Making nut milks- soy milk

August 27, 2019August 24, 2019 / gardengoddess17 / 2 Comments

I thought it was time to give DIY soy milk a go; it is cheaper to make than to buy and my partner has swapped over to soy now because dairy milks are giving him heart burn. My eldest daughter has been using non-dairy milks for a long time (she has an allergy to animal proteins) and I seem to go between the two extremes. While I don’t enjoy the flavour of meat at all, I do LOVE milks, cheeses and yogurts (and I miss milking my cow) but I also like the plant based alternatives just as much.

I found some interesting options for making the milk; the first is a straight forward method that involves boiling, blending, filtering and heating the soy beans. The second is a brief video showing how to pulp the soy beans without a blender. I thought I might cheat and use the blender for this one, but it is comforting to know that I can make it without the fancy tools.

My first attempt at this milk went like this;

First, I soaked a cup of soy beans in water overnight. The next morning they were swollen up and ready to blend.

The ratio of soy to water is anywhere between 1:4 to 1:9, I chose to use the middle ground of 1:6. This means that I will end up with close to 1.5 litres of milk from 1 cup of raw beans. To begin this process, I added 3 cups of water to my soaked and drained beans and blended them for an epoch (well…2 minutes or so).

Then I strained them through a nut milk bag (basically a jelly bag if you are into making jams and such).

The pulp left in the bag can be used to make all sorts of things (including soy flour).

Next I poured the juice into a thick bottomed saucepan and added 3 more cups of water. This lot was then heated to the boil while stirring periodically (while I cleaned the kitchen of soy juice flecks). I kept it at a low boil for about 15 minutes, skimming off the froth as I went (and making new soy juice flecks in the kitchen). During this time I got distracted and let the pot boil over a little bit. Soy milk is a real pain to clean off the stove top.

After it all cooled off a bit I poured the milk into a container and put it in the fridge. I can use this milk for cereals, drinking (with vanilla added), add to coffee (for my partner) and for cooking.

As it cools the milk forms a skin. I poured it through a makeshift sieve funnel.

We had a nice chai latte to celebrate. It was good.

Now for the cleaning up…again.

Maybe I can try making tofu at home too in the future.

Preserving eggs for winter

July 17, 2018July 13, 2018 / gardengoddess17 / 3 Comments

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We have a lot of old girls in our flock; I feel that a life time of service providing eggs, compost and weeding shouldn’t be rewarded with death when laying starts to wane. We always have a few younger hens coming up to lay too though, so our egg production during peak spring laying is about five eggs per day from a total of ten adult hens. Five eggs a day is just too many for our needs these days, there being only two of us most of the time (and my daughter can’t eat eggs, even when she is home). So I have been looking for ways to preserve eggs for years now.

I haven’t found anything remotely workable before, but this technique looks like my style; easy, cheap and effective. Water-glassing is a method which uses good old chemistry to seal the shell of an egg and prevent bacteria from penetrating the shell and causing it to go bad. I found a particularly good recipe for making water-glass (this version is actually lime water, but apparently they are all called water-glass) here.

Most sites and books seem to state that the lime chemically seals the shell of the egg so that no oxygen or bacteria can get in and this preserves the eggs for up to eight months or so (some sites say twelve months). For this reason it is very important to make sure your eggs are clean, with no mud or chook poop on them, it is also really important to not wash the natural protective layer off the egg before preserving. All the older sources recommend having your lime solution ready to go and placing eggs into it each day as they come in from the chook pen.

Water-glassing solution

30g hydrated lime (slaked lime)

1 litre clean water

Combine water and lime, pour into a light proof container with a lid. Carefully place clean unwashed eggs into solution and store in a cool place.

Eggs will keep for 8 months.

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I will leave this dozen eggs here on the bench until January or so. Look forward to an update when I open the first preserved egg. This could be one very smelly experiment.

Sourdough scones

April 3, 2018April 2, 2018 / gardengoddess17 / 2 Comments

Against all possible predictions and probabilities, the sourdough starter is still alive. It has been used regularly and is now kept in the fridge between baking days. I have been making a loaf of bread every week or so, as it is only me who eats it; my partner says it gives him heart burn and my daughter doesn’t enjoy the taste. I have also made the odd other thing with it; muffins, brownies and pikelets, even doughnuts. Now I thought it was time to try scones.

The usual caliber of scones I create ranges from inedible to…interesting as a building material and possibly bullet proof. I am hoping that these will be different. I found a recipe that looks good on this blog; Passion fruit garden.

Basic recipe

Scones:

1½ cups sifted all-purpose (plain) flour
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda (bicarb soda) (The recipe said ½ tsp if starter is quite sour. For my first batch, I used the ½ tsp because my starter was well and truly dead!)
½ tsp salt
¼ cup butter
1 cup starter.

Method:

Sift all the dry ingredients together.
Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles breadcrumbs.
Add the starter and mix. As mentioned above, I had to add some milk as my dough was too dry.
Turn dough out onto a lightly floured board.
Knead only long enough to form a smooth dough.
Press out dough to about 2 cm deep.
Use a scone cutter to cut out scones.
Put scones onto a tray lined with baking paper.
Brush scones with milk.
Let scones rest for one hour.
Bake for 12 minutes at 200°C.

Of course with my daughter being almost totally vegan now I decided to substitute vegetable oil for the butter, other than that I just followed the recipe. It made six large scones, I think I will make a double or even treble batch next time.

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The resulting scones taste good but they look like flat rocks. They crumbled as I tried to cut them too. I think that is because of the oil for butter substitution. Next batch I will use the vegan spread we use for butter.

Update; I tried a batch with real butter, just to see how it would go. They turned out ok, but nothing spectacular. I think I need more practice at this…my losing streak when it comes to scones continues.

Making kumquat marmalade

May 27, 2014October 6, 2017 / gardengoddess17 / 2 Comments

Many years ago..(in fact the amount of years qualifies for a ‘Once upon a time..” beginning), my mother gave me a kumquat tree in a pot (for my 21st birthday). This little tree was lovingly tended and repotted as needed for a few years but never bore fruit. When we moved to another state I couldn’t take the tree with me so I left it at my in-laws house. My father-in-law (Henceforth known as Dad) planted it out in his yard and the little tree grew like a weed. It began to bear fruit in the second year in the ground and Dad dutifully picked the fruit and either gave it away or gave it to us when we were visiting as he didn’t like the taste of them.

So for years I have been collecting about 15kg of Kumquats once a year and making marmalade. We are not huge jam eaters in my house, so the little pots of distilled sunlight mostly became gifts and sale items on my market stalls.

I thought I would share my simple recipe with you;

Beautiful little orbs

My first step is to wash and chop the fruit; I take as many seeds as I see out as I go, but alway miss a few.

Chopped and deseeded

Next I weigh the fruit and add two litres of water to every two kilos of fruit. I use a stainless steel boiler to make my jam as it has high sides and a heavy bottom.

Weighing the chopped fruit.

The fruit and water mixture is boiled for about 20 minutes, or until the fruit is soft. At this stage I scoop any seeds out as they rise to the top of the water.

Fruit in the boiler with water.

The fruit all cooked and smelling lovely.

When the fruit is cooked I gradually stir in one kilo of sugar to every kilo of fruit (weighed before cooking). You have to be careful to dissolve the sugar fully at this stage, so lots of stirring is required.

Jam boiling away,

The jam needs to simmer away for a while to get it to set. The time required varies, but you can check for set by periodically dripping some jam onto a cold saucer and looking for gelling. When the jam is ready to set the drip will not run when the plate is tilted and it gets crinkles on the top when poked at.

The jam should be bottled into sterilised jars (I wash the jars then ‘cook’ them in the oven for 15 minutes) while it is still hot. Use jars with metal lids and put the lids on straight away to encourage a good seal.

Lots of little jars of sunlight, ready to be stored, sold or given away.

This year I also made some Kumquat liqueur by popping the chopped fruit into bottles of vodka. These bottles will be squirreled away until 2016 when they will be shared with reverence at a Yule party (or similar).

Some Kumquat liqueur aging slowly.

This marmalade is a little runny (which would improve if I added a lemon to the mix) but has a wonderful sweet/tart taste that goes well with toast, on roasting pork or chicken and can be used as a topping for cakes and slices.

Making pasta sauce

January 18, 2014October 6, 2017 / gardengoddess17 / 2 Comments

The tomatoes in the Hugelkultur bed have been supplying us with yummy Roma tomatoes for some time now and we have added them to most lunches and dinners (and the occasional breakfast), we are all at the ‘I don’t like tomatoes any more’ stage, reached at some point in every harvest season when there is a glut. Therefore, I decided (this morning) to make some pasta sauce and bottle it using my trusty but under utilized Fowlers Vacola (FV) unit. That way we can have our tomatoes to eat in the winter when we are all craving them. I decided to use glass jars with metal lids (the ones you buy pasta sauce in in the supermarket) instead of the traditional FV jars because the FV jars I own are all huge (1 litre is the smallest) and we use our pasta sauce in small lots so the smaller jars are more practical for us.

A bucket of Roma tomatoes from the garden

Stage one of the Hugelkultur beds cleared and waiting for a compost top up and mulch before replanting.

I found a fairly easy recipe for tomato pasta sauce that can be preserved using the water bath method. The recipe below has been copied from the Brisbane Local Food site and changed only slightly. The link in the title will take you to the original post.

Home made pasta sauce
Makes 1.5 cups

You need a large non stick frying pan or a wok and a stick blender

1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 fresh bay leaf
500g ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
8 sprigs of basil, oregano or mint
sea salt, ground black pepper. About 2/3 tsp of salt per 1 1/2 cups of sauce is recommended.

Heat oil to medium heat, add onion and bay leaf, cover and cook for 5 minutes or until onion is softened but hardly coloured. Add tomatoes, garlic and herbs. Cover, cook on medium heat, stirring frequently until tomatoes have collapsed. Add seasonings and blend until the sauce is a pleasing consistency and you are ready to bottle.

Preserving
Put sauce into clean, sterilised jars with good lids that will vacuum seal. If the pulp is still really hot, put a sterilised spoon in the jar before filling to prevent cracking. Place jars in a water bath up to their necks and bring the temperature up to 93.3 degrees Celsius (or 200 degrees Fahrenheit).
Hold at this temperature for two hours. Remove from the preserving pan and press down the lids to encourage vacuum sealing.

N.B. The Fowlers Vacola manual states that unless you use all their gear they won’t be held responsible for these instructions being no good.