During my vegan yogurt experiments, I read a lot about making coconut, almond, and rice milks at home and sorted out my own preferred methods. (Key ingredient across the board? A nylon straining bag.) Now, whenever I find myself standing in front of those Tetra Pak boxed beverages at the grocery, I consider for a second if it’s worth it for me to DIY it at home; even in the chaos of an average week, it usually is. The one experiment I’ve avoided is soy milk. Basically, I’ve come across headlines espousing the “evils of soy” just often enough to shy away from using it as one of my alternative milk ingredients. I had no nutritional research to back up… Continue reading »
Baa, Baa, Black Sheep: The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival
For as much as I love appreciating the work of people with serious farming experience and thriving businesses, I also grasp that I am not one of them. Realistically, I probably never will be (though I reserve the right to backyard garden and daydream). Regardless, no number of dollars spent at five-star department stores will magically hide that knowledge gap. However, I take no shame in appreciating the efforts of others. On an average weekend, that’s just a trip to the farmers’ market, but last Sunday the neighbors and I piled in the car to check out the vendors and animals at the annual Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. Thankfully, it was a beautiful, light jacket kind of day (when… Continue reading »
Getting Corny: Momofuku Milk Bar’s Corn Cookies
Based on the sheer number of somewhat bizarre drying experiments I’ve been running around here lately, you might have caught on that I’m a new convert to the joys home dehydration. Beyond your basic fruit snacks and carrot chips, I’ve been particularly interested in manufacturing my own DIY vegetable powders–everything from your standard garlic and onion to your more exotic tomato and red pepper. In the course of things, I ended up dehydrating a bag of frozen sweet corn for a recipe that never materialized, so I packed the dried kernels away in a mason jar until a good use for them presented itself. A few weeks later, however, I caught Savory Simple’s post on Momofuku Milk Bar’s Corn Cookies… Continue reading »
Better Than a Silver Packet: DIY Cream Cheese
The deeper I dig into DIYing basic household foods such as rice milk or nut butters, the weirder I sometimes feel about sharing those processes here. Sure, a recipe for homemade cereal bars might come in handy, but a lot of these typical grocery store items–from tahini to garlic powder–end up being pretty simple to produce from scratch in the average kitchen when all is said and done. So perhaps you might think of these posts as more of a Pinterest board of reminders or inspirations when it starts to feel like everything you buy has soy lecithin and whey derivatives added. Sure, you can toss readymade items into your shopping basket as needed, but if you have a few… Continue reading »
Sugar Rush: DIY Raisins
I’ve never been much of a dried fruit fan, and I think I can trace the root of this back to those little red boxes of raisins so frequently tossed onto my elementary school lunch bag. In my memory, the raisins always ended up packed tightly into the bottom of the box, requiring precision coaxing to remove them from their cardboard shell. They may very well have been nature’s candy, but I would just as well have skipped dessert altogether. Considering the marketing tag line that raisins are just “grapes and sunshine,” DIYing your own might not seem all that necessary or cost effective, and I would give you that. Still, I had read some things about how lovely homemade… Continue reading »
National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day: Peanut Butter & Pickle Variation
National Mustard Day (August 5)? National Split Pea Soup Week (the second week of November)? The volume of so-called “national food holidays” tends to make me uncomfortable in the same way that overly sentimental greeting cards do–the thought is largely inoffensive, but the meaning generic and diluted. (Though maybe not when it comes to National Margarita Day. That one I think I’d keep in regular rotation.) I would have overlooked National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day today, except that it seems to have stirred up the conversation around the peanut butter and pickle variation and this is a sandwich I feel compelled to advocate for. It being my snack of preference as a picky-eater kid, I was honestly shocked to… Continue reading »
