Simple to Make Farmers Cheese

We’ve been having fun the last few weeks making our own dairy products and here’s one of our favorite easy recipes for making soft cheese. This cheese doesn’t require any special cultures or any special equipment. All you need is a quart or two of good quality whole milk and vinegar. It’s ready to eat in less than 20 minutes. It’s also a fun project for kids to help make and my girls loved mixing their own cheese and then eating it on crackers for a healthy snack.

You can double this recipe if you want more than four servings. The recipe below makes about 1 cup of cheese.

1 quart whole milk

Vinegar (I prefer white wine vinegar, but different types give different flavors)

Sea Salt

Herbs

Bring the milk to almost boiling temperature, stirring constantly

Take pot off heat immediately when it starts to boil

Add vinegar one tablespoon at a time until milk separates into curds and whey (it took about 2 tablespoons for me)

Pour or ladle it into a colander lined with a dishcloth or cheesecloth if you have it. Do this in the sink.

Strain the milk for anywhere from 2-12 hours, or to make it faster just squeeze carefully the cloth until all whey has run off and you are left with only curds.

Place in bowl and add salt (I prefer sea salt) and herbs to taste.

NOTES

This cheese should last up to two weeks in the refrigerator. I used rosemary as the herb in our cheese above because that’s what we have growing in the garden. The girls absolutely loved the cheese spread on crackers. I used raw cow’s milk but you can also use goat milk if you prefer. Soy, rice or other milk alternatives won’t work.

As part of my quest to eat locally produced foods and encourage others to also do so, I’ll soon be compiling a list of local (Willamette Valley in Oregon) sources for milk, honey, meat, eggs, produce, etc. If you’re interested in this please leave a comment.

Cutting Grocery Costs Without Sacrificing Good Foods

Over the last year we’ve been working steadily at cutting our grocery bill in half. In the years before we followed a plan and a strict budget, we easily spent $600 - $700 a month on groceries. Now our monthly total is closer to around $315 and includes many organic products as well as all our paper products like toilet paper, saran wrap and dishwasher detergent etc. I budget $325 a month for groceries and household products but the last few months I have ended up with leftover money. Let me preface this by saying that we haven’t sacrificed quality of foods, nor do we eat cheap meat or boxed/packaged foods. I also don’t cut coupons for food items because coupons are usually for packaged foods which we don’t buy. We eat healthy, balanced meals made from scratch. Yes, it takes more time to prepare all our foods from scratch but the health and financial benefits are worth it. I prefer to do the work in the kitchen to keep my grocery bill down so I can put the money towards other financial goals.

Here’s an overview of how we spend our grocery $ and some tips that have worked for us to cut our costs in half.

Milk: $50/month.

I buy milk weekly at a local grocery store. I’ve recently switched from locally produced, hormone free milk to organic milk and we use about 3 gallons a week. In addition to using it to drink, I use milk to make yogurt and kefir smoothies.

Fresh Produce: $50/month

I know it isn’t the same everywhere in the country, but here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon we have a great farm store called EZ Orchards that sells locally grown (when possible) fresh produce for prices much lower than the grocery stores. I hit EZ Orchards twice a month, buying enough for two weeks at a time and I usually come away with two or three full bags of produce for about $22 each time. I stock up on apples (12 per week), oranges, grapefruit, tomatoes, avocados, broccoli, lettuce, celery, carrots, kale, bell peppers, mushrooms, onions, etc.

Bulk Foods: $60

I hit Winco once a month for all the bulk foods I need for the month. This includes butter, flour, bulk dried beans like black and pinto, molasses, popcorn, turkey sausage and ground turkey, pasta, mayo/mustard, peanut butter, tea, coconut milk, powdered milk, chocolate chips and any seasonings or spices. I also buy ziplock bags, saran wrap and aluminum foil at Winco.

Costco: $75

We get coffee, spinach (2 boxes a month), 1 big bag shredded cheese and 1 lb loaves of cheddar (3 per month), whole wheat tortillas, organic raisins, walnuts, flax or almonds (only 1 of these per month), tortilla chips, dishwasher detergent and TP.

Azure Standard: $20 - $25

If you aren’t familiar with this wonderful food co-op that delivers direct to customers or through a local community contact person. Azure Standard is a great way to buy bulk organic foods for low-cost. I try to buy one bulk food item per month. For example this month I bought organic pizza sauce. I spent $23 and it gave me enough sauce for almost a year. Last month I bought a 25 lb bag of organic steel cut oats (our breakfast of choice) which will last us five months or more.

Local Farms: $20

Honey ($8/month), eggs ($12/month). In the summer our local farmer's market (above) is a favorite place to final local farm produce, meats, eggs and cheese. In the summer I increase our budget in this area in order to preserve the summer bounty. In the off-season I buy raw honey and eggs direct from local farms.

Whole Foods/Health Food Store: $50

I usually try to hit a health food store like Whole Foods monthly for items like free range chicken, nitrate free bacon or deli meat, organic maple syrup, organic pasta sauce and applesauce.

Total Monthly Budget: Around $325

Cost Cutting Tips:

• I plan a month’s worth of meals before the start of a new month, listing out all the ingredients needed and shop Costco, Whole Foods, Winco and Azure Standard food-co once a month to buy the necessary ingredients. I shop for dairy and produce every week or every two weeks. For the month I only plan on about 18 dinners since we often eat leftovers, eat with friends or have meals-on-the run like quesadillas or food from the freezer.

• We don’t eat packaged or processed foods, nor do we buy convenience foods like boxed crackers, yogurts in individual cups, ready-made hummus or chicken nuggets. We make all these sorts of things from scratch, usually enough for a month at a time and then freeze them to use all month.

• We don’t eat dry cereal for breakfast. Cereal is expensive and not as healthy as homemade sourdough English muffins, toast with scrambled eggs, hot oatmeal w/ flax, pancakes, yogurt with fruit, etc. We vary the breakfasts we feed our girls but S. and I prefer soaked and sprouted steel cut oats with nuts, raisins, chopped apples and cinnamon.

• We make all bread goods from scratch except tortillas. I make whole wheat sandwich bread 1-2 times a week, pita bread (for sandwiches) once a week, sourdough English muffins monthly, dinner rolls, muffins, crackers, granola and granola bars, etc. weekly.

• We use dry beans instead of canned. I resisted switching to dry beans instead of canned for a long time because the first time I made them they came out mushy. But I’ve since learned how to prepare them the right way and I love the health (less sodium) and financial benefits of using dry beans bought in bulk. I have also started soaking and spouting my beans a few days before cooking for the health benefits. I haven’t yet converted to organic beans but I’d like to once I can figure out how I can afford to with my given budget.

• We use powdered milk in all recipes that call for milk like waffles, pancakes, etc.

• I don’t clip coupons unless I see a great deal. But I do shop the loss-leaders at select grocery stores like Safeway where you can get some incredible deals if you watch for them. Usually this will be for splurge items like ice cream, cereal (on rare occasions) or special chips or crackers.

• We don’t eat meat at every dinner. We usually have meat twice a week and beans, eggs or tofu as the protein the other nights. I also try to stretch meat into two meals so for example, for hamburgers (turkey burgers) I’ll mix the ground meat with ground mushrooms to make the patties half meat and half mushrooms. No one can tell the difference and I’ve cut the amount of meat used for a meal in half.

• We don’t buy juice products. My girls would suck it down if we did and it would cost a fortune for organic juice, plus I prefer they don’t have the added sugar. We also don’t buy soda. We purchase beer or wine on very rare occasions.

• We set money aside in the summer to buy some produce and fruits in bulk and can or freeze enough to last the year. Items we stock up on in the summer include: berries (made into jams or frozen whole), peaches, pears, zucchini and summer squash, kale, spinach, Swiss chard, applesauce and tomatoes (canned in salsa, sauce and diced). Having this on hand helps reduce the amount we spend the rest of the year.

• We try to cook a turkey or whole chicken once a month for a meal and to make chicken salad or have leftover turkey for sandwiches, etc.

• I also try to double whatever I’m making and stick half in the freezer for quick meals later. Things like waffles, muffins, soups, pasta dishes, mini pizzas, etc. make great quick meals when I’m too tired, sick or busy to stick to my planned menu.

Final Note…

I definitely still have a lot to learn when it comes to cutting back grocery costs and creating more foods from scratch and I’ve been blessed with some great mentors and friends who encourage and inspire me in this area. If you have any other cost-cutting tips to share please leave your ideas in the comments.

Here are the girls and I at our favorite local organic blueberry farm. We go often in the summer to stock up on berries that will last all winter in the freezer.

Girls Sing US History

As part of our school work this year we've been attending a weekly homeschool co-op for families who follow a classical method of education. This year the girls have been learning US history and have learned a history sentence song for each major event in US history. Here's four-year old Annah singing the one about westward expansion by Lewis & Clark and Davy Crockett. We finally got digital video so we can start uploading videos!

Books for Young Girls

Here's a list of some of the best books Mira (age 7) has read this spring. Finding good, age approproriate books for her level of reading has been a real challenge as most of the bigger chapter books are geared for older girls, but here's a list of the best. Our little reader still reads about one chapter book every 1-2 days so we're constantly seeking out new books. Some books I don't approve of include the Junie B. Jones series. To see our earlier books lists visit here.

Great Books for Young Girls:

The Trolley Car Family (the best book by far if you can find it. It is out of print but truly a wonderful, heartwarming story. I read it twice myself!)
A Horse Called Holiday
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
Ramona Forever
Henry Huggins
The Year of Miss Agnes
Black Beauty
Sarah Plain and Tall
Noelle the Nutcracker
The Cabin Faced West (my personal favorite. True story of a girl who met George Washington before he was president. Wonderful story.)
The Bobsey Twins Adventure in Washington
Homer Price
The Bobsey Twins Camping Out
Greek Myths
The Bobsey Twins Big Adventure at Home
The Boxcar Children
Little Women
The Littles
The Bobsey Twins and the Greek Hat Mystery
Children of Famous Americans Series: Louisa May Alcott
Children of Famous Americans Series: Wilma Rudolph
Children of Famous Americans Series: Abigail Adams
American Diaries: Nell Dunne

Garden Time

We're been busy this spring getting our garden ready for our first big planting. In the past we've had success with small gardens, but this year our plan is to at least triple our harvest to preserve much of it. Last summer I stuffed our freezer with kale, spinach, zucchini, beets, Swiss chard from the farmer’s market and canned lots of things including tomato sauce, salsa, pears, strawberry jam, applesauce, etc. We just ran out of the kale and spinach and still have enough jars of the canned goods to last us until the season starts again. There is such pleasure that comes from cooking and eating foods you grew or harvested and preserved yourself, isn’t there?

So far this month I’ve planted two varieties of sugar snap peas, two kinds of spinach, onions, Swiss chard, broccoli, lettuce and onions. This week I plan to sow kale and beets from seed. Although we live on a tiny city lot under 7000 sq. feet, we’re taking maximum advantage of our space and growing as much of our own produce as possible. We’ll be planting blueberry bushes, carrots, pole beans, tomatoes, basil, cilantro, thyme once the weather warms up some more. We’re also looking forward to our Asian pear trees producing their first fruit as well as our strawberries. We plan to convert more of our backyard to raised beds and do some patio containers so that next year we can grow even more.

Our chicks are three weeks old and growing fast! They’re entering their teenage stage and their feet are almost as big as their bodies. I’m embarrassed to admit that they were just so cute and fun that we added four more to our original group of five, so yes, we’re up to nine chicks! At least one is a rooster (that we know of) and since we can’t have roosters in town, we’ll probably end up with around 6 or 7 once we find homes for the roosters. For now they are living in a feed trough in the garage and we’ll move them outside to their coop with a heat lamp in a few more weeks. We took two of them outside today to let them explore.

Classical Girls

Last weekend we had fun with a bunch of good friends while attending a family concert by the Salem Chamber Orchestra held at Willamette University. The girls dressed up in beautiful princess dresses sent from Kirsten in Denmark (my dad’s wife) and enjoyed hearing songs from Cinderella and from French composer Debussy and others that they’ve been studying in our Classical Conversations Homeschool co-op.

Both girls are fascinated by instruments and we’re planning on picking up a piano this week that Shane’s brother is kind enough to lend to us. Mira can’t wait to start piano lessons and Annah alternates between wanting to learn the clarinet or the cello. Our favorite books to learn more about the orchestra include: Meet the Orchestra, Peter and the Wolf (w/CD) and Beethoven lives Upstairs (a CD).

No-Knead Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes

Here's my favorite quick bread recipe for when I'm the one bringing bread to a get-together. I love that I can mix this up in five minutes, no kneading involved , let it rise and that it makes four round loves. Enough for a big group of people. The rustic texture is wonderful. The other great thing about this dough is that you can refrigerate it for up to two weeks and just pull out some dough as you need it and bake it that day. Leaving it in the fridge for up to two weeks gives it a wonderful sourdough taste.

The Master Recipe:

Boule (Artisan Free-Form Loaf)

Makes 4 1-pound loaves

3 cups lukewarm water

1 1⁄2 tbsp granulated yeast (1 1⁄2 packets)

1 1⁄2 tbsp coarse kosher or sea salt (yes, this is the correct measurement)

6 1⁄2 cups unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour

Cornmeal for pizza peel

Here are the complete instructions for making this bread. It's a long article but if you go to page 3 of the article you'll see the steps #1-10. If you can't figure it out email me and I'll send it to you.

Rising on the pan on cornmeal. Be sure to bake it on a pizza stone if you have one for that crispy texture. If you don't have one, that's okay - you can bake it on a cookie sheet.

The Chicks Are Here!

We picked up our chicks last night and the girls are so excited about their new pets. They are so cute and when we leave the room their peeping really starts up. It's obvious they like company. It's also funny to watch them running around and then suddenly they'll fall over and fall right asleep. So far we have five chicks and we're picking one more up this weekend. We have one Buff Orphington, two Rhode Island reds, two Barre Rock (the black and white ones) and one Aracana (they lay the turquoise eggs). Right now they are in our laundry room in a box with a heat lamp. Soon we'll move them to the garage and then to the Hen Hotel. I made the girls "Chick Journals" to chronicle the growth and development of their chicks. We've been stuying about animals and this is a fun little school project.

Welcome Ruby, Daisy, Lucy, Roseabelle, Patty and Grace!

Freebies & Great Deals

A few of things I got totally free last week (above)

Don't you just love great deals? Last week alone I had $103 worth of free stuff or savings on things I bought thanks to the blog sources below. Here are some great deals you should know about.

On my quest to further reduce our grocery and entertainment spending (we spent $312 on groceries last month for our family of four) I've been following blogs that post info on freebies and great deals. So far this week, we have eaten lunch for free at both Arbys and Quiznos (using coupons for free sandwiches online), got a free $20 cake pan, got two of the large size International Delight's coffee creamer totally free, bought $8 worth of snacks at Target for less than $3, free ziploc bags at Costco, free sample of Betty Crocker's new desserts, and free organic makeup plus lots of savings on groceries I regularly buy. All of this deal seeking just took me a few minutes of printing off coupons from the sites linked below. Saving money and sourcing deals is a game for me and I think it is great fun to get almost free stuff. Don't you?

There are a lot of great deals out there if you just follow a couple of blogs like those linked below. Did you know that the Red Movie Boxes located outside McDonald's have codes for free movie rentals on Mondays and also Wednesdays through March? Or that this week you can get 40% off organic groceries through Amazon? Or that also this week you can get TWO tubes of free organic Physicians Formula mascara from Riteaid? Riteaid is offering a buy one get one free deal this week and when you combine it with this rebate for a free mascara you get it totally free. Two $10 each tubes of organic mascara for free!

I check these blogs daily for updates on freebies and great coupon deals:

Deal Seeking Mom

The Freebie Blogger

Family Cents

$1200 a year (that's their total annual grocery budget!)

Money Saving Mom

Homemade Whole Wheat Graham Crackers

Almost a year ago we started making all our own baked goods including bread, buns, and all our snacks, so I'm always on the lookout for ways to make kids favorites from scratch. Making our own breads and snacks saves us a ton of money plus it's much, much healthier. Here's one of our new favorites: homemade peanut butter graham crackers made with whole wheat flour.

PB Whole Wheat Graham Crackers

3 TBS honey
2 TBS molasses
1/4 cup peanut butter (creamy)
1/4 cup butter (softened)
1/2 cup buttermilk (make own using 1/2 cup milk and 1/2 TBS white vinegar)
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda

Beat honey, molasses, PB and butter together until smooth.

Combine buttermilk and vanilla and set aside.

Combine dry ingredients. Stir dry ingredients and buttermilk, alternating, into butter mixture. Let dough rest for a few minutes.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly oil a baking sheet. Divide dough and roll out onto prepared baking sheet to a thickness of 1/16 of an inch. Cute into 2 1/2 inch squares and prick with fork.

Bake for 6 to 8 minutes. Cool on wire racks.

Danish Birthday Man Cake

On Sunday we celebrated Shane's birthday with a big breakfast and a Danish "Kageman" or man cake. I remember this cake from my childhood when every child would have one at their birthday party. The dough is sort of a pastry dough made with eggs, flour and butter and then topped with icing and candy decorations. Thanks to Kirsten for the recipe! It's simple to make and I'll post the recipe later this week on this post.




Our family has a tradition of doughnuts for birthday breakfast and that's the only time of the year we splurge on this favorite treat. No birthday in our family is complete without doughnuts from the local Roth's grocery store. Yum!