Making Homemade Tortillas

After years of purchasing tortillas with enriched flour and a whole list of unknown ingredients, Jon decided to make our own tortillas using four simple ingredients: flour, salt, coconut oil, and milk from a recipe that he found on The Prairie Homestead Blog.

Homemade Tortilla Recipe:

2 c flour (or half fresh ground wheat and half all-purpose)

1 tsp. salt

4 T coconut oil

3/4 c warm milk

Instructions: Using a pastry blender, mix together flour, salt, and coconut oil until it is crumbly (similar to making pie crust).  Add milk a little at a time and mix until everything comes together.  Divide into seven small balls.  Using a rolling pin, roll each ball about 1/8 inch thickness into a circle or use an inverted bowl for making a round shape. Fry in a dry skillet 30 seconds on each side poking air bubbles with a fork. Use immediately. 

How to Make Ginger Ale

Ginger Ale is so refreshing in the sweltering heat of summer!  Ginger ale was never my beverage of choice growing up, but now that we make our own, I am sold on it's tart flavor.  Since we use the actual ginger root in our recipe, every bottle is packed with health boosting properties ginger is known for including: soothing stomach upset, respiratory coughs, fevers, and more.  Knowing ginger is good for my body, I don't feel guilty sitting back and enjoying a bottle of our homemade ginger ale.

To make ginger ale, you first have to ferment the ginger root by making a Ginger Bug.  Unlike  berry and sarsaparilla soda that requires champagne yeast, ginger ale uses the natural yeast created from a ginger bug for its fizzy carbonation.

With a wooden spoon, stir the following ingredients into a pint mason jar:
-2T fresh ginger (Skin and grate - I use a micro-plane grater)
-2T unrefined cane juice sugar
-2T non-chlorinated water

Cover jar with a coffee filter secured with a rubber band.

Every day for at least five days, stir in 2T each of grated ginger, sugar, and water.  It should get bubbly and foamy. On the sixth day use what you need and refrigerate the rest adding 2T each of everything (ginger, sugar and water) once each week.  Cap jar loosely when refrigerated.

Once your ginger bug has fermented for six days, you can make ginger ale.

Ingredients:
2-4 inch piece of fresh ginger root, peeled and minced
1 cup evaporated cane juice sugar
1 cup fresh lemon or lime juice (~ 4 lemons)
1 tsp. sea salt
16 cups non-chlorinated water
1 cup homemade ginger bug

*makes 8.5 grolsch bottles

In a saucepan, add  6 cups water, minced ginger root, sugar, and salt.  Bring to a boil and simmer for about 5 minutes until sugar is dissolved and mixture starts to smell like ginger.

Remove from heat and add remaining water.  Cool mixture to room temperature.

Add fresh lemon or lime juice and ginger bug.  Stir.

Fill grolsch bottles.

Store bottles in cooler or cover bottles for several days until carbonated, and then transfer to fridge to drastically slow down the carbonation.  The reason we place the bottles in a cooler is to contain any liquid and glass that may explode in case the bottles carbonate too long.  When we first started making soda, we had a bottle explode all over the kitchen and freshly painted ceiling...a very sticky mess to clean up!

Besides water, there are only five ingredients in ginger ale.

Even though we use organic ginger, we grate it before dicing.

If you have a pirate on the premise, they should help juice the lemons to help fight scurvy!

When adding the lemon juice and ginger bug, make sure the water is not too hot (below 100 degrees Fahrenheit), otherwise you will kill the natural yeast in the ginger bug.

Using a fine mesh strainer helps produce a cleaner product. Then cap and vigorously shake the gallon jug for 20 seconds or so.

Use a funnel with a slight indent at the bottom so air can escape when filling the grolsch bottles. 

Almost finished...final capping of the bottles. 

To be on the safe side, we recommend storing the bottles in a cooler in case a bottle bursts. Check daily for carbonation.  Small bubbles forming on top of the beverage indicate carbonation is taking place.  If a quick rush of air escapes when you slightly loosen the wire barrel, then it's probably time to place the bottles in the refrigerator maybe slightly before then. We recommend that until you get used to how fast carbonation takes place (which is highly dependent on the ambient air temperature), that you have a test plastic soda bottle as a control bottle just so you know how fast they are carbonating.

Some sources I referenced when perfecting our recipe include: Wellness Mama and Nourished Kitchen.

Berry Scones Made With Oat Flour

We really love our grain mill and have been experimenting with different grains in our recipes lately.  One recipe that turned out perfectly with an alternative grain was scones.  In general, my scones are very moist and puffy like biscuits, but when I use frozen berries, the batter tends to be really wet and runny creating some unpleasant smokey smells from the oven from liquid dripping off the baking stone.  What a mess this creates and the scones are then over-baked.  To solve this problem, I discovered ground oat groats help absorb the excess moisture in the batter creating the perfect berry scones.  You have to try them!

Berry Scones:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup wheat germ or flax seed meal

1 cup ground oat groats

1/4 c sugar

1 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. baking soda

5 T frozen butter, grated

1/2 cup berries (frozen or fresh)

1/2 cup sour cream or plain yogurt

1 egg

Mix together flours, sugar, baking powder, and baking soda. 

Add grated butter to dry mixture using a pastry blender until it has a crumb-like texture.

In a small bowl, mix sour cream and egg together, add to above mixture.  Batter will be wet. 

Add berries and mix thoroughly.

Place mounds of dough onto baking stone, flatten the tops. 

Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until golden.

Optional: sprinkle sugar on top before baking.  

Using Snow For Homemade Ice Cream

This February we received about 10 inches of snow over a few days.  We live in the Mountain State so we don't have to go far for a good sledding hill!  

Even though it's cocoa season, we couldn't resist bringing out the ice cream maker.  We haven't purchased ice cream in at least five years and find the store varieties way too sweet for our liking, not to mention all of the unnecessary additives our bodies don't need.  Snow is free and the best thing to use for keeping the cream cold while churning.  Our ice cream maker is an antique White Mountain hand crank churn we found at a flea market.   It is Made in the USA,  We have our churn sitting inside a 5 gallon pail because there is a crack on the bottom that leaks water.

After 30 minutes or so of churning the cream is starting to thicken. 

The key to using old churns is to submerse the entire bucket in water for at least 24 hours before using it so the wood slats swell and hold the ice water.  As you can see, even with a slight crack, the pail still holds the ice water pretty well.  It took five days for the pail to dry out again.

Yum...mint chocolate chip ice cream!  There are recipes using snow with the milk, but we prefer the recipe found on the back of the Morton Ice Cream Salt box.  We reduced the recipe by half with a few other slight variations:

 Recipe:

1 1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 T lemon juice

1/8 tsp. salt

3.5 cups heavy whipping cream (local Homestead Creamery brand)

 1 cup whole milk (Whole Creamline Milk Homestead Creamery brand) 

 1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 tsp. mint extract 

2 drops green food coloring

1.5 cups chopped chocolate chips (Ghirardelli Bittersweet chocolate). 

According to several websites, this White Mountain Ice Cream churn was made in 1923.  More than 90 years and the thing still works!  I can only imagine how many revolutions that handle has had in its life so far.

Winter Bread Baking

It's January and cold outside with temperatures expected to drop into the single digits this week.  To give the house a cozy feel, I bake bread.  It tastes so good with a dab of butter next to a bowl of soup.  And do I even need to describe in detail the smell of baking bread?  I was debating on whether to include step-by-step instructions for bread making, but I realize there are dozens of blogs with tutorials on this process.  Instead I will briefly introduce the two varieties I make.

By far the easiest bread to make is artisan bread taken from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by: Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.  The name sounds fancy, but the process is actually very straight forward and can be made in a normal oven.  For this bread, the dough is mixed in a container and stored in the refrigerator until baking day.  When you are ready to bake, you grab a cantaloupe-size ball of dough and throw it on a pizza peel to rest for about 40 minutes before sliding it on to a preheated baking stone in the oven.  A cup of water is added to a cast iron skillet in the oven to create that crispy crust that artisan bread is known for.  If you want to impress your friends with homemade bread, this is it!  There are recipes for different flours and other additives.  My family currently enjoys the Italian Semolina Bread.  

Another type of bread I make on occasion is a traditional white bread where the dough rises first in a bowl and then again in a loaf pan.  Different flours can be used in place of all-purpose flour if you choose.  I use a recipe from the Betty Crocker Cookbook.  What ever type of bread you choose to make, it will smell and taste fantastic because you made it. Enjoy!

How to Cook Squash in a Dutch Oven

This fall we discovered the best way to cook squash...in a dutch oven over the fire.  We have cooked golden hubbard, turk's turban, and acorn squash so far and they have all turned out great!

First, I split the squash in half, scoop out the seeds, and add about 2 T butter and 1 T brown sugar to each half.  Sometimes the squash is too big for the dutch oven so we have to bake the halves separately.  The most important part when cooking squash in the dutch oven is always keep water in the bottom; you don't want the pot to boil dry because you will ruin the cast iron.  I add about a half inch of water in the beginning and periodically add water throughout the cooking process.

This is our setup when cooking over the fire.  My dad welded us a stand with a hook for a pot.

Depending on the size of squash and the intensity of the fire, you want the squash to steam for about 30 minutes.  In the picture above you can see steam escaping.

The squash is done when the inside scrapes away easily from the shell.  Baking in the dutch oven keeps the squash moist and gives it a bit of a smoky flavor that we like. 

Meals from the Garden

My family absolutely loves Thai food and the summer is the best time to make it with all the fresh veggies.  Here's what we add to our thai dishes from the garden: edamame, peppers, cabbage, chard, zucchini, carrots, garlic, onion, eggs, peapods, basil, tomatillos, okra, broccoli and mushrooms.

Pasta dishes are an old stand-by whether they are pesto or spaghetti, most everything comes from the garden.  Even the egg noodles are homemade using eggs from the chickens.  And of course, the side vegetable always comes from the garden.  I'm still trying to perfect the best homemade spaghetti sauce and every time it's a little bit different.  This recipe includes homemade meatballs using ground venison.  The sauce includes tomato paste, stewed tomatoes, hungarian wax peppers, oregano, mushrooms, onions, garlic, tomatillos, and okra.

A good ol' fashioned stew is the perfect meal to have on a cool evening while sitting around the fire.  Venison, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, and oregano.

Kohlrabi with mashed potatoes and corn.  

Eggplant Parmesan and corn.

And for a delicious dessert, Ground Cherry Crisp.  This is the first year growing ground cherries and we absolutely love them!  When made into a dessert they taste almost like peaches. 

Tomato Blight and Using Green Tomatoes

This summer got away from us and the tomatoes received the brunt of it.  You can see from the above picture how quickly late blight takes over.  The only green in the picture on the right side are the prolific weeds.  It's a heart-wrenching feeling to rip the plants out of the ground while the fruits are still green. 

Every year Jon and I learn a little bit more about gardening and create our own tips and best practices.  This year Jon discovered the best bean trellis, and this year we are one step closer to understanding how to grow tomatoes.  Using wire fencing was far better than the flimsy tomato cages and log and twine trellises that rot and fall over.  This year the rows were spaced "properly" according to seed packet instructions, but they were still too close together making weeding downright impossible which explains the excessive overgrowth of weeds and airflow is crucial to minimize disease spreading.  Next year: eliminate the congestion and plant the tomatoes in one long row instead of a patch. Do you have any recommendations to keep blight away? We think it's taking over our potatoes now too.

Some of the tomatoes will ripen off the vine so we put them on the porch where they will receive some sun (if the cloudy rainy weather will pass!).  In the picture there is a seed-saving experience gone bad.  We saved seeds from a pie pumpkin that must have crossed with a zucchini.

Cherry tomatoes typically don't turn red after removal from the vine.  Instead of throwing them into the compost, I made Green Tomato Hot Dog Relish.  It's super easy to make.  You begin by washing the tomatoes and throwing them in a food processor without removing the skins. 

In food processor, puree green tomatoes until you have 1 quart.  Puree 1 large onion and 1 large red pepper.  Combine tomatoes, onion, and pepper in a large bowl with 2 T canning salt.  Let sit for 1 hr.

Drain and rinse.

In a large soup pot combine pureed mixture, 1 cup sugar, 1 T mustard seeds, 1 tsp. celery seed, 4 whole cloves, and 1 cup vinegar.  Bring to a boil and simmer 20 min.

Remove cloves before filling jars.  Process half-pints 10 minutes in water bath.  

Makes ~6 half-pints.

Homemade Egg Noodles

Making egg noodles is really easy, requires only a few ingredients, and doesn't take a lot of time.  In the past I rolled them on the counter with a rolling pin but the dough tended to shrink back on itself which made rolling them a challenge and they were always too thick, requiring a couple days to dry.  After 5 years of rolling them by hand, I decided to purchase a noodle maker and chose the Atlas 150.  It's really easy to use and has two cuts: fettuccine and spaghetti.  You can make a couple batches at a time, hang them up to dry, and store them in a jar for later use.

Recipe:
1 2/3 cup flour
2 eggs
1 T oil
2-3 T water

Mix everything together.  If the dough is too sticky, add more flour.
(it should have the consistency of bread dough)

One batch of dough makes enough noodles for 4 adults. 

The Atlas 150 noodle maker has 9 thickness settings and fettuccine and spaghetti cuts.

Rollers squish the dough...

the dough comes out the bottom...

and then you put the dough through the cutter. 

Noodles are draped over a cookie rack waiting for water to boil.

After a few minutes in boiling water, the noodles are ready to eat!

Noodles that will be for later use are hung over a dowel suspended above the kitchen sink until dry.

The noodles are stored in a gallon glass jar for later use!