to be the case at all, but better safe than sorry right? I got 15 biscuits out of about 15 minutes of work. The dough came together nicely. Be gentle when kneading. Over-mixing the dough leads to tough biscuits (I sound like an expert. But I did see Alton Brown make biscuits once, and that's what he said.) My plan is, if the freezing thing works out well, than every once in a while, I will make a double or triple batch, bake what I want, and freeze the rest. We usually eat all the ones I bake. I baked 8 for dinner Saturday (leftover ham and bean soup), and we ate 6. Six is the most I will bake for just us, especially when we buy the premade ones, because they are so seemingly expensive. But no more! From now on, I will not be afraid of biscuits! Next time, I might even try garlic-cheese...

Crock Pot Yogurt

My new favorite thing is homemade yogurt. I had fig flavored yogurt the other day. Try and find that in a grocery store. =) (And one of my coworkers gave me yummy homemade granola, which goes really well. But I digress.)
The process is actually really easy, and no, you don't need a yogurt maker.

Here is what I did (after copious amounts of research. I didn't make this up.):
1. Heat a quart of whole milk on the stove over medium heat, stirring and checking the temperature every few minutes. Don't walk away for too long. You want to go to 185 degrees.
2. Next, cool the milk to 110 degrees. You can put it in the fridge or leave it on the counter. I poured my milk into a clean glass measuring cup (quart-size) and set that in a pan of cool water. Keep stirring the milk every few minutes, or you will get cold on the outside and warm on the inside.
3. Add 1/4 C of dried milk powder and 2 Tbsp of yogurt starter. This can be powdered yogurt starter or plain yogurt. I used a cup of plain yogurt because I didn't want extra plain yogurt sitting around my house. Stir this in. You can also add 2 T of honey for sweetener. I intended to make vanilla last time, but forgot the extract. Add it now.
4. Pour the soon-to-be yogurt into glass jars. Set the glass jars, lidded, in your crockpot. (Check to see how many will fit first.) I fit 7 jars in my 6 qt oval crockpot. I was using half-pint canning jars, because I have them. You can use larger clean jars and just make a larger batch. I wanted mine in portable, single-serving sizes. (If you don't have any glass jars, I have alternate instructions at the end of the post.)
5. Pour warm tap water into the crockpot. Put your thermometer in there. Aim for 110-120 degrees. You don't want to go much higher than 125 degrees, or you will kill the yogurt cultures, and end up with sour milk, not yogurt.
6. Watch the thermometer. If the temperature goes down a lot, put your crock on "keep warm" or low, for no longer than 20 minutes at a time. Keep an eye on it! You don't want to let it get too warm. If you are leaving the house like I did, get the crock warm and the water at the right temperature, then cover it with a towel and leave.
7. The yogurt will take 6-10 hours, depending on how tangy and thick you like it. The longer it cultures, the more tangy it gets. The milk powder acts as a thickener, so it should thicken nicely even after only 6 hours.
8. Put the jars in the fridge! Ta-da! You just made yogurt!

You may notice a little liquid inside your jars when you go to eat your yogurt. This is harmless. you can either stir it in for a thinner consistency, or do like me and pour it off because it weirds you out a little. It doesn't mean the yogurt is bad at all. Just that the whey separated a little.

Now, what if you don't have any glass jars? Easy. Follow instructions to number 3. While your yogurt is cooling to the right temperature, turn your crock on "keep warm" or "low" and let it warm up a bit. Then pour the yogurt into the crock, turn it off, and cover with a towel and let it incubate. Put the thermometer in there so you can monitor the temperature. If it gets too low, turn the crock back on. It should hold the temperature fairly nicely though. When it is the right consistency, 6-10 hours later, you can dish it into tupperware or whatever containers you have. (I can't vouch for this particular method, but CrockPot Lady can.)

Now, if you have glass jars but no crockpot, you can put the jars in a waterbath in the oven. Warm the oven up as low as it will go as you heat the milk, then turn the oven off and the light on. Put the jars in there for the time amount. I have done this, but I find the crock pot a little easier since it insulates so well.

Homemade yogurt is not as thick as store-bought, but it also doesn't have weird words thickening it. Just milk and bacteria. Yum. (The good kind. Come on, you knew yogurt had bacteria in it before now.) The more you stir homemade yogurt, the more it loses it's thickness. You are breaking up the proteins. Just don't stir it too much after it is done incubating. This is why I like the individual serving jars. I can take the one I want and leave the rest alone in the fridge. You can use your homemade yogurt as starter for the next batch, but after a few batches, it loses potency. (You know, a copy of a copy. It ain't too bright.) I for one, will spend $0.33 for a new small plain yogurt cup every time to make sure I have good live active cultures. By the way, make sure the plain yogurt you start with says that- live active cultures. Dead cultures mean no yogurt. You can also use a vanilla flavored yogurt if you can't find plain. I know that our Kroger-brand store carries plain in the small size, not just in monstrous size.

Now, why do I like making yogurt? Isn't it easier to just buy it? Yeah, sure. But I really don't like the fruit on the bottom yogurt because it isn't fruit. It is this weird fruit custard syrup thing that grosses me out. I don't like buying the low-fat "diet" yogurts, because while there are many flavors, they have aspartame or splenda, both of which are gross to me. I can taste aspartame from a mile away, and I don't trust splenda yet. Let someone else be the guinea pig for splenda. So I end up buying the full-fat "blended" yogurt, which probably has the same "fruit" stuff mixed in it, but at least I can't see it. And that only comes in a few flavors, which I get tired of. Plus with homemade, I can control how sweet it is, and I can control what fruit goes into it. Imagine that, yogurt with REAL fruit in it. Like when I had fig jam and yogurt. It was yummy! I also recommend pear jam, strawberry jam, raspberry jam, apples, pears, and nectarines (not in season anymore).

You can slowly decrease the fat content of the milk as you get better at making yogurt. Start with whole milk for guaranteed success (ok, it isn't guaranteed if you kill off the cultures, but otherwise, it works). Then try 2%. Just up the quotient of non-fat dried milk powder, which adds in the needed proteins, but without the fat. Honestly, I don't know how low you can go. I am still in the whole milk stage of homemade yogurt. But I don't eat yogurt every day, so a quart or half gallon of milk will make me enough yogurt for quite a while- at least 2 weeks. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that you can do this with soy or rice milk, but do your own research if you are going that route.

Next up, sour cream! I've been buying the "natural" kind for a while, so we can avoid more of those weird words. I think I am about ready to try making it. Research must be done first...

The seasons are changing

How do I know? Well, my contacts are driving me NUTS! (That’s my first clue.) And my hair is staticy all the time. My allergies are ramping up again. And it’s almost cold enough at night to put a real blanket back on the bed (at least once Alann turns the fan on high). I’m glad it’s changing. It’s time to get my fall plantings in (just carrots, beets, garlic, and onions). We got some decent sized beets this spring/summer, but the ants harvested them first. (Jerks) So we haven’t had any beets yet. I like beets. Alann likes borscht. I deal with it. It’s ok hot, but once it’s cold, it’s all him. We made our first salsa of the summer this weekend. Everything in it was home-grown- the tomatoes, onions, garlic, bell pepper, and hot pepper. It was yummy!

On a sad note, there has been a death in the family. Our dear old avocado fridge has gone the way of all appliances. I noticed Friday that the light didn’t come on when you opened the fridge, but since we have never replaced it, I figured it just burned out. But when I got some bacon out for breakfast on Saturday, there was no denying it. I will miss the green fridge- the way it used to freeze the milk, and anything else that got pushed too far back, or the way it didn’t keep anything cold when we turned the thermostat up. The way it had very few shelves and the drawers weren’t attached. How it made the laundry room 5 degrees hotter than the rest of the house. And of course it’s lovely avocado color. Those were the days. Wait, no I hated that thing. I’m actually kind of glad it died. Plus we get $30 from the power company for recycling it through them, and our power bill should go down. That thing was a monster.
So we spent all day Saturday fridge shopping. Well not really. We checked Craigslist and found a few fridges. We called and ended up getting a 12 year old Kenmore. We were home around 2. It’s pretty nice. (Nicer than the 70s fridge anyway, and bigger than the one that came with the house.) So we put it in the front and moved the one that came with the house to the laundry room. Could we live with just one fridge? Yes. Do we want to? No. It’s so convenient because we can buy 4 gallons of milk and not go back to the store just for milk in the middle of the week or on our “off weekend”. And we can leave food in larger containers instead of trying to dish it into Tupperware to fit elsewhere. And of course, we need the freezer space, because I buy meat in bulk on sale. It wouldn’t all fit in just one tiny freezer. When we lived with my dad when I was little, we used to have 3 or 4 fridge or freezer combinations. We had the everyday fridge/freezer in the kitchen (I wouldn’t be surprised if my dad still ahs the same fridge). Then we had the “ice cream” freezer that we were not supposed to get into on our own. And the meat freezer. We had a big garden and butchered our own rabbit and chicken meat, so we always had a big stock. That may have been a side-by-side. I don’t really remember. So having multiple fridge or freezer units is not strange to me at all. We debated whether we should get a chest or upright freezer or another fridge/freezer unit. I am pretty happy with what we got. The new fridge has shelves! And drawers! The fridge that came with the house had only 2 shelves and the drawers were missing. There is room in the fridge. Things don't sit on top of each other. We are moving up in the world.
And just to spite us, as Alann was unplugging the green fridge to move it, he saw a spark. He plugged the fridge back in, and it started. He said “the fridge is running” I said good, thinking he meant the white one. Then it dawned on me that he was messing with the green one. I said “It’s too late! Get rid of it!” We didn’t bother trying to check it or fix it or anything. The thing was 30 years old. We figured it was dead dead. Not just sleeping. Alann said maybe there was a power surge but the fridge didn’t have the power to start itself up again. I don’t care. I don’t want to have to worry about the fridge not working and us not noticing until all the food goes bad. But it works, which means it is eligible for the rebate. Good enough for me. And, we paid cash. So no credit expenditures. Also awesome.

Becca's frugal tuesday tip

Oh wait, it's Wednesday. Either way, here is my idea. (Ok, it isn't my idea. I got it from elsewhere, but it is important!)

Did you know that foaming hand soap is regular soap, watered down? It is. Really. Doesn't it make you mad that foaming hand soap costs more than the "regular"kind, but contains less soap? It makes me mad. Which is why this is nifty.
Last year, at Bath and Body Works, I bought some hand soap. Then, about a month later, I got a postcard telling me about the 5 for $15 sale. I refused to buy more soap, as I already had bought some at 3 for $15, but I remembered. And I waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, they held the sale again! (It is probably still going on. It started Monday.) Alann mentioned that he preferred the foamy soap, and I prefer the foamy soap (it doesn't seem to dry out my hands as much), but I hated that it was the same price for less product (the ounces are different).
A blog I read (and can't find the post to save my life) mentioned that foamy soap is just watered down regular soap. If you google it, lots of people apparently know this. They just didn't tell me. All you need is the foamy soap dispenser and then you can make foamy soap to your heart's content. So this is what I did. I bought two foamy soap dispensers (full of soap from BBW) and 3 regular soaps for $15. I already had one foamy dispenser in my bathroom, which I had been secretly refilling from Alann's regular soap. It wasn't really a secret. He just never asked and I didn't tell him what I was doing. (Sometimes he thinks my ideas are crazy, not genius.) So we now have 3 foamy soap dispensers, full of soap, and an understanding not to throw them away. When they run out, I will just refill them with soap and water. With BBW soap, I use a 50-50 ratio, but I have read that 25% soap and 75% water is the right ratio. I like the 50-50. I think it depends on your soap and your preferred bubble-age. Mix gently. I prefer the "swirl" method to the "shake" method, but whatever. (It is afterall just soap.) I add water and mix and add water and mix until the little blue beads are no longer suspended. All of the little blue beads will drop to the bottom of the foamy soap bottle and sit there. (I guess you could rinse them out between refills if they bothered you.)
If you are a foamy soap connoisseur, you will notice that "home-mixed" is a little lighter. The foam isn't quite as tight, but it washes just as well. And, it saves you money, because you are using much less soap. You could go even more frugal and quit buying BBW soap, but let's face it, it just smells good. (Yes I know, it is antibacterial, which is against my beliefs, but you have to pick your battles sometimes, and searching out good smelling pro-bacterial soap is not one I have time for.) (Oh and I got a free thing of lotion with a card that they sent me. Awesome.)
So there you have it. That's my frugal tip for the...time being.
(Oh, I am also on twitter now thanks to teene. Beccasev)