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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.

I’m a little late to this party, but I think the new farmers’ market in City Heights is important and I hope that San Diegans will go out to support it.

It’s a block south of University, on Wightman between 43rd and Fairmount. This can’t be too far from Red Sea (Ethiopian Restaurant). It’s a brand new, itty bity farmers’ market with only 11 vendors to start with, but I feel hopeful that if people show enough demand, more vendors will come!

For those of us not living in SD, City Heights is a low-income neighborhood. Residents there do not have much if any access to fresh food (let alone local or organic.) Just having a farmers’ market will be a huge opportunity for City Heights residents to get real food.

The remarkable thing is that this farmers’ market is going to accept food stamps and WIC coupons. This means that people formerly buying food at convenience stores because of the dearth of decent markets can now get the kinds of foods everyone should be eating. (That fresh foods are as much a luxury as they are is criminal; everyone should be able to eat food that resembles food, not packaged crap.) On top of that, food stamp and WIC customers of the market in City Heights will have their purchases matched dollar for dollar up to $10, so their stamps and coupons will go much farther than at a supermarket or convenience store.

I am so excited by this, so excited for City Heights residents. Please, please, if you can go support the baby farmers’ market! I wish I’d been able to on Saturday, but I plan to go this weekend.

Here’s the link to the SignOnSanDiego article:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080604/news_1m4farm.html

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.

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.

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.

I’m sitting on my sofa right now, surfing the internet, resisting the box of Thin Mints that Ben left on the table behind the sofa.

It’s easy to appreciate why I need to lose weight, when the only reason I’m lemming those cookies is because I’m bored.

The sad part of my tale of woe is that I do have things I want to do; I want to spin, I want to knit, I want to finish up a project for work. These last few days after the Daylight Savings change have taken their pound of flesh, and unfortunately it was a pound straight out of my brains. I am too bored to do the things that would kick me out of my boredom.

I made quinoa and baked tofu for dinner. I used store bought baked tofu, teriyaki marinated. Yummy. Sami loves both quinoa and baked tofu (couldn’t care less for fresh tofu, but bake it and she’s on it.) After we ate, I baked a slab of tofu on my own - I made a home made honey-soy glaze with jalapeño and chipotle peppers. I had a nibble though it was after dinner so I am saving this particular project for tomorrow’s lunch. It’s got a spicy kick, therefore I love it.

I need to have an apple now, as I seem to have worked myself up a mental appetite.

How do you get yourself off the couch when you find yourself settling in an unwelcome groove?

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.