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I joined the ranks of People Who Have Made Soy Milk At Home.

My first attempt yielded a pretty weak product, though it tasted good hot and both Sami and I enjoyed it. Combining info from five or six different sources on home soy milk making (without a machine), here is what I did:

1) Soaked one cup of dry beans overnight in about a quart of water.  I replaced the water about once every 8 hours for 24 hours.  I think this is longer than necessary, but it didn’t seem to do any harm.

2) Boiled the beans for about 30 minutes.

3)  Ground up beans in the food processor with about one cup of (hot!) water for each 1/3 cup of beans.

4)  Strained the milk through cheesecloth to remove the okara (bean pulp.)  Squeezed the okara until it was more or less bone dry.

5) Added a tablespoon of honey and a pinch of salt to the quart or so of hot hot milk.

6) The end.  Enjoyed a cup of hot, fresh soy milk.  It was very weak (about 50% regular soy milk strength) but still tasty.  Even Sami liked it.

The second attempt was much, much better.  This time, I:

1) Soaked 2 cups of dry beans in 2 quarts of water overnight.

2) Microwaved the beans until they were heated through - about 3 minutes.  I read on the internet somewhere that heating the beans before grinding them in hot water can reduce the beany soy milk flavor.

3) Ground up the beans, this time in the BLENDER (not the Cuisinart) for a finer grist.  One cup of beans to about 3.5 cups of barely boiling water.  I did this in four shifts before I got tired, and still have about a third of the beans.

4) Strain the blended stuff through clean cotton cloth.  I skipped the cheesecloth and went straight to a 12 x 12 inch swatch of muslin.  Since the grist was very fine and the cheesecloth I have is a loose weave, I figured this way I’d get better straining.  I think I was right.  Strain it until I’m satisfied that all the gooky parts are out.  I did this twice.

5)  Cook the milk.  Low boil for 30 minutes.  I scooped off all the little bits of foam that formed on top.

6) Serve hot with honey and salt as before - yum.  Then pour the rest (about a gallon?) into a storage container - in my case a giant tupperware container with a pour-spout lid.  I plan to get a glass pitcher with a sealing lid.

It wasn’t as hard as you’d think it would be, especially without a soy milk machine.  I probably wouldn’t make this big a batch again, so in the future I won’t have to do the grind/strain dance so many times in a row.  THe most time consuming elements were the soaking of the beans and the 30 minute milk cooking time.  I can take save soaking time by putting them in the fridge a day or two before I want to make more, or always keeping a batch in there if I think I’ll make soy milk once a week or so.  Not much to be done about the cook time, except perhaps to time it so that hot fresh milk is available when I want it.

I highly recommend doing this.  It was (dare I say) fun!  And I don’t think I’ll need to buy soy milk again.  For the price of one carton of soy milk (or so) I got about a pound of beans, which I can use to make a whole case or more of soy milk.  I don’t have to take home all those plastc-lined cartons!  I don’t have to drink additives or preservatives or sugar!  Unless I want flavor or sugar!  Wheeeee!

Pear sorbet.

Apple waffles (leftover batter recycled into apple pancakes this morning).

Applesauce (containing apples, pears, dates and figs.

Apple/pear/date/fig cider (strained juice from the applesauce cooking).

Salads, salads and more salads!  Some with grilled chicken!

Stir fry!

I really felt like I’d made a lot more things than I did; I spent a lot of time in the kitchen!  I guess we did eat a lot of salad this weekend, because it’s just starting to get hot outside.  In any case, eating more vegetables makes me feel more human somehow, and I can’t see any down sides.  It just meant a lot of prep time with very little actual cooking in the “I made this” sense.

No pictures, this time. But yesterday I was bestowed a gift of pears, apples and oranges from a friend nearly done with pastry school, and the pears were especially close to their expiration date.

Last night I took advantage of this incredible yet precarious gift by breaking in the ice cream maker I recently acquired on Craigslist for $17. (I’d been about ready to buy one at full price, too!)

It turns out that bruised pears are not so unappealing once they have been pureed. The sorbet recipe was quite simple after the pureeing action - add lemon juice, simple syrup, mix well, then add to the ice cream maker and operate as the manufacturer intended.

I was truly surprised that a bowl with a liquid interior, frozen solid, could so thoroughly turn my puree into more-solid-than-liquid slush. After a half hour in the ice cream machine, the sorbet still required a time in the freezer to get to the solid state I prefer.

But… I made sorbet! No carton to throw in the landfill! It lives in an airtight reusable plastic storage jar in our freezer. And it was so easy, I would easily do it again.

Perhaps next time I’ll start in the afternoon so that it will be slushified and totally frozen by the time we’re done with dinner.

So the temperature in the slow cooker last night ran a little high. I turned off the heat and covered the whole thing in a few towels and sweatshirts.

What I found this morning was yogurt… -ish. It was much thinner than what I got yesterday, and when I stirred together the thicker part and the thinner part, it was still kind of lumpy and curdy. Hmm. However, it smelled and tasted OK.

Next time I’ll try adding some powdered milk for thickness. Next time I think I will also actually use the yogurt making machine so that the temperature will be consistently controlled at the optimal temp.

I took one cup of this yogurt, added a tablespoon of coffee from yesterday, a teaspoon of honey, and a drop of vanilla extract, and I have to say it was quite tasty. So the silver lining was super thin but extra yummy, homemade yogurt with no gelatin, preservatives, etc. In a glass jar.

Net positive, I think.

After having had my head buried in the sand for some time, I recently learned that yogurt cups are not recyclable in San Diego. Boo.

With a hungry toddler in the house, it goes pretty much without saying that we consume a lot of yogurt. We eat it at home and frequently send the individual cups in her lunchbox to school. I’d estimate that in an average week our household consumes 10 to 12 cups of yogurt.

That’s a lot of plastic waste that can’t be recycled, and as you may have noticed, reducing waste has become very important to me. I did some research and discovered that it is actually not all that hard to make yogurt at home, which means that I could send it with Sami in one of her old wide-mouth bottles with a sealing lid rather than the drinking nipple; this would produce far less junk needing disposal.

This is my yogurt maker - I primarily like it for the reusable glass jars: http://www.healthgoods.com/shopping/appliances/Euro_Cuisine_YM80_Yogurt_Maker.asp

In fact, I didn’t actually even use the machine today, just the jars. I made a few small jars and a few big mason jars of yogurt, and the mason jar doesn’t fit in the yogurt machine, so I used the slow cooker.

General instructions on making yogurt:
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/cheese/yogurt_making/yogurt2000.htm

Instructions I followed this time:
http://www.fakeplasticfish.com/2007/12/plastic-free-yogurt-well-almost-plus.html

I didn’t use a Thermos - as I mentioned, I used the slow cooker to maintain the temperature. It actually was kind of a pain, I had to monitor it and turn it on and off to keep it from getting too warm and too cold. Finally I set it to Warm and put the lid on off-kilter to release some of the heat, and this seemed to help the temperature stay both moderate (around 110 degrees F) and consistent.

8 hours later, after a trip to the zoo, sushi dinner and a bath for Sami, I came back to find solid-ish yogurt almost completely surrounded by a yellowish, watery liquid, which I’ve learned is called whey. I wanted thicker yogurt, so I decided to be smart and strain my yogurt through cheesecloth (saving the whey for my next creative feat, to be announced).

What I wound up with was halfway between the texture of a very firm yogurt and ricotta cheese, though still with a distinctly yogurty flavor. As it turns out, I think what I was supposed to do was maybe siphon off some of the whey, but definitely stir the creamier part back up with all or most of the whey.

Oops. Well, shoot. My first shot at home made yogurt, and I went and F-ed it up trying to be smart. That was disappointing. But I consulted with Captain Google, anyway, to try to find out what it was that I had actually made.

I ended up finding a name for what I made, when I idly started flipping through How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman, looking for anything related to making yogurt. There is an innocuous recipe tucked away in there, just called “Yogurt.” In a subsection of the recipe were instructions on making “yogurt cheese.” Back to Google!

http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/yogurtcheese.htm

So at least there’s a name for what I ended up making. Only, true yogurt cheese is strained far longer than just a few minutes. Still, it’s thick enough I think I could pull off some uses of yogurt cheese, including spreading it on my bagel, or serving it to Sami as if it were yogurt anyway.

And then I moved on to another batch of yogurt, prepared the same way except that in the morning when I go to fetch it, I will not strain it. I’ll just stir it within an inch of its life and hope for the best.

Here endeth the adventure, for today. Reports are forthcoming on how the yogurt cheese worked out, and what home made yogurt tastes like. (It seems to smell just like commercial yogurt.)

I didn’t feel like eating much of anything when Sami and I got home today, so I gave her a bowl of the navy bean, sausage and kale soup I made over the weekend. She sucked it right down and loved it to bits.

I decided to make something out of the greens from three beets in my weekly CSA share. (Yes, I think I’ll be talking about the CSA a lot.) So I made myself a few slices of turkey bacon. Then I chopped up a few cloves of garlic and tossed them into the oil the bacon left behind, followed by some chunky carrots, and then finally the beet greens and stalks. Lightly sauteed, tossed with some salt and pepper, and that’s it.

Um, yum.

I only wish that each individual item in my CSA box didn’t come in plastic bags. Nothing to do with the food, and at least I can save them up and put them in the plastic bag recycling at the market. But I plan to write to Be Wise Ranch to suggest that they eliminate the plastic packaging where possible.

OK, so it’s mostly not lettuce.  But boy howdy, I just had a salad with the spring mix that was in my CSA box from Friday, and I will not hesitate to eat the greens straight up, no tomatoes, no cucumber, no dressing in the future.  These greens taste GOOD, on their own merit.

Recently I joined the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program at Be Wise Ranch.  I got a big fat box full of yummy vegetables - zucchini, kale, cucumbers, dill, cilantro, swiss chard, carrots (oh, so many glorious carrots!), oranges.

With a fully stocked fridge of vibrant organic produce to inspire me, I’ve been cooking with an enthusiasm I haven’t experienced in a while.  (Maybe part of the euphoria of being home, finally?)  On Monday I made a pizza totally from scratch. Bell pepper, zucchini and tomato with a home made cilantro, almond and pecan pesto.  It was even better when we ate the leftovers for lunch a few days later.  I really impressed myself with the pizza.

Tuesday, lettuce wraps.  I shredded up carrots, zucchini and onions, sauteed them with a little olive oil and tofu, and added a soy honey peanut butter sauce.  A dash of curry completed it for me.  It was fantastic.

Yesterday I made a swiss chard and barley stew.  Considering the number of vegetables in this soup, it comes as high praise that Ben ate his whole bowl down to the bottom.  Enough frozen for a week of lunches, yum!

And tonight I thawed out some frozen won ton wraps and made fried won tons with the leftover lettuce wrap fillings from Tuesday.  I think this was actually an even better use for the asian veggie-slaw than the lettuce wrap idea.  For my next trick, I’d like to try making potstickers or ravioli.  I also sauteed the remaining swiss chard with a little oil and garlic.  Even Sami liked it - especially the red cooked stems.

I’m getting hungry again just thinking about it all!

For dinner tonight I snipped some Sage and Rosemary from my garden and roasted it in potatoes, tofu, tomatoes and zucchini from the farmers’ market.

It actually turned out quite well, and I know this because a) Ben was eating tofu, be still my heart! and b) Sami was eating potatoes.  Not even fried ones!  And she quite bravely tried tomatoes and zucchini, and LOVED the tofu.

Organic produce is truly a thing of wonder.  Getting my family to eat vegetables, one day at a time.

2-ply superwash merino in blues and greens!
Originally uploaded by cinediva

Here is the crowning achievement of approximately the last week. At least, the crowning achievement of which I already have pictures. I spun this yarn on a wheel lent to me by a local spinner, after an ad hoc crash course in the functioning of a wheel.It happened like this. About two weeks ago, I posted on Ravelry that I had scored a spinning wheel on Craigslist but didn’t know if it worked, and asked for advice on how to tell if it could be used and if so, what repairs might be in order. Lovely Wendy came to my house and tinkered, prodded, hammered and oiled, and told me that my wheel could indeed make yarn, and that while it is a quirky fellow, a beginner spinning on it certainly garner props of the mad variety from people who know spinning.

To wit, the wheel has been christened “Cantankerous ‘ol Dude,” because after having spun on the modern wheel Wendy lent me, I can say for sure that every inch I spun was a challenge.

In any case, the blues and greens pictured here are my handiwork, two bobbins of singles spun separately and then plied together to form a textured, bulky yarn. I am rather chuffed with my handiwork, and am also pleased to mention that subsequent offerings are improving on the first.

Need I say that I really like spinning? I have my eye toward saving my pennies for my first new wheel.

In other news, Christine and Greg were visiting, outstanding and home-warming guests that they were. They were here to see Christine’s new nephew - my friends Cathy and Mike’s baby boy Christopher (I believe my pile o’ possessives violated some kind of grammar law, but I’m beyond caring.) Greg was unbelievably cute with Sami (Christine is believably cute with Sami, but only because she’d handled Sami when she was nary a month old, and so I could already believe it.) I really loved this visit because it’s comforting when friends come to stay who are really more family than friends. We had a blast, and I really just let C and G set their schedule, as I didn’t have many pressing things to do. They’ve left for Vegas and then back to New York after New Year’s, but I miss them already and can’t wait to see them in New York whenever we manage to get there.

I got up early to make bagels for everyone this morning for breakfast before the planned departure, and they were a hit.

Sadly, I never once pulled out the camera, so all the Sami/Greg/Christine pictures were taken by Christine. Bad momma, no cookie.

This post is actually of very little consequence, just a space saver to let the world know what I’ve been up to lately. I expect there will be a year in review of some sort coming up.