It's Peanut-Butter Bragging Time! Or, 13 Things You Can Make From Scratch if you Have Time and Inclination

Nothing for 42 days then 2 after 2 days, eh? Bet you weren't expecting that, eh? I guess my old friend Calliope (or would it be Thalia? Oddly enough the Greeks didn't have a specific Muse for food blogs) has come to visit again.

Today is going to be a short one, because, ironically, I actually have some cooking to do instead of just blogging about it. For today's list I present to you, "Things You Can, Actually Cook at Home and Don't Have to Buy in the Supermarket With Lots of Preservatives Like E-212 and E-221 Which are Probably Going to Kill You and Murder Your Loved Ones in their Sleep."

Or, in a less stylized, more click-baiting way of putting it, "10 Things that You Should be Making From Scratch!" Ack. Ugh. Gross click-baiting.

The thing about 'should be making yourself from scratch'ing - and this is a huuuuuuge caveat - it costs you time. I'm not going to lie to you - it does. Any of those dumb websites who are all like, 'Oh, You Can Make Your Own Pizza in Five Minutes or Less, Click Here on our Ads to Find Out How and Also to Lose Tummy Fat' are full of bullshit. Seriously. There's this weird triangle that not enough food blogs pay attention to, and it goes something like this:

You'd think with a degree in graphic design it would have taken less than 1/2 an hour to create this stupid triangle...

This is one of those triangles where you get to choose 2 out of 3 of the prongs, yet not all three. So, for example, I tend to make healthy food that is inexpensive, at the cost of my time. So my chart looks like this:

Get it? Others get healthy food that doesn't take them long to make, but costs a lot. Or (probably not the readers of this blog) buy cheap food that is quick, and crappy for you. I think you all get my point.

Now that we've established that, yes, making cheese and jam and stuff from scratch isn't going to happen in 5 seconds a day, and that if you have 11 kids and a full-time job, you probably have other things to do with you time, let's get to the bragging part of the blog.

Things I always make from scratch because it's worth the time

• Tomato sauce - so easy. Just chuck tomatoes and an onion in a pot and let them cook to death.
• Bread - cheaper to make than to buy. Plus I have a recipe that requires no kneading. 
• Soup broth - really what's the point of buying. Just chuck bits and bobs of veggies into a pot and boil while you are cooking soup. No big whoop. 
• Pizza - see "tomato sauce" and "bread."
• Granola - take rolled oats. Mix with nuts and sweet stuff. Bake. Congrats, you've made granola. Why would you spend 20-30 nis on that?
• Hummus and Tehinni - buy raw ingredients. Stick in food processor. Done.
• Orange Marmalade and candied orange peels.

Things that can be made from scratch, but aren't always worth the time:

• Mayonnaise - very cheap and good to make, but when you only want a tsp every week, the homemade stuff goes bad.
• Pickles - easy to make, but sometimes I don't think about wanting a pickle 3 days in advance.
• Jam - yes, I make homemade jam, yes, it's easy, and yes, I do it often. But sometimes, just sometimes, you just want blueberry jam.
• Cheese - when I remember, I make ricotta and labneh from scratch. Otherwise, expensive cheese-shop it is.
• Yogurt - ack! I admit it! Sometimes I buy it. I am so ashamed. 
• Croissants - Sometimes I can't wait three days for buttery goodness. (Goes well with homemade orange marmalade.) 

Things I recently learned you can make from scratch: 

• Apple cider vinegar - is basically fermented apple cores. How cool is that?
• Ketchup - Turns out it's easy to make! And no icky E-102 etc. (see, Murdering Your Family in Their Sleep, above.)

Things I would love to make from scratch one day, but haven't yet dared: 

• Tofu
• Pickled lemons
• Olives 
• Hard cheeses (shout-out to Annanas)

Others? Questions, comments, complaints? Ideas for things I should be making and aren't? Complimentary cheese plate? You know how to find me.

Non-snooty Homemade Yogurt

Forgive me, blogging world, for I have sinned. It has been 42 days (!!!) since my last post, and I haven't even fulfilled my promises made for Pesach recipes. (OTOH, I haven't seen any posts claiming that people are starving for lack of Kosher for Pesach vegetarian recipes, so I don't feel too too guilty. Just a little guilty.) Also, I have been privy to some amazing resources for Pesachy food recipes that friends and friends of friends have written, so I don't feel like I necessarily need to reinvent the wheel there.

Frankly, I have been feeling a little disheartened with the blogging thing lately. There are soooooo maaaaaaaany good food blogs out there these days, and I don't know how much I'm going to contribute. Lil 'ol me. Just now, for example, I was scrolling over to Smitten Kitchen looking for sidedishes, and that made me feel bad about myself, and want to kick myself for not putting up my own recipes on the internet since before blogging was big, and how stupid it was that I hadn't gone out and gotten an amazing camera, because isn't she about my age and now she's big and famous and the queen of cooking things at home from scratch and isn't she just doing things that I could have done myself had I thought of it, dammit?

And then I imagine a heavenly voice calling out that reminds me that nobody expected me to be Rav Zusha, just to be me. Which makes me feel a little better, but also a little cynical because I don't believe fairy tales anymore, and I don't have a fancy camera anyway.

Also, blogging has become a lot of work these days. The last few posts I've posted have taken HOURS to write. Cuz, you know, there's the writing part, and that's fairly easy. But then there's the making the recipe, so I can have nice photos to post (I don't know about you all, but when I read food blogs, I don't really read them. I just go for the photos.), and then my crappy camera is really my crappy phone, so I have to instagram or canva the photos to make them somewhat less crappy. And then I have to play with graphics and fidget and stuff and that makes writing blog entries a pain in the butt less fun. Less fun makes me less inclined to blog.

So there you are. It's not that I haven't been cooking. I have been. Most of it has been edible. I just haven't been able to bring myself to invest an entire day in food blogging. Also, I have a thing about inspiration and writing when the mood strikes, which lately it hasn't been. But I do want to be writing more, and for that I think there needs to be fewer pictures so that blogging becomes more fun for me again, less of a hassle. You all okay with that? Okay? Okay.

So I've been making yogurt from scratch, did you know you can do that? You can. It's not difficult. Worst comes to worse you get it wrong and then you just use spoiled milk to make muffins and they come out fine and nobody dies. So I'm going to tell you about yogurt, but there will be no photos. Just imagine something white and milky.

 I has no photos. Here, have a video.

 

Here. Homemade yogurt recipe. Harrumph. 

Hypothetically you do need some specialized equipment for this one, namely a thermometer and a thermos. You might be able to do without the thermometer, just play it by finger; and in place of thermos I've read that you can use a heating blanket or oven. Basically just some way of keeping yogurt at an even temperature for a few hours. Feel free to experiment and let me know what works or didn't. If you want to go to a snooty source which will tell you to buy yogurt cultures and to use a yogurt maker, you can go here. Just take them with grain of salt.

Ingredients

• milk
• old yogurt - very important that it has active bacteria in it. I think, though I'm not certain, that that's any plain yogurt marked 'bio.'

1. Pour milk into thermos. This isn't necessary for recipe, it's mainly just to measure out how much yogurt your container can handle
2. Pour milk into small pot. Heat until it reaches 185 degrees F. This, like, kills bacteria or something. I've read that if you don't have a thermometer, you can stick your finger into the hot milk, and when it's hot enough that you immediately want to take your finger out (ouch!) it's hot enough. Sounds like fun, eh? Or you could invest in a thermometer.
3. Let it sit until it cools to 110, or "just warm to the touch" in snooty blogger speak. Whisk periodically so it doesn't get that icky foam at top. At this time start your kettle going, to heat some water.
4. Stir yogurt into the milk. How much? Some. I usually use about 2 tbs. Or more. Whatever. Some. 
5. Now, I like to first heat my thermos a little. Dunno how strictly necessary this is. I just pour in some heated water, swoosh it around, and then pour it out. I think it helps the thermos stay hot.
6. Pour runny milk thing into thermos. Close thermos. Let sit somewhere between 4-8 hours. The last time I left it overnight, and it was fine. Delicious, even. 
7.  Cool yogurt in fridge. 
8. Eat yogurt.

 The cons of this yogurt is that it doesn't stay good quite as long as commercial yogurt (duh) and sometimes it's a little piecey or chunky. But the pros are that it's SO MUCH WAY CHEAPER than the store-bought stuff! This is coming from someone who just blew 50 nis on about 3 yogurts the other week. Sheesh. So make this. Then make homemade jam. Then combine the two to make flavored yogurt, and STICK IT TO THE MAN CUZ YOU JUST MADE YOUR OWN HOMEMADE YOGURT.

Oh, and then reserve some yogurt, cuz once you've made it once, you can use the old yogurt to make new yogurt, ad infinitum. It's the gift that keeps on giving, like herpes.

Beans Beans the Magical Legume

In other, non-cooking related news, Mr. Better Butter is no longer employed in an actual office where they pay him money in exchange for services rendered.

(This is, actually, going to bring us back to food, and I'll tell you how. Just be patient.)

A strange thing happens when we are both jobless. Despite the fact that I, supposedly, have some earning power and could probably go out and get a crappy desk job fairly immediately, and despite the fact that Mr. Blogger will probably be collecting more unemployment than I could ever earn, and despite the fact that we actually have some money saved - despite all this, when we are both unemployed, I go into what I call EXTREME SAVING MODE. (The good thing is that this fits in nicely with living as a frugal pantry-eating, dumpster-diving, sustainability freak...the bad thing is, like any other extreme diet, it's not actually that sustainable and once we get jobs, I tend to go on teeny tiny crazed spending sprees. It's how we got our lovely couch.)

For now, though, I'm going to try to be über-thrifty in my kitchen. (You know I'm serious because I used an umlaut.)

umlaut = serious

This fits in nicely with the slightly neglected pantry clean, it fits nicely with sustainability, and it fits in wonderfully with clean eating and living from scratch. Not that I don't bake all the bread from scratch anyway, but now there may be more legumes consumed. (Human methane emissions keep you warm, right? Saves on heating bill!! Win-win!)

Beans, beans, they're good for your... pocket

So I'm just going to finish up by giving you an über-savingsy, frugal, clean-living recipe, because that's what I do here on this blog. It is brought to you partially by my recent brain-wash sustainability course, and it's a great last minute 'oh-shit-I've-got-last-minute-guests-coming-what-do-I-feed-them' recipe. It's also a great 'oh-shit-there-is-nothing-in-the-house-but-lentils-what-do-I-eat' recipe. So now, without further ado, I bring you:

Red-lentil Hummus Recipe (Tastes Just Like Real Hummus Recipe)

Note: for this recipe I'm going to do that thing that irritates the crap out of hubby, and not give you precise measurements. The real reason is because I don't know them and I've been making it differently each time, but we can pretend the reason is because I'm assuming all readers are either serious foodies or just here for the jokes. Or both. If you need precise measurements, comment and I'll measure next time.

Ingredients:

• Red lentils
• Tehinna paste
• Lemon juice
• Parsley/coriander/random onion paste you make by chopping up onions, herbs, and olive oil
• Salt
• Spices like chili or cayenne if you import it from America or cumin or something
• Ice-cold water]

1. Soak the red lentils, with intent to sprout them
2. Lose patience after a few hours because it takes too long, and cook them instead - just for a few minutes, until they're soft enough to mash.
3. Stick in food processor. Process. Add other stuff. Taste. Add other stuff except for liquid. Keep tasting and adding until it tastes good. 
4. Add liquid until it gets smooth enough to spread.
5. Serve. Feel snooty that you made red lentil hummus.

Hey hey dumpster diving dumpster diving, hey hey diving into a dumpster

I was just on a really cool educational neighborhood walk as part of this recent attempt to actually metamorphasis into my mother sustainability course that I've been doing lately. We went...well, on a dumpster dive.

That's a perfectly gorgeous woodcarving that someone threw out!!!

You still there?

Ok, now that I've rid myself of 10% of my lurkers, let me tell you about this dumpster dive, and explain what it has to do with this blog.

You see, it wasn't *really* a dumpster dive, in the sense that you may be thinking of dumpster dives. That is, the instructor did actually go into dumpsters. But she didn't dive, she took out a bag at a time, nobody got gross or dirty, and the goal was not to take home furniture, food, or other people's trash (though a one of the folks did indeed take home a perfectly good bucket.)

The goal was to talk about garbage, see how much people threw out, and try to reduce the amount we throw out in our own personal lives.

Allow myself to get up on my soapbox for a bit here [gets up on soapbox]:

We, as a people, throw out way too damn stuff. Israel is THE SECOND WORST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD in terms of throwing out food (USA is worse. Haha.)  We think of recycling as a panacea. It's not. As I learned today, it's a red herring. No, it's worse than a red herring. It's a justification to buy more stuff  - and we throw out so. Much. Shit.

It's not about the environment. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I don't give a rat's ass about the environment. It's about the five-year-olds in China who are sent to work so you can have a new iphone (NO AUTOCORRECT I'M NOT GOING TO CAPITALIZE THE SECOND LETTER.) It's about sweatshops where people can die or lose limbs because they are working in an unsafe environment. It's about rich people at the top of big companies getting rich off of the backs of their workers who are paid minimum-wage because they pulled off the hoax of selling something that FALLS FREE FROM THE SKY, put it in a bottle, and sell it to you for money! It's about living in a world where marriage, friendships, life, and belongings are disposable - where you can just go out and buy another of everything because everything is cheap and nothing has any value. 

Throwing out less isn't just about all of that. It's about living in a world where you know where your vegetables come from and that they weren't coated in wax to make them shinier, where your garbage doesn't disappear from sight the second it leaves your bin, where things have real value and meaning, and real furry creatures from Alpha Centauri are REAL furry creatures from Alpha Centauri!!!

[pant pant pant.]

AND WHY ARE ONLY MEN ALLOWED ON SOAPBOXES, EH?

Let's talk about food for a second here, and let's talk about throwing out food, and not throwing out food. 

We saw a ridiculous amount of food get thrown out on the streets of Jerusalem. We saw a perfectly good package of Tim-Tams (one brave soul even ate one), we saw a package of bread that looked FINE (see my last rant about my opinion on throwing out bread), we saw a really fancy leftover sandwich that hadn't been touched, and  tons and tons of pineapple ends.

I'm going to say this once, and I'm going to state it loud and clear: I FIRMLY BELIEVE FOOD SHOULD NEVER BE THROWN OUT. See my soap box above for more information, but really, it's not about the starving children in Africa. This time. 

There are. So. Many. Good. Things to be made with leftover food. Even at the end, when it's truly gone to meet its maker - it should get composted, not thrown out. Becuase you see, decomposed food turns into compost, and compost gets used to grow new food, and the circle of life continues. 

Just without the evil foreshadowing bit

You see, you might not have realized this, but this blog has an Agenda. That's right. I said it. In my ideal world, we would live in that romanticized time in which people didn't throw out clothes - they repaired them until you couldn't repair them anymore.  And then they made them into rags. And then into rag dolls. And then rag carpets. And then finally into wicks, and that's how they kept warm the whole long cold winter. 

So, same thing with food. 

Therefore, I'm going to give you a short list of things you can do with leftover food, and if you don't have time and inclination, give it to me, and I will eat for free for the rest of my life. (That's actually not my agenda. My agenda is for less food to get thrown out. But hey, this is good too.)

Bread -->frozen bread (stays good for ages. Freezers and microwaves are your friends) ◊ croutons ◊ bread soup (yum) ◊ bread crumbs ◊ bread pudding 
◊ french toast, and thanks to Bishul Bezol for the suggestion

Leftover or bad Wine --> french onion soup ◊ mulled wine ◊ soups ◊ stews 

Almost rotten Milk --> homemade yogurt (blog post pending) ◊ homemade cheese ◊ muffins ◊ cornbread  ◊ pancakes

Tiny bit of leftover Cheese --> freeze (stays good forever) ◊ pizza ◊ pasta ◊ quiche 

Leftover tiny bit of Meat that you don't know what to do with --> Soup ◊ stew ◊ pot pie ◊ burritos

Stale Cookies/cakes --> (First of all, what are you doing with leftover cake? But if you are, then make) trifle ◊ bread pudding ◊ tiramisu   

Dying Fruit --> jams ◊ dried fruit ◊ chop, freeze, make into smoothies

Dying Veg --> a soup. Always a soup. Or pickled things. But it's cold, so now all I can think of is soup.  

Etc. etc. I could go on. But I think you get the basic idea? Or do I have to preach more to the choir? 

Please send on more ideas, and I will update this list. But basically? Please don't throw food out. There were starving children in the Holocaust.   

Let's Talk about Bread, Baby

Let me start off by saying, I love bread. I seriously love bread. I pity you all you glutards out there, and I look upon atkinsians with derision and contempt. (Actually, if you are gluten-intolerant, you should probably stop reading right now, because this post is basically an ode to bread.)

Bread is awesome. (Not a huge fan of sandwiches, but that's another story to be told another time.) Bread is so awesome that there was a whole exhibit at the museum a few years ago dedicated entirely to bread that I had to go see as part of my degree (may or may not have had something to do with the fact that my professor was also the curator of that exhibit.)

I call this 'Pantry Cleanse' Bread

I do NOT love store bought bread. Haven't bought it for years. Feh. Ptooey. Yuck.

The difference between store bought bread and homemade bread is like the difference between erotic and kinky (erotic is using a feather, kinky the whole chicken...no? Am I the only one with that cultural reference? I hope not, because if so I sound weird.)

Store-bought bread, especially slightly old and stale store-bought bread, is sad. It tastes kinda blah. You just KNOW there's a million chemicals in it, it barely has any flavor, and they charge about 200% more than the cost of the ingredients. I don't get it.

It's a flower! It's the rosetta stone! No, it's tear-apart bread!

There's just so many things I love about homemade bread. Taste is just the beginning...you know what? This sounds like a lengthy one. I'm going to make a list:

1.  I love how cheap bread is to make.
2. I love the aroma that wafts over the home when you've just made bread.
3. I love kneading bread - you can really punch and get all your aggression out on it.
4. I love how forgiving bread is - it's very hard to ruin bread. Trust me, I've tried.
5. I love how the ingredients can be changed ever so slightly to make vastly different breads.
6. I love how many things there are to do with bread leftovers (bread thrown out on the side of the road, as people often do here, makes me want to cry.)
7. I love a nice crunchy crust.
8. I love sourdough, both the eating and the making.
9. I love how yeast is alive.
10.  I love how there are so many customs, superstitions, traditions, and cultural significance about bread. 

Oh, also, I love how it makes the house nice and warm while baking. (I'm a little cold right now. It's only 23 degrees out there.)

I haven't always had success with bread. Oh yes. FEAR NOT OH YOU NON-BAKERS. I too, have failed. So many times. Seriously. So so many times. I've made bread that was hard as a rock; bread that was gooey inside; bread that didn't rise; bread that rose too much. I've done it all.

And I'm still here. Baking distinctly edible bread. So you can do it too, and if you're afraid, call me. I'll hold your hand.

As we walk off...into the sunset...though, um, not in a weird way.

For now, though, since I'm still doing that pantry cleanse, I'm not going to post a bread recipe, even though I baked one today. First of all, because I have about a gazillion bread recipes, and it would be hard to choose just one to post here; and second, like I wrote before - bread is so versatile and forgiving, that you make a slight change - and boom! different bread recipe. Which basically means that I have no idea what I baked today.

Instead, I'm going to post a bread pudding recipe. Because I had tons of bits bobs and the other of about a zillion different end pieces of bread in my freezer, and something had to be done about it. I used some leftover challah, a leftover muffin, a leftover (very stale) pita, and I think some savory nutty bread too. It came out delicious. (I'm going to start that diet...tomorrow.)

Mark Bittman's Bread Pudding

(Have I mentioned that MB just recently joined my line-up of kitchen gurus?  Welcome, MB.)

• 700 ml milk*
• 55 grams butter
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 100 grams sugar
• 8 slices stale bread (or, approximately that much bread comprised of whatever is left in your freezer)**
• pinch salt
• 3 eggs

Topping

• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

 *Yes, ml and grams. If you don't have scale, go here.
**Yes, freezer. Always keep leftover bread in the freezer. NOT the fridge. It crystallizes in there or something.

1. Preheat oven to 350F/175C. 
2. Butter your baking dish - use whatever fits. Then break up the leftover bread bits and put them in there. Smush if necessary.
3. Heat together milk, butter, sugar, cinnamon, salt until the butter melts. Pour over bread, let sit for a few minutes. MB says to 'occasionally submerge any pieces of bread that float to the top.' I says to shmush it. 
4. Beat the eggs. Stir and shmush in with the rest of it.
5. Top with the sugar-cinnamon topping.
6. You want to bake it in a water bath - and if you're not sure what that means, you should probably consult one of my gurus - I recommend Alton Brown in the cheesecake episode. Basically, FIRST put in the pan on the oven tray, THEN pour in the water on the side while it's already in the oven. Do it wrong and you risk a watery death to your dessert (been there...done that.)
7. Bake 45-60 min, or until it mostly passes the toothpick test
8. Try not to eat it all and save some for your spouse so they can get fat too. 

 (The picture did not come out nice. Just picture something really appetizing and creamy and delicious here.

Top 10 Reasons You Should Click on my Bait, Or, How Not to be a First World Douche in the Kitchen

Hello again, dear readers. It's been two weeks and I'm sure you're curious about how my pantry clean is doing. It's going pretty well, I'm happy to say. My pantry is, somehow, STILL bursting at the seams, and I think we still have enough food to feed a small army and/or survive for a good year after the zombie apocalypse.

I managed to use the rye 'berries' (as it turns out they're called. Who knew?) in a pretty good whole-wheat kinda sourdough rye bread (blog post pending), I finished up our barley and our quinoa, I'm slooooowly making a dent into the rice, and I found out that I have another two whole kilos of oatmeal and of whole wheat flour hiding in the pantry.

But, before we get more into the whole pantry thing, I feel like I'm getting a bit ahead of myself with this blog.

You see, two things happened this week that made me realize I'm missing a vitally important blog entry.

One is, we went to someone's house over the weekend, and I discussed this whole eating through the pantry thing with the hostess. She was completely overwhelmed by the idea - and that made me so sad! I don't want this blog to be a snobby 'oh look at me and how ammmmmaaazing I am that I make fig jam' blog! I want this to be funny! Down-to-earth! Inspiring! Showing you that you, too, can make random weird meals out of things that you find in your pantry, like the really strange sardine-red-pepper-white cheese on crackers I had for dinner last night!

Objects in photo may taste stranger than they appear

The other thing that happened, is that I came across one of those lists of 'oh look at me and my blog and here are 10 click-baiting things you should know about food!' So I clicked (grrr) and I went to their blog, and wouldn't you know it, it was all about avoiding white flour and only buying organic whole-locally-grown-chickens-who-have-been-fed-nothing-but-chia-seeds and other such stupid first world problems. So I read that, and I thought, GRRR, and then I thought, ok, I better make my list of how my kitchen works. Without further ado, I bring you:

Babka's Top 10 Rules for how not to be a First World Douche in the Kitchen

1. Eat real food. By real I mean ingredients you can pronounce. If you can't pronounce it, you probably shouldn't eat it. That being said, if you do eat it - it probably won't kill you, so stop freaking out about it. 
2. White flour and white sugar are delicious. Eat them. 
3. Salt is delicious. Eat it. If you have a problem with sodium, stop going out to so many fast food joints. If you own one of those stupid cookbooks that recommend low sodium things, I give you permission to throw it across the room, stomp on it, tear it into little pieces, and burn it.
4. Margarine and MSG, otoh, are not real food. EXTERMINATE. EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE. Or see point 1.
5. Organic food and vegetables are great - if you're rich. If you are a starving child in Africa, eat whatever food you can find. Realize that all organic things, however great they might seem, are definitely a First World advantage that you should feel grateful if you have, and not beat yourself up if you don't.
6. Not every frickin' meal has to be animal. Vegetables are delicious and they're cheap. Stop eating so much meat. Not every meal has to involve an animal who died so that you could get fatter. 
7. Quit throwing out so much frickin food. (See 'starving children in Africa.') If you have leftovers in the fridge and aren't sure what to do with them, add an egg and some bread crumbs, fry them, and call it a day. If it's really dead and you can't revive it, however - 
8. Compost, don't throw out. Find a friendly local composter. It's not hard, it's good for the ground, and it saves on those gigantic landfills that aren't going anywhere fast. 
9. If it doesn't have a cape, stop calling it Super! If I'm going to eat super-foods, I fully expect to be able to fly, turn invisible, and to live forever. If it doesn't do that, I want my money back.

And finally, the most important of all:   

1. Be able to play in the kitchen. Yes, I have millet and oats in my kitchen. Possibly even several different kinds of oats. I do this because I like playing. I like being creative. I get strange ingredients and I figure out what I can do with them. Sometimes I'll buy chia, and sometimes I'll buy whole rye. Sometimes I make ketchup from scratch, and sometimes I'll try pickling. But whatever I do, I do it because I enjoy it and it's fun for me. The kitchen should be the place where you feel comfortable to go to get good food. Not the place you feel stressful because your ingredients have to comply with some stupid top ten list that some intern came up with to bait your clicks. If you enjoy playing and want to attempt bread - follow along with me. There will be many mishaps. That's ok. Keep calm and carry on cooking.

I've always wanted to generate one of these!

The jarring truth about jams (or, the jamming truth about jars)

Here's the thing. I don't really know what I'm doing when it comes to jams.

I do know one thing, though. Store-bought jam is EXPENSIVE. Bloody expensive. And I can't figure out why! Fruit, when it's overripe, is dirt cheap. Sugar is cheap. I'm pretty sure pectin is cheap (and I hope I didn't lose you with that fancy foodie term, dear reader. Pectin is just a fancy word for fruit sugar.) Is it the amount of work that gets put in? The electricity? The fact that it's a fancy first world food that only us #firstworldproblempeople get to eat?

I'm not sure. But that's why I've been making jam at home.

C'est non le strawberry jam.

Now, clarification. I don't think that what I'm making is *jam* jam. (Or maybe it's not preserves? I don't know.) My point is, I wouldn't trust it on a shelf for months and months and years and years. I don't have the knowledge, and I don't have the equipment, and I wouldn't really want to risk the botulism.

What I *have* been making is refrigerator jam, and it is delicious. It gets eaten quickly, it lasts in my fridge for a month or so, and both myself and my significant other have eaten it recently and are both still alive. So far, I've done cherry jam (yum), cherry jam with a drop of almond flavoring (OMG YUM), peach/plum//apricot jam (still good, but not as good as that almond.)

Today, life handed me figs fresh off the tree. So today I am attempting fig jam.

I'll jam you my pretties! And your little dog, too!
Hum. Ok. That just got weird rather quickly.

Sometimes, when I'm sad that I don't live in a country with fresh raspberries growing wild and mushrooms everywhere (shout-out, R.R!), I am consoled that we at least have fig trees growing wild. So many that I truly cannot understand why anyone would pay the ridiculous price they charge for figs in the store.

Now, I'm not going to go into much detail here about how to jar things. I'm not here for that. If you really want to learn about it in depth, check out Alton Brown (my kitchen guru, as I may have mentioned) in the Urban Preservation episode about jam. Then, if you want to know more and are more patient than I am, head on over to some random blog that I don't particularly know if you can trust and read the whole veeeeeeeeeery looooooooong article with everything you could possibly ever want to know about canning and jarring and stuff. Finally, check out the newest edition to my list of kitchen gurus, David Lebovitz, read his cherry jam 'no recipe' recipe, and pray to whatever god you pray to that you can still find cherries this year.

For now, I will tell you what I do when I make "jam" (maybe I should call that "jamm" or "gamm" - you know, like one of those trademark things that don't want to use the real word, so they use a silly misspelled one instead.)

Babka's Random Fig Jamm 

Ingredients 

See?? Fig seeds!

• Figs picked from the tree that morning
• Sugar or honey (according to the links above it's 3/4 of the amount of fruit. I find that to be a bit sweet. So do what you want, but I take no responsibility)*
• a bit of lemon or lime juice (a squeeze or tsp or so)
• water (some)
• cardamom, a bit of white pepper (oh yes!!), and a bit of almond flavoring (I'm starting to think almond just makes everything better.)

1. Clean the figs. Cut the figs. Check the figs VERY CAREFULLY for worms or bugs. Ew. Gross.
2. Weigh the figs. See, I told you you should get a kitchen scale. 
3. Put all the ingredients in a pot and cook them until they're dead. Really dead. Like probably 30 minutes worth of dead. Do the spoon test that David Lebovitz taught me about (put a plate in the freezer, and when you want to test if the jam is done, you plop a bit on the cold plate and see if it smudges. Works great.) 
4. Cool and put into a clear jar. I don't have real canning jars. I just use clean leftover jars from previously bought jam. Like I said, it hasn't killed me yet. 
5. Refrigerate and enjoy.

*I used honey because I was completely out of white sugar. I've never tried using honey before, no idea if it will work. I don't see why it wouldn't, honey is a natural preservative. I'll let you know how it works out.

Chia Part III - In Which There is a Picture of a Cat

As promised.

My apologies for the clearly staged cat there.

I fixed the chia. That doesn't mean that I'm done with the chia, I think there's more to be done and explored, and so many people have commented with potential things I can do with the rest of my bunch of chia seeds (and that's not even including the ones who suggested I give it to them.), that clearly, there is more experimenting to be done.

Just, maybe, not quite yet. I gots other things to write. Like homemade marshmallows, for example, which are much yummier if homemade and not nearly as complicated as one would think.

But before we get there. I fixed the chia tapioca soy milk soup.

How, you ask?

First, I tortured it a bit. Yes, I did things to it that one really should not do to food. I'm sorry, chia. I froze it, then refridgerated it, then refroze it, then defrosted it. It was not happy with me, but it did bend to my will. So ha.

Then, I added a bunch of sugar, some milk, some more cocoa, and a secret ingredient that I will reveal below. And I made them into popsicles. (I want to say that most anything can be made edible by turning them into popsicles, but that's not even remotely true. Like, mac and cheese popsicles would be DISGUSTING. So I can't say that. Fortunately, this is not disgusting at all. It's actually pretty good.)

I like how the strewn mint makes this look fancy

It does have that slight taste of 'huh I think there's something healthy in here but I can't white figure out what...' so if you're looking for a way too sneak more chia seeds into your kids diet, this is it. It's ever so slightly grainy. But - it's chocolate. So, chocolate.

Now, I'm going to share my trick for making things edible aka my trick for turning almost dead fruit into yummy popsicles with you. It might sound ridiculous and like something only unemployed food bloggers do, but I assure you (and this is coming from me, the non-liar), it's quick, it's easy, and it's worth it.

It - is syrup.

In this case, mint syrup, but also basil syrup, ginger syrup. And lord knows what other kinds of other syrups you can make, but I haven't tried everything yet.

This is why you should make syrup:

• We've already discussed how I hate throwing things out. This happens to me a lot with herbs. You buy a bunch, use a handful, and still have herbs coming out the wazoo. Or, you only used the leafs, and still have tons of stalk. You make syrup.
• You hate the taste of water and buying tons of coke is EXPENSIVE. This will save you so much money.
• You have a soda stream and just recently noticed that all their syrups contain aspartame. EWWWWWW. Syrup uses sugar. Yum. (I'm not gonna say it's good for you, but at least it's not aspartame. Ew.)

Making syrup really is actually easy, and then you can stick them into those convenient squeeze bottles and stick them in your fridge and they last forever. The Internet thinks they only last a week. I think the Internet is wrong. It's sugar. Doesn't sugar preserve things?

Here is the recipe for syrup, and you do not need any special equipment. If you don't have a convenient squeeze bottle you can even use a jar. (OMG did I just say you could use a jar?!?? That is SOOO unpinteresty of me.)

Chocolate popsicles. I has them.

Simple Syrup recipe

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup herbs or a bunch of herbs or a bunch of ginger peels that you didn't want to throw away

1. Combine all ingredients in a small pot. 
2. Cook on low heat. Stir occasionally until sugar dissolves.
3. Remove from heat and let cool completely.
4. Use a colander and/or a cheesecloth (see why you should buy a cheesecloth?) and strain. The easiest way to do this is to pour into something with a spout, and then from that into a jar or squeeze bottle.
5. Make popsicles

Make cheese! Make cheese now!

The annual opportunity to have cheesecake is almost upon us (yay cheese!) and for this opportunity I highly - HIGHLY - recommend you make your own cream cheese. Why? Do I really have to explain why? It's delicious, it's about a million times cheaper when you make it yourself, and it might have fewer preservatives. That's why. Also, it's easy.*

*So as I do not become one of those irritating Pinterest Liars I have formerly spoken out against (and whose very existence was the inspiration for this blog), I am going to put a gigantic qualifier on 'easy.' It is easy IF you have cheesecloth or something that can double as cheesecloth. Now, I highly recommend you get cheesecloth because if you have cheesecloth you can make your own ricotta, paneer, labaneh, and cream cheese. BUT, if for lack of time or resources you cannot get a cheesecloth, you can use:

• a random piece of thin cloth like muslin. Fairly cheap to buy at fabric stores,
• a baby's burping cloth-  LIE. I have tried this. It didn't work. The cloth was far too thick. If you find a thinner cloth and it works for you, let me know.
• panty-hose? Maybe? I don't see why not, it's a thin enough material. Haven't tried though. 
• Actual cloth diaper that was used on actual babies? Maybe. Sounds kinda gross to me, but that's probably just my silly 21st century sensibilities.

Anyway, I highly encourage you to get an actual cheesecloth if you can find it.

Then, this recipe. It once was found, but then I failed to bookmark it, and then it was lost, and finally refound, and bookmarked on every single device I own. It was surprising, actually, how difficult it was to find a simple DIY cream cheese recipe on the internetz. Many websites claim you can't actually make cream cheese from scratch, and that you need rennet and other specialty ingredients to make it work. I don't know what they are talking about. I've made this several times before, it's amazing, and you can then make cheesecake out of it.

Have I mentioned yay cheese? Yay, cheese. Also, yay cheesecake.

 Homemade cream cheese
From More Quiche, Please

Yield: About 1 cup

take recipe, multiply X5 for cheesecake

Ingredients

• 1 container sour cream = 200 ml = 0.423 US pint (you could probably round up to 1/2 a pint. Sh! I promise not to tell.)
• 1/4 tsp salt

You will also need:

• 1 cheesecloth (a thin burping cloth works perfectly - LIES! NO IT DOESN'T! )

Directions

1. Mix salt and sour cream in a bowl.
2. Put into cheesecloth, tie it up somewhere it can drip (ideally into a bowl or something that can catch the drips), and let it drip - yes, outside of the fridge - overnight or for 8 hours. 
3. Scoop it out, put into a container in the fridge. 
4. The end. The recipe claims it keeps for a week, but, really, why wait? Make cheesecake. 

Well, yeah, it kinda looks gross now. But ... cheesecake!

Homemade mayonnaise - turns out, not that hard

I've been meaning to make mayonnaise for a long loooong time now - basically since Julie and Julia came out. I keep reading that it's not so hard. But...we barely ever use mayonnaise at all, so it's hard to justify making it when the store-bought one is tiny, cheap, and lasts us pretty much forever. (Really the only thing we regularly use mayonnaise for is for distracting the cat when we clip her claws - during which she makes the most hilarious sounds that waver between utter bliss and pure hatred. We really need to put a video up on youtube one of these days.) Anyway, it's hard to justify making homemade mayonnaise for your cat. Not impossible, but hard.

Today, however, life (and by life I mean our upstairs neighbors) handed us bread. We had the tomatoes, we had the lettuce, we were about to have the chickpea-parsley-green onion-chives patties....we just needed the mayonnaise.

Opportunity to make homemade mayonnaise - I has it.

Turns out, really not that hard. (And cheap! And delicious!) I didn't differ from the original recipe much, because it's Alton Brown and I would trust AB with my life. (If by life we mean palate, and that basically boils down to the same thing, no?) I didn't have dry mustard, so I used regular mustard, and otherwise I left this recipe alone. Thanks, AB.

Finally, the recipe contains the requisite warning about raw eggs. To which I say, feh. I laugh in the face of salmonella poisoning. Hahaha. Raw eggs are delicious. If you are pregnant or have a compromised immune system, fine, go ahead and avoid raw eggs. I personally think all good things in life have raw eggs in them, and if they don't, they should.

Also, Salmonella sounds like and should become a lovely girl's name. (What? It's not more or less ridiculous than Yasleen or Shiny. with apologies to all the Yasleens and Shinys out there.)

Homemade Mayo

Ingredients

1 egg yolk
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
2 pinches sugar
2 teaspoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 cup oil, safflower or corn

1. In a glass bowl (why glass specifically? Not sure.) whisk together egg yolk and dry ingredients.
2. Combine lemon juice and vinegar in a separate bowl then thoroughly whisk half into the yolk mixture.
3. Start whisking briskly, then start adding the oil a few drops at a time until the liquid seems to thicken and lighten a bit, (which means you've got an emulsion on your hands). Once you reach that point you can relax your arm a little (but just a little) and increase the oil flow to a constant (albeit thin) stream.
4. Once half of the oil is in add the rest of the lemon juice mixture.
5. Continue whisking until all of the oil is incorporated. Leave at room temperature for 1 to 2 hours then refrigerate for up to 1 week. (That's it?? No way we're going to finish that much mayo in a week. Anyone want some homemade mayonnaise?)

CONTAINS RAW EGGS: The Food Network Kitchen suggest caution in consuming raw and lightly cooked eggs due to the slight risk of salmonella or other food-borne illness. To reduce this risk, we recommend you use only fresh, properly refrigerated, clean grade A or AA eggs with intact shells, and avoid contact between the yolks or whites and the shell. For recipes that call for eggs that are raw or undercooked when the dish is served, use shell eggs that have been treated to destroy salmonella, by pasteurization or another approved method.

Hey look, Ma, I made mayo!

Next up: cherries. Because I have too many cherries in my fridge. Stay tuned.