Weekend Homestead Happenings

Do you remember in this Fridays Frugal Five I told you about some free Panera bagels I got leftover from a work meeting.

Well, bagels freeze just lovely and take a look at what we enjoyed for one of our breakfasts this weekend.

I love the fact that I saved those bagels, and the egg is from our chickens, and the tomato is from our garden.

Really, how cool is that!

Now, who would turn their nose up at leftover free bagels if it looked this good? Obviously not me.

I was inspired a couple weeks ago with a gallon of gifted grapes to make some grape jelly.

Well, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that we have had grapes growing on our little homestead for years now, but I’ve never thought to turn them into jelly, I just always thought they were too sour.

But thanks to the Z Man for picking and cleaning me a gallon of them, and thanks to the inspiration of grape jelly last week, I canned another 17 jars of grape jelly and it turned out great.

grapes

You can read more about how I made my jelly here.

We didn’t grow corn this year, but I found some lovely corn at the farm stand just down the road.

I’ve never put up corn, but thought I’d give it a try this weekend.

Yes, that’s a cucumber in the middle of the corn in the top left picture.

The nice lady at the farm stand gave it to me for free, I didn’t have the heart to tell her I have about 2 dozen at home waiting on me to do something with.

The best way I found to cut corn off the cob is to use a bundt pan and a sharp knife. The kernels fall right into the pan with very little mess.

It was by no means a difficult process. It did take a bit of time because corn in a pint size jar needs to be pressure canned for 55 minutes.

I bought 8 dozen ears and that netted us 54 pints of canned corn, all sealed and just beautiful.

So, as usual we had a busy weekend on our little homestead, but we will be glad for it come this February and we have all this wonderful food to enjoy.

How was your weekend? Did you put anything into jars this weekend?

Till next time,

Lori

Homemade Yogurt

I started making my own homemade yogurt about a year ago when I ran across a recipe on the Frugal Girl website.

I still use this same process because it’s easy and now that I’ve done it so many times I’m able to whip it up pretty fast.

I like making yogurt mainly because it taste so much better and it cost a lot less than store bought.

It’s easy as could be, all you do is

heat up milk
cool it down
add a cup of prepared yogurt
pour it into jars
let the jars sit in a cooler with warm water for several hours.

I can get local raw milk so that’s what I make my yogurt with, but you can use commercial whole milk too.

The yogurt keeps for a month in the fridge so I just use a whole gallon of milk which turns out 5 pints of thick greek yogurt and 2 quarts of whey for me.

Yep, whey. You know that protein whey that everyone wants in their diets now and most people have to buy the powdered stuff at the store. Well, make your own yogurt and you’ll have plenty of it. (more on that later)

The ingredients you’ll need is:

1 gallon full fat milk
1 cup of non flavored yogurt (your starter yogurt)

The equipment you’ll need is:

A heavy bottom stock pot (not cast iron)
A thermometer
A Whisk
Canning funnel
Measuring cup or ladle
Quart size mason jars (preferably wide mouth)
A cooler

This is what I do:

Pour your gallon of milk into a heavy bottomed stock pot
Gradually bring the temperature of the milk up to 190 – 195 degrees while gently stirring occasionally (do not scrape the bottom of the pot as it may scald a bit and you don’t want that in your yogurt)
Fill a sink with ice cold water while milk is reaching temperature
Gently lower the pot of milk into the ice water to cool the temperature down to 120 degrees
Remove the pot from the sink of water on to a towel on the counter
Thoroughly whisk in your starter yogurt
Ladle the mixture into your jars and put the lids on tight
Put the jars in a cooler and pour 2 quarts of warm water into the cooler
Keep water in cooler at 120 degrees for 4 hours
Remove yogurt from cooler and refrigerate

At this point you have yogurt that is ready to eat.

However if you want a thicker yogurt like a greek yogurt (especially if using raw milk, which tends to make a thinner consistency) then continue on doing this:

Let yogurt refrigerate overnight in the jars
Strain all but 1.5 cups yogurt through a fine cloth to release the whey (I have to do this in batches and it usually takes a few hours)

Whisk the 1.5 cup of thinner yogurt into the thicker yogurt to end up with a perfect creamy textured yogurt.
Spoon yogurt into jars, put lids on and refrigerate.

Remember to set aside 1 cup of your yogurt as the starter for your next batch.

I’m afraid that my post has made it sound like making yogurt is a long difficult process, but really it’s not.

Keep in mind that most of the process is giving it time to set up and time to strain, but that’s not hands on time.

It really is easy and so worth it.

I hope you’ll give it a try.

We use yogurt in place of sour cream because not only does it taste great it’s better for us too.

Once you taste your homemade yogurt you’ll never go back to store bought yogurt again.

Till next time,

Lori

Friday’s Frugal Five

This week was “stay out of the stores” week and I’m happy to say that I’ve been rather successful too.

Well, I did have to stop and pick up a few canning jars, but that’s it.

I realized that each day either on my way to work or on my way home the thought of stopping at the store just somehow instantly popped in my mind.

Just like hey it’s 12:00 time to eat lunch, or hey it’s bedtime time to brush my teeth, hey I’m in the car lets stop at the store….

What is that!!!

What I know about myself is that if I don’t make a conscious effort to stay out of the stores then my subconscious will come up with something that I need and I’ll be at the stores every day.

So this weeks frugal five is more about the things I didn’t do instead of the things I did do.

Not one morning did I stop at the stores on the way to work to pick up something I thought I might need.
Only one evening did I stop at a store to pick up canning jars, but bought nothing else that I thought I might need.
I did not carry my credit card with me all week, purposefully.
I did not spend any of the cash in my wallet and used a store credit to purchase the canning jars I picked up.
I did not buy breakfast, lunch or dinner out all week.

I did however “put up” (canning) 16 jars of salsa, 7 jars of tomato juice, 5 jars of sweet relish, 16 jars of (my version) salsa verde, we packed our lunches, dried our clothes on the clothes line (in between storms), added money to the pickle jar and are still breathing fresh air and loving it.

Salsa Verde 2

What frugal fun have you had this week?

Till next time,

Lori

Homestead Tomato Juice

The tomatoes are dwindling down. I’ll probably only get a few more batches of tomato juice before the canning tomatoes are gone. It makes me a little sad.

Last nights inspiration got us 7 quarts and 1 pint of tomato juice.