Four Burner plus Oven Kinda Weekend.

Jen's Lunches This Week (#4)
I was a cookin' fiend this weekend, folks. Had all four burners plus the oven going yesterday - WOOT!! Apparently to make up for being an über slacker the last two weeks. Felt really good, to be active in the kitchen and making things. It's cheap-ish therapy - for me, anyway. 

Here's a quick list of what occurred in my kitchen between Saturday and Sunday:
- New batch of Greek yogurt, with whole milk.
- Batch of Marcella Hazan's Tomato Sauce, which I combined with Food Merchants Organic Polenta, for quick and tasty lunches this week. 
- Cooked 1 lb. of lacinato kale and 1/2 lb. baby spinach, cooled it and squeezed all the water out.
- Steamed a bunch of asparagus (as in one bunch, not like so much that I'm generalizing as "a bunch").
- Cooked up 2 cups of red quinoa and 1 1/2 cups of wild rice.

 

The only things I didn't do, but need to to in short order, were prepare a gorgeous head of leaf lettuce for salads; roast 8 large and lovely brussel sprouts; deal with a large head of broccoli. 

An expensive yogurt batch.

I made a batch of yogurt last night. 

Nothing remarkable about that, really, except that the previous two batches were utter failures, so I felt much relief and joy that *this* batch worked. 

Enter Genius Spouse, who chimed in with, "Sweetie, for your yogurt, do you need consistent temps? Maybe that's the issue, since we turn the furnace down each night". 

Dammit, Beavis. 

He's completely right. I've been wrapping the warmed crock in two thick, nice beach towels, and leaving it to chillax on the kitchen counter, but we like to sleep in a fairly chilly house. Plus even though it's technically not winter until Saturday, it has been winter for a few weeks.

I also suspect my I-have-no-idea-where-I-even-got-it-or-when thermometer may be biting the dust. I was farting around with it while heating the milk on the stove, and it seemed to have differing opinions of temperature at times. I realize I'm imprecise when cooking, but there is a time and place for preciseness. Fermented foods are up there. 

A weekend at home means cooking. WOOT!

For the past two weekends, we've been gallivanting about - drinking micro-brews, visiting with old friends, meeting new friends, and jamming out to some seriously awesome music. Posts to come on all the fun we've had. 

Needless to say, zilcho has gotten accomplished on the home front - although Spouse was Master Launderer on one of his vacation days, so at least we have clean knickers, eh?

We have a local farmer, who stops by my workplace, once a week in August to sell his homegrown beefsteak tomatoes and melons. It's a total bargain for homegrown 'maters: 3 for $1 American dollar. I picked up 6 nice looking ones today. No melons because I'm the only one that will eat them and I'm expecting good stuff in my CSA bag tomorrow. 

Farmer Dave 'maters - yummmmmeeeeeee

On the to-cook list this weekend:

• Roasted tomatoes from the cherry ones I'll get in my CSA bag tomorrow
• Tomato sauce from the 6 Farmer Dave tomatoes I just bought (+ herbs from my garden)
• For lunch next week: wild rice, quinoa & spinach casserole (recipe coming soon)
• Yogurt - my Green Bean Delivery every two weeks includes 2 half gallons of Hartzler's Dairy Milk
• Tzatziki because my CSA bag will have cukes in it
• If I'm feeling super cuckoo, maybe homemade pita (from Frugal By Choice, Cheap by Necessity)

We'll see how far I actually get as this is a fairly ambitious list and we do have social engagements and all. I also need to spend some time with my baby garden. It hasn't rained much this week and I'm sure all my plants are thirsty. Reason #2 why I'm really a horrible gardener. Owel.

Are you thinking about your plans for the weekend? 

Any cooking or baking in store?

Homemade Yogurt. Easier than you think.

I love yogurt. A lot. I eat it every day. At first, I ate it because I liked it. Then I realized how important the active cultures are to my gut health - especially since Spouse likes to remark I have the stomach of a cat. Then, with the rise of Greek style yogurts, I ate that because it is substantially higher in protein (and I honestly prefer the thicker texture).

But at $1+ per container or the larger containers just being hard to navigate, I started investigating alternatives. At first, I did some research on yogurt making machines but those seemed a little confusing + expensive. Then one of my favorite blogs had a post on how she makes homemade yogurt – in a machine but the first comment mentioned making yogurt in a crock pot. I’m always trying to come up with new things to do in my crock pot so I googled “crock pot yogurt” instead. WOW. Who knew.