Homemade ramen

Some time back, Eli and Rachel treated me to a big bowl of homemade ramen. They had made it by simmering pork feet for 24 hours, making a gelatinous, fatty broth. It was amazing. I do not have the patience to stand at a stove for more than 20 minutes, so I decided to make a pressure cooker version. I used the pork feet, chicken wings, sauteed onions, and thumb-sized piece of ginger.

The result was not as gelatinous as Eli's broth, but close enough.

Plop that onto some store bought udon noodles.

After microwaving and adding a soft boiled egg. Just look at all that fat floating on the surface. Yum! (Also added scallions after the picture.)

The thumb-sized piece of ginger was too much - I could pick out the taste in the finished soup. Next time I will use half that, and also two smaller onions or one large one, rather than the two large onions I'd found. Other than that, it's a delicious hot meal!

Perfecting yogurt

The key to making a thick, creamy yogurt with maximum flavor?

Minimum of 14 hours in the Instant Pot.

I make it without added flavoring or sugar, then eat it with fruit if I want dessert.

Homemade yogurt

I've been making and eating a lot of yogurt for the past couple of months. I'm still calibrating my vanilla bean recipe, but mostly I make it plain and unsweetened. Sometimes I add strawberries or raspberries for sweetness - or just the juice that drains out of frozen berries:

Bread in a jar

Having all the ingredients (except live yeast) already portioned out makes it easy to mix up bread dough on a busy morning.

It will sit on the counter to rise for 5-6 hours, and be ready for baking in the afternoon.

Sausage making class

I attended a sausage-making class from the Institute of Urban Homesteading. It was run by Seth Peterson, who is easy-going and charismatic. It was a hands-on class - we picked fresh herbs from his luscious garden, chopped and mixed them with spices, mixed that into ground beef, worked the meat with our hands until it was very "tacky," fried it, and then ate it. Those were delicious sausage patties/hamburgers without casing. Then we put together a hand-cranked grinder and used it to fill pork casings and fried up the resulting sausage. That was fun but I see myself skipping that step and just making hamburger in the future. Mmmmm.

Now THAT is a stove.

A small yet abundant area of the garden.

Apple tree guild!

So delicious.

Roast chickens

Anna Hess' book The Weekend Homesteader: A Twelve Month Guide to Self-Sufficiency includes a recipe for roasting a whole chicken. I was excited to try it out. It requires you to stay by the stove and frequently pull the chicken out to baste it, but it's extremely easy and I appreciate not needing to cut up the chicken and cook the pieces separately.

I purchased a whole organic chicken, small yellow potatoes, and gave it a go.

It came out absolutely delicious! I ended up with too much butter and oil accumulating at the bottom of the pan due to using a spoon instead of a real baster, but otherwise it made 6-7 servings and was absolutely worth the cooking time.

This weekend I'm visiting my parents to celebrate Mother's Day, and surprised them by bringing and roasting another chicken. I used my mom's baster and this time the potatoes came out crispy. A little too crispy, actually, as my dad was late for dinner and I left the pan in the warm oven so the chicken wouldn't get cold, and the potatoes kept cooking. We joked that I had made chips. I included garlic and fresh rosemary from my yard. Everyone was happy with the meal.

Lemon juice

My parents have a lemon tree and always end up with more lemons than they can use. Since I'm trying hard to drink 8 cups of water a day, I like to add a little squirt of lemon for flavor. (Or some slices of cucumber, which make it deliciously sweet.)

The "olive oil" type bottle makes it easy to add just the right amount. I decided that it was worth it to buy a little juicer as well. Most of it went into little jars in the freezer. I'm getting into the homesteader mentality of getting stuff in bulk when it's in season, and storing for later.

Canning jars

I went to Urban Ore to pick up some PVC pipe and, as usual, went by their kitchen supplies section. I've found some nice glass containers there before. This time I was pleased to find 10 clean canning jars!

I had already been planning to explore pressure canning. One aspect ready to go!

Rabbit broth

4 liters of rabbit broth. Guess what happened the first time I poured myself some soup.

Rabbit quesadilla

Quick to prep and heat up once you have the ingredients. The chives were from my garden.

Making myself cook

A hungry friend came over on Saturday. I told him to help himself to anything in the fridge. He opened the fridge to find it almost completely empty - his options were limited to eggs or cheese sandwiches. That reminded me that I was once again due to set aside an evening for cooking.

I'm trying to learn to cook a greater variety of meals. It's a chore. But I managed to cook rice (will be used for chicken friend rice tomorrow), a lemon custard, a large quantity of garlic and parsley bread (most went into the freezer), and banana bread (my first try - it came out good, but not great).

I forgot to post last month about cooking mushroom quinoa pilaf as well as roast rabbit for the first time. They both were also in the category of "pretty good, but not great." I'll keep trying with those.

A couple of weeks ago, I spontaneously purchased a passion fruit and a horned melon at my grocery store. I'm always curious about the foods that I've never even seen before, and fruit seems like a safe bet, since you're usually not expected to cook it.

The inside of the passion fruit had only a small amount of liquid. It was mostly a dense pulp holding a large number of seeds together. It was as sour as a lemon, but had a sweeter undertone. If I had run it through a blender, it probably would have made a good substitute for the lemons in lemonade.

The horned melon had a very cool looking, dense geometry of seeds and bright green pulp. It also turned out to have a sour flavor! I ate half, but couldn't manage any more. It would be an interesting addition to a fruity dessert.

Butternut squash

I spontaneously purchased a butternut squash at the grocery store, and roasted it with garlic and rosemary.

I had never eaten squash before, and was amazed at how sweet it was. Too sweet, actually - I left the pan for my housemate.

Bulk containers

I recently finished reading the book Plastic Free by local author Beth Terry. I would love for everyone to read this book, because it is non-preachy and packed with practical tips for reducing your plastic consumption (and consumption in general). Whether you're just considering making small, easy changes to reduce the harmful and wasteful plastic your food and body come into contact with, or you're a green pro who needs fresh ideas and resources, I am sure that you will find great info.

I was inspired to make a few small changes to the way I purchase and store my food. When I last went to the grocery store to buy chicken for the dogs, I brought along my own container. The person at the meat counter put my container on the scale, zero-ed it, then packed in the chicken and charged me accurately. That saved the plastic-coated, non-recyclable paper that the food would otherwise have been wrapped in. It was easy-peasy, and ridiculously exciting.

I decided to purchase all my baking flour, nuts, and seeds from bulk bins from now on, and likewise bring my own containers for them. I had to buy a couple of large, stainless steel containers for the flour -- I go through a lot now that I'm regularly baking bread!

The "bulk food" corner of my counter. Fruit has always been purchased packaging-free.

Speaking of baking bread, I'm still in awe of how (a) easy, and (b) delicious it is.

Poppy seed and walnut loaf. Clearly I love them poppy seeds.

In order to make this "buying in bulk" thing easier, I made a list in my phone of all the foods I purchase regularly, and which of the local stores I can buy them in. I'm also committing to buying loose leaf tea whenever I can, and preferably in metal tins rather than plastic bags. I'll have to buy some things online, but I'll purchase larger quantities to lower the ratio of energy used to pack and ship them. (5 pounds of organic poppy seeds!)

Yuummm.

On one last do-it-yerself note, I fixed the space heater today.

Give me heat!

I took it apart and found the problem. The two metal connectors that complete the electrical circuit when you turn the dial were separated by a thick layer of dust and pet hair. A thorough cleaning fixed it right up. Note to self: clean it more often.

Baking bread

I recently read the book Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What You Should and Shouldn't Cook from Scratch--Over 120 Recipes for the Best Homemade Foods, by Jennifer Reese. I'd always heard that bread is very easy to make at home, but this was the book that pushed me to actually try it.

The verdict? Everyone was right, and I have no need to purchase artisan bread ever again.

This bread is dense, with a thick, crispy crust, and I added poppy seeds and sunflower seeds for extra flavor. I brought these two fresh loaves to my parents' house for Christmas, and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

I will experiment with increasing the ratio of whole wheat flour to all-purpose white flour (the recipe calls for 1 3/4 C whole wheat to 5 1/2 C white), and with adding more types of seeds and nuts.