What to do with a garden surplus

My first inclination is to give it away!  However, my neighbors are likely as tired of cucumbers and tomatoes as I am.  Two years ago, we had a crop of 1,800 tomatoes.  This year was not as abundant, probably due to the inconsistent weather that we've had.  We still ended up with a LOT of tomatoes.  Our best producing tomato bush is the one that we have tilled under year after year, and it keeps coming back in the same place!  It was an heirloom tomato bush that we purchased from a farmer on the side of the road for $1.  It looked rather straggly and we felt sorry for it. Three years later,  I now refer to it as Father Abraham.

Last night's crop.

Just about the time this morning that I began to wonder what to do with all of these tomatoes, my 11 year old son begged me to make homemade tomato soup.  Here's my favorite, oh-so-simple recipe.

Tomato Soup for Two

2 cups of pureed, fresh tomatoes (skin and all, I throw them into my blender)
1 tablespoon of butter (I use ghee, which is an excellent grass fed source of vitamin K2)
1 tablespoon of flour
1 cup of milk or cream
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of dried basil (or fresh, if available)
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon sea salt or garlic sea salt (if you use iodized table salt, cut back the amount slightly)

In a saucepan, heat the butter until melted. Add the flour and stir to blend.  Quickly add the cup of milk or cream and whisk until smooth.  This is your classic white sauce.  Add the 2 cups of pureed tomatoes and the remaining ingredients.  Heat through, then remove from heat. Cover and allow the soup to sit for five minutes before serving to allow the flavors to blend.

You can substitute nearly any vegetable for the tomatoes in this recipe, I just used what I had in abundance.  In the past, I have made cream of asparagus, cream of broccoli and even cream of celery when needed for a recipe.  Some vegetables require steaming them to soften them before pureeing.

Enjoy!

How to make expensive Greek yogurt for less than $5 a gallon

Greek yogurt has been all the rage for the past several years, and for good reason.  It's a power house of nutrition, especially protein.  If you factor in the additional benefits of probiotics (beneficial bacteria for your gut), Greek yogurt is a health bargain, even at full price.

But you can successfully make it for less than $5/gallon (your mileage may vary depending on that you are willing to pay for a gallon of milk).  Here in our home, we prefer "real" milk, purchased directly from the farmer. We have been consuming "real" dairy products since 1998, and have never, ever had a food borne illness from consuming non-pasteurized or non-homogenized milk products.  The concern is trumped up, but that's a different blog post.

To make your fancy yogurt you'll need a large slow cooker, a wooden spoon, approximately 1/2 cup of plain yogurt with live cultures (just about any commercial yogurt on the market and you can be as discriminating as you want), a gallon of milk, some cheesecloth to line your strainer, and a pot to catch the yellow liquid (called whey) that will drain off of the yogurt.

Pour your milk into your slow cooker.  Turn it on to "LOW" and allow to warm up for several hours until you see many tiny bubbles on the surface.  You do not want to boil your milk.  I have, in the past, accidentally overcooked the milk until it turns a light tan color.  It didn't affect the quality of my yogurt, it just looked bad to those in the family who prefer their milk "white".  Because there is no true standard amongst slow cooker temperatures, I cannot tell you how long your slow cooker might take to reach the tiny bubble stage, but mine took 3 hours to reach approximately 140F degrees on my digital thermometer.

I then turned off the heat and removed the lid to cool my milk to 110F degrees.  This took about two hours, and will vary depending on your room temperature.

When my milk reached 110F degrees, I added my 1/2 cup plain yogurt (I used Fage plain Greek).


Stir the yogurt in until completely dissolved.  Now your milk is ready to "incubate".  There are different methods to achieve this.  My inner crock from my slow cooker can be removed, so I take it out, put the lid on, and put in my unheated oven with the light on.  The light is sufficient to create just enough warmth to maintain the temperature at 101F degrees. The idea is to maintain the temperature between 100F and 110F degrees for at least six to ten hours, or until your yogurt is thick.  Another method is to set your pan or crock on a heating pad on the counter and wrap with a towel.

Your yogurt should thicken up nicely if kept in the correct temperature range. If it still has not thickened, cover it back up and continue to incubate it for several more hours.  Don't worry, there is a large margin of error before you could actually ruin the yogurt.

When your yogurt is thick, congratulations!  You now have yogurt!

But don't stop there, Greek yogurt requires a few more steps...

Line your strainer with cheesecloth and position over a pan large enough to catch the precious yellow liquid (called whey).  Pour your yogurt into the strainer and let sit for about an hour or more.  As the liquid whey drains off, your yogurt becomes even thicker.  If left to strain for days, it will eventually become a very soft, spreadable cheese, resembling cream cheese.  But if you stop the process after only straining for about an hour, you will have Greek yogurt at a fraction of the cost of store bought Greek yogurt.

Do not throw away the whey!  It's an excellent medium for soaking grains and flour or for adding to to baked goods for added nutrition.  I've also used whey to make dill pickles using a process called lacto-fermentation.  They were a big hit here in my home, and fermented foods will be a topic for another day.

This is the yellow liquid that was strained from my yogurt.  It's called "whey" and is packed full of nutrition.  Whey lasts a long time in the refrigerator without spoiling, and usually our demand is more than our supply.

A gallon of Greek yogurt barely lasts a week in our home as we use it to substitute for sour cream and I use it for baking.  Remember to save a half cup of your yogurt creation to use as a starter for your next batch!

Frugal and natural personal care products

For thirty days, I've been an experiment in making and using my own body wash and shampoo.  It all started when my husband went to visit a friend of a friend who lives off-grid in the mountains of Georgia.  He came home from that trip so excited about the possibility of making our own body wash and shampoo.  I'm a woman who enjoys the delightful smells of life, so my first inclination was to brush off the suggestion and hope that the idea would fade.  Yet my husband kept on about how the major corporations in the personal product industry peddle harmful chemicals in a deceitful way:  they sell you a shampoo that chemically strips the dirt and grime out of your body and hair, leaving it void of moisture, and in turn market conditioners and lotions to you to replace the moisture. They most usually have to add fragrance back into the product to cover up the chemical concoction's unpleasant smell.  Thus, they've snagged you not once but two or three times in a very cleverly orchestrated campaign for your dollars.

It turns out that my husband's own marketing campaign was successful.  He knew exactly how to appeal to my practical tendencies. Aside from resisting any product that contains ingredients that are proven be carcinogenic, as well as hormone disruptors...quite frankly, I'm cheap.  

And so it began.  We use this simple recipe for both our hair and our bodies.  I've also been using it to bathe our dogs and they smell so fresh after their baths!

For this recipe, you'll need:

1 bar of Kirk's Original Coco Castile Soap, grated

6 cups of water

several drops of vegetable glycerin (optional, for added moisture retention)

several drops of your favorite natural essential oil for fragrance

• Heat the water on the stove, but do not boil.  While your water is heating, grate your bar soap.  I like to use my Salad Shooter, which makes the job of grating go much more quickly. The bar soap is fairly soft, so a manual grater would work well also.

• Add your grated soap to the water and stir until dissolved.  This process only takes five minutes at the most.  Remove from heat after the soap is dissolved.

My hair is noticeably softer after thirty days using our body wash/shampoo.  Once per week,  I deep condition with pure extra-virgin coconut oil.  I give special attention to the ends. If you have dandruff, apply the coconut oil to your scalp.  I leave it in my hair for 10-15 minutes, then shampoo with my liquid soap. My hair texture continues to improve with each use. No, this does not make my hair greasy.

• Allow to cool before adding the vegetable glycerin and/or essential oil.  This step is completely optional.  My husband and I both have middle-aged hair, and as it grays it becomes coarse.  To counteract the coarseness and keep it smooth, we like to add the glycerin.  As far as essential oils, we opted out because we actually like the pure, clean smell of the Kirk's soap.
  
• Transfer to a container of your choice.  We recycle a pump type dispenser to use for our soap. One recipe has brought us 30 days of daily use.  Your soap will be very thin and will gradually thicken as it ages.  Coconut has antibacterial properties, so no preservatives are needed.

Just a note: Any castile soap will work.  We chose Kirk's because of the simple, natural ingredients and the price.  On sale, a bar of this soap will cost less than $1. I order other products frequently from iHerb and Swanson, so my shipping is usually free.  Kirk's has also been spotted from time to time in Dollar Tree stores in the Southeast.  You could also substitute any castile bar soap for this recipe, but the other "name brand" castile soap (bearing the name of a certain Doctor) has a higher price per bar and fundamental beliefs of the company do not align with our family's.

Mama's Pizzeria!

When we first moved to our little corner of Northwest Georgia two years ago, we almost immediately discovered an authentic pizzeria that became a Sunday afternoon habit. Giovanni's Pizza was the best. The service wasn't always great, but we could get two large pizzas overloaded with stringy, stretchy, full-fat version mozarella for $10. The middle of last year brought a disappointment when, without warning, Giovanni's disappeared. So began my quest to duplicate his recipe. The secret, I think, was in the cheese. Pizza is not a good choice for curtailing culinary indulgence...so no part skim mozarella, if you can help it.

As a family, we prefer a thin crust. Yes, you can have really, really good homemade pizza on the table in 35 minutes (not including oven preheat time to 425 degrees).

Starting with the dough...

In your Kitchenaid, using your dough hook, following ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour or freshly milled wheat flour
1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 tablespoon honey
1 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

You may need to add water to the dough one Tablespoon at a time, depending on the humidity. Your dough should be very pliable, but NOT STICKY!

After you've mixed your ingredients for three minutes on low, separate the dough into two balls and roll out onto your two pizza pans. I prefer to cook on baking stones, well seasoned. I prebake the rolled dough at 425 for 8-10 minutes, then add my toppings. Toppings are an individual preference, all the way down to the sauce. I use whatever sauce I have on hand, but prefer tomato puree seasoned with oregano, basil and thyme. After you've loaded your pizza with toppings and cheese, bake in oven again for 15 minutes or until cheese is golden and bubbly.

So easy! And you read that recipe correctly...no rising time for the dough.

Some other variations (think CiCi's!) that we've tried:

Sauteed onions, bell peppers and black olives (for the grownups, of course)

Mexican Pizza: I've been known to use leftover taco meat, but you can fry one pound of ground beef and add an envelope of taco seasoning, prepared according to directions. Replace the mozarella with Jack or cheddar cheese, and after cooking, load on the taco toppings: lettuce, sour cream, chopped tomatoes...whatever you like!

Philly Cheesesteak Pizza: Fry one pound of ground beef, add one envelope of onion soup mix, and one cup of water with two tablespoons of flour (hint: whisk in flour well to the cold water before adding to the meat) . You can grill some more onions, bell peppers and mushrooms for a topping and finish with melted velveeta!

YUM!

How not to be frugal

Lesson learned the hard way.  I'm not sure how it works for you, but tonight I discovered why I should not take my husband shopping.  The last time we went together was over a year ago, when I first embarked on my frugal journey.  I've had a year of training in frugality, he hasn't.  He simply impulse buys whatever he wants! It really disturbs me to watch someone pay full price (especially when I share the wallet).
Let me back up...
This week has been a week of reading frugal cookbooks, and frugal living books.  It's not like basic training for me since I've been doing this for a while, but I am honing my skills in preparation for the worsening economy.  I truly do believe that it is going to get much worse.  There's one thing that I have learned, and that is that you have to actually USE what you stockpile, otherwise frugality is an exercise in futility. We've spent the past two weeks eating from the pantry and freezer, just as we always do twice a year in January and July. Notice that our yearly cleanouts come at times when pinching a penny helps (right after the holidays and again at curriculum purchase time). We could probably eat from the stockpile for another week or two if necessary, but I fear that it's becoming tiresome for my crew. Now it is time to stock up again!
Normally, I am not a warehouse club shopper.  The $40 yearly membership is too steep to recoup for what we actually BUY there.  Not all of their prices are so wonderful!  However, Sams Club is running a deal through January 21st: if you purchase an annual personal or business membership for $40 ($35 for businesses), you get a $25 Sams gift card on the spot! That makes a year of membership only $10 or $15.  Definitely worth it!
Be forewarned...you have to have discipline to shop at Sam's, and you have to know your prices to really know if you are getting the best deal.  An impulse buy at the regular grocer may cost you $2 per item. At a warehouse, impulsivity may cost you $8-$10 or more per item!
Here are some good buys at Sam's, based on what we actually use a lot of and price comparison at Publix and Aldi:

• Nearly all of their spices are majorly discounted.  For instance, 20 ounces of onion powder for $3.48 (I use this as a base in nearly all of my homemade mixes for taco seasoning, spaghetti seasoning and homemade Shake N' Bake).
• Pure Vanilla (not imitation!) 16 ounces for $6.67. I go through a lot of vanilla!
• Mrs. Butterworth's Syrup, one gallon for $6.34.
• Trash bags, 13 gallon with drawstring, 150 for $8.86.
• Butter, $1.94 pound
• Mozarella Cheese, 5 pounds for $10.87.  I shred this into 2 cup portions and freeze.
• American Cheese, 160 slices for $11.28.  Yes, this'll last a while!
• Basmati Rice (the only brand/type we like) 15 pounds for $16.77. Not the cheapest TYPE of rice, but we do eat only this kind.  It doesn't get mushy and we use it as a base for fried rice often.

• Organic Raw Spinach, huge tub for $3.84.  We'll munch on it raw for a few days, in salads, then cook what's left in chicken broth with the Basmati Rice and a handful of shredded cheddar!  Yummy side dish!
• Cream Cheese, 3 pounds for $6.67.

As you can see, the dairy products are a terrific deal.  Cheese rarely goes on sale, and when it does, you still can't beat the price of Sams.  Hard cheeses freeze well when shredded. I have a Salad Shooter gadget which can quickly shred mounds and mounds of cheese.
Happy stockpiling...and remember to be truly frugal, leave the family at home!

Pear Honey...well, kind of

I like to give credit for the recipes, especially since this one is not my own. I found it at Recipezaar. I have been craving it for weeks, and I am not especially fond of any kind of cooked fruit! I tried to be diligent and respond to a post on our local craigslist.org for free pears being offered before the freeze, but the lady never responded to me. I purchased some pears at a 99 cents/pound price. I did learn a lesson about purchasing something for a specific recipe: hide it! My fruit foragers of the family devoured my pears in one day! I grumbled a little bit when I noticed this, because I had already combined the pineapple with the sugar and lemon juice...no turning back now! I improvised and used apples instead, but the result was still scrumptious!

Pear Honey

• 3 lbs fresh pears, peeled,cored,and finely chopped
• 5 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 (8 ounce) can crushed pineapple in juice
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

1. In a 6 quart stainless steel kettle combine all ingredients.
2. Bring to boiling, stirring occasionally.
3. Simmer 40 mins.
4. Spoon into sterile jars, leaving a 1/2 inch head space.
5. Wipe jar rims, adjust lids.
6. Process in boiling water for 10 mins.
7. Makes 7 half pints.

Just a note: In my opinion (and I have a terrible sweet tooth too), this is way too much sugar. I would reduce it to 3 1/2 cups the next time. I only made 1/3 of this recipe, because I'm not into canning preserves and had none of the canning supplies (I usually make freezer jam!). Therefore I only went through step 3 of the recipe.

What's the big deal about $25?

Due to some unforeseen medical expenses over the past few months, we have had to pull from other budget areas to keep up with our obligations. For instance, our lawn needs to be reseeded and the gardens need to be mulched, but that will have to wait due to the medical bills. I was feeling a little bit grumpy about it because it needs to be done in the Fall of the year. We missed it again this year.

My older son's pants seem to be unable to keep up with the length of his legs, and my youngest son's hand-me-down pants need to be altered to keep up with his waist. So, I pulled out the sewing machine and learned to hem. Still, there have been some clothing expenses this month as the weather changed. They both need shoes, but only because of extreme wear and not for lack of fit, thankfully.

That's just one example of the many wants and needs that seem to be waylaid due to the struggling economy. More than once recently, I've felt more gripey than thankful, thinking that things never seem to go my way and I never really have been able to get ahead.

And then...

The mail came today with $25 in an envelope as payment from an in-depth survey that I had taken about television viewing. That $25 came on a week that is 4 days shy of my paycheck, but just in time to pay for my son's music lesson payment due on Wednesday. A $20 payment, I might mention, that had the potential to put a crimp on an already strained budget.

And there's enough left over to buy a gallon of milk :)

Matthew 6:31-32

“So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs.