When your yard is a marsh... make MARSHMALLOWS!

I've wanted to make marshmallows for a long time, and what better time?  I can't do dishes, I can't wash laundry and Girl was sleeping.  I checked the internet, and since most recipes call for corn syrup, I decided to experiment.  Here is my recipe!

3 packages gelatin (good thing I'm not a vegetarian)

1/2 cup cool water

Mix together in the bottom of your mixer bowl and let "bloom" for 5-10 minutes

Then in a small saucepan, mix:

2 cups white sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup honey

1/4 cup water

bring to a boil and keep boiling until it passes 250º (somewhere between soft ball and hard ball stage)

Once it has boiled, turn on the mixer on a medium speed and s..l...o...w...l...y stream the sugar mixture into the gelatin mixture.  Once it is all in, crank that mixer to high speed and let it go for about 10 minutes until you have a big white sticky mess.

Grease a pan, (I used a 9x13, glass pan, but if you want fatter marshmallows for roasting or something, use a 9'' square) and lightly dust it with icing sugar.

Dump the mix in, and with wet fingers, smooth it out.

Once it has set, cut it up and you have marshmallows!

Husband couldn't quite understand why I made marshmallows to start off with...  you see, we don't exactly sit around eating them from a bag normally, but when I reminded him that rice krispie cake is made with marshmallows it all made sense. 

Unfortunately, now I want to try flavoured marshmallows.  Who wants a maple marshmallow roasted over the fire?

A bad day for the bank account.

If bad things come in threes, I guess I'm still waiting for the third, but in my opinion, two is enough.  Granted, in the realm of terrible things that could happen, our day yesterday was a breeze.  First, we're having septic tank problems.  I don't really get the whole system (luckily Husband is well-versed), but from what I glean, the hard, clay-like soil around the pipes that pump water from the tank to the field somehow broke a pipe, and we sprung a leak.  Water is on lockdown in the house right now while Husband is outside digging. 

I feel bad for him, it's not going to be a pleasant job, but I figure, I did childbirth, so we can call it even.  (Sorry Husband, if I could take it from you I would.) 

On a somewhat related note, it rained yesterday, so the ground is extra muddy, and with that rain, came hail.

Luckily only one of our cars was damaged (an insured one *PHEW!*) and as annoying as it is, it was a car that needed some paint anyway, so we can throw in a few extra bucks and get all the stuff we needed to do done at the same time.  It's just the hassle of dealing with insurance, since it's a old car, but it's rare and has collector value.

Oh well, it is what it is.  Unfortunately cooking is kind of minimized since I can't wash dishes.  It's kind of like a camping trip at home!  Just don't forget your TP when you come visit, and watch for the poison ivy!

Borscht-y Goodness.

I promised a friend I'd share my beet borscht recipe, since she was looking for a good one.  I, of course, think this one is the best, so here you go!

PORK STOCK:

1 chunk of pork, about 2 lbs

(since I don't like meat in my borscht, I use a roast of some variety, and when it's done make it into pulled pork sandwiches for Husband, My mom used neck bones.  The choice is yours)

salt and pepper

cover all ingredients with water and simmer.

Once the pork is cooked through, skim the frothy scum off the top and strain

(If you'd like to have meat in your soup, pull it apart and set it aside.)

COOKED BEETS:

With the beet peel still on, put about 6-8 in a pot, cover with water and boil until fork tender.

drain

(while still warm, the skin will come off easily)

peel and grate, set aside

BORSCHT

To the pork stock, add 2 regular onions (chopped) and 2 stalks celery (chopped), let simmer

then add 1/2 a small head of cabbage, sliced into thin strips.

continue simmering for about 15 minutes.

add 8 medium carrots, sliced or grated

add 1 large tomato, chopped

and 2 cans tomato soup

OR

1 large can diced tomatoes.

then add 3 "squirts" of ketchup

simmer to cook vegetables.

add cooked beets

and spices to taste (parsley, salt, pepper, hot pepper flakes)

This soup freezes really well, and is spicy and hearty.  Perfect for a cool day!

Better than the aquatic variety.

I've been feeling a bit bad lately, since Girl, at a year-and-a-half, doesn't really get the whole new menu thing.  She doesn't care that much, and I do my best to find things that replace some of the other stuff she eats.  While wandering the grocery store however, I heard her ask for one thing in particular.  "Fishies".

I hit the internet and found some cracker recipes and modified them.  Here you are, Cheesy niblets for the wee ones!

1 200g package of cheddar cheese, grated
(I used old, since it'll give you the best cheesy bang for your effort)

1 cup flour (I used whole wheat, but white, spelt, etc will also work)

1/4 cup butter (cold)

1 tsp of salt

Spices to taste

(Girl is no stranger to flavour, so I added 2-3 tsp of smoked paprika, and a shake of garlic. They smell AMAZING!)

Dump this all into your food processor and pulse until it looks like fine crumbs.

Add water a tablespoon at a time until it comes together in a ball (about 3 Tbsp)

 

Once you have the dough, roll it out to about 1/4 inch thick on a lightly floured surface and cut into shapes.  It's easiest I'm sure to use a pizza cutter and make squares or something, but I often feel the need to justify my mini-cookie-cutter collection, and Girl is at the point where she likes naming shapes, so I did a variety of different ones.

Put them on a pan layered with parchment paper.  You can get them really close, they puff up but won't spread into each other.  Bake for 10 minutes at 400ºF.  Take out of the oven (stick another pan in) and let cool for about 10 minutes, flip the crackers over if you like.  Then pop them back in for another 5 minutes. 

MMM.  Cheesy and delicious with a nice smoky flavour.   They will keep for a bit, but if you're going to take longer than a week to eat them, (or you want to make a lot and store them) stick them in the freezer.

Now I'd better go upstairs before Husband eats them all.

Deep Breath.

It's only been three days... it's only been three days...

I had a moment today where I wanted to crack.  Not that it would have done any good, I don't have any food in the house that could result in me cheating.  I had a massive headache and for about an hour there, I just could not care less about anything.  I wanted to grab a frozen pizza and throw it in the oven.  The idea of making dinner made me cranky.   It has been three days, but three busy days.  There was a lot of cooking and for two of those three dinners, I had people over.  It's enough to cook meals for two and a half, but throw in a few extra people...  I'm used to cooking for crowds, but when it's just us, I can be lazy and make eggs and toast for dinner.

I made a meal plan at the beginning of the week and so far, haven't stuck to it.  I need to regroup, reorganize and refresh. 

Luckily my headache is gone now and I feel a little silly for even contemplating quitting so early, but in the heat of the moment, those 362 staring me in the face were tough to take.

Time to go upstairs, take a long, hot bath and then read and enjoy a piece of puffed wheat cake (made with honey instead of corn syrup) in the silent house while Girl sleeps. Such is the life.

A Burst of Briney Nostalgia.

There is something about pickle making that always makes me nostalgic.  I'm not sure why, since I've only been doing it for the last few years.  Perhaps its knowing that I'm walking where those I love have gone before.  I didn't make pickles with my Oma very often, but it's her recipe, and now, making them with my mom (and Girl poking at play doh in the corner), it makes me happy.  We laugh when we remember stories, like the one about the lady my Oma worked for, who hated washing cucumbers so much that she put them into the washing machine.  Every cucumber came out broken, but she didn't care.  We groan collectively when we have a blow-out in the canner.

But that's mostly because we have to throw those pickles out now.  *sigh*.  We lost two jars. 

It was a long day, especially since I also made a big batch of chili (enough for 6 family meals at $1.95/meal), a massive pot of beet borscht, and a small batch of relish, not to mention the roasted chicken for dinner, and chicken stock with the carcass.

I'm feeling a lot better about this whole thing now that I have a lot of food in the freezer.  It's my own little stash of convenience food.

OMA'S PICKLES

in the jars (clean and sterile ones):

as many cucumbers as you can jam in (they shrink, so cram them in good)

2-3 silverskin pearl onions

one good sized dill flower

1 tsp pickling spice (if there are hot peppers in the mix, take those out)

brine:

13 cups water

4 cups vinegar

1 cup salt

1 1/2 cups sugar

heat on the stove until all the sugar and salt is fully dissolved, and pour into jars while still hot.

Close the jars and seal in a hot water bath.

The biggest waste of my time thus far.

Pasta making. 

Ok, that isn't all true, because making lasagne noodles was fine, I would do that again.  It was making spaghetti and fettucine that was awful.  It may be the limitations of my pasta maker, but being as this is only a year-long experiment, I wasn't about to go out and buy a fancy electric one. 

I decided, for the first few batches to do a somewhat traditional pasta, with eggs and flour.  So, I put a pile of flour on my counter... made a well and dropped in some eggs.

I took a fork, and started mixing it up, gradually bringing more flour into the egg mixture...

Once it was getting stiffer, I just mushed it in with my hands until I got a ball of dough.  This is a very imprecise method.  I did it twice and both balls of dough were completely different.

Foolishly, I thought the smooth one was better, but when it came to actually rolling it out, the lumpy one seemed to go through the machine better (after kneading it a bit more).  I ended up having to knead the smooth one with more flour, otherwise it was too sticky.  I suppose this method works well if you really understand pasta, and know exactly what it should look like, but for a novice, it was too much trial and error.  The subseqent batches I used a recipe:

2c flour

2 eggs

1 tbsp oil

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 c water

and dumped it all into my food processor and ran it until it formed a nice ball.  I found it still needed to have a bit more flour, but you have to knead it with flour anyway.

Rolling it through the machine was fun...  (if by "fun", you mean tedious and annoying).  You push it through the largest setting over and over, folding it up and doing it again,

...until you get a nice smooth noodle.

Then you do it many more times, decreasing the thickness by one step each time.  I got to the 6th of 7 settings and thought that was fine for lasagne.

I spread them out on a floured surface until I was ready to boil them and assemble the lasagnes. 

Where spaghetti and fettucine get annoying, is that you can't just run the dough through the cutters after you've made it thin enough.  It needs to dry out a bit first.  It can't be too soft, (it won't cut through) or too dry, and the edges can't be dryer than the middle, or it'll be a gigantic mess.  Needless to say I did a lot of muttering under my breath before I got enough noodles for 3 meals of spaghetti.  It also took me most of the afternoon and made a mess of my kitchen.

There, I did it once, and I'm not planning on doing it again.  Yes, it does make really cheap pasta (about $1.25 for a double batch which yields more than a box of lasagne noodles), but if you factor in the time and frustration, even fresh-made pasta at the local italian deli is a bargain.

The rest of my day.  3 lasagnes, and 8 meals of spaghetti sauce.  Grand total, under $30 for a minimum of 11 family meals. (it will likely give us some leftovers too).  Under $2.75/meal