New Year's Resolution?

I know you haven't heard from me lately. I've been very busy. I mentioned on Face Book that I got an elliptical exercise machine and got it carried down into my basement myself. It was 226 pounds and a challenge. Well, the challenges have continued over the past week or so, not counting holidays. The elliptical arrived 5 days early, so I had to get the room ready before I started assembling it. The room I intended to use had been dubbed "the yarn room" when I first moved in, and my previous dogs slept in there. It's a nice room and woefully underutilized. When I got down to the carpet, however, I realized it was worse than I thought, so I used my brother's carpet cleaner. I didn't do a perfect job, but it's a heck of a lot better than it was.

Once it was cleaned, I started putting the thing together. I was determined to do it by myself. I read reviews on Amazon.com that said one person couldn't put it together by themselves. My stubborn streak said, "Bullshit!" There were instances in which I wished I had 3 hands, but I'd quit for a while and think about how I could manage to do what I needed to do creatively. At one point I used yarn to hold up a portion of plastic in order to put screws in below it.

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I've done enough exercising in my time to know that if I'm going to use it, I need to entertain my mind while I'm working my body, so I got myself a little TV and a VCR. Boy! they are unbelievably cheap these days. The shelves were there when I bought the house, and I'm really happy they were put in well. I decided exercising would be a great time to re-watch Battlestar Galactica.

Today, I finished the assembly process. I hope I work out as much and sweat as much using the machine as I did putting it together. I think it's good to know how it works and goes together. If anything happens, I'll know where and what the problem is. I'm not going to get any more of a workout on it today, but I will be starting out the New Year with good intentions. I think as long as my knees hold out, I'll be ok. So you can expect to read about lighter meals here in Lorad's Kitchen, at least for a while.

Yogurt Redux

I hope all of you realize that I won't keep up this pace. It's just that I'm on break. Once the semester begins, I'll get too tired to write very often. I wish I had that kind of energy, but I don't.

My last batch of yogurt was very thin. I wasn't at all happy about it, and I was concerned that I had done something wrong. But then it struck me. I had my yogurt warmer on the cabinet by the kitchen windows where it was too cool. To test this theory, I made another batch. I am happy to say that it came out beautifully.

Spice cupboard Runneth Over

I have a fairly small galley kitchen. When you cook a lot, space is a big factor. Well, my spice cupboard had gotten entirely out of hand. This was what it looked like very recently.

It made me crazy that things would fall out when I opened it. So, I took matters to hand and purchased a large spice rack and spice jars

And now, this is how my cupboard looks. It probably could use a little more organization, but now that I've got space to move around in there, I can think it all out and do something with it.

Cocoa with Steamed Milk

One of my many indulgences is I make myself a cappuccino every morning. I really enjoy them and some nights I crave them; however, I can't drink coffee after noon or I won't sleep. So tonight as I was craving it, I came up with a possible solution. What if I made cocoa by adding steamed milk instead of scalded milk? I tried it. It worked really well. It wasn't as sweet as I would have liked, but next time I might add a couple of marshmallows. It took more effort than I thought it would, but I was just being impatient waiting for the water to warm up in the machine. It still isn't a cappuccino, but it'll suffice.

Yogurt

One of the things I've been doing since I stopped writing this blog is making my own yogurt. I had been sick this fall from one thing or another, and my friend Mari had been telling me about the benefits of yogurt for a long time. I have to admit that I really didn't like yogurt. It wasn't the sourness or anything. It was the texture. The taste didn't seem right for the texture. I think I thought the boughten yogurt should taste like pudding if it was going to have that texture. So I was eating the boughten stuff for a while, and then it dawned on me, I should be able to make this on my own. I went to Amazon.com and ordered a yogurt kit. What's the first thing the kit tells you? That you don't need a kit to make yogurt. Hey, it only cost $20, so it was no big loss.

My first batch flopped. I didn't temper the culture. Tempering means adding a little of the scalded milk to the culture before adding the whole pot. It separated. I really wish companies that include instructions would hire professional writers. It would be a lot easier to follow instructions if they did.

It turns out that I love homemade yogurt, and so does my dog, Teddi. She cleans out the jar each time I have some and then cleans out my dish as well. It also turns out that making yogurt is sooooo easy. You need milk (preferably whole); some cultured yogurt, at this point, I just use one of the jars from the previous batch. You could end right there if you want lighter yogurt, but I've developed a taste for thicker stuff. To get the thicker stuff, you just add powdered milk. The process is that you scald the milk to about 180 degrees, and then let it cool to about 115 degrees. Add a little of the scalded to the yogurt and powdered milk, and then add the rest. Then put the yogurt/milk mixture in jars, set it in the warmer for about 12 hours, at which time you put lids on the jars and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.

I know there are people who eat yogurt straight, but I'm not one of them. I add a little canned fruit to the mixture. My favorite is Mandarin oranges. I'm sure as time goes on, I'll get a little more exotic with my fruit and maybe even other add-ons, but for now, it's a little sunshine for my cold winter days. And there's nothing funnier than seeing Teddi carrying a baby food-size jar around the house so that she can get that very last molecule of yogurt out of the bottom.

Kombucha

Several of my friends have been bugging me to start back with this blog, so here I am. I may go off the mission and talk about things other than food or cooking, but I'll give it another try.

I made Kombucha a couple of years ago, and then stopped. Well, I've started making it again. Kombucha is a fermented tea drink. It's undoubtedly an acquired taste. Think fruit and vinegar...I know that doesn't sound good, but it is. With my first batch, I used cranberries, orange peel, and ginger for the second fermentation. I think I used too many cranberries because man is that stuff tart. For a milder change of pace, I used pear and ginger for the second fermentation. This stuff isn't going to last long because it is so good. I'll go back to cranberries eventually, but I'll need to ease off on the amount. If you're interested in making it yourself, I'd recommend that you try some first. HyVee has some and most organic markets have it as well. Then if you like it, you'll need to get a scoby. The word SCOBY stands for Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast. Think of it as Sour Dough starter. However, it looks and feels a lot more like snot.

But you remove the stuff prior to the second fermentation with the fruit, and then you strain it all. My recipe calls for 13 cups of purified water and a cup of sugar brought to a boil. Then brew 8 bags of organic Oolong tea for abou 15 minutes. Once it's entirely cooled to room temperature, add two cups of vinegar and the scoby. I cover the jar with a coffee filter and set it up out of the way on the ground floor where it's usually warmer. After two weeks, I take it down, transfer the scoby, which has usually expanded by then, to a new jar of tea. After removing the scoby, I add fruit that I've put through the food processor and cover it with a lid for a couple of days. You have to be VERY hygienic when making Kombucha. I sterilize my bottles and equipment with boiling water before I bottle any of it. Once it's been bottled, it'll need to be refrigerated because it hasn't been pasteurized. But please, read a book on the subject. Don't try to make this just off of my recipe. This isn't as simple as whipping together a cake.