Spend Less: Homemade Substitutes For Grocery Staples. 5 Ways To Sweeten Without Sugar - Healthy Perspectives. Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down… Growing up, I loved sugar. But now that I am a little older and wiser, I know that as much as I love sugar for its goodness, I don’t need it in all of my meals. As my family continues to move our way towards healthier eating, I’ve found there are alternative ways to sweeten our foods without adding the sugar we used to include in everything from tea to pancakes to homemade cookies. Applesauce - I have loved applesauce since I was a little girl, so incorporating it into recipes tastes like a small slice of my childhood. You can use it in place of half a cup of white sugar when baking cakes or cookies (including one of my favorites – oatmeal). Honey - This was one of the first changes I made.
Maple Syrup - Pancakes are a favorite breakfast in our home, but many types of syrup have a lot of sugar in them. Cinnamon - I have always loved the smell of cinnamon. This entry was posted in Healthy Eating, Healthy Families. Substitutes For Baking Ingredients. Let’s say the power has been out for several days, social unrest and violence is at an all time high, and you and your family have decided to “bug in” until the worst is over. You all need a morale boost, so you decide to make pancakes for breakfast. You get your camp grill going, put a griddle on it, get out your Emergency Food Storage & Survival Handbook and look up the recipe for fluffy buttermilk pancakes.
You go through your food cache, start gathering your ingredients, and then you realize, “I never stocked up on baking powder!” Or maybe you did, but it’s gone bad. Baking powder only lasts 18 months at best, and only 3 to 6 months once you’ve opened the container. Common Ingredient Substitutions Article. Recipes: Basic Kitchen Products From Scratch. Earthnotes Cookbook Basic Kitchen Products from Scratch Have you ever looked at a stick of butter and wondered how it was made? Oh yes, you probably knew it involved churning and maybe you got awfully close to the real thing the last time you overdid the whipped cream, but is that it?
Is there anything else involved in the process? And what about vinegar? How does vinegar get to be vinegar? Brown StockYield: about 2 quarts Tip: Stock can be frozen in amounts you plan to use for individual recipes. Cut bones into pieces and brown them in a preheated 350°F oven. Brown Sugar In a pinch you can make your own by combining 1/2 cup sugar and 2 tbsp molasses. Butter Making If you have access to a cow, let the milk stand until the cream rises to the top. Tip: When making your own dairy products, scrupulous cleanliness is important.
Cheesemaking If cheesemaking appeals to you, then you can work with milk products from cows easily enough. MILK CHEESE: 4½ cups milk heated to 99°F. Chicken Stock Mayonnaise. 5 Kitchen Staples You Can Make Yourself from Your Urban Homestead | The Natural Living Site. By Shanna Lea, on March 28th, 2011 If you find this post useful, please take one second to like, share, or tweet it. Thanks! ©2011 Shanna Lea (formerly Shanna Ohmes) Every homestead kitchen needs the base ingredients for planning and rounding out meals. You can learn to make 5 basic kitchen staples as a base for all your meal planning. Chicken Stock—By raising your own backyard chickens, you can have extra meat for the stewpot, and stock for future soups and stews. Chicken bones, especially from chickens raised outdoors on forage, make the richest, yellow stock that is beautiful in and of itself. Freeze your Greens—Spinach, turnip greens, dandelions and lamb’s quarters are easy to grow, and easy to put up for meals all year round.
Ok, maybe the kale chips aren’t a necessary kitchen staple, but they do provide an excellent alternative snack instead of processed potato chips, which have become a staple in many kitchens. DIY Nonstick Cooking Spray: Quick, Easy, & Frugal. DIY Fruit & Vegetable Wash. Did you know that most chemicals used on produce won't be washed off with a simple rinsing under water? The acid in vinegar kills bacteria and helps to dissolve the wax and pesticide residues found on the skins of many fruits and vegetables.
As an added bonus, this will help some fruits last longer in addition to making them a healthier option to eat. While it would be ideal to only purchase organically grown produce, or to grow your own, that isn't always an option. This solution is a frugal alternative when 100% organic foods are not available. I still use this solution on the organic foods I buy, as it does a much better job of washing than water alone. I KNOW that this works, because the water is dirty after the produce has soaked and the apples and grapes have a slight white sheen on them from where the shiny wax had been. DIY Fruit and Vegetable Wash(printable recipe) Step 1: Make sure your kitchen sink is clean or place a large mixing bowl in the sink.
5 Packaged Foods You Never Need To Buy Again. Welcome to 2012. Or, da 12, as I like to call it. What did you resolve to do this year? Eat healthier? Avoid processed foods? I want to do all of those things, which is why I am so damn excited about this post. Never Buy Soup I’ve always hated trying to shop for soup. If there are no animal parts in the soup, there’s usually lots of salt, fat, and additives, or a little GMO just for fun. If there’s nothing objectionable in the ingredients, eating store-bought soup usually means taking a trip to bland city. The funny thing is, when you make soup at home, you don’t have to add any junk and it’s always bursting with the flavor of whatever vegetables you put in it. Campbell’s and their corporate buddies have somehow managed to convince us that making soup is a task better left to the experts. Just open your fridge and Google whatever you see in there followed by “soup recipe”. So get to it. Super Soup Tips 1.
Here’s the method I’ve been using. My mother-in-law started it. What? Yes. Orange Pectin. Pectin can be made from any high pectin fruit: crabapples, apples, quinces, lemons or oranges. To extract pectin, the fruit must be first cooked. Commercial pectin is made from citrus peels or apples and in most cases comes in a powdered form, although a liquid pectin is also easily obtainable. If you intend to make your own pectin, look for fruit that is available for free. In cooler climates wild apples (crabapples) will be a good choice; in hot places like Florida, citrus fruits are so abundant that many people don't even bother to pick them up. Kumquat tree. Orange tree. Orange orchard. Pectin Made From Apples Apples are the common choice as they are available over a wide range of climate zones, they are easy to prepare and the resulting pectin stock has a neutral flavor.
Instructions 4 lbs. unripe apples 4 cups of water To extract pectin obtain unripe fruit, mainly green and still slightly sour apples. Remove stem and blossom ends. Boil gently 10 minutes. Second extraction. Make Your Own Raw Apple Cider Vinegar. I’ve been making my own raw apple cider vinegar for so long now, I didn’t even *think* about posting it on the blog! It’s one of those dead simple techniques that are so empowering. I mean, several years ago, if you had suggested I make my own vinegar, I would have had no clue how to even go about it! For those of you interested in cultured foods, this is just about the simplest fermented item. Simple is GOOD, right? Life gets complicated enough with all of the other DIY home and health care, from-scratch foods, “feed it daily” cultures, and more that we try to do. Want to make your own ACV?
After the jump! I’ll start with the hybrid method, which uses generic Apple Cider Vinegar from the store. The reason I do this is because using store bought raw apple cider vinegar for all of the animals, AND us is a pricey option. Maybe someday we’ll be making our own apple cider from trees on the property, and we’ll make our vinegar truly from scratch…but till then, this is a great starting point! Make Apple Cider Vinegar From Apple Peelings. Apple cider vinegar has become a buzz word amongst the health-conscious crowd lately, and rightfully so.
It is not only a culinary necessity, but it can cure skin conditions, detangle hair, stop heartburn, play a roll in weight loss and detox the body. Click here for more information on apple cider vinegar. Real apple cider vinegar, with the mother, may be easy to find in the grocery store now, but it isn’t cheap. In fact, you can expect to pay around $9.99 for 1 L (quart) at many grocery stores. This doesn’t go over very well with the budget, but the good news is, it can be made for almost nothing, from apple scraps you would normally compost or feed to your chickens. AND it is easy to make. Make apple sauce/apple pies/apple fruit leather/apple WHATEVER, where peeling and coring the apples is involved. Directions:Collect your apple peelings and put them in a gallon glass jar/container. Tips: If you notice mold on your apple cider vinegar at any stage, skim it off and keep going. Homemade Peanut Butter. Once you make peanut butter at home, it will be very difficult to get excited about storebought peanut butter ever again.
Not that eating peanut butter of any kind would ever be a chore because I love it so, but homemade peanut butter is a delicacy. And a nearly effortless delicacy at that. It’s akin to savoring a piece of high-end dark chocolate that’s rich and pure, uncomplicated by fillers, additives, or ingredients that have no place being in chocolate; and then grabbing a milk chocolate bar in the checkout line at the grocery store, which is likely a combination of tasteless, grainy, and waxy.
Apples and oranges. Store-bought peanut butter versus homemade. Once you have something amazing, it’s hard to get excited about any less than. That’s this peanut butter. Sure, all peanut butter is good, and some is better than others, but this is in its own league. It’s similar in taste to store-bought varieties of “natural” peanut butter. Honestly, there’s not that much to store. Wheeee! A paste. Recipes - Homemade Pectin. Make Your Own Ketchup, Mustard, Mayo - Farmers' Almanac. Why spend a lot of money this summer on condiments from the grocery store that are, in most cases, loaded with corn syrup, artificial flavors, and preservatives? It’s easy to make your own ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and more right at home with ingredients you probably already have. Here are a few simple recipes for these favorite summer cookout staples: Homemade Ketchup Ingredients: 1 (28-oz) can whole tomatoes in purée 1 medium onion, chopped 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 tablespoon tomato paste 2/3 cup packed dark brown sugar 1/2 cup cider vinegar 1/2 teaspoon salt Directions: Blend tomatoes and purée from the can in a blender until smooth.
In a heavy 4-quart saucepan, cook onion in oil over moderate heat, stirring, until softened (about 8 minutes). Add puréed tomatoes, tomato paste, brown sugar, vinegar, and salt. Simmer, uncovered, stirring frequently, until very thick (about an hour). Directions: Dissolve mustard in vinegar. How To Make Butter With Nothing But Cream & A Jar. Just the other day as I was eating breakfast I was thinking about how I could have fresh butter in a post-collapse situation (yes I really do have strange thoughts like these). This got me looking into how butter was made and surprisingly it looked pretty easy. So yesterday I went to the task to try to make some on my own without the use of electricity. What You’ll Need (no-electricity required version) 1 Pint of Heavy Cream or Heavy Whipping CreamA glass jar How to Make Butter Turning heavy cream into butter is as simple as pouring the cream into the glass container, tightening the lid, and shaking.
Here’s the transformation the cream goes through (I timed it for reference): After shaking for about 7 min. Add salt to taste and viola! One pint of whipping cream made almost exactly 1 cup of butter which is equivalent to 2 sticks. As a test, I decided to see how long it took to make butter with a hand-held electric mixer and was pretty surprised at the results (again I timed it). ). Mayonnaise! Why pay a lot of money for bad mayonnaise when you can make really gourmet mayonnaise in a few minutes at a fraction of the cost? Here's a simple recipe requiring no technique, commonly available ingredients, and my favorite kitchen power tool- the hand blender! You'll need: a widemouth jar of one half to one pint capacity a cup of oil- any oil.
I almost always use extra virgin olive oil, but canola is a good, healthy choice. Some people like half olive oil and half canola. Light olive oil is a good choice if you want a lighter flavor. a half a large lemon, squeezed through a strainer (or 2 tablepoons prepared lemon juice) a quarter teaspoon of salt an egg a half teaspoon (or more) of crushed garlic a teaspoon of powdered mustard, or a tablespoon of prepared mustard, or a teaspoon or more of your favorite hot sauce.
Vinegar From Scratch - Henriette's Herbal Homepage. Newsgroups: alt.folklore.herbs From: ewhitevhp.aol.com (EWhiteVHP) Date: 10 Nov 1995 18:45:29 -0500 Subject: How to make REAL vinegar 3 pgs How to make REAL vinegar These directions show how to make vinegar at home using readily available ingredients and supplies. In the late 1800s chemists learned to make acetic acid. Manufacturers added water to reduce its strength to 5%, colored it and sold it as vinegar.
It takes good alcohol (wine or beer) to make fermented vinegar. {*style:<b>General Directions </b>*}Winemaking suppliers list acetobacter as "mother" or vinegar culture. Vinegar should contain at least 5% acid as required for preserving or pickling. Acid test kits, sold by winemaking suppliers, are used to determine the acidity of vinegar. {*style:<b>Sanitize </b>*}Sanitize utensils and containers that will touch the vinegar by soaking them for 20 minutes in a solution of 2 tablespoons chlorine laundry bleach to 1 gallon water. {*style:<b>Vinegar Method I {*style:<b>Directions wine yeast. DIY Infused Olive Oils. Your information will *never* be shared or sold to a 3rd party. How to Make Corn Oil at Home. 9 Baking Ingredients You Can Make. Homemade Vanilla Extract. Substitutes For Baking Ingredients. How to Make Homemade Yeast. Why You Should Grind Your Own Flour & Choosing A Mill.
Free Sourdough Starter: Carl Griffith 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Page.