Pickled Beets

I managed to can 3 jars of pickled beets so far this year. This was after we took out enough to roast and mix with feta cheese. I love beets! How about you?

Also, don't forget to check out the Sizzling Summer Sale!

Photo Friday: Apple Pie Time!

I hope everyone out there has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Animal Crackers

The kids and I had fun making animal crackers for my daughter's birthday. It was so much fun!

We made cheese ones from the Smitten Kitchen Whole Wheat Goldfish Cracker Recipe. So easy! I highly recommend it! The crackers come out delicious too! I just end up using regular bleach flour and skip the whole wheat part. Though I'm sure they are good either way. =)

We also made more traditional graham animal cracker ones from the King Arthur's Flour recipe. I substituted graham flour for oat flour, because I have an easier time digesting it. It came out super dry so I added roughly 1/4 cup of milk and they came out just fine. The kids seem to be eating them up!

The cracker cutters came from King Arthur's Flour too! They are just too cute! They are also simple enough that my 4 year old didn't have any trouble using them by himself. I also want to try out Smitten Kitchen's Graham Cracker Recipe, because it looks really good, but it will have to wait for next time!

Bread

When I was sorting through some things I found these neatly handwritten recipes: 

They are my grandmother's recipes hand written down by my mother when she was in high school. They are both for Whole Wheat bread.

You will notice the scale for these recipes is rather large. The first one, I think, makes 2 loaves of bread and the second makes 4 loaves of bread. 

My mother was 1 of 7 children. They were fairly poor and so made everything from scratch, including their bread for the week. My mother said her mother always made the best bread. She said they would take bean and mayonnaise sandwiches on homemade bread to school and all the rich kids would fight over who got to trade them for their store bought bread sandwiches. =)

I haven't made the recipe yet, but plan on doing it soon. Maybe scaling it down a little... Feel free to make it yourself. If you do, let me know! I would love to hear how it turns out!

Photo Friday: Spice Catalog

Bagels

A couple weeks ago I made bagels with my bread machine. They turned out really good! I plan on making them again. They were really easy too! You can find the recipe I used here: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/bread-machine-bagels/

Experiments with Cream Cheese

Most mornings for breakfast I have a bagel with cream cheese. For some time I have been kinda sad because I can't find cream cheese without any fillers. Even the organic variety has locust bean gum, which doesn't sound tasty at all. Well I have been listening to Animal Vegetable Miracle and I got to the section where they talk about making homemade cheese. One of the things they mention is how soft cheeses are incredibly easy to make. I was curious enough to do a search and see just how difficult it really was. Turns out it is incredibly simple!

I found a recipe on Mother Earth News, where you simply use a strainer, a towel, a plastic container, and plain yogurt to make cream cheese. Above is my cream cheese making device. I just used a clean hand towel, poured in my yogurt and let it sit over night. The results are below.

My first attempt was with yogurt from our CSA box. The yogurt to start out with was a bit runnier than I'm used to so it was no surprise the cream cheese came out softer than I was expecting. It was also fairly bland in flavor.

Not daunted I tried again with Nancy's Plain Lowfat Yogurt (I plan on trying whole fat yogurt next time). It turned out almost exactly like regular cream cheese! It was more sour than regular cream cheese, so I am going to have to experiment with sweetening it a bit. Maybe with maple syrup or honey for regular bagel use. As a side note, I got a huge tub of yogurt to work with. I measured out my yogurt when I made it. About 3 cups of yogurt makes 2 cups of cream cheese.

I did attempt to make my own yogurt, but it was a bit of a failure. Note: Do not use cast iron to make yogurt, it will turn out awful! I am going to try again and I'll keep you posted.

However, a big success came from making the cream cheese! I made a cheese cake for Mother's Day! It turned out to be the best cheese cake ever. Both my mother and my husband were skeptical, since neither one are fans of cheese cake, but both said it was delicious and had 2nd pieces. As you can imagine it has disappeared, so I don't have a photo. The recipe I used was one from Philadelphia and can be found here. I didn't put the strawberry preserves on top, but will probably make a fresh strawberry sauce for it the next time I make it. It was delicious without it. Also, since I can't eat graham crackers I substituted ginger snaps instead, which turned out perfect!