Yogurt!

Greetings!

I hope everyone is having a nice weekend. i have been a busy little housedyke... Today I am going to talk you through my favorite project from this weekend... Homemade Greek Yogurt!


it is so easy! Mine turned out perfectly, and I didn't even have a thermometer!

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all you need is a gallon of organic milk, (can't be ultra-pasteurized) and a little container of plain yogurt. oh, and a crock pot and some cheesecloth :)

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heat up the milk in your crockpot until JUST before the boiling point. then take the crock out and set it on the counter until it is lukewarm (around 108 degrees) then add the yogurt in and mix well. put the lid on the crock and wrap it in towels, placing it into the oven with the light on to keep it warm (around 100 degrees) if your light is broken like mine, then turn the oven on to warm for a couple minutes right before putting in the yogurt. let it sit overnight (8-12 hours) to thicken, then pour it into a collander lined with 4 layers of cheesecloth sitting in a bowl, and stick it in your fridge for 3-4 hrs to thicken. Then pull it out and twist up the corners of thee bag, squeezing out the whey. Tie a string just below wher the bag is twisted, and set it back in the collander. Put a coffee mug in the bowl and set the collander on top so it is held above the liquid, and put it in the fridge for another hour or two. When you pull it out, the yogurt should have decreased in volume by half. Just scrape it into a container with a spatula, and keep it in the fridge for up to a week. I like mixing mine with honey, and flax meal, and stawberries :)...yum!

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tips: save a cup of your yogurt to use as starter for nex time. also, don't throw away your whey...it has tons of uses!

Vegetarian, Gluten-Free Spoony Lasagnas!

My least favorite part of the day 

is trying to decide what to make for dinner.  There are those times where this hour becomes especially bothersome, where there seems to be a severe lack of ingredients in the pantry.  Rather than give up and demand that we go out for dinner, I decided to use the meager remains of a few random items in the fridge before they went bad (I hate wasting food.)

Here's what I had:

a handful of wilted baby spinach

about a cup of cottage cheese

a half-jar of spaghetti sauce

shredded cheese

parmesan

4 broken gluten-free lasagna noodles

What I did:

Cooked the noodles to al dente.

Layered the ingredients in the following order in a muffin pan (oiled)-

piece of noodle

spoonful of sauce

spoonful of cottage cheese

a few spinach leaves

sprinkle of cheeses

piece of noodle

spoonful of sauce

sprinkle of cheeses

Cooked 'em at 350 degrees for 20 minutes

Scooped 'em out and ate 'em!

While this may seem like a lot of work just to make what came out to be the equivalent of a 2-person lasagna, there were just not enough ingredients to use even an 8"x8" pan.

...and they're just plain adorable, no?

Re-Purposed Wine Bags

I became a trend-setter this morning at the Bloomington Farmer's Market,

where I used my Kroger (grocery chain) sectioned wine carriers to pick up some tomato, squash, and pepper plants for my garden.

This way all the little baby planties get to be in their own special area and I didn't have to carry a box all the way back to the parking garage and hope not to trip and spill them into the street.

Yay!

Without Question, THE BEST Gluten-Free Treat of All Time

Also, the best peanut butter cookie EVER, so there.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix 1 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup sweetener of choice (I tend to use raw sugar or brown sugar)

1 egg

chocolate chips (optional)

Place on baking sheet with cookie scoop if you have one.

Bake for 10 minutes or until edges begin to brown a teeny bit.

Eat.

Yields about a dozen or so, I don't know, they get eaten the moment they come out of the oven.

Sink-o-duh-my-o

...or, Cinqo de Mayo.  It's been almost 2 whole month since St Patty's day so it's time for another Alcoholiday.  One with better food and beer that isn't green.  And strangely enough, no one pretends to be Mexican on Cinqo de Mayo. Go figure.
   In celebration of the Battle of Puebla the R&R committee at work decided to host a salsa contest.  Naturally, I had to participate.  I took in two submissions.  Submission number one was my basic blender salsa.  Put tomatoes, onion, anehiem chiles, cilantro, and parsley in the blender, and blend the shit out of it.  Pour into a bowl and season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and hot sauce or lime juice if you like it.  Easy peasy rice and cheesy. It was alright, nothing to write home about, it's just not tomato season.
   My second submission however kicked MAJOR ass.  Mango. Pineapple. Habenero. Salsa.  It was a total shot in the dark but holy hell was it goooood.

Beautiful...it's so...beautiful

And easy!  All you need is

• 4 Mangoes, chopped
• 1 pineapple, chopped
• 1 red onion, diced
• 1 or 2 (depending on the size) red bell peppers, diced
• a small handful each of parsley and cilantro (I snip it right off the bunch with clean kitchen shears)
• 6 habenero peppers, seeded and minced super fine

(a note about the cilantro and parsley, you can use all one or the other, depending on your tastes)

Stir and omnomnom

   But one cannot live on salsa alone.  The other day I mentioned on my personal blog that I picked up some cream cheese and that I had a tasty, tasty plan for it.  Well I also bought these...

And with those, I made these...

  POPPERS!   And making these totally made me feel like this.

Chai-tastic!

Happy Saturday, everybody!

I'm currently cleaning, doing laundry, and baking sugar cookies, so this will be brief...but I just had to share this recipe with you for Chai Concentrate (based off the one found here...I had slightly different ingredients and had to tweak it a bit)

Since I was making sugar cookie dough WHILE steeping this, I spaced getting pictures, so you get a sad picture of my half-drunk Soy Chai on a dirty kitchen towel :)

K...so here you go :) enjoy!

Ingredients

• 4 1/2 cups water
• 10 black tea bags
• 1 cinnamon stick, broken in half
• ¼ teaspoon ground ginger (or 2 TBSP fresh?)
• 7 whole cardamom pods
• 10 whole cloves
• ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
• ¼ teaspoon ground allspice
• 1 teaspoon orange zest
• ½ cup brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon honey or maple syrup
• 1 tablespoon Vanilla

Instructions

• Bring the water to a boil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the tea bags, spices and orange zest. Stir to combine, and remove from heat. Let steep 10 to 15 minutes.
• Remove tea bags, and strain out the spices with a fine mesh sieve. Add brown sugar, honey and vanilla. Stir well to combine. Store in a jar in the fridge for up to a week.
• Mix concentrate (I recommend shaking the jar really well first) with milk of your choice (I used vanilla soy milk. It tastes amazing!) in about a half-half ratio and work from there :)

Now, just a reminder, this and all recipes posted on The Domesticated Housedyke are also available to search on the sidebar to the right, or on our Recipes Page which can be accessed using the little fork and spoon just under the header at the top of the page.

Thanks for reading and have a lovely weekend! I'll post pictures of the cookies on our Tumblr page later...they should be pretty epic :)

shortbread melties

my husband's favorite:  shortbread melties!  teeny tiny shortbread cookies that melt in your mouth...<drool>


WARNING: you WILL eat waaay more than you think you will.

1 cup room-temp butter, creamed
2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
half bag semi-sweet chips

OR

1 cup room-temp unsalted butter
2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
half bag milk chocolate chips

roll into 1 inch balls and bake for 13 minutes at 350 degrees.