Make Your Own Artisan Ricotta Cheese – It’s Easy!

I’ve always wanted to try cheesemaking, and I recently found a recipe for homemade ricotta cheese that was originally published in the now-shuttered Gourmet magazine. Creative Director Richard Ferretti’s recipe was so simple, it gave me the courage to make a batch — no rennet or thermometers needed! Since then I’ve made several pounds of this creamy cheese, and EVERYONE (everyone, I tell you) begs for the recipe. (Everyone.) So here we go.

First, line a sieve with a double layer of cheesecloth and place it in a bowl like this: 

Next,  bring 1 quart of milk, 1/2 cup of heavy cream and 1/4 teaspoon of salt to a rolling boil in a heavy saucepan. (By the way, I only make half of Ferretti’s recipe at a time because I am trying, trying to keep my butt from getting as big as a barn.)

Now, you add 1 1/2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, reduce the heat to low, and simmer — stirring constantly — until the mixture curdles, about 2 minutes. It looks sort of gross at this point, but stay with me.

Now, simply dump the whole mess into that nice cheesecloth-lined sieve, like this:

Errrgh!  Let it drain for about an hour, and you’ll have a nice batch of ricotta that looks something like this:

Transfer the ricotta to a tightly lidded container and refrigerate it. For a crazy good snack, spread it on lightly toasted slices of French bread, sprinkle with salt and pepper and top with sliced fresh tomatoes or roasted red peppers. It’s also wonderful spread on crackers and topped with a drizzle of olive oil and Balsamic vinegar. Or spread it on hot buttered toast and drizzle with honey or sprinkle with a little cinnamon sugar for a completely decadent breakfast. Ferretti says to eat it within 2 days, which shouldn’t be difficult to do.

Have you tried making your own cheese? If so, I’d love to hear about your experiences.

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Make Your Own Tender, Perfectly Puffed Pita Breads – For Pennies

The Best Gingersnaps on the Planet

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Organic Mint Pesto from the Garden’s Final Basil Crop

A dusting of snow covers the mint plants in the garden

It’s snowing here in Colorado today, and in anticipation of last night’s hard freeze I picked all the basil. I’ll use it to prepare a fresh variation on pesto sauce enlivened with fresh mint. The pesto freezes well and I portion it into 1/3 cup servings so that we can easily thaw a little to toss with hot linguine, whisk into salad dressing, or spread on a pizza when summertime is a distant memory. Here’s the simple recipe:

Fresh Minted Pesto Sauce

1 1/2 cups loosely packed fresh basil leaves (no stems)

1/4 cup loosely packed mint leaves, no stems

1/4 cup fresh parsley

2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

1/4 cup blanched almonds

4 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

4 to 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Put the basil, mint, parsley, garlic and almonds in a food processor. Blend at low speed for a few moments until the ingredients are coarsely chopped. Add the cheese and half of the olive oil and blend again. Scrape the mixture down from the side of the container. Turn the speed to low and trickle in the remaining olive oil while blending. By hand, stir in salt and pepper to taste. Makes 1 cup.

Make Your Own Peach Preserves

The peaches this year have been more delicious than any I can ever remember — heavy, fragrant, juicy and sweet from the sunshine of late summer.

A display of Colorado peaches at Whole Foods

Before they’re gone, you can easily preserve fresh peaches’ fleeting, nectared essance by making a batch of homemade jam.  Perfect for holiday gift giving, I also love opening a jar of homemade jam on a snowy winter morning, slathering it on a hot, buttery biscuit and being transported back to sweet memories of the previous summer.

I used to make jam the old-fashioned way, standing at the stove for hours boiling and stirring the mixture and trying to keep it from scorching.  Recently I made a batch

Be Green, Recycle Less ? Here’s How …

There’s a little convenience store not far from our house called “Farm Crest Milk Store” that I’ve driven by many times. A few weeks ago I happened to remember that we needed milk right as I was approaching the store, so I pulled in the parking lot.  I was curious about a whole store devoted to milk but discovered that it’s a lot like a 7-11, with a few gas pumps outside and the usual impulse buy items inside. What was different, however, was

Cool Off with Homemade Naturally Sweet Tea

 

     Most store-bought sweetened iced teas are full of it — high fructose corn syrup, that is — and the ‘light’ versions are loaded with artificial sweeteners. Instead, make your own cool, delicious sweetened tea with natural ingredients and you’ll reap all of the antioxidant health benefits while keeping unnessary bottles out of the landfill; you’ll also save money! 

You’ll Dig This – Build Your Own Eco-Friendly Raised Garden for Less

In our efforts to convert more of our yard to gardening space, I wanted to add a raised garden for planting vegetables. I briefly lusted after one of these kits from Plow & Hearth, made from recycled plastic:

…but the $149.95 price tag (+ $17.99 for shipping) seemed to defeat the idea of growing food to save money. Fortunately, my Pop came to the rescue with the offer of four free reclaimed angle irons that had originally supported some decorative beams at a friend’s condo. His garage is full of treasures like this, and it’s amazing how he can go in there and rummage around and emerge with just the right tool or hardware for just about any job. He proposed that we use the angle irons to secure four pieces of lumber to make a frame for the garden, and he even created

Make Your Own Tender, Perfectly Puffed Pita Breads – for Pennies!

After reading about homemade pita bread on the King Arthur Flour blog, I was obsessed with making a batch from scratch. I love pita bread, but I was spoiled years ago by warm, fresh-from-the-oven pitas in Athens and have never found anything close here in Colorado. Even at one of Denver’s largest Middle Eastern grocery stores, the pitas are chewy and a bit cardboardy.

Using the King Arthur recipe as a guideline (and based on research that recommended a mix of no more than 33% whole wheat flour for reliable rising), I substituted 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup of spelt flour for one cup of the all-purpose flour. I didn’t have any King Arthur’s Dough Improver so I added a pinch of baking powder. Once the dough was ready to bake, I divided it into 8 portions and flattened the first ball slightly with my fingers like this:

Make Your Own Granola – Delicious, Healthy and Inexpensive!

Here’s a simple recipe that you can use to make your own healthy breakfast cereal. You can use organic and/or vegetarian ingredients if you wish, and substitute other goodies to suit your taste. Plus — with the cost of organic rolled oats at about $1 a pound — you can save tons of money by making your own!

 

Here’s the basic recipe for my favorite granola blend. I call it Oatmeal Cookie Granola and your kitchen will smell just like homemade oatmeal raisin cookies while you’re baking it!

Homemade Hooch at the Urban Homestead

We’ve been harvesting currants here, and even the ripest berries are intensely, mouth-puckeringly tart. After scratching my head about how to best utilize the little red berries, I found a recipe for homemade cassis and knew we were in business. I love kir (a drink made with cassis and white wine) and its cousin kir royale (cassis and champagne). While crème de cassis is traditionally made with black currants, I learned that red currants can also be used.

This is a two-part recipe, and you can easily double this if you have a bounty of fresh currants.

Homemade Cassis

• 3 to 4 cups ripe currants
• 2 ½ to 3 cups vodka (or enough to cover the currants in the jar)
• 1 pound sugar (more or less may be needed) 
• 1 cup vodka (more or less may be needed)

Wash the currants, remove any stems and gently pour them in a one-quart Mason jar. Pour the vodka in the jar, almost to the top. Here’s how it looks at this stage:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can You Compost a Poinsettia?

Dear Ms. Homesteader,

Now that the holidays are over, my poinsettia is dropping its red petals and becoming less attractive by the hour. My wife suggested throwing it in the compost pile, but I thought I remembered reading that poinsettias are poisonous. To compost or not to compost?

Sincerely yours,

Poindexter Settya

Dear Mr. Settya,

You will be happy to hear that poinsettias are not poisonous, so yours can be safely added to the compost heap. Some people are sensitive to the milky sap that comes from the poinsettia’s branches; it can occasionally cause an itchy rash. Wear your gardening gloves when you add the plant to the compost, and be careful not to rub your eyes after touching the plants. Here at the urban homestead, we composted our very own poinsettia plant just yesterday, and it immediately transformed the compost heap into a festive and colorful montage:

 

Sincerely,

Ms. Homesteader

Just Call Me the Bag Lady

Do you know that we Americans use around 84 billion plastic bags annually? (I know I’ve probably got a cool million or so stuffed in the kitchen drawers and pantry.) What’s worse is what happens when the bags end up in the landfill:  they don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade—breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits and contaminating soil and waterways.

A New Bamboo Floor

2008 begins with a terrific improvement here at the Urban Homestead - a new bamboo floor in the office!

Our journey started when I read Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan’s compelling book, “Apartment Therapy: The Eight Step Home Cure.” Along with some great ideas for simplifying one’s home environment and paring down one’s possessions, the author suggests indentifying the room in our house that bugs us the most; he then gently guides readers on how to “cure” the space. In my case, the room with the most problems happened to be the space where I spend at least 50% of my time — my home office. For starters, the floor was covered with the grungiest, worn, dog-hair and lint-laden, impossible-to-clean shag carpeting. Think I’m exaggerating? Take a gander at THIS:

When our professional carpet cleaner said

Bugged by Yellowjackets

We’ve always had tons of yellowjackets here. They are aggressive and pesky, and often get inside the house. Last year I tried some ugly yellow plastic traps that use chemical attractant and caught, perhaps, two dozen yellowjackets. This year, I’ve purchased some vintage-style, reusable glass traps that can be baited with sweetened fruit juice. I read that springtime is the best time to set out traps, because the early season yellowjackets are often queens.

 

As you can see from the photo on the right, about an hour after I hung the traps we had a visitor. But it was a fly, not a yellowjacket, and it managed to get itself out of the trap and fly off a little while after I took the photo.

Strangely, I was happy.

Update: The glass traps may be prettier than the plastic ones, but they caught nary a single yellowjacket during the 2007 summer season. Meanwhile, the tacky yellow plastic trap with commercial attractant caught about a hundred yellowjackets in three months. We clearly need to find a better bait for the glass traps; watch for an update in spring of 2008.

 

Granny’s Formula Rocks!

In my last post I wrote about trying to unclog a drain with a natural, enzyme-based drain cleaner. Unfortunately, although the formula was all-natural and one could feel wonderfully guilt-free using it, it didn’t have any effect on the slow sink.

The following day I tried a new tactic on the stubborn drain, one that you often see in old housekeeping books and “Hints from Heloise.” I poured 1/4 cup of baking soda down the drain, followed by 1/2 cup of plain white vinegar. The mixture foamed up spectacularly for a couple of seconds and then settled down, at which point I covered the drain with a small saucepan lid. After a few minutes I removed the lid and poured a gallon of boiling water down the drain. Within the next 90 seconds there were some wonderful gurgling noises followed by a “whoosh” and the drain was clear.

This method was natural and inexpensive, and it had the added thrill of feeling like a high school science experiment!

Autumn Gold

After a spectacular show of golden foliage, the locust tree out front is quickly losing all of its leaves. The leaves are small – not easy to rake up, but excellent for composting. The basic ‘recipe’ for compost is slightly more than half brown stuff, and slightly less than half green stuff. Brown things like leaves and pine needles have high amounts of the element carbon. Green things include grass clippings and other plant wastes that have high amounts of nitrogen. You can also add some dirt to speed up the process. The other important ingredient is water, which helps break down the clippings. You also need to make sure that air can circulate around the pile so the mixture doesn’t rot or get moldy. Autumn is the perfect time to create a big compost pile; you can fuss with it all winter and let it age for the recommended 4 to 6 months, at which time you’ll have a wonderful batch of rich compost for spring planting.