Evaporated Milk

This is going to be a very quick post! I didn't want you all to think I had forgotten about you!

With Christmas rapidly approaching, I know many of you will be baking speed demons! My First Mate here at the homestead is something of a Cookie Elf himself, so I know alllllllll that goes into making those delectable morsels!

One ingredient, that I know I, Myself often forget to pick up at the store, is evaporated milk. But- I'm here to tell you, it's soooooooooo easy to just make your own! Especially if you are like us, and always have milk on hand for your Powder Monkeys (aka- the kids!)

Let's get started!

Needs:
Pot
Wooden skewer
Spatula
waste bowl
Milk- 4 1/2 Cups


Step1: Pour 2 cups of milk into your pan, and put it on the stove.

Step 2: Take your skewer and stick it into the milk, and then mark on the skewer where the milk line is. The black line on the skewer shows where the milk touched.

Step 3: Add the other 2 1/2Cups of milk to the pot and bring the pot of milk up in temperature to just barely a boil, and then reduce the heat to keep it at a very very low gentle simmer.

Here's where patience needs to happen. It's going to take a little bit to reduce aka EVAPORATE the water off the milk. What you are doing here, is reducing the amount of water in the milk by 60%. But, like all good things, this takes time!

You will want to stir the pot every few minutes, to keep the bottom from scalding, as well, a skin will form on top. Remove the skin with your spatula and put it in the waste bowl. Here's a photo of the skins I was pulling off the top of the pot. Just dump it in there, and toss it later.

Step 4: once you notice that the amount of milk in the pot is going down, take that skewer and see if the milk matches the line you marked. If not, keep cooking! If it does, guess what?! You now have evaporated milk!

You'll want to allow the milk to cool before using it, and it will store in a jar in the fridge for up to two weeks.

Easy peasy!!!!!

Happy Cooking Mutineers!

Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater!

Now that Halloween is over, I'm sure many of you have pumpkins that you aren't sure what to do with. Do you just let it ferment and hope that the squirrels come and eat it and get drunk? Do you put it straight into the trash or compost?

NOPE! You're gonna cook that thing up! But wait, isn't it a pain to chop up and roast a whole pumpkin??? YES! It is! In case you haven't realized it yet, this blog, is about how to NOT make it be a pain in the pa'-toot!

If you are fortunate like we are, and have an adorable Powder Monkey on board your ship, chances are you have a few pumpkins. Ours is adorable enough to charm the Farmer right off his tractor! He got right down, pulled two large pumpkins off the wagon and gave them to her! Little stinker!

Since we are fortunate, I don't want to let any of that kind generosity go to waste! So, I roasted the pumpkins. Whole. In the oven! It's truly easy!

Things you'll need:
Oven set to 375
Knife
Pointy spoon
Pumpkins (squash of any type works with this method. For this post, you'll see both a large pumpkin and a spaghetti squash)
Tin Foil (optional


First thing- you'll probably need to lower the racks in your oven to the two lowest settings. On the bottom rack, I put some tin foil to catch any potential dribbles. Haven't had that happen yet. Then again, "yet" means it's still a possiblity. You could also use a baking sheet. None of mine have edges, so I use the tin foil instead.  Once you have that done, turn the oven on and set it to 375 and let it heat up.

Next,grab your pumpkin and wash it off! You don't want the dirt from the field roasting in the oven!

Once you've gotten it all clean take a pairing knife and poke a few holes around the top. I try to keep the cuts on the top, so that it won't dribble down the sides and into the oven (hence the tin foil on the bottom rack- just in case!).  This is also a great time to take out a little aggression! You don't need too many slits, just a few.

 There is also the possibility that you may need to trim the pumpkin stem down. Go ahead, grab a good stiff knife and hack off some of that stem! I know I still needed to do this even though I put my oven racks all the way down.

By the way- all your prep work is now done! Just stick that sucker in the oven!

 Here's the not so measured part of all this. Now, you just wait. After a couple of hours, you can test the readiness of the squashes by taking a fork and poking the pumpkin. Now- a pumpkin's skin is a bit thicker, so you will have a tiny bit of resistance. But, as long as the fork goes in after the initial pop, then you are good to go! How long it needs to cook, depends on how big of a pumpkin you are roasting.  This was a decent sized pumpkin, and I let it cook about 2 hours and it was PERFECT! the spaghetti squash in the photo was done MUCH sooner! I think that one took about 45 minutes.

Once they are cooked, pull them out and set them on the counter to cool. Just for a little bit. You don't want to make the mistake of grabbing a hot pumpkin straight out of the oven! OUCH!

 Once they are cooled, take a knife and split them open to cool a little more. they will still be WAY hot on the inside!

They will split open soooooooooooooo easily! You can send me thank you cards at any point for this!

Once they have cooled enough to really handle, take a pointy spoon and start to scrape out the seeds! I use a grapefruit spoon, but any spoon would work. Since they are cooked, and nice and soft, it's really easy to remove the seeds! Just be sure to not take all your yummy squash meat with it!

After removing the seeds, go ahead and scrape out that lovely meat! Just put it in a bowl as you go. I was able to pull the pumpkin and squash apart in chunks, and peel the skin right off! Some spots, I did scrape with the spoon, but both methods are super easy and low fuss!

you can stop here, and either eat the meat as it is, or let it fully cool and freeze it, or you can take it a step further, and blend it up. The spaghetti squash I turned into fritters (which will be a later post) and the pumpkin, I pureed up. I just put the chunks into my Ninja and blended away! It came out super nice and smooth! You can then divide it into freezer bags, or use immediately in recipes. If you put it in a bowl in the fridge, and let it sit without a lid for a couple of days, you'll notice the moisture leaves! I'm not that patient, so I tend to squeeze mine through a cheese cloth, or tea towl to remove moisture.

There it is! YUM!!!!!!! Go ahead and make all the foods! This particular batch was turned into muffins, soup, fritters and sauce!

Go forth, and no longer fear roasting a whole huge pumpkin! I'll be processing our Halloween pumpkins this weekend and saving that golden goodness for the upcoming holidays!

I've got that Easy Peelin'

Get it?! Easy Peelin', instead of Easy Feelin'.... ok. Obviously, I haven't had enough coffee yet. Or maybe too much, but I'll leave that alone for now!

Last week, we talked about how to make chicken stock, since ya'll decided that the Chicken came first. This week, I want to show you how to make the easiest peeling hard eggs! Note that I didn't say "Hard Boiled Eggs"? That's because I no longer boil them. Nope. Never again will I boil an egg, and go through the horrors of trying to peel an egg, only to loose half of it to the shell and compost.

Well, if you don't boil them, what do you do? STEAM them!!!!!!!

Reason being, the steam, not only permeates the shell, but it also permeates that membrane and separates the membrane from the egg as it cooks. That's the part that normally holds onto the egg white and causes you to lose half of your egg.

I have done this now with store bought eggs, farm fresh eggs (yes, from the roadside stand down the way from me!) and with eggs that were still warm from coming out of the chicken! Doesn't get any fresher than that! And I had the same fabulous results with all of them.

So, let's get to the steaming!

You'll need:
A pot
Water
Steamer basket of some type. Either the metal ones, or the bamboo. Doesn't matter. Both work fine.
Eggs







Step One:
Put enough water in the bottom of the pot to be able to bring it to a boil and keep at a low boil for approx 20-25 minutes. Turn the stove on and bring that water up to a boil.

Step Two:
While you wait for the water to boil, Get your steamer basket and load it up with eggs

I just lay them in there. Nothing fancy. We go through a LOT of eggs each week. So, this is a normal amount for us.

Step Three:
Once the water is boiling, turn the heat back just enough to keep it at a low boil. Put the steamer basket in or on the pot (depending on the style you are using it may be different than mine). And set your timer for 20-25 mins. I have found when I use the Jumbo eggs from the roadside stand, that 25 mins works best for me.

Once the timer is done, I turn off the stove, and move the whole shebang to either the counter, or a cool burner. I just let it all come down in temp. I never rush. Sometimes, I even leave them on the counter and go out in the yard and play with the Powder Monkey for a bit, or blast off a few practice shots with the bow and arrow or plot the next Village to plunder and pillage.....

Once they are cool, go ahead and store in the fridge just like you would any other boiled egg. A note about food safety- you do not want to put hot foods directly into the fridge. Let it come down in temp before putting away.


And just to prove to you what I am showing you in these photos works- just watch! So easy that even my two year old Powder Monkey can peel her own egg!

Which Came first? the Chicken (Stock) or the Egg?

Well, after the votes were tallied, it looks like you Mutineers want to know about the Chicken! So the chicken is coming first!


Let's get started on how to turn a $7.50 whole chicken into 6 meals and 11 Quarts of stock!

you will need:

- a whole chicken. Preferably already culled, otherwise there are extra steps you'll need to take. That will be a later post. So for this time, let's assume you have purchased a whole chicken from the butcher or grocery store
-some carrots
-onion
-couple cloves of garlic
-Shot of apple cider vinegar
-crockpot
-water
-pressure canner and jars/lids/rings OR freezer safe containers and freezer space



First thing you'll want to do,  is get your crockpot out and ready to go. I do everything in the crockpot. This pot will be kept going for 3-5 days. YES! Really, so if you haven't gotten over leaving your crockpot on while you are gone, GET OVER IT! That's what they are made to do! Unless you have faulty wiring, then that's a whole other issue!

The next thing we are going to do, is get that chicken ready!

As you can see from the photo, I really and truly bought a whole, organic chicken for $7.50.  Shop around, look around, you might be surprised where you will find cheap food! I will say, that because this is an organic, antibiotic and hormone free chicken, it seemed "small" compared to the super huge fattened up chickens we are used to seeing. FEAR NOT, Me Hearties! You will still get a TON out of this one chicken!

So, stand him up on one end. I like to keep the "big" side down, so the leg bones are at the top, where the packaging is smaller. I cut just a small opening into that bag. There's a lot of liquid in the bag, and you don't want that running all over the place. You don't want salmonella to ruin your stock party!

While you still only that that small opening in the bag, you'll want to reach inside the chicken and grab the bag of giblets. Don't throw them away, we're going to use them! Clip them out of their separate packaging and put them into the crockpot, along with the whole chicken. Nothing fancy, just dump them all in there!

There may or may not be one of those little paper pads in there. be sure to pull that out if there is!

Once you have your chicken in the pot, and have cleaned up your work surface from any dribbles, you'll want to add your veggies. I peel the onion and garlic, and don't even bother chopping the carrots. I just plop them all on top of the chicken in the pot. And then put that shot of apple cider vinegar on top. This helps to pull the minerals/nutrients out of the bones!

Once you have your chicken, giblets, and veggies in the pot, go ahead and cover it with water, and turn the crockpot onto the lowest setting.

After 12 hours, it will look something like this:

Go ahead and get a platter and remove the chicken. leave the veggies in there, and leave the liquid.
Let the chicken cool enough to the touch to pull the meat off it and set aside for meals (I got 6 total meals from this chicken. It was 2 full meals for the three of us!!!). Once you have a pile of bones and a pile of meat, dump the bones back into the crockpot! This is the key to making your good stock!

Add some more water to make sure the pot is full if need be. Let it go another 12 hours.

At the end of the 24 hours, you can strain off HALF of the pot. Don't drain it more than half way! You want to leave some of the stock there to flavor the new batch. You can fill your jars with the strained stock (I use a laddle and a fine mesh strainer to do this.) and once cooled, you can put them into the fridge.

Top off with fresh water, and let go another 24 hours.

Repeat this process of removing liquid and adding water every 24 hours. You want your stock to be a nice dark amber color like this:

depending on the particular chicken, I usually keep this going for 3-5 days. Once the bones of the chicken just smoosh and crumble between my thumb and index finger with little pressure, and the stock color lightens up, I call it a day.

If you are going to pressure can the stock, then this is the time to take your jars out of the fridge and can them.
If you are going to keep it in the freezer, then you can just pop those containers right into the freezer instead of the fridge!

Please note- that I do NOT add salt at any point in this process. Reason being, is that I would much rather add it when I am cooking and adjust the salt to the recipe I am making, rather than have to adjust my recipe to the salt already in my stock!

Enjoy! And Happy Sailing!!!!!

I love you, a bushel and a Peck!

Rather, two pecks. Two pecks of apples that only cost $8 total. And you know what that got me? 7 pints of applesauce and approximately 2 gallons of apple cider vinegar.

Wait, what?! I know this is what you are thinking! How on Earth, did you get all that for $8?!

Take a seat, and I'll explain.

Equipment needed: (or rather, what I used)

-2 Pecks of Apples. Knowing that I was going to be making applesauce and vinegar, I purchased seconds. Seconds are the slightly less perfect pieces of fruit and veg that are still saleable, but might not be perfectly round, or have a bruise, or some discolor. They are fine! They need to be used and loved! EAT THEM! Because they are seconds, this also makes the CHEAPER.

- Either a veggie peeler, or if you are fortunate enough to have one of those fancy-schmancy Apple-Peeler-Corer-Slicers like I do, well, now is the time to employ it!

-If you are using the veggie peeler, you will also need a knife

-Just like with the fancy-schmancy peeler, if you have a food mill, you'll want to bust that out of the cabinet, if not, then a fine mesh strainer and a spoon will do.

-large pot to boil water in.

-Large GLASS container to make vinegar in. Yes, it HAS to be glass. I'll explain why later.

Ok, those are the large pieces of equipment all accounted for. Let's get on to the process.

First thing you should do, is wash those apples! Even if you get them from a great, local friendly, all organic place like I did, you still want them to be grit free. Dump them into a sink full of water and pour in a sizeable splash of white vinegar, and let 'em soak for a few mins. Swish them around like you are swabbing the deck of your ship!

I'm going to walk you through what I did, if you need to use the veggie peeler/knife combo and the fine mesh strainer/spoon combo, you will do things a little differently. I can make an addendum to this blog post if need be for those whom are going that route.

Break out that peeler-corer! Pop your apples onto the spikes and crank that handle! What is left, is a spiralized apple, the peel, and then the core. Set the apple aside (in some water with lemon juice to prevent discoloring).
Now, that glorious apple peel and core, DO NOT THROW THEM OUT, DO NOT COMPOST THEM (yet!). Take those bad boys and put them into the glass container you plan to make your vinegar in.

Repeat, repeat, repeat. Do this untill all your apples are peeled. Keep setting aside the meat, and putting the peels and cores into the glass container.

Before you move on to the phase of the applesauce'ing, lets finish up the processing of the vinegar.

A note about the glass jar: you will want to use glass, or a ceramic fermenting jar. DO NOT use metal. The fermenting process will leach out the metals from your container and contaminate your food. This is no good! No one wants food that tastes like a car key! (you know you have done it! Admit it! You have put your car keys in your mouth to free your hands up. You KNOW what I'm talking about here!!!)

Ahem. Onward!

 Once you have your full jar of peels and cores, you will need to cover the top of the jar. You want to use something that will allow the pot to "breath", but not let in bugs. I used a coffee filter and a rubber band. You can use fabric, or cheesecloth (might need to double or triple the cheesecloth). Whatever you have on hand.

Take that jar and just set it aside for a day or two.You want those apple bits to turn brown. Once they are brown, fill the jar with water, and put your breathable cover back on top. Set it aside again. This is the part where it's not so scientific. You now wait. And wait. And then you wait some more. Each batch I have made has taken a different amount of time. One batch was strong enough in 6 weeks, one batch I left almost 12. I do a sniff test. When it smells strong enough for my liking, I strain the liquid off and bottle the liquid. I take the apple bits and compost them. Because this is the "organic" processing of the vinegar, it will be cloudy just like when you buy the organic unfiltered brands in the store. There's nothing wrong with this!
Here's what my finished vinegar looks like:

Depending upon the type of apples you use, will also affect the color. Each batch will be slightly different.That's ok! Go with it!!!!!!!

Now, back to the 'sauce making!

Get that large pot half full of water, and get it heating up. You'll want it just below a boil at a good simmer.

Drop a few handfuls of the apple meat into the water and let it heat up. You won't need to do this for very long. Use a slotted spoon to scoop out the apple meat and put it into a colander to drain the water off. Start processing the next chunk of apples.

This is where things get a little hectic. You'll be heating up the apples in the pot, while simultaneously straining apples, and running them through your food mill.  I know you aren't a Kraken, and don't have 8 arms, it will be ok! I promise!

Take the cooked apples and put them into the hopper of the food mill, and start cranking the handle and pushing them through:

It might take a few cranks to get something to start coming out, but it WILL happen! I promise!

Once you have processed all your slightly cooked apples through the mill (or smashed them through a strainer with a spoon) you'll want to put them back into the pot on the stove and cook them just a bit more.

I did NOT add sugar, or spices or anything else to mine. If you want to add stuff to yours, by all means, go right ahead! I left mine plain, because I will not just be eating this as an applesauce. I will be using it as a base to make fruit leather with. So I didn't want extras in mine.

I'm not going to go into the whole process of how to can up the applesauce. That will be a whole other post. But, as I mentioned, I was able to get 7 pints of applesauce out of these two pecks! And that glass jar of vinegar that is batching up, is a 2 1/2 gallon jar!

All for the cost of $8.

Pretty awesome!

Happy Sailing My Fellow Privateers!

Let the adventure begin!

Privateer

[prahy-vuh-teer]

noun

1. an armed ship that is privately owned and manned, commissioned by a government to fight or harass enemy ships.

2. privateersman.

verb (used without object)

3. to cruise as a privateer.

Mutiny

[myoot-n-ee]

noun, plural mutinies.

1. revolt or rebellion against constituted authority, especially by sailors against their officers.

2. rebellion against any authority.

verb (used without object), mutinied, mutinying.

3. to commit the offense of mutiny; revolt against authority.

Welcome aboard the Ship! Errr, I mean, welcome to our Home! I am proud to be the Captain of this vessel, and look forward to you embarking on the journey with our family as we mutiny against (some) modern congenialities. With two full time “day jobs”, a toddler and life happening around us at such breakneck speeds, we are often asked “How do you do it?!”  Well, weigh anchor and prepare to get your sea legs as we navigate around the Homestead and show you how to mutiny against the myths and stigmas that Homesteading is “too complicated”.