Over the weekend, I made some ricotta.  As usual, I was left with whey and wanted to do something new with it.  I’d had a craving for some rice pudding for a while and figured I’d give it a go with whey instead of milk or cream.  It worked wonderfully, giving the pudding a delightfully tart flavor alongside the sweet and spicy notes.

Chai Spiced Whey Pudding

• 4 Cups Whey (Milk or Milk Alternatives will also work)
• 1 1/2 Cups Rice, cooked (any will do)
• 1/3 Cup Honey
• 1/2 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon Ground Ginger
• 3 Green Cardamom Pods
• 2 Whole Star Anise
• 1 Vanilla Bean, split
• 3 Tablespoons Cornstarch
• 1/2 Cup Raisins (optional)

Put the cardamom pods and star anise into a tea ball or tie into a muslin spice bag.  Combine everything but the raisins into a medium saucepan.  Over medium heat, simmer the mixture for about 20 minutes or until mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.  It will thicken as it cools.  Pour into dish or individual containers and refrigerate for at least 3 hours before serving.

Yesterday, I finished off the cherries in our stash.  Jeff calls the pantry our stash, I rather like that.  Anyway, yesterday we finished off all the cherries we picked last summer.  I remember thinking at the time that we were picking too many, that the stores would be with us for years.  I, obviously, was wrong.

We’ve finished off 28 quarts of cherries in an extra light sugar syrup, 14 pints of brandied cherries, 3 gallons of frozen cherries, and 1 gallon of dried cherries.  We won’t be able to pick any more until at least July.  They were yummy while they lasted.  The frozen ones were extremely yummy in smoothies.

I suppose this year we’ll pick more than the 80 pounds we picked last year.  It seems crazy to think of those kinds of numbers, but it is exactly this kind of activity that allows me to Eat Local Because I Can.

This summer when those amazing Flathead Cherries ripen up, we’ll be harvesting and preserving more.  This year we’ll do less in brandy and maybe freeze more.

If you’re local and interested in learning how to preserve your own fruit stash, be sure to check out my upcoming classes.  There will also be lots more canning information coming your way here as we move the fruitful season.

Edited / Updated May 23, 3012: 

This image from Northern Sun got my mind working and inspired me in many ways.  That inspiration has culminated in a rather exciting project that I’m kicking off today.  This spring, summer, and fall I’m committed to Eat Local Because I Can.  I’m determined to preserve everything I can from my local producers and foragers (as well as what we grow) so that I can indeed eat local for the entire year.  While the challenge specifically mentions canning, all methods of preservation are welcome and will be employed by me.

Over the last few months, I’ve been interviewing and talking with other canning bloggers.  Starting next Thursday and continuing for a few months, I’ll be sharing those interviews with you.  There are some truly amazing folks who’ve agreed to talk canning with us, they’ve shared photos, stories, recipes, hints, tips, and so, so much more.  I can’t wait for you all to be inspired by them.  I hope you’ll join us as we talk about canning and jump in on the conversation. 

While We Eat Local Because We Can, there will be:

• some extremely fun giveaways
• free printables meant to help with canning adventures
• recipes specifically geared towards the filling of glass jars
• those interviews I mentioned above
• a few surprises

Wanna join us?  There’s nothing you have to do really, maybe leave a comment or two to let us know you’re participating but there are no requirements.  If you’re a new canner, let us know how we can help you gain confidence so that you can eat local because you can.  If you’re an experienced canner, we welcome your thoughts and advice too.  It is my sincere hope that this challenge will be inspirational and full of empowerment for you as we all Eat Local Because We Can.

Our kitchen is as much a food preparation area as it is our pharmacy.  I spend time there making food that I hope will keep our bodies healthy as well as make natural medicines for when we’re less than healthy.  This past weekend I did just that by making use of our abundance of dandelions.

This bucket was mostly destined for the beginnings of a tincture.  According to Backyard Medicine: Harvest and Make Your Own Herbal Remedies by Julie Bruton-Seal and Matthew Seal, the whole plant can be made into a tincture by putting leaves, flowers, and roots into vodka and leaving to steep for a month before straining.  The tincture is good for skin and digestive problems.

 There are still plenty of dandelions out there and will be for a while yet.  I have plans for those too:

• I’ve infused the flowers in oil for a few years now and we do quite enjoy rubbing that on our sore joints
• I’m wondering if I can do an egg-free, wheat-free version of Cold Dandelion Noodle Salad
• There will be Dandelion Jelly, too
• The smaller leaves will get tossed into salads and green smoothies for a while too

What are you making in your kitchen these days?  If you’re using dandelions, tell me what are you doing with them.

Jeff and I both are super fond of our porch.  Once the weather warms up we’re out there pretty much constantly.  We would rather eat there than inside when the sun is shining and so over the weekend we made good use of the porch for the first time this season.

We fired up the grill for the first time, too.  We cooked up a whole, local chicken, just simply butterflied and seasoned with salt & pepper.  Let it cook until almost done and then threw some carrots on there.  It was yummy I don’t mind saying and the leftover chicken was incredible on our salads.

It’s a simple thing, a quiet meal on the porch but it feels markedly profound to us.  Enjoying our little piece of the earth by relaxing on the porch after a very long, hard day of work is truly a magical experience.  It reconnects us with each other and all the reasons we do work so very hard on this little piece of earth we call home.

Making use or multiple uses of everything we’re blessed with is a big part of our lives.  This is as much true for food as it is for canning lids.  Nothing is ever wasted and we will squeeze blood from a nickel if we can.  It’s not about being stingy, it is about being grateful for every thing and taking nothing for granted.

One of the ways we be sure to make the most out of our food and food budget is to save the bones from the animals we eat.  We keep bags of these bones in the freezer and when a bag gets full we make soup stock.  It’s super easy and customizable.  This is a method, no actual recipe is needed, it’s pretty impossible to screw this up:

Toss the bones in a pot with some quartered onions, an entire head of garlic with the top removed, some chunks of carrots and celery (or fresh / dried lovage), and a few whole peppercorns.  Cover all that with water and let simmer, uncovered, very gently on the stove for a minimum of a few hours up to about 8 hours.  This can be done in the crockpot too, just leave the lid vented a bit so that the water can escape and the flavors can condense.  Remove from heat, allow to cool and strain the liquid.  I let the stock sit in the fridge overnight, this way all the fat rises to the surface.  In the morning, I scrape off the fat (save this for cooking or seasoning pans or toss), and then preserve the stock for future use.  The stock can be frozen or canned.  I generally can it up in quart jars.  Strained broth (with absolutely no pieces of meat in there) should be pressure canned at 15 pounds of pressure (adjust lower for lower elevations) for 20 minutes in pint jars, 25 minutes for quart jars.

Over the weekend, I made 2 quarts of ham broth and 3 quarts of chicken broth.  We tend to eat less soups as the garden salad greens come available, but still tasty all natural broth on the pantry shelves is never a bad thing.  This broth is free of nasty chemicals like MSG or BPA and is way tastier than anything that you buy at the grocery store.  Also it’s cheap considering you’ve already purchased and eaten the meat.  Actual hands-on time is short so this is the perfect project to have going on at home while you’re busy doing other things, like say planting the garden full of salad veggies.

Hanging out in the kitchen for me is often like hanging out with friends.  There are the longtime, steady friends that you can always count on right next to the new acquaintances who are quickly proving (or disproving) their worth in my health and lifestyle.  I imagine this is true for most of us who do a lot of cooking from scratch.

In my kitchen and pantry more often than not these friends both old and new are stored in glass jars.  Things like molasses, maple syrup, leftover whey awaiting a new purpose, applesauce, beans, and more are kept in glass jars until they’re called into service.  This keeps things neat and easily spotted with a need for minimal labeling, if any.

New friends like chia seeds are making appearances in my daily smoothies.  These days my favorite smoothie is: 1 Tablespoon of chia seeds soaked in 1/2 cup of water until it gets good and gelatinous.  1 Frozen Banana, 2 Big Handfuls of Raw Spinach, 1/2 Tablespoon Maple Syrup.  Blend it all together until it’s good and smooth, adding more water if necessary to keep it all moving.

Old friends like bread still visit my kitchen now and then.  I’m still not eating wheat but I do still love making bread so every now and then I bake up a batch for Jeff.  This is some cinnamon raisin bread made with the leftover whey from last week’s Ricotta making.  Old friends meeting new ones, seems like a good plan not only for the kitchen but for life in general.

What friends are you making or keeping in touch with in the kitchen these days?

I’ve had a craving lately for spinach and ricotta.  It’s an old favorite combination especially in lasagna.  I’m not eating lasagna these days though I’m sure I could get some rice noodles, it wasn’t really the pasta I was desiring, however.  To get my fix, I made some ricotta out of raw, local goat milk.  If you haven’t made ricotta, it’s super easy with very minimal equipment needed.

Fresh Ricotta

• 1 Gallon Milk (Goat or Cow will work)
• 1 teaspoon Citric Acid dissolved in 1/4 cup cool water
• 1 teaspoon Salt

1. In a large pot, combine the milk, citric acid solution, and salt.  Mix thoroughly.
2. Heat the milk to between 185 and 195 degrees.  Stir often to prevent scorching.
3. Remove from heat when the curds and whey separate.  Allow the mixture to sit for 10 minutes, undisturbed.
4. Pour the mixture into a colander lined with butter muslin.  Once all the whey is poured through, carefully tie up the corners of the butter muslin.  Hang the bag above a bowl (I use a cabinet door pull) and allow to drain about 30 minutes or until the desired consistency is reached.
5. Remove from the muslin and store in a container in the refrigerator.  It is ready to eat immediately, if desired.

Note: You can easily cut this recipe in half.  The whole recipe makes about a quart of finished ricotta.

The whey can be used for a multitude of things (bread baking, smoothies, soaking grains, fermentation, etc.) so don’t feel like all that extra is a waste.

As for my spinach, ricotta craving: I’ve been sauteing some onion, garlic, and spinach together in a touch of lard until the spinach wilts and then removing it from the heat.  I toss in some ricotta cheese and pour it all out on a small corn tortilla.  It’s not exactly a taco and there is way more filling than shell but it’s yummy and it hits all those cravings I’ve been having in a healthy way.

What’s your favorite way to eat ricotta?

Over the weekend, I received a box from my Aunt Tish and in that box was this amazing book.  It was my grandma’s.  Jeff and I have had such fun looking through it’s worn pages, seeing my grandma’s hand-written notes and laughing at some her circled recipes.

My grandma was an amazing baker and I fondly remember always wanting her to frost cakes with Seven-Minute Icing.  I was so pleased to find the recipe she used not only in this book, but circled inside the covers.

Of course, these days I don’t eat eggs, but I’m still so happy to have this in my library.  The book is full of so many wonderful things including chapters on food preservation full of tips “experienced jelly makers know,” how to dry, how to freeze and much more.  The copyright on this particular book is 1953 and some of the canning information is out-of-date but it is still very useful.  Included in the book was, The Food Preserver’s Creed.  I loved it so much I turned into a small poster to hang in the kitchen.

If you’d like to have a copy of The Food Preserver’s Creed above, you can download and print a pdf file: Food Preservers Creed.

Note: The canning jar graphic in the ‘poster’ came from: The Graphics Fairy

We don’t keep store-bought crackers around because most are full of stuff we’d rather not eat and the ones that are somewhat natural are expensive.  Still, I occasionally get a craving for a cracker and a little something sweet.  This inevitably led to some experimenting and these tasty, crispy crackers.  Crackers that are gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, and refined sugar free.

Sweet Sesame Crackers

• 1/2 Cup Brown Rice Flour
• 1/2 Cup Almond Meal
• 2 Tablespoons Flax Meal
• 1/4 teaspoon Baking Powder
• 2 Tablespoons Sesame Seeds
• Pinch of Salt
• 1/4 Cup Maple Syrup

Preheat oven to 350.

Whisk together the dry ingredients.  Stir in the maple syrup until the mixture pulls together, loosely.

On a cookie sheet lined with parchment or a silicone baking sheet, turn out the dough.  Top the dough with a piece of wax paper.  Use the wax paper to prevent the dough from sticking hopelessly to a rolling pin.  Roll the dough out thinly and evenly.  Remove the wax paper and cut the dough into cracker shapes (a pizza wheel works great).

Bake in the preheated oven 15 to 20 minutes.  They will darken as they bake, we like them quite crispy and dark but I suggest checking them at 15 minutes and adjust from there to suit your personal tastes.

Note: I imagine you could subsitute other flours for the rice but I didn’t test it any other way.