Homemade for the Holidays - Ricotta Cheese Anyone

http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/homemade_ricotta_cheese/

Last week I had a Christmas wish for a favorite treat from Italy.  The dessert I planned included a hefty amount of ricotta cheese.  Have you priced ricotta cheese lately?  It's almost $8 for 32 oz.  Well, for the price of a gallon of milk I can make ricotta that tastes better than anything I've ever bought in the store and is less than half the cost.  Plus, it is SO easy.  Here's how you do it:

Homemade Ricotta Cheese
I always use whole milk because everything I've read says this produces the best quality cheese. Please let me know in the comments if you do something else.  Sometimes I also add a cup of heavy cream for a dessert cheese. This recipe is the perfect amount for a 9x13 pan of lasagna or stuffed shells, but it can easily be halved.

Ingredients
1 gallon whole milk
3 Tbsp + 1 tsp white vinegar
2 tsp salt

Instructions
1 In a large pot, over medium heat, bring the milk, vinegar, and salt to a near boil.  Be patient, it takes about 30 minutes and looks like lots of steam and foam.  If you want to use a thermometer, your looking for a temp around 180 degrees.  Don't let the milk scorch or your ricotta will be ruined.  Very gently boil for one to two minutes, until the milk is curdled.
2 Meanwhile, line a strainer with a few layers of cheesecloth and set it over a deep bowl. Save your whey. Put it in a few freezer bags.  I'll have some recipes for how to use that soon.
3 Pour the milk mixture into the strainer and let drain for 15 minutes. Gather the cheesecloth around the curds and squeeze gently to extract any excess liquid.
Makes 4 cups.

Use immediately for lasagna, pizza, salads, cannoli or any other Italian treat.  Or, store in an air tight container in the refrigerator for several days.

A Plethora of Produce

I bought all of this at Sunflower Farmer's Market. It is mostly organic and mostly locally grown. I spent $21.28 cents on the whole lot. This was an excellent find and a great value. My second frugal food lifetyle tip for you is:

Learn to make produce a vital part of your daily diet.

Here are 5 No More Grocery Shopping tips for stretching your grocery budget, keeping you out of the grocery store, and placing produce in your Best Frugal Foods category:

1. Buy produce that's in season, on sale and build your menu around that - Duh. This is a no brainer. All of this was on sale, that's why I got so much of it.
2. Determine your most acceptable price per pound/item and never pay more than that - For instance, if the best price you've paid this year for apples is $0.77/pound, but a good deal is still to be had at $0.87/pound, then always look for the best deal price, but never pay more than $0.87/pound for apples. Most produce is much cheaper than meat, consider your pound for pound costs when designing your menu. This concept can be carried over to all grocery purchases and is key to stretching your grocery budget.
3. When you find your best deal of the year buy a bunch and learn to preserve it - You can freeze or dry most produce items. I'll do a tutorial later on how to best do that, just know you can and stock up when the price is right.
4. Learn to properly store your produce - Again, Ill follow up with a tutorial someday. Just know that repackaging certain produce when you get it home will preserve it's freshness longer. For instance, leafy veggies last longer when you put a paper towel in with them. This keeps the moisture off the leaves and they last longer. Some people swear by Lettuce Keeperslike the ones in this link.
5. Plant a garden - "What?" you ask. Winter is coming on in the northern hemisphere, gardening season is over. Well take a look at what my favorite tree hugger up north is doing. She lives in Oregon, so the use of special (and not necessarily expensive) lights helps supplement their lack of sunshine, but where my climate is bright even in the cold, a sunny window will work just as well. Again, look for another tutorial to come.

Bonus Tip: Join a CSA - this is Community Supported Agriculture. It's good for your budget, it's in keeping with the No More Grocery Shopping Concept, it's usually organic, it supports the environment as well as your community and has many other benefits you might not be able to reap from your own little garden alone.

Weekend Update

Friday

A few days ago I decided to institute Fend For Yourself Fridays. Usually we have a family activity planned for the evening (this Friday it was the StoryTelling Festival at school) and there's not a lot of time for intensive meal prep. So, Friday's a good night for everyone to eat what they want, with in reason. Here's how it went:

What we ate: Breakfast - cold cereal (we're still doing pretty good on real milk, it seems to go a lot further when I bake and cook with the powdered stuff)
Lunch - early day home from school, kids ate fresh fruit and chicken nuggets
Dinner - Hannah & Caleb - Campbell's chunky chicken soup (the kind from our 72 hour kits that I'm glad I rotated out, tastes like baby baby food bland). Brennan & KC - Top Ramen spiced up and added to for a palate pleasing meal. Don & I - Instant Chow Mien, also rotated from our 72 hour kits, but MUCH preferable to the chunky soup.

Saturday

What Today was family fun (and cleaning) day and Mom & Dad's date night.
What we ate: Breakfast - Everyone did their own thing for breakfast.
Lunch - We had cheese and crackers and carrot sticks, courtesy of Don. He made some dips (remember, we're all about sauces at our house) and arranged some cheeses on a plate along with carrot sticks and pita crackers. Everyone loved it and it filled us nicely before the movies. We are going to be sad when we run out of cheese and sour cream.
Dinner - We made a meal to take to a new neighbor who just moved in today. They have a small family, so we were able to keep half the food we made to feed our kids. Bren made a butter and herb pasta, I made a salad, and we also took some "Warm Delights" (mentioned in a previous post) and bread that we picked up at the Health Food Store (which is not a supermarket). Don & I went to our favorite fresh mex cafe. We just ordered soup and tortillas, plus some sauce to take home and the whole date cost us $13.26. We ran into a neighbor who's read my blog. She hugged me and said, "You're here. You're not at the grocery store, you're here." I showed her that we were still very good and frugal and only got the soup (we're also a bit under the weather which is closer to the real reason for our frugal order) and she had lots of encouragement for us. See, I paid with cash, ordered cheap, I'm sticking to it. But, that leads me to -

A tips from Don & Mariah's date night:

If you have a favorite item from a restaurant, like a dip, dressing or sauce, talk to someone there about ordering that item as a side for take-out. We used to have a favorite Caesar salad dressing we loved getting from a local Italian place. They let us order it by the pint and we'd take it home in a paper cup with a lid. It was a lot cheaper to do it that way than to come back repeatedly ordering the whole salad. In today's case, this cafe makes an amazing tomatillo dressing that is difficult to duplicate, believe me, I've tried, and while sometimes close is good enough, there's nothing like the real deal. So, rather than spending a bunch of money on food that is just carrier for the sauce, try ordering just the sauce and go home and make the food.

Trial and Error. Mostly Error.

Disclaimer: Amateur at work, for best results,

seek professional help.

I made my first batch of morning moo (my select brand of powdered milk). It was an entertaining process. Here are the steps I took:
First, I gathered my supplies and read the directions - gallon jug, morning moo, measuring cup, funnel. Mixed 2 cups powder with 1 quart hot water, then add to remaining 3 quarts cold water equaling 1 gallon finished product. Fine.
Second, I measured out the morning moo, 2 cups powder. So far so good.
Third, I tried to figure out how to get all that sticky, messy powder down the funnel and into the milk jug. This was my first big mistake, and mid-process I burst out laughing. Why didn’t I mix this in a pitcher first and then pour it into the jug though the funnel, I wondered. I bet you were wondering that, too. Oh well, I love to reinvent the wheel, so forward I went.
Fourth, I made a paper funnel, thinking a bigger exit hole would help when my plastic funnel wasn’t working out so well. This step did not help as much as I hoped.
Fifth, I added water and gave it a shake. I shook this stuff so hard I lost my wrap skirt twice (good thing I was all alone in the privacy of my own home). It took a long time to get all the lumps to dissolve.
Sixth, I started adding the cold water to top off my gallon. Here I ran into a problem with foam. Seventh, I pause the game (isn’t this so much fun) and call my good friend Donna. I tell her of my trial so far, we laugh hysterically, then I ask seriously “Donna, what do you do about all the foam?” I get the feeling that if I had done it right in the first place, I wouldn’t have such a problem with the foam. Kindly, Donna does not say this. She just says, “Let it rest. Come back to it later. You could try stirring the foam down a little, add some more water, let it rest and then add some more water.” Patience is often the most practical advise.
Eighth, I wait, add water, stir. Wait some more, add more water. Patience, patience.
Ninth, I clean up my enormous mess (see photos below).
Tenth, I let lots of time elapse and finally refrigerate my first gallon of morning moo.

Tip: Think ahead to prevent a 3 step simple process from turning into a 10 step invasive procedure.

Morning Moo Footprints on My New Floor

A Magnificent Mess

The Easier the Better

Today is a day I’d really, really rather eat out. Better out than in, I always say, when the day flies by so fast and you can hardly catch a moment to breathe. But, I resisted that urge, saving my cash for another day, and decided to make tacos instead. And with pre-made corn tortilla shells, it was so easy.

What We Ate: Breakfast - 100% food storage friendly rice pudding (recipe to follow)
Lunch - Who knows, I can’t even remember lunch
Snack - Rice crispy treats and pumpkin pancakes
Dinner - Tacos, taco salad, nachos and whatever else you can imagine making with pre-packaged taco shells, ground beef (to quote Don, “I love ground beef. Why don’t we eat it more often?” Oh, just wait as the month moves on, you’ll have your fill of ground beef, I muse with a grin.), cheese, guacamole and a bunch of other non-food storage items.

One comment here, a trick I learned from my sis. To make your taco meat stretch further, add an egg to the pan once you’ve drained the grease. Think fried rice only Mexican style.

Recipe

Rice Pudding
3 cups leftover cooked rice
1 cup morning moo (reconstituted powdered milk)
½ cup canned milk
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
Cinnamon and nutmeg to taste
Bring milk, sugar, vanilla and spices to a boil. Reduce heat, add rice. Simmer for five minutes and serve.

Day 4 - Powdered Parmesan Alfredo

Can you believe it's only been four days of no shopping? It feels like its been a whole week already. Tonight is a crazy night, everyone going in separate directions but me. Good thing I fed the kids an after school snack inspired by my friend Donna. We had pumpkin pancakes and they were a huge hit and so, so easy. This evening I’m keeping the home fires burning with one, now two, now three and finally four children all at home. Don has church meetings and I’m glad we had a nice sit down breakfast this morning because that counts for one family meal in the day.

Something occurred to me as I prepared our leftover pasta for dinner. I thought I’d serve some lovely frozen green beans with the meal because all of the kids like them and one kid in particular eats more of them than the rest of the family combined (Hannah). But, then I thought at the rate my greens are going, we’d better eat all of our fresh before we move on to frozen. So, here’s your tip for the day.

When you are in a pinch, and can’t make it to the store for whatever reason (my sister-in-law once had 6 weeks of blizzard where trucks couldn’t get food in to the stores) use up your fresh food first.

And that’s what we did. Plus, I added canned milk and powdered Parmesan to Bren’s awesome alfredo sauce to stretch it out a bit further. No one even noticed.


What We Ate: All vegetarian, all day (except for the chunky chickens)
Breakfast - Cold Cereal
Lunch - Campbell’s Chunky Chicken Soup rotated from our 72 kits, taste and smelled just like baby food. When I opened the can I had a flash back to earlier days of feeding not-quite-toddlers from a jar. Not a winner, but Hannah liked it and it would get you by in a pinch.
Dinner - Left over penne pasta, food-storage enhanced alfredo sauce, leftover home made bread made into garlic toast, green salad with tomatoes from the garden.

Recipes

Pumpkin Pancakes
Make your favorite pancake recipe and add ¼ cup pumpkin for ever 2 cups flour. Mix and make like you would normal pancakes. Fabulously hale and hearty fare.


Brennan’s Famous Alfredo - Not food storage friendly, but oh so good
2 Tbsp butter
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 ½ cup heavy cream
½ cup milk, with 2 tbsp flour mixed in as emulsifier
1 cup grated hard cheese (Parmesan or Romano)
Salt to taste


Saute garlic in the butter over medium-high heat until golden brown (the garlic not the butter). Turn the heat down to medium. Add cream and milk mixed with flour. Bring to a near-boil (that means you see one or two bubbles come to the surface). Turn down one more notch and add the cheese. Simmer until all cheese is melted. Salt to taste. Makes enough for at least a pound of pasta. When I needed it to stretch further the second time around, I added ½ cup canned milk and ¼ cup parm. cheese.

Monday Night - Letting Go of Poor Practices

Okay, before I get into the dirty details of preparing to be prepared, I’d better blog about tonight’s dinner, that way there is a daily report of dinner ideas for the duration of the experiment.

I was going to do leftovers from the lovely dinner we had with my sister’s family. But, because
Don was away on business for the day/evening, I thought I’d take advantage of an opportunity to have breakfast for dinner. Now, Don would say that he doesn’t mind having pancakes and eggs for breakfast, but I know that he doesn’t generally prefer it. Also, I wanted to break with one of my long held beliefs which said:

If Dad is gone, we’re eating out!

This has cost me more money than it should have over the years because I don’t always feel like cooking when my husband is gone. And with one pair of hands against four, my odds of keeping sane to through the day seem better with drive thru service. But, tonight I chose a better way - I gave dinner over to Bren and pancake mix from our food storage.

What we ate: Bren made a lovely batch of waffles and everyone was happy. We used food storage syrup, sour cream and jam from the fridge, fruit from cold storage and powdered sugar from the pantry. One thing I would have done differently:

Use powdered milk in place of the real stuff when cooking and baking.

Future tip: When I come to the end of the next gallon of milk, I’m going to mix up some of the powdered counterfeit in it’s place and label it “Chef’s Special - Dairy Substitute.” No one’s going to drink it any sooner than they would go next door and ask for a cup of soy milk, but it will work for now when we’re cooking up some fine food storage fare.