Let's Roast A Duck, or How We Survived Thanksgiving Without a Working Sink Or Disposal

Thanksgiving, my absolute favorite holiday of the year. Aside from the obvious reasons of glutinous over-eating and pumpkin-maple-brown-sugar-cinnamon-goodness in nearly everything from the month of October to November, it's about family. Family and food are all you have to deal with--and though that might be a LOT to deal with sometimes, it's usually worth it.

Since Thanksgiving was so long ago *looks at calender and realizes it's been over two months* I won't bore you with the little details about visits with family, sassy uncles-in-law who verbally bitch-slap your mother-in-law without her realizing it, or last minute shopping trips for that damned can of sweetened condensed milk you had to have for the pie you're supposed to make.

I will, however, be telling you about how we survived the massively kitchen-centric holiday without a working sink or food disposal.

It's a funny story really. Well, NOW it's funny. At the time, it was hardly laughable.

On the eve of Thanksgiving (is that a thing?), my mom and I were rounding up last minute groceries while The Husband and Wee One were winding down at home. It had been a long day of dodging holiday shoppers to get what we needed, and we were dog-tired. Mom and I walked in the front door and immediately something was fishy. Literally. The house reeked of rotten fish.

I said nothing at first and went about putting away the groceries. Then Husband came over and explained what had happened.

While he was trying to clean the fridge out for the abundance of new groceries that would be filling it, he had taken out a lot of old food that needed to be tossed. We have a disposal unit in the sink, and we've never had any reason not to use it. So, as usual, he turned the water on, turned the disposal on, and started getting rid of all the icky. Everything was going fine, and then...

Sardines.

There was an old tin of sardines in the fridge and they decided to clog up the disposal, back up the sink, explode nasty fish water all over the place, and stink up the entire goddamned house.

So, on top of not having a sink that we could use for cooking, straining, washing, etc., the whole house smelled of rotten fish. And let me tell you, oil burners are usually lovely; they give a warm scent and feeling throughout the house. NOT the case when you're trying to cover up fishsmell. Because then the house just smells as though some oaf, for some gods forsaken reason, mixed the two scents together. And that was even worse than the just fishsmell.

Alright, so now that I've finished reliving that horrific episode, let's get on to the good stuff. Though, while you're reading, do try to keep it in the back of your head that anything requiring water or the disposing of water for the duration of the holiday season had to be done in the guest bathroom. That's right. Bathroom sink. Bathtub. (We may or may not have even used our jacuzzi tub to try and wash dishes. Maybe...)

Our first Thanksgiving in this house was a truly singular event. Two days before, on November 23, 2010, I gave birth to Wee One; so on the day of Thanksgiving, we were let out of the hospital. We had no furniture, the TV was on the kitchen counter, and we had a newborn. Sufficed to say, I was not cooking that year. Every year since though, I have been in charge of the bird. Strange as it may be to some, yes, I am the bird lady in our house. The reason being: DUCK.

No, don't physically duck. Duck, the bird.

We've been roasting a duck for two years, with lots of practicing in between holidays. I'd say in the past two years we've probably roasted 4-5 ducks, including the holiday birds.

So, Miller, you ask, how does one roast a duck? Where does one even find a duck?

Simple my friends, simple. Sit back and I shall explain all to you.

We usually get our ducks from Whole Foods. They come fresh or frozen, from a farm called Bell & Evans. They're usually about 5-6 lbs and they come with all the organs inside that you can use to either cook up on their own (duck liver and onions! Yum!), give to your dogs, or use to make gravy (which I did this year and OMG!).

We've used the same recipe each time, well I should say "method", not "recipe" because it's one ingredient: a duck. We tweak the glaze every once in a while however, though the original glaze recipe is fantastic.

When we were first looking for a way to do our duck, I stumbled upon this recipe and we've never looked back.

The duck always produces a load of fat (which can be used for roasting potatoes, frying eggs, or anything else you can think of) and always comes out with crispy skin--and let's face it, if the duck doesn't have crispy skin, it just ain't worth it. And the duck always looks...magical.

See? Magic. Delicious, crispy, juicy, magic.

For this glaze, instead of using the recipe from the link above, I geared it a bit more towards the Thanksgiving tastes. I used:
1/4 cup honey
1/8 cup molasses
1/8 cup maple syrup
1 Tbls. orange juice
1 Tbls. apple cider
1 Tbls. apple cider vinegar
1 Tbls. soy sauce
and just a squeeze of Sriracha.

It came out great. It was amazing. We ate the whole thing. Bones and all. No, just kidding. Those went to the lucky, lucky dogs.

So, accompanying our duck, who I named Henry, (I always name the ducks. I don't know why. But I do. Always have. Always will. So sue me.) was a stuffed turkey breast.

Sausage Stuffed Turkey Breast:
One 4-5 lbs. skin-on, boneless turkey breast, pounded out pretty flat
One pound ground pork sausage
Various seasonings

So, if you want something a little less time intensive than the duck, or something that will simply pair really nicely with it, this is the thing for you.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

On a cutting board, lay out your turkey breast and cover it with plastic wrap. Using a meat-mallet (or, if you don't have one, a small saucepan), pound the crap out of that thing until it's about an inch thick all over and looks like it could hold some stuffing. Remove the plastic wrap from the turkey.

In a mixing bowl, dump your pork sausage (breakfast sausage is fine for this, because you're gonna dress it up anyway) and your various spices. We used a lot of sage, some cayenne pepper, thyme, salt, pepper, and a few cloves of finely minced garlic.

Take your sausage mixture and start plopping it down onto the turkey breast. Once it's all lined on the breast, begin to roll the breast around the mix.

Using kitchen twine, tie the stuffed breast so that it doesn't fall apart in the oven. Spread either melted butter, olive oil, or fat of your choice over the turkey skin; then place the whole precious little bundle on a baking sheet or roasting pan.

Cook 1 to 1 and 1/2 hours, or until an internal meat thermometer gives a reading of 145 degrees.

Crank the oven up to 500 degrees and continue cooking until golden brown and the internal reading is 150 degrees, about another ten minutes.

Remove from oven, let sit for about 15 minutes, cut off the twine, and slice cross-wise into about 1-inch thick pieces. It'll look a little like this:

Next on the menu was a simple gravy, and I can't remember exactly how I made it, but I'll do me damndest to recall the majority of what you need to do.

I took the various duck inards, minus the neck and gizzard, and sauteed them in a pan of butter. I took the butter and giblets and popped them in the food processor, blended them up, and let them stay there for a while.

In the same pan, I began a roux with butter and flour. I let it get slightly brown, then added some of our chicken stock (homemade of course) and the blended giblets to it. I put it all in a saucepan and heated it through, not to boiling though, and decided whether it needed a bit more liquid or a bit of seasoning.

Remove from saucepan and pour in gravy boat (or creamer...since we don't have a gravy boat...) and set aside. Heat it in the microwave for about 30 seconds before setting it on the table.

You get something that looks like this, and I wish you could taste/smell it because--though I was a skeptic and wasn't very enthusiastic about a gravy made from inards--it was amazing:

The supporting cast in our Thanksgiving meal were the usual suspects, sweet potato casserole, my mom's cornbread dressing, cranberry relish, cranberry sauce (because I will never not lot the shaped-like-the-can-it-came-in jelly and you can't make me!), and a delicious brussels sprouts dish that I shall tell you how to make!

I'm not a fan of brussels sprouts. That is, I didn't used to be a fan. Husband has since converted me and we all (including Wee One) love them. I came up with the following recipe by mixing bits and pieces of other recipes together and getting something quite singularly delicious.

You will need:
Brussels sprouts, about a pound of them
A yellow onion, chopped,
A firm, green pear, or an apple of your chosen flavor (we used Fuji), peeled and chopped
Some bacon

Saute the bacon up as you usually would, then chop it into small pieces.

Prepare your brussels sprouts (ie: wash, cut, wash again) and parboil them. Set aside.

In a saute pan with a small amount of butter or olive oil, add your chopped yellow onion and your chopped pear/apple. Cook until the onions begin to turn translucent, add the brussels sprouts and bacon back in, cover, and cook for about fifteen more minutes.

There! Finit!

We had a lovely dinner, but more importantly, I had the most amazing sandwich the next day. I wish I'd taken a picture. My gods, this thing was orgasmic, and I won't even apologize from that terminology. It was.

So, in closing, well...I got nothin' really. I'm too preocupied thinking about that damn sandwich... Here are some pictures instead of a closing comment that will close this up and inspire you.

 

Sweet potato casserole (my mom's recipe.)

Cranberry relish (mom's recipe.)

The cast.

Pumpkin pie!

What's For Dinner Tonight, or Miller Gives You Three Different Recipes To Make Up For Not Posting Anything For A Long Time

Greetings Kitchen Comrades!

Now, before you verbally berate me via the interwebs for being so damned flaky when it comes to posts, let me just go ahead and say that that is all about to change. We're back to the old blogspot, got a new design up and running, and we're ready to roll! So, without further excused and with no more ado, I give you a post!

Let’s talk turkey.

Well, not turkey. Soup.

Well, not really soup either…

Let’s talk about that good ol’ Amurican classic, condensed cream of something soup.




Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I grew up on the stuff and I loved it. It’s creamy, it’s rich, and whatever you put it in is usually also deliciously decadent. It also reeks of a certain celebrity chef…

(Paula, I’m sorry, I love ya.)

That being said, it is HORRIBLE for you. Yes, yes, grandma and mom and aunt Ruby might have put it in everything they ever made, but they were also raised in lead-based-paint-coated cribs.

This is the ingredient list for Campbell’s condensed cream of mushroom soup:
WATER, MUSHROOMS, VEGETABLE OIL (CORN AND/OR COTTONSEED AND/OR CANOLA), MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, WHEAT FLOUR, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF: SALT, SOY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE, CREAM POWDER (CREAM [MILK], SOY LECITHIN), YEAST EXTRACT, SPICE EXTRACT, DEHYDRATED GARLIC.

Remember my post about broth? Remember how we talked about monosodium glutamate? Well, lo and behold, MSG strikes again!

No matter how good recipes using cream of whatever may taste, it’s just not worth feeding all that extra crap to my family. Hmm…cream of crap…has a nice ring to it. (The ring of truth!)

So, recipe number one tonight is a replacement improvement for the classic cream of mushroom. It can be tweaked for your needs, but I’ll get into that later.

So, the cast of players are as follows for one can of cream of mushroom:

2 Tbs. butter

2 Tbs. flour

1 cup milk

About 8 oz. finely diced and sauteed mushrooms (You could also use dried mushrooms, but I have a thing about dried shrooms…)

In a saute pan, melt the butter and add the flour. If you’ve ever made a roux, this will be familiar. When it’s thick and looks kinda like playdough, start adding the milk a little at a time. (I sauteed my mushrooms ahead of making the roux and added them in after all the milk was added, but you could just as easily skip the pre-saute and add them in with the butter and flour.)

That’s it. Super simple right?

Now, if you need cream of chicken instead of mushroom, you could add a bouillon cube instead of mushrooms. If you needed cream of celery, perhaps some celery salt or just chopped celery. Experiment and taste and let me know what you like and dislike.

Now, on to recipe number two.

You have a saucepan of chemical-free cream of mushroom soup now; whatever are you going to do with it? Well, I have a solution comrades! Hashbrown casserole!

It’s got potatoes and cheese and creamy stuff. Who could ask for more?

My step dad’s casserole is particularly amazing, but I think I may have managed to one-up him this time around with my homemade cream of mushroom. See, not only do I get the benefit of no added chemicals, but I also get all those yummy chunks of mushroom in the casserole now too. I’m a mushroom fan though, so adding mushrooms to anything is a plus.

Alright, the ensemble for this beauty is as follows:

1 30 oz. bag of frozen hasbrowns—thawed (or if you're impatient...not thawed...)

1 small yellow onion, sauteed in butter

1 serving (the entire recipe) of our cream of mushroom improvement

1 container sour cream (I used a cup of homemade yogurt though, for a healthier version)

8 oz. shredded cheese (Cheddar works wonders, but it’s up to your taste buds)

Salt, pepper, and granulated garlic to taste

In a large bowl, mix all your ingredients together into a creamy mass of goodness.

Butter a 9x13 casserole dish and plop out your mass of yumminess into it.

Bake in a 350 degree F oven for 45 minutes.

Grab a large spoon and eat the entire thing without shame.

Now, here’s what might happen next:

“Miller,” you begin tentatively. “What can accompany this delicious casserole I just made? What could possibly hold up against this mind-blowingly simple and comforting dish?”
“Simple,” I answer, caressing your worried brow. “Roasted chicken.” I whisper.

Okay, maybe that’s just all of the Nora Roberts novels speaking…

But yes, roasted chicken is just the simple, tasteful dish that can hold up to the richness of the hashbrown casserole. It takes literally 3 ingredients, and one of those is chicken. Now, in lieu of typing out a step by step recipe for how to roast a chicken, I’m going to point you in the direction of a favored recipe instead.
Thomas Keller knows his shit. Seriously. Even if you don’t watch Food Network or Cooking Chanel, you’ve probably at least heard the name somewhere. So, when I want a simple roasted chicken, I turn to this recipe of his and lick the grease from my fingers with glee.

Alright. Three recipes. There we go. We did it.

Pat yourself on the back.

Next time on The Days of Our--no, wrong show...Next time we're gonna talk about all the things I didn't post about last year (ie: Thanksgiving, L's Second Birthday, Christmas, etc.)

Until next time comrades,

Keep it Classy.

Traditional Bone Broth, or Why Are You Wasting Money On That Storebought Crap?

I follow a blog called The Healthy Home economist, which can be found at thehealthyhomeeconomist.com and is run by a wonderful lady name Sarah. She’s all about traditional foods and drinks that not many people eat or drink, let alone see, on a daily basis.

This post was inspired by her post on traditional stocks and soups.

Bone broth, which isn’t as terrifying as it sounds, is AMAZINGLY good for you and AMAZINGLY easy to make. If you’re one of those people that adore sit-it-and-forget-it recipes, this is for you.

Now, let’s take a second to talk about broth.



THIS IS NOT CHICKEN BROTH.



NOR IS THIS.



NOR IS THIS!!!

Nope, those are all icky, harmful, nasty, chemical laced poisons. I mean, have you ever read the ingredients on the back of a can of chicken broth? Or beef broth?

This is the ingredient list for Swanson Chicken Broth:

CHICKEN BROTH, SALT, MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE, DEXTROSE, YEAST EXTRACT, CHICKEN FLAVOR, FLAVORING, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, AUTOLYZED YEAST EXTRACT, CHICKEN FAT, HYDROLYZED SOY PROTEIN, CHICKEN BROTH POWDER.

So…what is all this crap? What’s monosodium glutamate you ask? Well, you know how you always here people saying that MSG is bad, and how companies sometimes put NO MSG on the front of their products?
Well, say hello to MSG! That’s right, your “healthy” boxed or canned chicken broth that you go and get every Thanksgiving for that delicious stuffing/dressing has MSG in it.

Also, corn syrup solids. Now I know they have those commercials on TV about how corn syrup is no different than can sugar and blah blah blah. Giving kids extra sugar is fine as a treat, right? So giving them something savory, that’s fine right? Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. NOT ONLY DOES THIS CANNED/BOXED BROTH HAVE CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, IT ALSO HAS DEXTROSE…WHICH IS BASICALLY THE EXACT SAME THING.

Now, let’s talk about “FLAVORING”. Why the hell do you need flavoring in something that’s made properly? And chicken flavor and chicken broth powder? If you’re making something, anything, say…chocolate cake, why the hell would you add chocolate cake flavoring? Clearly, you’re not doing it right if it doesn’t taste like what it’s supposed to taste like. Canned chicken broth tastes salty, because THEY ADD SALT TO IT. Wanna know when you add salt in my recipe for broth? YOU DON’T. Sure, if you want to add some when you actually eat it, or when you use it to make soup, that’s fine. But a broth is a broth is a broth is a broth. That’s it and that’s all. It is water, chicken/beef, carrots, onion, celery, and vinegar.

Wanna know another reason not to get canned/boxed broths from the store? FAT. Like I said before, fat is good for you and for your family! When you make broth at home, whether it be chicken or beef or pork or turkey, you’re going to get this beautiful layer of shimmering, glistening fat on the top. When you refrigerate the broth, it’ll separate naturally and you’ll get a layer of solidified animal fat. Rendered chicken fat, or “schmaltz” is used a great deal in traditional Jewish dishes, especially in those who keep kosher as it is a great substitute for lard (pork fat). Personally, I like to saute vegetables in it. It gives them great flavor, and it’s super healthy, again. Beef fat is…well, it’s a magical substance. There are different kinds, mind you. For this recipe we’ll just be dealing with your every day, run of the mill beef fat. What’s really amazing if you can get it is tallow. Tallow is the fat around the beef kidneys, which when rendered turns a gorgeous yellow color and is THE BEST FAT YOU CAN MAKE FRENCH FRIES WITH IN THE HISTORY OF EVER. In fact, before PETA and the FDA got onto them for it, McDonalds used to use tallow to fry their fries in. Now they use partially hydrogenated oils, which are disgusting and horrible for you.

Alright, I think I’m done lecturing. Shall we get to the recipe now? Grand!

Beef Bone Broth!

So, the cast list (or ingredients) is as follows:

Bones. These can be any bones you want to use honestly. If you made a t-bone steak and kept the bone, toss that sucker in! I personally got 2 beautiful beef neck-bones from Whole Foods, which is fine as long as they’re grass-fed. (Grass-fed beef is much better for you, as cows were not made to consume and process grains. Grass-fed beef also creates less scum. We’ll get to that later though.) I also went to our local farmer’s market, a wonderful little place called Hochstetler’s which is run by some amazing Menonite ladies, and got a big bag of marrow bones, or soup bones. Often times you can find these bags in stores, or you can ask the butcher if he has any. Also, as an aside, roasted marrow bones is probably the most amazing thing my husband has ever tasted (his words), and it’s his death-row meal. (Basically, you roast the marrow bones, spread the marrow on crusty french bread, and top with some sea salt and parsley and a bit of vinegar or lemon juice.)

Carrots. Depending upon what kind of broth your making, you may want to use more or less carrots. When I made my chicken broth I only used about 4 large carrots, but with the amount of bones and meat I used in making the beef broth, I used probably about 8. Peel them and roughly chop them. And when I say roughly, I mean you can cut them into 2 or 3 pieces. The bigger the pieces, the less chance of them completely disintegrating in the 24 hour cooking process.

Onions. I used 2, again, roughly chopped. White or yellow or red is up to you.

Celery. I used a full heart of celery, also chopped roughly.

1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar. Vinegar draws out all the nutrients in the vegetables and the meat and the bones. It doesn’t give the broth a vinegary taste at all, so don’t be put off by its appearance in the recipe.



The blocking (or the recipe):

Place all your meaty and marrowy bones on a roasting pan and place in a 350F oven. Roast for 20 minutes on each side. After the bones have been roasted, place them in a large stock pot (the biggest you have. Seriously, ours is about a 4 gallon pot).






Add your chopped veggies and the vinegar, then cover with water and give a little stir.



Let this sit for about an hour off the heat. This will give the vinegar time to draw the nutrients out.



Turn on the burner and bring the pot to a boil.



Using a spoon, skim off any scum that rises to the top. This will eliminate off flavors in your broth.



Once you’ve skimmed the scum (haha), reduce the pot to a simmer, cover, and leave it for at least 12 and up to 72 hours. I let mine simmer for a little over 24 hours. Now, about the word “simmer”…The perfect simmer is, for this recipe, a few bubbles coming up from the middle of the pot. You’ll see it and probably feel like you need to turn the heat up on the burner, but don’t. Seriously, it’ll be fine as long as there’s some sort of bubble action going on.



After 24 hours (or however long you wish to cook yours for), take the broth off the heat and fish out the largest pieces of bone. This will be slightly difficult as the meat is so tender you could feed it to a newborn without any teeth, but just transfer what you can to a plate and let it sit. Let the broth cool off for a little while, until you’d be comfortable with pouring it.



Fish out all the bones you can and set them aside in a bowl. These are amazing for dogs. Seriously, they will love you forever and ever. We had a HUGE amount of bones. See?





If your marrow bones still have some marrow inside, dig it out. This is AMAZING spread on crackers or crust bread. If that’s not your thing though, give it to those lucky dogs. Your marrow will look like something between meat and fat. Like this.



Now that most of your bones are out, use a fork and get as much meat from them as you can. This meat is great to save in the fridge or freezer to be used for Mexican dishes like tacos or enchiladas, or for meat pies (which is where ours will be going.) With the two neck bones I used, I got about a good quart container of meat to use.



Now grab a large bowl and a strainer and begin either ladling or pouring your broth through the strainer. You’ll probably have to use NUMEROUS containers for your broth, but don’t fret. You’re only going to need the fridge space for the night. You want to keep the broth in the fridge long enough for the fat to solidify and the broth to gel and cool. (Gelatinized broth is what you want, so don’t freak out when it happens. There’s so much gelatin in the bones and marrow, that it causes the broth to gel. It’s SO good for you, especially if you have intestinal issues like Crohn’s disease or Irritable Bowel syndrome.)



There are 5 containers of broth in this fridge. That big gallon jug in the front, that’s not tea, it’s beef broth.
Now, back to the fat.



In this container alone, I’ve got about an inch of beef fat already separated from the broth. Over night, it’ll solidify and you can scoop it off into a glass mason jar the next day. I beg you, I beseech you, in fact I ORDER you not to throw this fat away. If you don’t feel up to frying potatoes in it, then at least roast some veggies in it. It’ll change your life.

Alright, so it’s the next morning and you’re asking, “What the hell do I do with all these containers now?” Don’t worry, we’re getting there. Grab yourself some ziploc bags and set to work pouring the broth into them. You’ll want to find a flat(ish) surface in your freezer to lay the bags out on. Freezing them this way ensures a faster thaw time when it comes to using the broth. Your broth with last about 5 days in the fridge, but can be successfully re-boiled and safely consumed after those 5 days pass.

You can use this amazing broth in everything. Seriously. Need to make a sauce for steak or meatloaf? Add some broth. Need something extra to add to that marinara sauce? Add some broth. Making soup? Duh. Broth. Many Asian cultures start their day with a cup of hot broth, and I can tell you that J personally LOVES to do it too. Just add a little sea salt and sip it down with your morning toast or eggs.

I urge you to try this recipe, as it’s so nutritious and so delicious and SO COST EFFECTIVE. Especially with Thanksgiving coming up.

Also, making chicken broth is pretty much the same process. You can use the bones from a roast chicken you had the previous night for dinner, or you can use a whole chicken (skin on please!) and save the meat from it for later. (We made delicious chicken tacos with ours!)

If you have any questions about this recipe or about making another kind of broth, please message me.

Until next time,
Keep it delicious!

"Ceeckuls", or How To Trick Your Kid Into Eating A Nutritious Snack

So this is L.


L is going to be 2 years old on November 23rd, and he’s currently in a picky eating stage (aka: BITCH MODE). L will usually eat anything he’s given. No, seriously. ANYTHING. The kids likes anchovy stuffed olives miso soup. He sucks the head-fat out of crayfish and shoves dates in his mouth like a maniac. Most of the time. Then there’s Bitch Mode L, who doesn’t want to eat anything you give him. Not even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

As I said, he’s going to be 2 in a few weeks, which means he has a doctor’s appointment, which means the doctor is going to tell me that he needs to gain weight if he doesn’t start eating.

Enter Miller’s mad dash to the grocery store to get nutritious shit. I got him raw milk, raw cheese, high-protein raw yogurt, cod liver oil, baby cereal with DHA and probiotics, and pureed fruit. Now, L has a sweet tooth, so I mixed up some yogurt and fruit and cereal and added a spoonful of Nutella and told him it was ice cream. Didn’t buy it. Kid KNOWS his ice cream.

So, what is a slightly panicked, over-stressed mama to do?

MAKE POPSICLES!

Back in the summer I bought 2 of those popsicle mold trays from the dollar store and have gotten SO much use out of them. L LOVES popsicles, and so does his cousin who comes over to play quite a bit. I’ve made them from pineapple juice and pureed mango, peaches and blueberries, blueberries and yogurt, Gatorade (for a particularly horrific bought of the tummy flu), anything and everything you could think of can be put into a popsicle mold.

So, I got the idea to make some yogurt pops. I made 2 different kinds.



(As you can see, he’s already devoured a few of them.)

The pops on the left are my favorite because they have Nutella in them, and they’re friggen delicious. I mashed up a banana into a really smooth paste with only a few chunks, added a big-ol-hunkin-glob of Nutella, and a spoonful of raw yogurt, then mixed it all together and plopped it in the molds. It has a fudge-sickle like texture and tastes of chocolate and banana. (YUM!)

The pops on the right are also really good, but they have an ingredient that’s not super pleasant for adults. I mixed up a container of pureed berries and banana (baby food) with some raw yogurt, local honey (NOTE: HONEY CAN ONLY BE GIVEN TO BABIES OVER ONE YEAR OF AGE, OTHERWISE THEY COULD POSSIBLY GET BOTULISM!!!), and a few tablespoons of baby cereal. The baby cereal is a filler-upper, like oatmeal, so I added some on a whim. L likes both pops, but I like the cereal ones the best because they’re less messy.

Luckily, since making these, he’s getting a lot more food in a day, but thinks it’s just a popsicle! I’m also getting his cod liver oil into him through mixing it into his raw milk with chocolate powder in the mornings.

Bwahaha!

Smell ya later kitchen bitches.
-Miller

I Havent't Cooked Today, or Miller Answers A Question

So, today was a leftovers day, except the pancakes I made for L and J this morning. And let’s face it, if you have a single cookbook or access to the interwebs, you can find a pretty simple pancake recipe anywhere. So, instead of sharing a recipe, I’m going to share a question I received from a friend on facebook. The question read as follows:

“QUESTION, oh cooking guru. I’ve got the majority of a pint of cream (with a high fat content, but not enough for me to call it heavy cream) that i opened two weekends ago - its from a local farmer, so no expiration date. It doesn’t smell/taste sour, but since I only drink it in tea and use it for bakingI have no idea if it tastes right. Think I can still use it for baking?”

And the answer comes in two parts.

If you have pasteurized milk or cream (or any dairy for that matter), and you think it smells a wee bit funky, or it’s passed its date, toss it. There’s no use for it anymore. It didn’t turn into buttermilk, it didn’t turn into sour cream, it turned into a possibility for food-born illnesses. So please, THROW AWAY ANY SPOILED PASTEURIZED DAIRY!

Now, it’s it’s raw milk or cream, there is much fun yet to be had. Raw milk, because it hasn’t had any pasteurizing done to it, is full of probiotics or “good bacteria”. You know those things people take for digestive health? Yeah, that’s what’s in your milk. It’s a good thing, I promise! When raw milk goes sour, it doesn’t go bad, just…well, sour. What’s happened is the probiotics, our little friends within, have started to eat/use up the lactose, causing the milk to no longer taste sweet. So, by definition, yes, you have sour milk, but that’s okay when it’s raw dairy. In fact, you can do SO MUCH with soured raw milk!

You can use it in cooking still; it may just add a slightly sour taste to whatever you put it in, like buttermilk but not the same thing. Use it in pancakes or waffles, you’ll love them! Make macaroni and cheese, delicious! Heck, you can even put it in your hair as a fabulous conditioner. The sky’s the limit basically. Make yogurt or kefir, with it, that way you get more bang for your buck when it comes to probiotics!

The benefits of raw dairy are innumerable. In our personal experience though, I can tell you that L put on a bunch of weight after we started him on it, and he doesn’t suffer so horridly from allergies anymore. Sadly though, not all states are in agreement that raw dairy is good for you. Some officials will tell you that it’ll give you food poisoning or salmonella or any number of ridiculous things. To that I will simply say this: our grandparents didn’t call it ‘raw milk’, they just called it milk, and they turned out no worse for ware.

If you have any food or cooking related questions, don’t be shy! I don’t bite very hard!

Until next time my culinary comrades,
Miller

Homemade Yogurt, or A Recipe For All The Other Lazy Cheap Asses Out There

I love yogurt. Not the little tins you can get that are 100 calories each and full of nasty stuff. *Coughyoplaitcough* I love REAL yogurt. The yummy stuff that gets that pale yellow liquid flooded on top after you scoop some out.

A while back, on pinterest, I saw that you can make yogurt in a crock pot. What’s this you say? I can make one of my favorite snacks at home? In my slow cooker? MEANING I DON’T HAVE TO DO MUCH WORK!?!? SIGN ME THE HELL UP!!!!

As any discerning culinary mind though, I was wary of something that was so easy. (I mean seriously, my 6 year old niece could do this.) But, I decided to put my unease aside and give it a go.

The recipe calls for 2 ingredients. That’s it. That’s all. (I told you. Easy peasy lemon squeezie.)
1 quart whole milk (or half milk, half cream for a thicker texture. That’s what I used.)
2 Tbs. yogurt culture (which you can buy online) or pre-packaged yogurt (which I used), or yogurt you’ve previously made



(This is the yogurt I used from our local Mennonite-run market. It’s delicious.) 

In a saucepan, heat the milk/cream/both to about 110 degrees F. If you don’t have a thermometer, that’s about skin temp, or the temperature of a hot bath. And it’s okay if you don’t get it exact, this is a very forgiving recipe.

Once the milk/cream/both has reached the desired temp, whisk in your 2 tablespoons of culture/yogurt.

Pour the mixture into a quart mason jar and put on the lid.

Place the jarred mixture in the center of your crock pot’s ceramic insert, then fill—up to just under the lid—with hot water. My crock pot was a little shallow, so I could only fill up to about an inch below the lid, and it still turned out great. Remember, VERY FORGIVING this recipe is.



Cover your crock pot with a thick bath towel you’ve heated in the microwave, then put the lid on over that. (If you can fit the lid on your crock pot, great, if not, that’s great to. This will still work. Don’t worry. It’s going to be fine.) NOTE: DON’T turn the machine on. It confused me too. But no, you don’t need the crock pot to be on for this to work.



Now, you get to leave it alone for about 12 hours.

Seriously. Step away.

Don’t watch it. Don’t check on it. Don’t coddle it. There’s magic happening inside and you’re just going to scare off the yogurt fairies by standing around waiting. (Okay, maybe I made up the fairies.)

What’s really happening inside is that the culture you put in, or the yogurt, is changing stuff in the milk. (I like to imagine tiny little Cyberman-like bacterium going around saying, “You will be upgraded.”)

So, after about 12 hours (or more if you sleep in or forget that you’re actually making yogurt. Not that that happened to me or anything…) you can take your yogurt out of the now cold water and marvel at it’s glory, or you can just stick in the refrigerator and wait for it to get cold, then have some with honey and granola.




(See how thick it is?)



(Somewhere between sour cream and greek yogurt thickness.)



(Now L and I get to have some with fruit for breakfast!)

So, after my beta test with this recipe, I really see nothing I would do differently. It tastes glorious, the texture is thick and perfect, and it cost me a grand total of about $1.20 for an entire quart of yogurt that is basically $4.99 otherwise. (Because remember when the Cyber-bacterium were upgrading the milk? They were changing it into exactly the same kind of bacteria. Which means, whatever yogurt you used [or culture], this yogurt is now the exact same. So if you bought a $4.99 tub of local, raw yogurt, you now have the same thing for less than half that price.)

So…

Pros: Cost effective, low-input cooking, delicious flavor, thick texture.

Cons: You have to wait more than 12 hours to eat your yogurt.

All in all, I don’t think I’ll be buying yogurt again. Because, did I mention, now that you’ve made your first batch, you can continue using this as your 2 Tbs. of yogurt to make even more and so on and so forth!

Until next time my culinary comrades,
Miller