Fat and Crafty.com

The bread is on the first rise and the yogurt has been tucked into a  cooler to  come together.

I’m excited about the yogurt and am excited that i’m not using a yogurt maker. Instead I’ve used a cooler method found here .
We’ll see how it works out. in the past I had a Doniver machine with all the little different cups and hated cleaning all of the little cups. Today I’m using glass jars and Fage yogurt as my starter. If this works, I want to branch out a bit and try the following.
-Sweetened yogurt, strained
-Unstrained Sweetened Yogurt
-Gelatin to thicken it up.
-Other kinds of yogurt as starters.
-Other kinds of milk  and adding milk powder.

My favorite yogurt is the Fage strained yogurt with honey. I want to see if I can achieve it…

A week or so ago on a late night prowl of Albertsons I spied grapefruit in the produce section and though, Maybe Leah doesnt like grapefruit, maybe we can have that at home.

You see, I love oranges , clementines, tangerines, tangelos, grapefruit etc. Unfortunatly Leah has a problem with the acid and isnt supposed to eat them. If she does she gets a terrible tummy upset. I love the Leah, so I keep oranges out of the house. No organge juice, no cases of clementines.

I brought the grapefruit home and let it sit on the counter. As a kid, we always got a case of grapefruit monthly.  I know that I liked the grapefruit liberally sprinkled with sweet and low. But now? the idea just doesnt appeal. So off to the joy of cooking it was.

I read through the recipe and it seemed simple enough "

Take 1 grapefruit, cut in half, sprinkle sugar on top. Broil till bits turn brown. Then Eat.

My first thought was yummy. It sits before me now, brown carmely bits on top, inner fruit flesh torn where I have dug my spoon in.  Its squirt sweet grapefruit juice into the bowl Its passable, though I dont know if I would make it again. Its really overly sweet, which makes me wonder just how sweet this grapefruit is naturally. Maybe I’ll try the next one plain.

Well I’ve fallen on the bread making stick. For the past 2 weeks we’ve been not been making bread but instead eating out of the store of frozen storebought bread. First it was a lack of butter, then it was a lack of time.

I need to stop by the liquour store and pick up some vodka or brandy for vanilla making.  I’ve got a ton of vanilla beans and need to find a use for them.  While I’m sure I wont be able to reach the quality that Penzeys does I’m sure with a little work I can get close.

This weekend I’ll get back on the stick and go back to bread making. I think this weekend I’ll also dive back into yogurt making.  I dont have  a functional yogurt maker anymore. so I’m going to explore a few home grown methods. Yogurt was made before we had unitaskers, so why go buy a new unitasker to make the yogurt?

The other product that interests me is making Kefir From what I’ve read its easy to make  and actually propagates very quickly.  We’ve come to enjoy the commercial version, though according to Wikipedia the real stuff is a whole different beast

The milk is incubated at room temperature for a day or more, during which the lactose is fermented. The resulting beverage is a sour, carbonated, slightly alcoholic drink. The consistency is similar to thin yoghurt. In fact, most commercially available American "kefir" lacks both carbonation and alcohol and is nothing more than liquid yogurt.

I’m hoping to also engage in some cheese making later in the year.

I didnt want to cook for the potluck, but I knew what had to be made The theme was Summer  as we hopped for sun and shrugged off the rain for a day.  I normally provide a vegetarian option, but this time it was not going to be vegetarian at all. I knew that if I made it I would wake up smelling food permeate the house. I hate that in the morning.

I did it anyway and the results were raves about the:

1 big piece of pork. (pork shoulder, tenderloin etc, something with some fat)
Spice Rub (1 packet of taco mix in this case)
Oil
Pan
Oven
Set oven to 400 Squirt oil into bottom of pan, just enough to stop the meat from sticking.  Rub meat with spice rub.  Place meat in oven. Turn down to 250. Let cook for hours until done. Typically I cook it for  10 or 11  hours. This time I only did 9. Pull meat apart.

Eat.

This earned rave reviews and two recipe requests.

"And if anyone really needs meat there are mini hot dogs in the fridge"

I was worried that tonights dinner would be unappreciated or unenjoyed. I was afraid I’d planned my dinner around something  that just wouldnt work out.

I’d decided we needed to experience more root vegetables so I chopped parsnips, rutabega, acorn squash  carrots and beats into about 2 inch chunks tossed with olive oil,  salted then roasted in the oven between 400-500 degrees. I served over garlic chicken couscous.

What a surprise. The beets carmelized each developing a bit of black crunchy sweetness, the parnsips picked up a bit of pink from the red beets and were a sweet  contrast. The rutabega and the squash were  so close in color that it was hard to tell which was which. The flavor was quite different though. The squash had a creamy sweet tone,  like pumpkin. The rutabega tasted earthy and roasty.

A delightful dinner on a Friday night.  The prep was easy, as I chopped most of it the other night when I made dinner and just stored them in bags in the fridge until tonight when I did the roasting.

mmmm

First let me say that I need to get a camera to make these posts more interesting. Right now they are quite lackluster

So I tackled another recipe in the Joy of Cooking book. I want to try it again, in a couple of variations for a few reasons.

I was actually dreading Old Fashioned Vegetable soup, because it sounds boring. Think of it, at a restaraunt you get choices, Would you have the cream of chicken with a light sherry voulet and chive garnish,  or the Old Fashioned Vegetable. Vegetable soup is what you order when they are out of the soup of the day.

I  boiled water, added instant beef base, then when it reached a simmer, I tossed in the vegetables. Since it called for lima beans, corn, green beans, carrots, and peas, I used a frozen veggie mix that had all of these. I also added the cabbage it said was optional . A couple of cloves of garlic, let simmer then add tomatoes or tomato paste.

Except Tomatoes are a no no in my house. Leah has acid issues, and  while paste would work we didnt have any. I let the soup simmer then served it up with dinner.  A little salty from the soup base, it was fairly good. Would the tomatoes have balanced the salt? Maybe.  In the end I enjoyed it and would make it again, even if it was just to take to work for lunch. I found it tasty, and learned that 2 cups of vegetables is a good rule of thumb for 3 cups of broth

I’m going to make this again, with the following variations.

1- Chicken Base / Fresh Chicken Broth / Vegetable Broth (The recipe called for any of the three)
2- Fresh Veggies instead of Frozen. 

I’ll report as I try it.

The

I was sauteing the Kale for tonights dinner, and the thought crossed my mind.. Are we Flexitarians? i’ve never conciously aimed for the vegetarian label in cooking for my current household, too many different tastes too many different likes and dislikes. But that doesnt mean at Circus Maximus it is meat 24/7/365. I’m not sure why folks who are flexitarians don’t just call themselves omnivores. Admitting that you eat meat doesnt mean you have to eat meat 24/7.

The kale made me think about it as I was sauteing and admiring the dull green turn into a vibrant green. Kale is one of those underloved underdiscovered greens in my book. It’s got a hearty flavor and works where cooked spinach will. My family even prefers it to cooked spinach, citing that it is more spinachy in its cooked form then spinach is. What is spinachy anyway?
But here is what i’m making tonight. I chose a bread pudding to use up some of the excess bread I have been making.

Sausage, Kale and Cheddar Bread Pudding

16 ounces turkey Italian sausage
1/2 cup carmelized onions
3 cloves garlic chopped
2 cups 1% low-fat milk
5 eggs
1.5 cup (6 ounces) shredded sharp cheddar cheese, divided
1 bunch Kale
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
12 ounces cubed bread stale bread
Cooking spray

Preheat oven to 350°.
Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Remove casings from sausage. Add sausage to pan; cook for 4 minutes or until browned, stirring to crumble. Stir in onion then garlic. cook 3 more minutes.

Move sausage to another pan. Saute Kale in sausage drippings, adding a little water to steam if needed.

Combine milk, egg substitute, 1/2 cheddar cheese, parsley, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon black pepper in a large bowl, stirring with a whisk. Stir in sausage mixture then Kale. Add bread, and stir gently to combine. Let stand 10 minutes. Spoon into a 13×9 baking dish coated with cooking spray (I buttered it, I have no cookign spreay.). Sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake at 350° until pudding is set and lightly browned.

The inspiration came from Cooking Light’s Sausage, Apple and Cheddar Bread pudding”