Stir it up....my granola...stir it up....

In short I decided to try making some granola. Mark Bittman has a simple recipe that I adapted for my tastes. However I didn't stir it sufficiently while baking. I'd suggest checking on it every couple of minutes the first few times you make it (I certainly will). I'm also going to try using a glass baking pan instead of a sheet pan. I find it hard to stir the granola without knocking it off the pan. That or just use a couple of extra pans perhaps.

What wasn't burnt was quite good though.

Mushrooms

While there are circumstances in which I enjoyed zucchini I really hadn't had much luck with mushrooms. But a few varieties of these fungi are reportedly easy to grow, require no soil per se and can be grown in your closet. I haven't done this yet, but I've read enough to take a stab at liking mushrooms. From the view of urban sustainability, mushrooms are just too good (nutritionally) to pass up given their meager requirements.

So enter the 'mushroom crust' quiche. Its a recipe from the same book as the zucchini frittata (isbn: 1-57215-308-3). The mushrooms are sort of hidden in the crust...though perhaps not hidden enough :). The flavor was good, though I'm still not a fan of mushrooms I could eat this on a regular basis.

5 T butter
1/2 lb mushrooms coarsely cut*
1/3 C bread crumbs
2 T wheat germ
3/4 C chopped green onions (inc. tops)
2 C Cheese (your choice, but something strong perhaps, I used Cheddar)
1 C cottage cheese
3 eggs
1/4 t thyme
1/4 t marjoram
Paprika (gets dashed over the top before baking)

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F

Use three tablespoons of butter to saute the mushrooms until limp. Remove from heat and stir in bread crumbs and wheat germ. This is the crust material, you pour it into a greased 9 inch pie plate and press it into a crust as you might a graham cracker crust. In the same pan, put the rest of the butter and saute the onions until soft. Spread these over the bottom of the crust and sprinkle the cheese over these. Then in a blender whirl the cottage cheese, eggs, thyme, and marjoram until smooth. Pour into crust and sprinkle with paprika. Bake for 25-30 minutes.

NOTES:

Next time I'm going to finely chop the mushrooms, maybe even use a bit more and add in a bit more wheat germ as I didn't feel as though I had enough crust. Also the chunkiness of the mushrooms can make it tough to spread evenly.

Also I can't really see any reason you couldn't use olive oil instead of butter if you wanted. Butter is likely to be more local, while olive oil will be imported but if you're watching the types of fats you're eating it would make a difference. In fact, I think you could use less of the fat in any case.

I might try adding a bit more egg and a bit less cheese as well. While speaking of cheese, if you're interested in making mozzarella, a natural by product of that process is to make ricotta and you could certainly use the ricotta in this recipe instead of cottage cheese.

I think the cooking of the onions could be skipped and you could just cut, via some scissors the green onions into the crust and skip the addition of the butter and it would be just fine.

Well try it, experiment and see what you like. I don't like mushrooms but I had seconds on this one.

yogurt cheese

Well just for kicks I'd thought I'd try this. I'd seen some videos on it and it looked dead simple. Basically you just put your yogurt into a strainer lined with cheesecloth and wait 24 hours. It comes out super creamy, soft with a tangy flavor. I tried it on some toast and was pretty happy. Presumably you could use this instead of cream cheese or sour cream. Or you could put some herbs/spices into it and use it as a spread (or just use it plain). Here are a few photos, like I said....really simple.

I might be able to like Zucchini

Sara has this cookbook called "Vegetarian Cooking" which is one of those generic cookbooks you'd see on sale. In any event, its pretty decent and I've been trying recipes out of it. One recent success was Zucchini Frittata. I'm not a natural fan of zucchini, but this was really tasty. As a seasonal dish it could be made whenever you start getting some zucchini since spinach can be grown year round.

Zucchini Frittata

2T Olive Oil
1 small onion (or scallions, or chives)
1 clove garlic (minced or pressed)
1/2 - 1 C of spinach (or swiss chard)
1 medium zucchini, coarsely chopped
6 eggs
1/8 t pepper
1/4 t dry basil
1/4 t oregano
1 C Parmesan (though cheeses like asiago would work fine too, these cheese pack a lot of flavor)

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Heat the oil in a wide frying pan over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, leafy stuff and zucchini; cook, stiring occasionally, until vegetables are soft (about 5 minutes). Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

Beat eggs with pepper, basil, and oregano. Stir in cheese and veges. Grease a 9-inch pie plate (I use olive oil again) and pour mixture in. Cook for 25-30 minutes (should be puffed and the top should be lightly browned).

Enjoy!

Yogurt

Yogurt

I've made a couple of batches of yogurt and so have an opinion or two about the process. You can find the details of yogurt making on dozens of other sites so I'm going to provide comments based on my experiences.

Basically yogurt is a way of preserving milk. Friendly bacteria eat lactose into lactic acid. This apparently causes the proteins in the milk to clump creating curds which, with any luck, will become tasty yogurt.

What kind of milk? I'd recommend 2% or higher. I started using skim milk and it gives a runny yogurt. A lot of recipes call for adding nonfat dry milk to help it set. I like to avoid adding anything into a recipe I don't have to. Dry milk isn't something I can easily create on my own so I'm going to pass on that. Just use 2% or higher and it'll set quite nicely and you won't have to add anything.

Ingredients: Milk and starter. You can buy starter but why not just buy some yogurt instead? I just used the generic brand of plain yogurt from the supermarket that I used to buy anyway. Make sure it has active cultures, which many do anyway. You can buy organic if you want, but I'm still undecided on that detail.

Containers: I use mason jars and old yogurt tubs. Both seem to work well. Use what you have

Essential tools: a cooking thermometer. The process involves heating the milk to 175 then cooling it down to around 110 (optimal temp for bacteria) so you'll want to know the temperature. I'm honestly also considering a double boiler so I don't have to attend to the milk during heating so much.

Cooling the milk after its reached 175: a water bath is useful for this, just be careful you don't cool it too fast and shoot under 110.

Keeping the milk at the right temperature: Once the milk is around 112-115 degrees I put in the yogurt starter (I'm not exact, I just dump a few spoonfuls of the previous yogurt into the new one.) Then I transfer the containers (1-2) into a cooler then stuff that cooler with towels and top it with a towel and close the lid. This seems to work. There are 'yogurt makers' you can buy that are just incubators really. Sometimes I'm tempted but I'm too cheap.

Costs: The yogurt you make is in a 1:1 ratio with the milk you used. So if you use a gallon of milk you'll make a gallon of yogurt. That's pretty good. Up my way I can buy a gallon of store brand milk for $3.50 but pay about a $1.80 or so for less than a quart, so I'm saving over 50%.

Taste: its plain yogurt so its tart and tangy which I like just fine. But if you've never had plain yogurt keep this in mind. Most yogurt is sweetened and stuff (lots of it) is added. But I keep mine plain in the fridge and if I want berries I just add some at the time of eating.

Time: I can get the milk from jug to cooler in about 30-60 minutes. I haven't timed myself, but its not long. I like to do it at night and let the milk sour into yogurt over night.

So there you go, my two cents. Yogurt isn't complicated, don't let some recipes fool you.

Potatoes etc

The potatoes in a bucket are finally coming through and speeding up.



There'll be a flurry of blog posts at sometime in the future. I'm doing a lot of planting and dirt work at the moment. I start up grad stuff next week so I'm trying to get everything done by Monday night.

Free!

It was a great day for penny pinching and free stuff. This morning my neighbor took me around her lawn and pointed out a dozen different flowering plants she'd be happy if I helped myself to. What's nice is that many of them are shade loving and I have a couple shady spots on the house I've been pondering over!

Next we headed down to the island to pick up Lanie and stopped at a home that had a horse. There's a sign out front that advertises free horse poop if 'you scoop.' Well I'm a happy scooper and came prepared with a couple of rubbermaid tubs and a pitch fork. I'll be stopping there on a weekly basis :)

From there we stopped by Sara's father's where we scored a chives plant and some other assorted plants they were keen to share.

Then we headed home where we met up with Sara's mother who had brought up a number of household items Sara's grandfather was getting rid of: a couch, sewing equipment, scrap wood and tin and other detritus. They also brought up the rest of their unused seeds and onion bulbs so Sara and I treated them to ice cream at Spencer's in Bradley.

I'll have a busy day tomorrow preparing ground, planting and transplanting! But the rewards are many for the small investment of time and smiles :)