Homemade Ice Cream and Butter
I love reading articles at lifehacker.com. Lifehacker gives tips for getting things done. They also post articles about food and cooking. I love to cook. It wasn't until Michelle and I started purchasing quality kitchen equipment that I realized how much I enjoyed cooking. A few years ago we got a great deal on a set of Calphalon pots and pans at Bed Bath & Beyond, and we found that you really do get what you pay for.
Lifehacker recently had a post linking to a recipe for homemade ice cream that only had two ingredients, and didn't require an ice cream maker. Being a lover of ice cream, I had to try it. Here's the recipe from instructables.com:
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup of honey
- 2 1/2 cups of cream
- Vanilla extract (optional but recommended)
Directions:
- Whip 1.5 cups of whipping cream (plus 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract if desired) until it forms stiff peaks, refrigerate.
- Heat honey on low heat until it is very runny and add the remaining 1 cup of cream. Stir together until well blended (and grate in teensie bit of vanilla bean, if desired).
- Add honey/cream mixture to the whipped cream. Whisk until well blended.
- Freeze approximately 6 hours until the mixture is the consistency of ice cream.
Homemade Two Ingredient Ice Cream
I made the ice cream before bed last night, and it was ready when I woke up. It tastes a lot like the honey I used, so if you're going to try it, use a honey that you like. I also added some vanilla extract that dad brought back from Haiti. The homemade ice cream has the right consistency, and is delicious.
I had some leftover heavy cream that I wasn't sure what to do with. I was watching Secrets of a Restaurant Chef on Food Network today when the host said that she was going to make butter. All she did was dump some heavy cream in the mixer, and turn it on high for a while. She didn't show the rest of the steps, so I looked it up.
Here's what you do:
- Pour heavy cream into a mixer or food processor. I used a food processor since it has a lid that kept everything clean.
- Mix on high for about 10 minutes until you have butter.
- The butter will separate, and you'll be left with curds and butter milk in the bowl.
- Strain the milk from the curds.
Homemade Butter
I flavored the butter with a little bit of salt during step two. If you want to save the butter milk, you may want to save the flavoring until after step four. The next time I make butter I'm going to try adding some herbs.
Farmville: A True Story
One thing that I dislike about Facebook, is all of the status updates that show from Farmville, Mafia Wars, and other games. When people ask me if I play Farmville, I tell them, "No. But if you want to come to my house and help me on a real farm, you're more than welcome to."
Last year, after Michelle and I moved back to Hiawassee, we planted a small vegetable garden. We didn't have much, mostly tomatoes and some herbs. This year, we decided to do a little more. Michelle's uncle plowed a small plot below our house near the creek. The garden is about 10 feet by 30 feet. So far, we've planted tomatoes, broccoli, watermelon, red and green bell peppers, lettuce, and cucumbers. We still need to plant beans, zucchini, sweet corn, and anything else we can think of.
Our vegetable garden.
There's a lot of wildlife around our house that would like to eat our garden, so we had to build a fence around it. Luckily, or unluckily depending on how you look at it, we had two goat pens on our property. Michelle and I tore down one of the fences and reconstructed it around the garden. Hopefully that will keep the rabbits, deer, groundhogs, and bears away from our veggies.
Michelle's grandfather planted several blueberry bushes many many years ago. They produce some of the sweetest berries I've ever had. They hadn't been taken care of in recent years, and were being overtaken by honeysuckle. While I love the smell of honeysuckle, I don't want kill my blueberries. The vines had grown to the tops of the bushes, and were not sharing the sunlight with our berries. We spent many hours one day clearing the honeysuckle vines from the bushes. Some of the vines were two inches in diameter, and until we started working, we thought that they were part of the blueberry bushes.
Working on the blueberry bushes.
When we moved into our house last spring, the only source of heat was a small gas heater that barely provided enough heat for the room that it was in. When the house was originally built, a chimney was placed in the middle of the house. After much consideration, we purchased a Quadra-Fire Castile pellet stove. The stove burns wood pellets, which are made from compressed sawdust. The stove is a very energy efficient, and it's environmentally friendly since the sawdust used for the pellets is waste material from sawmills. The stove is controlled by a thermostat that can be moved from room to room. You set the temperature, and when it gets cold, pellets automatically drop into the pot and start burning. The only thing we have to do is keep the pellet hopper full, and the ash tray clean.
A Quadra-Fire Castile pellet stove.
It performed very well over the winter. With temperatures in the single digits, our house stayed nice and warm. Now that we have new energy efficient windows, the stove should do even better this winter. One other neat feature of the stove, is that it can also burn corn. This summer we'll plant a field of corn to heat our house with this winter. We'll still have to use wood pellets, as it can only burn a 50% mixture of corn and pellets, but it will greatly reduce the amount of pellets we'll have to buy.
Our future corn field, and my Gator. The blueberry bushes are at the far end of the field.
Best Smores Ever
Today I decided to make some smores. I didn't want to make a campfire, and I wanted the smores to be different. To make the smores without a campfire, I used marshmallow fluff. But to really add to the flavors of the traditional smore, I replaced the milk chocolate bar with Nutella. So if you're playing along at home, here's what you need.
Ingredients:
1 box of graham crackers
1 jar of marshmallow fluff
1 jar of Nutella
Glass of cold milk
Nutella
If you have never had Nutella, you're missing out. It's a very creamy, chocolately, and hazelnut-y. There are 50 hazelnuts in every 13 ounce jar. Nutella is great on toast or crackers, and a Nutella and banana sandwich can't be beaten.
Marshmallow Fluff
Marshmallow fluff is also a great ingredient. It's a creamy marshmallow spread that's a great replacement for jelly in a PB&J sandwich. (There's a recipe on the back of this jar for marshmallow fluff brownies that I think I'm going to try.)
Graham Crackers
I don't think this needs a description. I watched an episode of Good Eats the other night about crackers. Alton Brown said that the creator of graham crackers (a Mr. Graham) created them as a food to keep people from lust. The original recipe called for wheat and water.
Step 1: Spread the fluff on a cracker.
Step 2: Spread the Nutella on another cracker.
Step 3: Combine crackers.
Step 4: Pour a glass of milk and enjoy.
Tips:
- Nutella has a very strong flavor. I put more fluff on the crackers than Nutella so I could taste it.
- Use a separate knife for the two spreads. They're both messy, and nobody wants fluff in their Nutella jar.
- Make multiple smores. You can thank me later.
- Don't be afraid to dip your smores in the milk.