Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

We dusted off our electric ice cream maker last week to make some homemade ice cream to help celebrate my mom's birthday. This is a delicious, nutritious recipe from Nourishing Traditions, I just doubled the original recipe to make 2 quarts. And since it's so nutrient dense with lots of good fat, a little goes a long way!

Vanilla Ice Cream

Makes 2 quarts

6 egg yolks

1 c. real maple syrup (I used about 3/4 c. I always use less sugar in things and I don't miss it)

2 T. vanilla extract

2 T. arrowroot powder

6 c. heavy cream, preferably raw, not ultrapasteurized (I skimmed the cream off the top of the milk I get... thankfully I had JUST enough!)

Beat egg yolks and blend in remaining ingredients. Pour into an ice cream maker and process according to instructions.

My notes:

With the leftover egg whites, you can make homemade macaroons. I use a recipe similar to this, except I don't toast my coconut flakes and I usually don't use that much sugar--well I usually use maple syrup. Or, I used them to make an apple pie with a merengue top. Since it didn't turn out great, I won't be including the recipe... especially since I just made it up as I went, and can't really remember how I made it, anyway!

Since this isn't cooked, it's important to use the highest quality ingredients possible. I buy my eggs locally from a farmer who lets his chickens roam free. The yolks are so nice and orange, so you know they're high in nutrients.

When I say "real maple syrup", please don't use Aunt Jemima's or some other syrup containing high fructose corn syrup or other fake foods. It's "real" when it comes right from the tree, so to speak. I know there's some processing involved, but it's not made of corn syrup with maple flavoring! We buy ours locally if we can.

Vanilla extract, preferably not imitation please! And you can even make your own! Read about it here. That's what we do, and it works great!

Arrowroot powder can be found at your local food coop. Possibly at a grocery store, although not sure. It is a natural thickener, and works like cornstarch.

A word on cream--not everyone has the luxury of raw milk and cream. So if you need to buy cream from the store, please don't buy ultrapasteurized. They've completely killed anything that could possibly be beneficial. All the enzymes are destroyed. According to Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions, "the test for successful pasteurization is absence of enzymes. These enzymes help the body assimilate all bodybuilding factors, including calcium. That is why those who drink pasteurized milk may suffer from osteoporosis." There's a lot more I could say on this, but I encourage you to do some research about this and see for yourself how beneficial raw milk and cream is!

Andrew is five months

So here's an Andrew update. When we weighed and measured Andrew at home on Tuesday, March 23, he was at least 16 pounds, and 26.5 inches long. He "talks" a lot and is very interested in watching the goings-on around him.

Andrew and mommy!

Judah wanted me to take this picture.

Happy 5 month old!

Close up of smiley Andrew.

Judah likes getting in on the pictures. Like his Elmo sweatshirt?

We started feeding Andrew egg yolk as his first food at about 4 1/2 months. Some days go better than others... his tongue thrust is so strong! He's not super ready for solids yet, I think.

And the picture below? This is JUDAH at 5 months. I don't know about you, but I think they look quite similar!!

How I make yogurt

I've been making yogurt for about a year and a half. I first read about the process on a blog called Organic & Thrifty. (If you're interested, it's some interesting reading about real food and how to do it thriftily... is that a word?)

Basically, you put milk in a quart glass jar, then put the jar on a dishtowel in a pot of water. Heat the milk to 180 degrees, then take it off the heat and cool to 110 degrees, then add your yogurt starter.

That's a good way to do one quart at a time. We keep the same basic concept, but do four quarts at a time. If I'm already making it, I might as well make it in mass!

I learned from "Wild Fermentation" by S. Katz the reason for only needing to add one tablespoon of starter yogurt. Adding too much creates a watery product because the bacteria are too crowded. Somewhere in the last year, I started adding a half cup of starter culture, I can't remember why. I suppose I thought more would be better, but not so!

Homemade Yogurt

For making a gallon at a time

• 4 sterilized glass jars and lids
• a gallon of milk (I use raw)
• some starter yogurt, either from a previous batch or purchased from store, I use whole milk yogurt by Stonyfield Organic
• thermometer
• big pot to accommodate 4 jars at once

1. Pour milk into jars, and stick thermometer into one.
2. Fill big pot with water and stick jars inside water. I have a big pot with a strainer insert, so I put my jars in the insert and it goes into the bigger pot. It keeps the glass jars from sitting directly on the heat, which could cause them to crack. If you don't have a set-up like this, you could just put a thick cloth on the bottom to set the jars on.
3. Heat milk to 180 degrees. This kills competing bacteria, so when you add your starter yogurt, it won't have to fight with the naturally occurring bacteria in the raw milk, and gives better results.**
4. Take off heat, and let cool to 110 degrees. Then add one tablespoon per quart of starter yogurt.
5. Screw lids tightly onto jars, then put into cooler, surrounded by water from the heating up process. You can also put the quart jars into the oven with the pilot light turned on. In my oven, it keeps the temperature between 80-85 degrees. Let sit undisturbed for at least 8 hours, but can be left up to 12 hours. According to S. Katz, a longer fermentation period can possibly make yogurt digestible for the lactose-intolerant person.
6. Store your yogurt in the fridge. It will get more sour the longer it is stored. And don't forget to save some yogurt for your next batch!

**I made a quart of experimental yogurt this time. I followed the quick raw milk recipe on this site, except I put it into the oven with the pilot light on instead of into a yogurt maker. I warmed up the milk to only 80 degrees, then added a tablespoon of starter yogurt.

Last night I did a taste comparison. The ones heated to 180 degrees tasted like yogurt. The one heated to 80 degrees tasted more like kefir--a more tangy sour taste--but with a yogurt consistency. I guess it depends on how sour you like your yogurt. More enzymes are kept intact with less heating. The website says that you could just heat the milk to 110 degrees to keep more enzymes intact, but still get more of a yogurt taste, I'd guess.

I am still getting some extra whey on the top of my yogurt, but no problem! That can be strained off and used to soak grains.

Plain yogurt can be sweetened any way you wish. Sometimes I'll just cut up a banana in it, use some maple syrup, or mix in some applesauce with some nutritional yeast and bee pollen. Or use for smoothies, with some frozen or fresh fruit! The possibilities are endless. Or sometimes I'll feed it plain to my toddler. He loves it sour!

Enjoy!

Trip "up north" in March

We left to go visit my husband's grandma's house in northern Minnesota on Wednesday night (March 10) after the 7pm Lenten service was over. And as if the late night driving wasn't bad enough, it was sooooo foggy!

Andrew travelled well, we only stopped once to eat, but for the 6 1/2 hours we were on the road, Judah only slept for probably 3! He was mesmerized by the dashboard lights and the GPS we were using to help us navigate the roads in the fog.

We left on Saturday morning at 8am (March 13). It took us a bit longer to get home during the day, but it was much more enjoyable to not be dog-tired. Although it was still foggy!

Here are a few photos from our trip.

Great Grandma Merseth enjoyed seeing the boys.

I'm still in the kitchen, just a different one. :-) We made some soups with sprouted beans and barley. Oh, and my shirt makes me look really fat, but I don't truly stick out THAT far.

And to the highlight: tractor and snowmobile rides for Judah! He showed absolutely no expression while riding these, but he was just so excited, his emotions went beyond facial expressions. You could only tell how much fun he was having when it was time to get off the tractor or snowmobile... because he didn't want to.

My husband gets really excited about being here.

Well, he grew up on this farm, and he is farm boy at heart.

Grandma has a sometimes-indoor kitty, and it went over and laid beside Andrew. And then it looked like Andrew was petting it! Funny!

Make yourself comfortable, kitty!

Group photo!

Homemade Whole Wheat Pitas

I'm really excited to post about this, because I strayed from the directions a bit, and it totally rocked. I didn't want to stop eating these pitas.

These pitas are very similar to the pizza post I made last week, and based on my pita discovery, I'll probably be changing my pizza dough recipe to be more like my pitas.

Here's why I'm so excited: I made the pitas entirely with soaked dough and sourdough. That's right, no commercial yeast involved, just my wild yeast culture, which I like to refer to as my "Mankato Culture"--since I made it while living in Mankato! I basically followed the same recipe, but left out the commercial yeast, and it turned out great!

The process is much the same as the pizza dough. There are three parts: the soaker, the sourdough starter, and the final dough. And the amounts are slightly different, but the ingredients are the same.

For ease of use, I'll re-list all my instructions for the soaker and sourdough starter again. This is my adaptation of the pita recipe in "Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads".

Homemade Whole Wheat Pitas

Makes 6-8 pita rounds, depending on how big you want them

Three parts: Soaker, Sourdough, Final Dough

Part One: Soaker

1. Make the Soaker 12-24 hours before you want to use it. Mix the following ingredients in a bowl for about one minute, until the flour is hydrated and the ingredients form a ball:

• 1 3/4 c. whole wheat flour, preferably fine grind
• 3/4 c. kefir (or a mixture of water and lemon juice, whey, or yogurt... be creative. I used kefir because that's what I had)

2. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature 12-24 hours. If want to have it ready by the next afternoon, I'll usually mix it up in the early evening.

Part Two: Sourdough Starter

• 5 T. wild yeast starter (aka sourdough)
• 1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
• 1/2 c. + 2 T. water

1. Mix these ingredients to form a ball of dough. Using wet hands, knead dough for about two minutes in the bowl. The dough should feel very tacky. Let dough rest five minutes, then knead again with wet hands for one minute. The dough will be smoother, but still tacky.
2. Place starter dough in oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap, leaving at room temp. for 4-8 hours, until doubled in size. When I made these pitas, I mixed up both the soaker and sourdough starter in the evening, set them on the counter, and let them go overnight.
3. When the starter has developed (about doubled in size), knead it for a few seconds to degas it. I use it immediately, but you could refrigerate it at this point to use at a later date, within 3-4 days. If you do put in fridge, make sure you take it out two hours before you use it to take off the chill.

Part Three: Final Dough

1. Since I wanted these for lunch, I started mixing the final dough around 8:30 or 9 a.m. Cut the sourdough and soaker together. In the book, it says to cut it up into 12 pieces, sprinkle with flour so they don't stick together, and mix together. What I do is stack them on top of each other and cut with a kitchen scissors, and then sprinkle these ingredients on top:

• 3/4 c. + 2 T. whole wheat flour (I used sprouted flour)
• 1 1/8 t. sea salt
• 1 T. coconut oil, melted

2. Knead these all together for about 2 minutes, until all ingredients are mixed evenly. Dough sould be soft and slightly sticky, if not add more flour/water.
2. Knead for an additional 1 minute, so dough feels supple but tacky. Form into ball and let rest on counter for 5 minutes. In the mean time, prepare an oiled bowl
3. Knead for another minute to strengthen the gluten, then place in bowl loosely covered with plastic wrap, and let rise 45-60 minutes.
4. Transfer to lightly floured surface and divide into 6-8 balls. Place on pan covered with parchment paper to rise another 45-60 minutes, or until 1 1/2 times their original size.
5. In the meantime, you should have your baking stone preheating in the oven for an hour before you actually want to bake your pitas. Heat the oven as high as it can go (mine is 500 degrees).

6. Roll out ea. ball into a flat disk 4-5 in. in diameter. Dust disks with flour and return to pan, stacking if necessary. Cover with cloth towel or plastic wrap and let rest for 5 minutes.

7. Go back to your disks, and starting from the center, roll out to the edges until they're about 1/4 inch thick. (The book says not to roll them any thinner... but I think I may be so bold as to roll them thinner next time. Although I did enjoy the full thickness of the resulting pita.) Dust disks with flour again and move to flat surface to rest, covered and undisturbed for 15 minutes.

8. Transfer pitas on to parchment paper, and then transfer on to stone using a flat baking sheet. I did four at a time because that's what would fit on my stone. It should take 2 minutes to begin puffing. After it puffs up, give it 20 seconds to finish baking then transfer to cooling rack. You don't want to let it cook too much longer, otherwise the top will get hard.

And that is how I make pitas. I hope to make some more this week!

The edges are a little jagged... I used a pizza cutter, and it didn't work as well as I'd envisioned...

Judah loves letters

Here is Judah, "checking his email" and wearing one of his favorite outfits. Notice he's sitting on his potty/step stool, which is on top of an overturned storage tote.

For Christmas, Judah got a phonics DVD. It just goes through the alphabet and sounds out the letters and pairs it with an animal. For example it says "Buh Buh Bear" and shows some animated bears. It's his video of choice these days. He'll say that he wants to "watch the letters".

So Judah will notice letters everywhere now. But instead of saying the letter itself, he'll say, "Oh look, it's alligator!" Or on the Daisy brand Sour Cream container, it says "Pure and Natural" and so he sees the "P" and says "Puh Puh, Penguin"! Very cute. I try to make sure to mention what the actual letter is, so he doesn't think the letter is "alligator", "bear", "camel", etc...

A few days ago, I was wearing one of my "Arts on the Green" t-shirts from my time at Bethany. Judah noticed the "alligator", so I pointed to the "r" and he said, "rabbit!" Then he noticed the two "e's" and said, "Look! Two elephants!"

So whenever he sees letters, he sounds them out. The one downside to this is that the video only shows the lowercase letters, so when he see the uppercase letters, he's not quite sure what to make of those, unless they look like the lowercase version.

And here are some photos taken in the last week.

He wanted to wear his tie.

Here are the brothers. Andrew's 4.5 months. Judah's wearing another one of his favorite outfits... he says he wants to wear "the baseball". Yes, that's right, just "the baseball", and I keep telling him it's more of a football jersey, but he still calls it his "baseball".

So what DO you eat?--a How-to manual for feeding me

By now, most of my family is aware to some extent of my sensitivity to soy. And my immediate family is really great about making sure I can eat whatever food we're having. Whenever we get together, I am always fully appreciate the care taken in food preparation.

Don't think this is something that I'm thrilled about it. I feel like such a picky eater, and for most of my life, I've prided myself in NOT being a picky eater. Now I'm one of THOSE people.

Let me first explain how I got here. About three years ago, I started noticing that I was getting these itchy red (and unsightly) bumps on my neck, and was able to make a correlation between the reaction and eating BBQ sauce, which contains worchestershire sauce, which (and this isn't mentioned on the label) ultimately contains soy sauce. I also noticed problems with just soy sauce. I started doing research and realized that soy isn't all that it's cracked up to be. I won't get too deep into the science of it, but basically with the way soy is processed today, it contains a lot of toxins that are bad for our body. If you google search "dangers of soy", you'll come up with a myriad of hits about why soy is not good for you. So not only was soy something my body wasn't liking, I was figuring out that I didn't really want my body to like it, anyway!

It's been a long road, and I'm still figuring out what works and what doesn't. Sometimes I'll get headaches from a hidden soy ingredient, or just plain not feel well.

So, I avoid it as much as possible. And if you read labels, you'll know that this is easier said than done. Have you ever noticed that a lot of food contains soy!? It's a cheap filler. And the product won't always come out and say it contains soy, either. The labelers use sneaky labeling.

Here is a link for a list of soy aliases. A few that may surprise you are:

• lecithin--found in most chocolate, among other things.
• mono and di-glycerides--Found in most ice cream. Sad they have to ruin a good thing, but it usually also contains high fructose corn syrup, so I won't want to eat it anyway...
• MSG--also known as Monosodium Glutamate. Found in a lot more foods than I care to list!
• natural flavors--most things have this vague item listed among its ingredients. It's usually the last item on the list, so in a pinch, I will usually consume the item, and experience little ill effects.

So what DO I eat? Here, I've got a little list (reference to a Gilbert and Sullivan show...):

• butter (preferably from grass-fed cows, but since that's super expensive, regular plain butter will do just fine!)
• eggs (preferably from pastured chickens, but since those are also expensive and not easily found in every grocery store, regular eggs will do just fine!)
• milk (preferably farm fresh, raw milk, but since that isn't easily available everywhere, I usually just have water. Pasteurized and homogenized milk binds me up.)
• plain veggies, cooked or raw (and when I say plain, I mean plain. Sometimes pre-packaged veggies contain a filler or spice of some kind that contains soy. And don't put any seasoning salt on it... I'll just put my own salt on it, thanks. :-) )
• cheese (again, read labels. The fewer ingredients, the better. If it's cultured or aged, it's usually got fewer ingredients.)
• meat: beef, pork, chicken, etc. all good, just as long as they're not pre-seasoned or processed with additives as in luncheon meats, for example (you can use salt and pepper and some plain herbs, but don't get too crazy. Remember, some herb combinations contain additives with soy being among them...)
• good oils: coconut, olive, sesame
• oatmeal (I usually soak it overnight in an acid solution like kefir, yogurt, whey, or lemon juice)
• most artisan bread in the bakery section of the grocery store (I try not to eat too much of it... too much white flour doesn't like me. I usually make my own bread and crackers with sourdough, sprouted flour, or flour soaked about 12-24 hours.)
• full fat yogurt
• fresh or frozen plain fruit

Just to be thorough, here's a list of things I DON'T eat:

• margarine
• soybean or soy oil
• lecithin (this covers most chocolate)
• most anything processed or pre-packaged
• worchestershire sauce
• BBQ sauce
• salad dressings
• mayonaise/miracle whip
• high-fructose corn syrup (this isn't a soy thing, it's just a good health thing)
• white sugar (limited amounts, good health thing)
• white flour (limited amounts, good health thing)
• most ice creams (I do eat plain Breyer's and Good Value{wal-mart brand} sometimes)
• soda pop
• most luncheon meats, sausages, pre-prepared meats

That's not an exhaustive list, but it gives you a good idea of what I do and do not eat... the closer to how God made it, the better.

So the next time you hear I'm coming to eat at your place, have no fear, it really isn't that difficult to feed me. Give me a slab of cheese, some pot roast with potatoes, and a slab of butter, and call me "well fed"!

Awesome pizza crust

I think it's safe to say that most people love pizza. I do! And I have had mixed results with my attempts to make decent homemade pizza dough... usually because I don't quite follow the directions. Heh...

But I had success this time, and I'll tell you what I did. I dusted off the pizza stone we got for our wedding 7 1/2 years ago, and I used a combination of sourdough, soaked dough, and a little bit of commercial yeast. It just required a bit of advance planning, but boy, was it worth it. It also helped to have my parents here, so that, when I smoked up the house heating up the pizza stone, Grandma Linda was able to take Judah outside to play in the snow. I think it got so smoky because I washed off the stone right before I put it in the oven to heat up. Bad idea.

The dough recipe came from "Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads"--thanks to Kristin F. for recommending the book! It took me a while to get going with it, but what I've tried so far has turned out well! There are a few steps involved, but it's really not that time consuming... it's just a lot of waiting, during which time, you can be multi-tasking! It takes about an entire 24 hour period.

Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

Makes two medium sized pizzas (or they could be large if you stretched out the crust more)

Three parts: Soaker, Sourdough, Final Dough

Part One: Soaker

1. Make the Soaker 12-24 hours before you want to use it. Mix the following ingredients in a bowl for about one minute, until the flour is hydrated and the ingredients form a ball:

• 1 3/4 c. whole wheat flour, preferably fine grind
• 3/4 c. water
• 2 T. whey -- (This is my personal change. It actually calls for 3/4 c. + 2 T. water, but I substitute in the whey to give an acidic medium for help in breaking down the flour to make it more digestible. It also calls for 1/2 t. salt, but I don't add that in until the final mixing since salt inhibits the fermentation process... since fermenting is what I'm actually doing with this soaker. Peter Reinhart makes the soaker for flavor, which is great, but I also look at this soaker to help with breaking down the phytic acid in the flour... in case I haven't mentioned this before, the phytic acid binds with other minerals in the body and doesn't allow the body to absorb them! That's why I'm so anal about soaking things...)

2. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature 12-24 hours. If want to have it ready by the next afternoon, I'll usually mix it up in the early evening.

Part Two: Sourdough Starter

1. Make the sourdough starter dough. In Peter Reinhart's book, he gives you a choice of using either a "biga" (a slowly fermented dough with added commercial yeast) or you can substitute in a wild yeast starter dough, which is what I did.

• 5 T. wild yeast starter (aka sourdough)
• 1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
• 1/2 c. + 2 T. water

Mix these ingredients to form a ball of dough. Using wet hands, knead dough for about two minutes in the bowl. The dough should feel very tacky. Let dough rest five minutes, then knead again with wet hands for one minute. The dough will be smoother, but still tacky.

2. Place starter dough in oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap, leaving at room temp. for 4-8 hours, until doubled in size. What I did was I made this dough in the morning about 8:30 then put the bowl in the oven with the light on. It keeps the oven between 80-85 degrees Farenheit, and helps with the rising, especially in this colder weather.

3. When the starter has developed, knead it for a few seconds to degas it. I use it immediately, but you could refrigerate it at this point to use at a later date, within 3-4 days. If you do put in fridge, make sure you take it out two hours before you use it to take off the chill.

Part Three: Final Dough

1. About 3:00 in the afternoon, I mixed up the final dough. Cut the sourdough and soaker together. In the book, it says to cut it up into 12 pieces, sprinkle with flour so they don't stick together, and mix together. What I do is stack them on top of each other and cut with a kitchen scissors, and then sprinkle these ingredients on top:

• 7 T. whole wheat flour (I used sprouted flour)
• 1 1/8 t. sea salt
• 1 1/2 t. instant yeast
• 2 1/4 t of honey (this is optional, I didn't use it)
• 2 T. olive oil (I used coconut oil)

Knead these all together for about 2 minutes, until all ingredients are mixed evenly. Dough sould be soft and slightly sticky, if not add more flour.

2. Knead for an additional 3-4 minutes so dough is very tacky, verging on sticky. Form into ball and let rest on counter for 5 minutes. In the mean time, I got two pieces of parchment paper ready with some oil spread on them.

3. Knead for another minute to strengthen the gluten, then separate the dough into two balls.

4. Shape the dough. I form it into a disc and let gravity help me out, as I hang onto the edge and just move around the circle as the dough pulls down until it gets to the right size. Lay each circle on your parchment paper, and top with desired toppings.

5. Slide pizza onto the preheated stone (It should have been preheating for an hour at 500 degrees). I used a flat airbake cookie sheet to slide my parchment paper and pizza onto the stone. After 2 minutes check if pizza needs to be rotated for even baking. The pizza should take 5-8 minutes to bake. It's so awesome to see how the crust puffs up! Practice some self restraint--it's hard, I know-- but wait 3-5 minutes before cutting to let the cheese set, and so you won't burn your tastebuds off.

Those are the basic instructions. You may want to check this book out from the library, or buy it to get really specific instructions and lots of great helpful pictures. Also, I am going to try not using instant yeast next time I make this. I just tried baking a loaf of bread with a soaker and a sourdough starter, and mixed the two together without any commercial yeast, and it raised most awesomely, just took a little more time than with commercial yeast. And tasted awesome. So... I'll probably post about that later... too many ideas, so little time!

Sorry my photo skills are lacking, but this gives you an idea what it looked like before we devoured it. The parchment paper got crispy, but it sure made the whole sliding thing easier.