Yogurt

Previously I mentioned that we use Dannon All Natural Whole Milk yogurt. For the last couple of weeks, however, our Wegmans has been out of stock. I can only assume this is due to the increased demand from you, our dear readers. All is not lost! We have in the past very successfully made our own yogurt. In fact, it is better and cheaper, but it does take a little bit of effort. Specifically, we use Yogourmet freeze dried yogurt starter and follow their directions. Three quart jars fit in our yogurt maker ring with the tall lid. I experimented with using the surface temperature feature of our IR thermometer (for humans), but it was not giving me repeatable values so I will stick with the kitchen stick thermometer in the future.

Rebekah's edit: we actually use half the starter that the Yogourmet directions call for--we're cheap, and we get good yogurt that way anyway!

Burritos Smothered in Green Salsa

This is a burrito smothered in green salsa.  I made the burrito in our typical burrito making fashion, but then covered it in the newly made green salsa and stuck it in our trusty toast-r-oven on broil for a while.  The kids preferred to avoid the salsa (it wasn't hot) and just have a normal burrito.

Green Salsa (many years later)

I have made green salsa before and that always turned out well.  At Wegmans yesterday they had some tomatillos that looked good, so I went for it today using this as my guide.  Unlike last time I didn't broil the tomatillos and our blender recently broke (the plastic part around the blade cracked).  Having forgot that it was broken I was at a loss for what to do when Rebekah reminded me that we don't care about the blender anyway because we always prefer the stick blender (easier clean-up, fine grain control over results).  So I successfully have a batch of green salsa cooling down.

Cinnamon Muffins

I needed to make something to take to our small group meeting this morning and quickly searched for cinnamon quick bread.  The second result looked reasonable.  Due to time, we baked at 400 as muffins, layering cinnamon in the middle and on top.  The results were good.

Also, leftover enchilada casserole is good. 

Enchilada Casserole

Long ago I gave up on store-bought enchilada sauce.  It is easy to make much better sauce at home.  But, alas, I forgot what recipe I semi-followed before.  Tonight I tried this one: https://www.budgetbytes.com/2012/08/red-enchilada-sauce/ and it was okay, but I will try something else next time.

I start with a layer of sauce, then corn tortillas alternating layers of beans (leftover black bean soup today), rice, and cooked peppers and onions.  This time I also added some finely chopped kale on some layers.  All the layers also have some cheese (cheddar) and sauce.  Bake 350 for a bit (everything is already cooked so about 30 minutes).  Should be ready when the cheese on top is browned.  Serve with sour cream on top.  We don't bother with sour cream and instead always have good quality plain yogurt with nothing added wherever sour cream is called for.  It is best when we make our own, but we usually buy the Dannon All Natural Whole Milk yogurt.  We have had good luck with most brands that only have cultured milk and some bacteria names in the ingredients.

We still eat food (red beans and rice)

The original intent of sharing our food stories with all of our loyal readers was to selfishly keep a record of what we eat so that there was one canonical place to find out what it is exactly that we eat ourselves.  We have failed to keep up with this and are again in a quandary, not knowing where to find the foods that we have liked in the past.  So some more links are coming this way as we try to document foods once again.  To start, red beans and rice is an amazing food.  We use this recipe:  https://www.budgetbytes.com/2014/02/vegan-red-beans-rice/  (lots of wonderful foods there).  I think it was red beans and rice that introduced us to smoked paprika, now a staple in our house and often requested as a topping at the table by both Judah and Junia.  We omit the celery (Rebekah doesn't like it) and often garnish with thinly chopped kale (another staple in our house these days).  I can't recall now if we do a crock-pot version, but we certainly do it with the fast bean soak method.  Also, we probably double the amount of spices.  More about kale later, as we have some right now.

Edit: We're abandoning the fast bean soak method after some semi-negative consequences and some research. Overnight soaking for the win!