Make Your Own Butter

I'm always on a mission to eat healthy and save money, so I can't believe I haven't started making butter at home sooner. 

You may be surprised to see that I said "healthy" and "butter" in the same sentence. If so, you should read the untold story of butter. Our bodies need saturated fats like butter. Butter is also a fantastic source of vitamins, minerals, and more. If you eat raw butter from grassfed cows, you maximize your benefits. Too bad raw butter is hard to come by, and expensive, right?

Wrong! Making raw butter yourself is easy. All you need is access to fresh raw milk, and a means for whipping the heck out of the cream. Here's what I did to make the freshest butter I've ever tasted:

The cream is getting thicker!

First, I skimmed the cream off the top of my raw milk. I poured about one cup of cream into my blender, and started the machine. For the first few minutes of blending, the cream did not appear to change much. After about five minutes, I noticed that it was getting thicker along the sides of the glass.

You can see on the spoon how the buttermilk separated.

After about ten minutes, the thicker parts seemed to slowly disappear. While the blender was running, all I could see was very runny cream. However, when I stopped the blender, the clumps of better was easy to see. It appeared runny at first because the buttermilk separated from the cream.

Next, I poured the contents of the blender through a strainer. There was a lot more buttermilk than I expected (maybe I'll make pancakes with it!). My butter still seemed a little too wet, though.

I decided to put the butter back in the blender for a little more beating. That separated out a little more buttermilk. By this time, the butter was very warm, soft, and whipped. I put it in a bowl and placed it in the fridge to cool and harden. Within an hour, it was stiff. 

Now I'm going to have to start searching for a mold to make fancy butters for special occasions...or maybe I'll just use my fruit snacks molds?

Brew Your Own Kombucha!

Once upon a time, my husband and I went grocery shopping together. Suddenly, he saw a drink that he remembered having as a kid. We bought a bottle, and he insisted that I try it as soon as we got in the car.

"Kombucha?" I stammered, reading the label. "What is it? And what is floating around at the bottom of the bottle?"

"Oh, that's the bacteria," he replied.

What? Who drinks stuff with bacteria floating around in it? I thought. Even though I was grossed out, I was willing to try it...and I hated it. It was fermented, and pungent; way too strong for my taste. After that first taste, I remained totally uninterested in kombucha...until one fateful day.

Months later, I was at a friend's house. She offered me some of her homemade kombucha. I braced myself for the worst (with a polite smile on my face, of course), but I was pleasantly surprised with its simple, mild, yet tart, flavor. Now that was refreshing to drink.

Because I was so happy with my friend's kombucha, I asked her to teach me her ways. I learned that Kombucha (pronounced "com-booch-ah") is a naturally carbonated tea drink that is produced by a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (scoby). Like yogurt bacterial cultures, Kombucha cultures are actually good for you, promoting gut health. Also like yogurt, Kombucha can vary in sourness and sweetness.While the entire brewing process takes at least two weeks, the actual active preparation takes less than an hour.

I know that there are probably dozens of kombucha recipes out there, but I want to share the only one I know I like.

 

First, you have to brew your tea. Rather than brew a regular batch of tea and later have to wait for it to cool to room temperature, my friend instructed me to make a "tea concentrate" and then add cold water to it so that it cools more quickly. To yield one gallon of kombucha, you should brew six organic black tea bags in a half-gallon of water, along with one cup of sugar. You should use the purest water you have access to, as it will contribute to the health of your scoby. I used water from our filtered pitcher.

After about 20 minutes, and the sugar is completely dissolved, transfer the concentrated tea solution to a clean glass gallon jar. Next, add a little less than a half gallon of cold water to the jar (making sure to leave enough room for your scoby and a little leftover kombucha from your last brew). Adding the cold water will hopefully bring the entire mix to room temperature. If it's still too hot, you'll have to wait. I was in a hurry to cool my brew, so I gave it a little ice bath.

Once the tea is at room temperature, you add the scoby and leftover kombucha. Make sure your hands are clean when handling the scoby. It's weird knowing that this slippery, blubber-like mass is actually living.

Finally, you cover the top of the jar with a clean, cotton cloth which allows the scoby to breathe. Now you have to let the scoby work its magic for at least the next two weeks.

It took me a long time to decide upon a place for my kombucha to brew. Different websites I referenced insisted upon certain storage conditions (must be up high, can't be near a ceiling fan, needs light, can't be too warm, must be away from everyday activity, etc.). I was at a loss because my little apartment tends to be very warm, and every room, except for the bathroom, has a ceiling fan. Luckily, my friend calmed my fears by showing me the place where her kombucha brews: on a shoulder-high shelf in the middle of her busy, warm kitchen. So, I stopped worrying about it and put my jar on the top shelf in my kitchen closet.

Two weeks later, I took my jar down from the shelf. My original scoby, the "mother" scoby, had produced a "baby" scoby, just like it was supposed to.

I carefully lifted the two scobies from the jar and set them aside in a clean bowl. If you're not ready to start another batch of kombucha right away, the scobies can be set aside in the refrigerator. You can also separate the scobies and have two jars brewing at once. Keep in mind that the larger the culture, the faster the brew. I plan on letting my scoby make lots of babies before splitting.

I feel like I've been taking care of a pet this past month! I've had to feed it (on the sugar), make sure it can breathe (hence, the cotton cloths), and take care of its babies. I actually felt like I was killing something when I poured some little strings of bacterial cultures down the drain (I like to pour the liquid through a strainer before storing it in half-gallon glass jugs).

I let it sit in the fridge for a few hours before the final taste test. I was thrilled to find that it tasted just like my friend's kombucha. My second brew will be two weeks old in a few days, but I'm going to let it go another week to see how sour it gets.

I think my new pet and I are going to get to know each other very well in the coming months.

Homemade Yogurt Success!

As I continue to embark on my healthy, do-it-yourself journey, my skills in the kitchen are being stretched. I just made homemade yogurt for the first time! I was actually surprised by how easy it was. It takes a lot of time to make yogurt from start to finish (six or more hours!), but most of that time is spent waiting. I would take five to ten minutes to complete each step and then go back to what I had been doing previously (usually tending to Jadon!). 

Here's the tutorial for making some homemade yogurt of your own:

To start, boil a large pot of water to sterilize all the materials that will come in contact with your yogurt. You will later use this hot water to create your own double boiler, a pot-within-a-pot for heating milk uniformly. Your inner pot needs to be something that can be heated safely, like the large glass jar I used. 

The milk you use will yield the same amount of yogurt in the end (one cup of milk makes one cup of yogurt). You can use any kind of dairy milk (coconut milk, almond milk, and soy milk with not work), but I recommend using whole milk (especially raw!) so that your yogurt is nice and creamy. Pour your desired amount of milk into your inner container, surrounded by the boiling water. Heat the milk to a temperature of 185 degrees Fahrenheit. Apparently, this is the temperature at which milk froths, so you could technically complete this step without a thermometer. I used a meat thermometer just to be sure. Stir occasionally. This process will kill any harmful microorganisms.

While the milk is heating, set aside your starter culture (a few tablespoons of plain, unsweetened yogurt with active live cultures in it). Starter cultures can come from leftover store-bought yogurts, like mine, or they can be purchased.

After the milk has been heated, the milk needs to be cooled to 115 degrees Fahrenheit, the perfect temperature for the bacteria in your starter culture to grow and multiply. I transferred my hot milk to another pot because I was nervous about the possibility of the glass jar shattering when going from a boiling hot to a freezing cold environment.

When the milk has cooled sufficiently, take a cup of the milk and mix it with the starter culture until it is a uniform consistency.

Then, add that mix to the rest of the cooled milk and stir until evenly distributed.

Notice that Jadon is ready for mom to finish the next step!

You will now need to keep your milk mix at a consistent warm temperature of about 115 degrees Fahrenheit so that the bacteria can thrive and turn the milk into yogurt. There are many incubating techniques that work, including a warm oven, a crock-pot, and even summer heat. Being the frugal gal that I am, I decided to try the "cooler" method because it doesn't require any additional energy. I poured the hot water from my double-boiler into four small glass jars that would fit inside a cooler with my large glass jar of warm milk.

I placed the milk jar in the middle of the cooler, and the hot water jars in each corner. After closing the cooler, I placed it in a corner of my kitchen where it could remain undisturbed for several hours. Some yogurt makers recommend five hours of brew time. Others insist on seven hours or more. I decided to go about six hours before checking on my yogurt.

Six hours later, I wasn't sure if anything had changed when I looked at my jar from the outside. But after I tested the consistency, I found that my mix had thickened quite a bit. For the final step, the yogurt must be refrigerated so that the bacteria stop consuming the milk and reproducing. Otherwise, the yogurt will just get thicker and thicker, and become more and more sour.

I transferred my yogurt to new containers and kept them in the refrigerator overnight. The next morning, I finally sampled the yogurt and was very pleased with the taste. It honestly tasted like my store-bought variety that I used for my starter culture. The texture was slightly more runny. However, I usually eat yogurt in smoothies, so the texture really doesn't matter to me.

Since I plan to continue making yogurt, I made sure to save a small sample of this batch for my next starter culture. You can even freeze the yogurt sample. I'm really happy that homemade yogurt is a healthy option for baby food. As we slowly introduce new foods to Jadon, I look forward to his reaction of my new yogurt.

Pinterest Project: Homemade Laundry Detergent

Since I've already tried (and loved!) making homemade cleaning solutions for glass, wood, and other surfaces, I feel like I'm willing to put any homemade product to the test. My family recently ran out of store-bought laundry detergent, so I decided to replace it with a homemade version. I found a recipe from this website through Pinterest. Not only did it seem easy to make, but the author claims that this mix will last a whole year (at four loads of laundry a week)! The recipe cost the author about $28, but included optional ingredients. Being the frugal gal that I am, I decided to test the recipe without the optional ingredients to see if they are really necessary for my family's needs.

My "essentials" recipe consists of four ingredients, which cost me a total of $11.34:

1. 1 (4 lb 12 oz) Box of Borax- Found in the detergent aisle
2. 1 (3 lb 7 oz) Box of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda- Found in the detergent aisle
3. 2 (14.1 oz) Bars of Zote Soap- Found in the detergent aisle
4. 2 (2 lb) Box of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda- Found in the cooking aisle 

The optional ingredients that I chose not to include are OxyClean and fabric softener crystals. I figure that I can add these on an as-needed basis. You will also need a large bucket for mixing your ingredients, and a tool for grating.

There are really only two steps for creating this laundry detergent. First, you have to grate the bar of Zote Soap.

Grating the soap was by far the hardest and most time-consuming part of this process. Even though the website claims that you could use a food processor for this task, I decided to go at it by hand. I wanted to avoid the hassle of cleaning out the processor, mostly because I didn't know how hard it would be to get all the soap off. I really didn't want soapy food in the future. So, in an effort to make grating by hand easier, I tried slicing the bar into manageable-sized chunks. I even periodically cleaned the blades of our hand-cranked grater in order to keep the little holes from gunking up.

By the end, my hands were so tired of grating that I couldn't finish the final chunk of soap without having to take a break. But, seeing as I was impatient to start mixing, I called on Jon to do the last little chunk. Next time, I may brave the food processor because the soap wasn't that hard to get off.

The second and only other step is mixing all your ingredients. I sat on my kitchen floor to do this part. The author of the original recipe recommended adding ingredients in increments as you mix, which was a great tip. It would have been difficult to evenly distribute all the parts if I dumped all of each ingredient in before mixing.

The consistency reminds me of a cake mix with coconut flakes in it.

I've used my new detergent for a week now, and I'm very happy with the results. Even without the extra ingredients, my laundry feels soft and smells great. I don't know if I'll ever go back to store-bought detergents since this homemade version is so cheap!

Now if only I knew it was safe for cloth diapers! I may have to do a test-run in the future.

Homemade Cleaners: Cheap, Natural, and Really Work

This summer I started using homemade cleaners. It all started when I saw these two pictures on Pinterest:

Both of the captions explained how you can use vinegar to clean up your subborn bathroom buildup. My bathroom sure was in need of a major cleaning, so I gave it a try. I couldn't believe how well it worked. I could actually see fizzing bubbles coming off our showerhead immediately after I attached the baggie of straight vinegar. Letting the tub soak in water, vinegar, and some dish soap helped stains come off with just a little bit of scrubbing.

Later on in the summer, my husband and I took a weekend roadtrip. When we got back, I discovered a little trail of tiny ants going across our countertop, into our sink, and down the disposal. Knowing that ants leave little oily scent trails for other ants, I made sure to wash everything down carefully with a sponge and dishsoap. But hour after hour, the ants kept returning. A friend suggested washing my countertop with vinegar instead of soap. After one wipe-down, no more ants! And I was happy that the vinegar didn't leave any smell after it dries.

Since I was pregnant this summer, I was more than happy to use these natural cleaning methods. I started looking up other homemade cleaning solutions online. I bought some cheap-o spray bottles from Walmart, and came up with my own little stash:

I decided to write the recipes for each solution on the bottles to make refilling easier. Here's the recipes I decided to try (and am really happy with so far):

Furnitiure Polish: Two parts olive oil, one part lemon juice (goes on a little greasy, but wipe down with a cloth, and it's all good)
Power Cleaner: Undiluted white vinegar (for really tough stuff)
Glass Cleaner: Equal parts water and rubbing alcohol, plus a little white vinegar (looks a little streaky at first, but dries awesome)
General Cleaner: Equal parts water and white vinegar

Does anyone else out there use homemade cleaning supplies? Even scrubbers, etc? I'm always looking for ideas, and I bet there's some good ones out there.

Pinterest Project: Homemade Fruit Snacks Tutorial

I have a friend who recently let me taste some of her homemade fruit snacks. I couldn't believe how tasty they were. When I asked for the recipe, she told me to look on her food board on Pinterest.


The Pinterest inspiration

So, I checked out the recipe and decided to try it for myself. Turns out, they are really easy to make. I mean, there are only three ingredients, and they take ten minutes from start to finish!

Your three ingredients are gelatin, honey, and lemon juice. In addition, you need some flexible silicone molds. These molds are usually used for ice cubes or candy making. I found mine in the party aisle at Walmart for fifty cents each.

To start, you combine 3 tablespoons of gelatin, 3 tablespoons of honey, and 1/3 cup of lemon juice in a sauce pan and stir it regularly over low heat. You will know when it's done when it goes from being thick and chunky to smooth and runny.

Transfer the heated mix to a bowl with a pouring spout. I used a glass measuring cup.

Then you have to carefully fill the silicone molds. I avoided filling them all the way to the top because it's such a pain to fix an accidental overflow. To give you an idea how far the mix will go, I filled all three of my molds with this one batch.

Before you do anything else, I recommend immediately putting your saucepan, whisk, and measuring cup in the sink to soak so that the gelatin doesn't harden. Soaking breaks up the sticky mix so that clean up is a lot easier.

Your molds then need to sit in your freezer for five to ten minutes for hardening.

When they come out of the freezer, the fruit snacks can be pushed and peeled out of the molds. Like jello, they will be solid at room temperature after coming out of the cold.

I had so much fun making the lemon fruit snacks, I decided to experiment with other flavors. For lime fruit snacks, I substituted the lemon juice with lime juice. For orange fruit snacks, I used orange juice, but found that the orange flavor was a little weak. I'm going to have to come up with a way to get a more concentrated orange flavor. For strawberry, raspberry, and mango fruit snacks, I pureed frozen fruit in a blender so that it amounted to about 1/3 cup. I found that the mix was a little too thick with the pureed fruits, so I added a little lemon juice to thin it out, and that worked great.

I think my favorite flavor is the raspberry because it even has the little raspberry seeds trapped in the fruit snack. My husband's favorite flavor is the mango, by far.

I'm trying to think of other flavors to try. Banana? That doesn't really sound good. Watermelon? I think the flavor would be really weak, like the orange. Suggestions?