mama urchin

Before we scooted off to mission control — more rocket pics in Papa’s flickr stream — someone in our house turned five. She has been telling us for months about the mermaid swimming party she was going to have. My philosophy on children’s birthday parties is that themes are fun for them, even if I personally find them a little too much. And if you are going to do a theme, I say go for it whole heartedly. So, a mermaid swimming party was had.

The inside says:

We had the party at our local recreation center so we couldn’t really decorate too much. I just got all kinds of shells and some ocean-colored beads to put on the tables.

For food we kept it simple. Papa made an awesome cake — with art direction by Mama — and we had ice cream cups and swedish fish. Let me tell you, I had forgotten how good swedish fish taste. The castle cake was made with a nordic ware pan. We made a sheet cake to be the ocean and decorated it with homemade candies, store bought sugar fishes, and two theme-appropriate playmobils.

The mermaid princess seemed pleased, if not a little overwhelmed. She’s already started planning next year’s party, a fairy teaparty — do you think she’s been reading Daria’s blog?

Would you like a potato? An Irish Potato? It’s candy….

Bake a potato. Let it cool. Scoop out the flesh into a bowl and mash it up. Add a lot of confectioner’s sugar and shredded coconut. Add a dash of vanilla extract. Keep adding the sugar and coconut until it’s the consistency of stiff dough. Shape into small potatoes. Put a few pieces at a time in a bag with ground cinnamon and shake it around. Enjoy!

Leeks and in the bowl, green lentils. Not too much green outside so were going with inside today. We had Lentil Soup with Sausage to celebrate /combat the return of cooler weather. I was at the shoe store today and a woman was returning snow boots. I told her she was dooming us to a big March snowstorm. I hope not. I want some green out my window.

I think everything I’ve made from scratch this week has been fairly obvious. Today, not so much. We eat a lot of yogurt around here — Papa and I both enjoy it with granola for breakfast and the urchins enjoy it for breakfast and snacks too. So, instead of paying for all that yogurt we make it instead.

You can make yogurt without a machine and you can make yogurt without using a powdered starter but you’ll have better success if you use both. We have an older version of this machine and my in-laws use this machine. The difference is mostly personal preference — our machine makes seven 6-oz jars of yogurt, their machine makes 1 or 2 liters of yogurt in one large container. As for the starter, you can use yogurt as a starter — similar to how you use sourdough to start more sourdough — just make sure it has active, live cultures. You’ll probably have more luck, though, if you use a powdered starter. We use the Yogourmet starter. We get it mailorder but I’ve also seen it in Whole Foods. Okay, so let’s make some yogurt.

Pour 40 oz ultra-pasteurized milk into a large measuring cup. Using ultra-pasteurized means you don’t have to sterilize the milk first.
Warm the milk to room temperature — I do this by microwaving the milk for about 2 minutes.
Add the powdered starter and whisk until it’s fully dissolved.

Divide equally among the jars.

Put the jars in the machine and turn it on. For 2% milk we let them cook for 15 hours to get a nice thick yogurt, for whole milk we cook it for 8 hours.

Put the lids on the jars and pop them in the fridge, voilà yogurt.
If we want fruit flavored yogurt we just add a little jam to the jar before we eat it but a lot of the time just granola is enough.

Organic Plain Yogurt = $1.00 per 6 oz. container
Homemade Plain Yogurt** = $0.46 per 6 oz. jar

(*Stonyfield Farm Organic Yogurt, ** $0.06 per ounce organic 2% milk, $0.83 yogurt starter)

I think a lot of people who eat granola make their own. Everyone develops a certain type they like and a lot of times it’s easier to make that type rather than buy it. Our family prefers the maple syrup sweetened variety of granola but we have a hard time finding any granola that doesn’t contain nuts — Papa is allergic — so making it is almost our only option. What follows is an adaptation of a Fine Cooking recipe where I’ve omitted the nuts. You of course can add them back in if you desire.

6 c dried ingredients (at least 4 cups needs to be old-fashioned rolled oats but the other 2 cups can be chopped nuts or seeds)
.5 c whole-wheat flour
.5 c nonfat dry milk powder
.5 t salt
1.5 c pure maple syrup
.25 c canola oil
1 T vanilla extract

Put all the dry ingredients in a large bowl and mix them well.
In a measuring cup combine the liquid ingredients.

Pour the liquids into the dry ingredients and stir, stir, stir.
Spray two rimmed baking sheets with non-stick spray — I use silicone mats and just spray the edges of the pan.
Divide the granola between the two pans and spread as thin as you can.

Bake in the middle of the oven at 300′ F for 20 minutes.
Stir and flip the clumps. Rotate the pans.
Bake for 20 minutes more.
Stir again. It may be ready now or it may need up to another 20 minutes.

If you smell the slightest burnt smell get it out of the oven because nobody likes to eat burnt granola.
Let it cool and it will harden/dry. Store it in an airtight container.
If you like to add dried fruit you can add it (about 2 cups) after the baking but around here we prefer to add it as we eat it.

Store Bought Granola = $0.28 per ounce
Homemade Granola* = $0.28 per ounce

(* $3.79 for 13.5 oz. bag granola, ** $0.25 per cup rolled oats, $0.35 per cup Organic Whole Wheat Flour, $2.56 per cup Dried Milk, $4.66 per cup pure maple syrup, $1.00 for the salt, oil, and vanilla)

Wednesday night is pizza night at our house. We have activities at church on Wednesdays so we need a reliable dinner, one that the kids will eat without a fight, so pizza it is. I’ve talked about pizza before, what can I say we like it.

Pizza from this recipe

• 18 oz flour
• 1.5 t salt
• 2.25 t yeast (1 package)
• 1.5 c warm water
• 2 T olive oil

Bloom the yeast in the warm water for about 10 minutes.
In the meantime put the flour and salt in your food processor with the metal blade and give it a whirl or two.
While the machine is running slowly pour in the water/yeast.
The dough should come together pretty quickly, in a minute or so.
Stop the food processor and pour the olive oil in all at once. Process just until the oil is combined.
Turn out the dough and all the little bits onto a floured surface.

Knead the dough by hand working in more flour until you have a nice smooth ball of dough. At this point we divide ours into four mini balls of dough.

Let them rest on a floured surface with a towel over them for about an hour.
Turn your oven on to 500′ F with a bread stone or tiles inside.

After an hour or so pick up the dough and shape it into a pizza shape. I have the most success doing this by stretching the dough over my hand.
Top with your favorite sauce, cheese, and toppings and bake on the stone for about 8-10 minutes.

The best part about splitting the dough into four mini pizzas is that we can each top our pizza the way we want. Tristan does cheese only, Katie prefers sauce, cheese and sausage or pepperoni, Papa likes meat and cheese, I often use pesto instead of sauce and I like sun-dried tomatoes and roasted red peppers with cheese. Tonight though we all had just cheese with a side of tamiflu. Our over-acheiver tested positive for both strep throat and the flu this afternoon. Apparently she was exposed to a rogue strain of the flu that is not prevented by the vaccinations we all got earlier this winter. Spring, you’re coming soon, right?

Purchased Large Cheese Pizza* = $10.99
Homemade Personal Pizzas**= $5.43 ($1.36 per individual pizza)

(*from Domino’s pizza,** $1.56 for 18 oz Organic All Purpose Flour) $0.06 Instant Yeast, $0.25 for the oil and salt, $0.77 for half a jar/can of pizza sauce, $2.79 bag of shredded mozzarella cheese)

Bread is an obvious choice for making from scratch. It really is easy and with a bread machine it is super-easy. We had a Breadman machine that we got a decade ago and last Autumn it started to make some very loud, not so nice noises. Committed to the bread-making I debated with which machine to replace it and finally settled on the investment of the Zojirushi.

I’ve had the best luck with the bread recipes that come in the manual with my machine — both the Breadman and the Zojirushi. We tweak them, of course, to meet our tastes but they have the right proportions of everything so they get the best results. If you are looking for recipes try this or this recent post or this excellent recipe and tip sheet. So instead of a recipe today I have some helpful hints for making bread:

• Don’t wholly substitute whole wheat flour for white flour unless you are also adding wheat gluten. White flour has enough gluten to achieve a nicely risen loaf, whole wheat flour alone does not. So, if you don’t want to add wheat gluten use a mix of white and whole wheat flour.
• Measure your dry ingredients by weight, you will be so much more successful if you do this.
• Store your yeast in the freezer, it will last much longer this way.
• While making bread machine bread is easy I still find myself avoiding it because I have to measure all those ingredients. Next time you make bread, measure the dry ingredients for two loaves (don’t include the yeast). Put one set of dry ingredients in the machine, the other in a zip-top bag or canister. Then when you want to make bread again you can just put the liquid(s) in the machine, dump in your dry ingredients, and add your yeast. Talk about quick.

Purchased Loaf of Organic Whole Wheat Bread* = $2.99
Homemade Organic Whole Wheat Bread** = $1.95

*purchased at my local Whole Foods
**price figured using this basic recipe ($0.35 per cup Organic Whole Wheat Flour, $0.09 per tablespoon Vital Wheat Gluten, $0.06 per loaf Instant Yeast, $0.75 for the oil, salt, and honey)

• 4 28.2-ounce cans of diced tomatoes (do not drain)
• 6 T olive oil
• 10 large cloves garlic, chopped
• 1-3 T kosher salt
• 1/4 c lightly packed dried basil

Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-low heat.
Add the garlic. Cook, stirring often, until the garlic is golden and softened (don’t let it burn), 5 to 10 min.

Pour in the tomatoes with their juices.
Bring to a boil over medium high, stirring frequently, and then reduce the heat to a simmer.

Add the salt (I start with 2 T) and basil and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the sauce has reduced and thickened. This could take as few as 20 minutes or as much as two hours. Mine usually clocks in around one hour, maybe a little more.

Now is the time to make this sauce taste the way you want. Before adding anything taste it first, you may need to add some more salt or even some sugar — if you use good quality tomatoes you generally shouldn’t need to use any sugar. We like garlic so I often add a cube or two of frozen garlic scape pesto from the summer. Chopped sun or oven-dried tomatoes would be yummy. Certainly any herbs you particularly love would be welcome.

The next step is to divide the sauce into your containers of choice. I generally go with zip-top bags filled with two cups of sauce — a jar of pasta sauce has just over three cups of sauce. You should get about 14 cups from this recipe. Let it cool a little and then off to the freezer and you’ll have homemade sauce for about seven meals. So to compare:

Muir Glen Pasta Sauce = $0.17/per ounce*
Homemade Pasta Sauce = $0.12/per ounce** (and it tastes better too)

*($4.29 for 25.5 ounce jar)
**($2.79 per 28oz can Muir Glen Diced Tomatoes, $1.19 per 1/4c jar of basil from Penzey’s, $1.50 for the garlic, olive oil, and salt = $13.85 for 112 ounces)

Last Autumn Molly posted about her grocery shopping dilemma where she felt like she was always running to the grocery store and spending more money than she wanted to there. She asked for tips and got a lot of them from her readers. I’ve been thinking back to that post recently because we are trying to be better about staying on budget with our spending. I’ve started to regularly make some things from scratch that we used to buy and I thought it might be fun to share some recipes and tips with you guys. So, I declare next week — February 18 through 22 — to be Made From Scratch Week here on the Mama Urchin blog. Feel free to join in if you want.

Poor Papa, he loves pancakes and french toast and he married someone who is more of a scrambled egg kind of girl. He really hoped our kids would like pancakes because, really what kid doesn’t like pancakes? Well, that would be our kids. No pancakes, french toast, or waffles can be coaxed past their lips. Recently he convinced Katrina to try a different kind of pancake — crepes — and much to his surprise she liked them. I think she really thought of them as more of tortillas — which she loves — and filled her crepe with cheese and sour cream. So last week she told us she wanted pancakes for dinner, the kind she likes. So Papa set out to make some crepes and realizing that most of us would need something a little more substantial came across a recipe for crepe quiche lorraine. They turned out to be very yummy, and pretty too. I had nothing to do with making them but I think they were pretty easy. They made an excellent last minute dinner for sure.