homemade vegetable broth!

Beef broth, Chicken broth, Vegetable broth... broth, broth broth!

If you cook a lot, you probably use a lot of broth, whether it's in soups or to add flavor to rice or beans, or any number of things. I use a lot of vegetable broth, and I figured out that I was probably buying a box or two a week.

I haven't bought a box of vegetable broth in MONTHS, ever since I learned this incredibly easy way to make my own!

Whenever I cook with vegetables, I throw the extras in a medium sized pot. "Extras" means onion skins, garlic skins, carrot ends, celery ends, potato peels, eggplant ends... any part of a vegetable that you wouldn't normally eat.

Next, cover the contents of the pot and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and leave to simmer for about two hours. Add salt to taste... I'm not a fan of that "low sodium" garbage, so I add quite a bit :-)

While simmering for about two hours, continue to add water if it boils off. After allowing it to cool, strain it and store in the refrigerator until use!

homemade yogurt

Yesterday I spent most of the day thinking "what am I going to do with this milk? The sell-by date was yesterday... it's going to be bad any minute now!" I didn't feel like baking, didn't have the patience for tapioca pudding... a few google searches later, I came up with an idea that not only excited me, but also terrified me.

Homemade yogurt. Yogurt is alive. Do I really trust myself not to poison my entire family?

I figured I'd give it a go.

I found several recipes online and tweeked them to fit what I had on hand.

CROCKPOT YOGURT

you will need:

Milk. You can use nonfat, %, or whole, depending on what you have in the fridge and what you want for yogurt.

Yogurt. An individual serving size container works well. Plain is the most obvious choice for flavor, but I used vanilla and it came out just fine. It must have live active cultures!

I had about quarter of the carton left in a half-gallon that was about to expire, so I added some milk from a new carton. And I only had vanilla yogurt, so it had to do.

 

 

Pour the milk into your crockpot and turn it to low heat. Leave it for about 2.5 hours.

 

 

 

After 2.5 hours have elapsed, turn the crockpot OFF. Leave it on the counter like this for about 3 hours.

 

After 3 hours have elapsed, uncover the milk and stir in the yogurt. Replace the cover, and leaving it off and/or unplugged, wrap the entire crockpot in a large bath towel.

 

 

 

Leave it like this for 7-8 hours. After seven hours have elapsed, you can check the consistency of the yogurt.

 

And the, TA-DA! You have a ton of yogurt that cost WAY LESS than buying it in the store.

 

I was able to fill an empty quart yogurt container, as well as most of a pint container.

 

And here's the best part... it is without a doubt the BEST yogurt I have EVER tasted!

frozen baby food

Another day spent in slippers and unbrushed hair... makes me realize I am in serious need of a night out with my husband, high heels, and red lipstick. Maybe someday! In the mean time:

BABY FOOD:
Besides the fact that you never REALLY know what's in canned foods that are sold at the store, and that you probably don't want to be feeding mystery food to your baby, if you haven't noticed, baby food can get expensive.

I've perfected a great money-saver that completely satisfies my little pumpkin! All kinds of fruits and vegetables can easily be steamed (certain vegetables need to be cooked a little longer than others) and pureed in a food processor. One of the great things about making it myself is that I can introduce Maggie to spices that she probably wouldn't get in many baby foods, which tend to be on the blander side. So far (she's only been eating "food" for a couple weeks) she's only had parsley and cinnamon, but soon she'll be eating the classic Italian spices. Yum!

I make several batches of baby food each week and freeze them, and defrost during the week as necessary.

Broccoli & Spinach

Banana & Peach

Finished Product!

classic iced tea

Everybody, myself included, likes to have more than just water, milk, and OJ in the refrigerator to drink... but I just can't justify it! Buying drinks is just SO expensive, especially if it's more often that just as a special treat once in a while. Iced tea is one of those things... it's refreshing, caffeinated, and just good. It's also SUPER EASY to make!

For a gallon, I use 8-10 black teabags. I steep the teabags in boiling water in my largest mug for about 10-15 minutes. (If you want sweetened tea, now's the time to add the sugar, so that it dissolves.) Pour it into whatever you're using for a pitcher (an old orange juice container works well!), and fill the pitcher with filtered water. And that's that!

For a nice twist, add a squirt of lemon juice to your glass.

I've already been drinking mine... gotta wake up somehow!

quick and easy (and delicious) quiche!

This morning I desperately needed to get some dinner going before I thought about the rest of the day. When I'm in a rush, easy dinner= QUICHE! When we were first married, my husband was so amazed that his wife could whip up a quiche so effortlessly. He said he'd only ever had quiche in restaurants, and that mine was much better than those. Well, here's my secret: it's the easiest thing in the world. Those restaurants were just doing a bad job. I always keep some pre-made pie crusts in the fridge. They last forever (at least several months), are pretty inexpensive, and are SUCH a pain to make from scratch.



My ingredients this time around: 

1 Pillsbury pie crust 

layer: 
8 oz cheddar cheese, grated 
8 oz frozen spinach, thawed 
8 oz frozen broccoli, thawed 

combine: 
5 eggs 
1.5 cups milk 
a dash of allspice 
 a pinch of salt 
half a pinch of ground black pepper 

Pie crust goes in the pie plate. First put a layer of cheese- whatever you have on hand is fine! For me it's usually cheddar. Then add whatever you have for a filling. For me, it's usually spinach or broccoli, or in this case, both. We're being pescetarians for Lent, but I'll often add leftover chicken, too. Finally, the egg mixture gets poured over it all and you're ready to bake!

 

Place it all in your preheated oven at 375 for about an hour, until it's nicely browned on top. 

 

I'll have a happy husband tonight!