Archive for the ‘Cooking & Food’ Category

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It probably won’t surprise you to know that your tap water may have contaminants in it. From nasty chemicals to who-knows-what, there are hundreds of things that turn up in tap water in the US. (I won’t even start on Mexico, where I am living till the spring… we don’t even brush our teeth with tap water here!)

There is an excellent website, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) where you can t ype in your zip code and find out what is in your water — they have analyzed almost 20 million records obtained from state water officials and found 316 pollutants in the drinking water from 45 states.

Go through their step-by-step process of choosing a water filter: Read the rest of this entry »

I just came across a good description of how to make homemade yogurt, something I have done a lot.

You can see it at the link,and I’ll add a few comments — I use either a commercial yogurt with a live culture or the brand of dry yogurt starter mentioned in the article, Yogourmet. That’s the same brand as the yogurt maker I use, and clicking on its picture will take you to it at Amazon.

If your yogurt turns out kind of stringy-slimy, it’s gotten some other strains in it. I don’t know if it’s bad for you but I don’t like it so I used to toss it out when that happened occasionally. It used to happen when I used homemade methods for keeping the yogurt hot but since I bought this thing you see, it is rarer… or maybe it hasn’t happened at all, come to think of it.

I’ve had mine for five or six years. It’s not cheap, but mine seems as good as new, so it’s a good investment. Read the rest of this entry »

The other day, I noticed that  the teakettle that we keep on our stove  was a few inches closer to the front, instead of sitting on the back burner.

Without giving it any thought, I moved it back to where I was used to seeing it.

The next day, there it was again, between this burners.

Had to be something my husband was doing.What could he be up to?

This old gas cooktop has pilot lights between both sets of front and back burners, and Kelly was experimenting with keeping the kettle over a pilot light.

He’s found that it reduced the time to make a pot of tea and (more important to him) it saves a little energy.

My husband Kelly has been making homemade peanut butter for about seven years, ever since we got a Vita Mix blender. I suppose you could do it with a food processor too, but this blender is a sturdy workhorse that we’ve been very happy with. We start with peanuts, lots of them. Kelly likes to buy two different kinds: about half already roasted, and these have been salted. The other half would be raw or lightly roasted but definitely without salt.

Here is our VitaMix. Looking good for seven years of near-daily use. Besides making smoothies, salad dressings, soups, and the like, we use it to grind wheat berries for homemade bread  and of course peanuts like today.

Kelly measures two cups of each kind into the blender. Unlike most recipes for homemade peanut butter, this method does not add oil. The roasted nuts give up enough oil. Then while it is running, he uses the tamper that came with the blender and pushes down at various angles. It makes a good bit of noise!

You can see in the picture on the right that the lower portion is mixed and the upper portion isn’t yet. Eventually it pretty much all is, and he stops running the motor at that point, as the machine could technically be burned out by running it too long. We always end up with a few peanuts not completely mixed, no problem.

Here you see the final result. We find that it  stores for weeks or months in the refrigerator. As you might guess from the volume, Kelly considers peanut butter one of the basic food groups! This is yummier than most any you can buy, and more economical.

And just in case you’re interested, here is a list of Vita-Mix blenders at Amazon. Some of them cost less than we paid seven years ago!

Thanks to Emma Holister of www.art-margin.com and www.candida-international.org (neither of which is directly related to rocket stoves) for this illustrated article on how to cook with twigs in a stove made from an old can. If you don’t want to make a rocket stove yourself, you can buy one at the first link given below.

If the price of gas and electricity is getting you down, build a simple rocket stove and cook with twigs!  It’s free and it’s sustainable.  Cooking with a rocket stove is another big step towards freedom from extortionate energy bills and the multinational giants ransacking our planet and our bank accounts.

A rocket stove can be used outside in the summer, on your terrace or balcony, or indoors in the winter, hooked up to a chimney with a hood.  Because of the insulated interior, this stove gives off far less smoke and carbon monoxide than a normal fire.  Only when igniting and putting out the fire is there really any smoke worth speaking of.  This simple design creates a strong air suction that makes the cooking flame very intense with just a few twigs.  Using bigger and more twigs gives a stronger flame which will heat your pans faster than a gas hob.  You can reduce the flame by reducing the amount or size of the twigs.

I built this rocket stove in an afternoon, using the information and explanation video at http://rocketstoves.org Read the rest of this entry »

I was looking over some Chinese recipes the other day… not to cook from them but in evaluating the ebook they were in. It got me thinking about how much my own cooking is derived from Chinese methods.

One of my favorite things to cook is a big stir-fry with brown rice:

I put on the brown rice, using about 1 cup of rice and 2 1/4 cups of water. I cook it on a very low temperature for about 35 or 40 minutes and then without opening the lid and letting the steam out, I turn it off and let it sit for  another 10  to 20 minutes. Actually, that method of letting it continue to cook is something I learned in France. It saves energy and makes it less likely your rice will be stuck to the bottom of the pan. I also sometimes put a small dollop of olive oil in the pot to help avoid sticking. (Any leftover rice finds many uses.) Read the rest of this entry »