It's a Recession: Homemade Tortilla Chips

I don't know about you, but I seem perenially incapable of finishing an entire bag of corn tortillas. I like to get them to make enchiladas (they taste much better with the corn tortillas than with flour, in my opinion), but a batch for two people only makes a small dent in the bag. The solution? Make tortilla chips.

Eat Rating: Awesome. A nice bit of crunch
Difficulty: Super easy. An 8-year-old could do this (provided she doesn't burn herself putting it in the oven. That was always my problem as a kid...)

5 corn tortillas
1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tbsp sea salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper .

Using a sharp knife or a pizza cutter, cut each tortillas into six triangles. Place the triangles in a small bowl and drizzle the vegetable oil over them, tossing so each piece is well coated. Lay out the chips on the cookie sheet and sprinkle with salt. Bake for 25 minutes or until the chips have begun to brown. Remove from the oven and let cool about 5 minutes before serving.

Variation: Cinnamon Chips
Omit salt. Mix 3 tbsp sugar with 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar over the chips and follow remaining steps.

It's a Recession!: Cashew Butter

Ok, so cashew butter is probably not a household staple. But peanut butter is. And while I love the stuff -- grilled peanut butter shall always be Elvis and my favorite sandwich -- after awhile it gets old. So I decided to switch it up a little and try cashew butter. Cashew butter has a much more subtle taste than PB. It's more mellow and doesn't hit you over the head with its nuttiness. The recipe calls for unsalted cashews. They sell big bags at Trader Joes. But if you can't find unsalted, go ahead and get the salted kind and just rinse them off in a colander.

Adapted from Chocolate and Zucchini.

Eat Rating: Awesome.
Difficulty: Easy to Medium. Requires a food processor or blender

2 cups unsalted cashews
Salt, to taste

Heat your oven to 400 degrees. Place the cashews in a single layer on a cookie sheet and bake, stirring occassionally, for about 8-10 minutes or until the nuts become fragrant. You want them lightly roasted.

Remove from oven and allow to cool for five minutes. Place the nuts in the food processor and pulse to break up. You'll have, at first, a sort of course meal.

Keep pulsing, stopping ocassionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber scraper. The nuts will continue to break down and eventually begin to form a paste. Taste and add salt if desired.



The paste is somewhat thick and a little more crumbly than traditional peanut butter. Once it reaches desired consistency, place into a jar or plastic container and refrigerate. The butter will keep in the fridge for a few weeks.

It's a Recession!: Easy Homemade Biscuits

You'll never buy a can of Pillsbury biscuits again.

When I was a kid, Sundays were reserved for church and biscuits. As soon as we'd get home after services, my mom and Dad would head to the kitchen to make brunch. My dad would cook the meat -- bacon, sausage, occassionally ham. My mom would cook the eggs. And I would make biscuits. This involved pulling a can of Pillsbury out of the fridge, cringing as it made the popping noise and placing them on a cookie sheet to bake for 10-12 minutes.

If I had known then how easy it was to make your own biscuits, though, I might have done that. Especially since it's so easy to customize with buttermilk, cheese or cinnamon and raisins.

Adapted from

Eat Rating: Awesome. You really won't need to buy canned biscuits ever again.
Difficulty: Easy. It's better if you have a pastry blender and a cookie cutter to cut the biscuits. But in a pinch, I've used two knives and the mouth of a glass and it works out fine.

2 cups flour (LN: You can use all-purpose or whole wheat. If you use whole wheat, you may need to increase the milk slightly)
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup butter (5 1/2 tbsp)
2/3 to 3/4 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

Take your butter and cut it in half lengthwise with a knife. Then cut into chunks. You want the pieces to be small, less than 1/2 inch at most. Once your butter is all cut up, add it to the flour then use your pastry blender or knives to cut it in. The butter will eventually become a mass of tiny particles mixed in with the flour. At this point, gradually add the milk a little at a time until the dough begins to cling together. You want it to be a dough that hold together but not too sticky. If you add too much milk, add a little more flour.

Knead on a floured surface about 15 times. With a rolling pin (or your hands in a pinch), roll out until the dough is about 1/2 inch thick. Use the cookie cutter (or the edge of a glass) to cut into rounds. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

Variations:
Buttermilk biscuits: Reduce baking powder to 2 tsp and add 1/2 tsp soda to the dry ingredients. Replace milk with 2 cups of buttermilk. Proceed with the remainder of the recipe.

Cheesy biscuits: Add 1/2 cup of shredded cheese to the flour mixture in the first step. Proceed with the remainder of the recipe.

Cinnamon raisin biscuits: Add 1-2 tsp cinnamon to the flour in the first step. Cut in the butter, then add 1/4 to 1/2 cup of raisins. Proceed with the remainder of the recipe.

It's a Recession!: Homemade Butter (and Buttermilk)

Know what this is? Yeah, it's an actual butterball.

On occasion, when I need to bring baked goods in to the office, I get up at 5 a.m. and do my baking in the morning. One morning a few months ago, I thought I'd make some fresh whipped cream to frost a coworker's birthday cake. I put the cream in my Kitchenaid and walked into the other room. When I came back a few minutes later, the whipped cream was a disaster. It had separated into little beads of fat in a thin liquid. Disgusted, I threw it away and made a buttercream frosting instead.

Now I sort of wish I hadn't thrown it out. As I learned on The Kitchn a few weeks back, if I had let the mixer keep going I would have ended up with butter. If you keep beating the butter past the whipped cream stage, it eventually breaks down into the fat (butter) and what's left (buttermilk).

Buttermilk.

I've frankly become obsessed with making my own butter now. But beware walking away from this either, once it gets to the separated stage, the buttermilk is very thin and watery and will spray right out of your mixer all over the floor. (My dog Rex loves it when I make butter for this very reason.

The cool thing about this is, depending on what type of butter you regularly buy, making it yourself can be cheaper. A quart of cream at Giant runs between $4 and $5. By comparison, a pound of comparable quality butter, like Horizon Organic, is $6.

Eat Rating: Awesome. Imagine the best butter you've ever tasted.
Difficulty: Easy. Requires a Kitchenaid mixer or food processor. (You could also do this by hand by shaking a jug. But your arm would probably get tired.)

1 quart of cream

Place the cream in the bowl of the mixer and fit with the splatterguard (that step is super important if you don't want buttermilk all over your kitchen)

Turn the mixer to high.

The cream will begin to form soft peaks, then hard peaks of whipped cream. Keep beating and it will start to break down into little pieces. Continue beating. You'll know it's done two ways -- 1) the chunks will turn a golden yellow color and 2) you'll hear the change in resistance to the beater, it will sound sloshy.

Place a colander over a large bowl. Pour the butter mixture into the colander. Remove the colander. What's left in the bowl is your buttermilk. Pour it into a separate container, refridgerate and use within 1 week.

Turn on the sink to cold water and rinse the butter in the colander. Place chunks of butter in a clean paper towel and squeeze. You need to make sure all the whey is removed or your butter will go rancid. Rinse again in water and squeeze in a paper towel a second time.

Once the butter is clean, wrap in plastic wrap and freeze or refrigerate for up to a week.

For more storage tips and ideas for things to try with your butter, see this entry over at Brownie Points blog.

It's a Recession: Homemade Frozen Yogurt

No ice cream maker required.

I've recently become enamored with the frozen yogurt at Sweet Green. And so, all summer, I've been looking at recipe after recipe for homemade frozen yogurts, sorbets, sherbets, gelatos and ice creams. The thing they all have in common? All of them require an ice cream maker - an appliance I do not own and, at the moment, CCO has forbidden the acquisition of additional kitchen appliances (at least until I clean out my appliance cupboard). So I have been bereft of homemade frozen yogurt.

I had just about given up hope. But then, as I was leafing through the reicpes at the end of Mark Bittman's new book, Food Matters, I finally found it: a frozen yogurt recipe that does not require an ice cream maker. Mark Bittman, you are officially my hero.

I've tried this with black raspberries that CCO and I picked a couple weeks back. Bittman suggests trying various berries, bananas, cherries or stone fruits. I was thinking I might try apricot next.

Eat Rating: Awesome. Sweet, creamy and cold.
Difficulty: Easy. Requires a food processor or good blender.

Adapted from Food Matters, by Mark Bittman

1 1/2 cups fruit, any type cleaned and frozen
1/2 cup yogurt (to make this vegan, he suggests using 1/2 cup silken tofu)
1/4 cup sugar (LN: I actually upped this to closer to 1/2 cup)
Water as needed (LN: I didn't need any)

In a food processor, add the fruit, yogurt and sugar. Pulse several times to combine, scrapping down the edges as necessary until fully combined. If the mixture seems a little coarse, add a few teaspoons of water. Taste and, if necessary, add more sugar. Serve immediately or store in a container in the freezer.

Variations:
Chocolate Cherry: Omit sugar. Add 4 oz. melted bittersweet chocolate to fruit and yogurt.

Strawberry Balsamic Jam (Part 3)

Strawberries and balsamic vinegar. It seemed like a strange combination. My mother even gave me a skeptical look, one of those "don't blame me, Leah, when it's horrible" looks, when I suggested it. But I was right. It is pretty good. The Strawberry-Balsamic Jam comes in right in between the two other varieties. The strawberry is good, but pretty plain, like the girl-next-door who you like but don't really want to marry. The port wine is so rich and sweet that you can't eat very much. The Strawberry-Balsamic is a nice middle ground, sweet but not overly so and exotic enough of a taste so it's not boring.

Eat Rating: Awesome
Difficulty: Medium-hard. No pectin in this, so you're in for the long haul.
Comparison: I think, just maybe, this is my favorite. Don't tell the others.

From "Nine Bean-Rows"

4 cups strawberries, washed and crushed
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 lemon, juiced
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
3 1-pint jars

In a large saucepan, combine all the ingredients. (To cut down on cooking time, you can let the berries mascerate in the sugar for 20 minutes or so). Heat over medium until boiling, then cook for about 30 minutes until the jam begins to sheet. Fill jars as previously directed.

Strawberry Port Wine Jam (Part 2)

Awhile back (and by awhile I mean, last month) I made a pretty awesome strawberry tart with port wine glaze. I say I made a tart, but the only thing anyone actually ate were the strawberries, leaving a whole sad mess of marscapone cheese. This set off a little light-bulb in my head. What if I made strawberry jam with port wine? Apparently, I'm not the most original person in the world, because I did find a recipe from the June 2003 issue of Southern Living on Strawberry-Port Jam. I even had enough port leftover from the tart that I didn't need to buy a new bottle.

The port does two things -- it makes the jam a really dark ruby red color, and it makes it hella rich. Like I don't think you could actually eat more than 1 tablespoon (if you're on a diet, that could be helpful, right?). But you'll definitely like that one tablespoon.

Strawberry-Port Wine Jam

Eat Rating: Delicious.
Difficulty: Medium-hard. Same deals as before, though the recipe cooks much faster because of the pectin.
Comparison: The jam is richer than the straight strawberry. Port is definitely the primary flavor, so consider which you like better: strawberries or wine?

Adapted from Southern Living, June 2003

20 oz (about 2 1/2 cups) strawberries, washed and crushed
1 1/2 cups ruby port
1 tsp lemon zest
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 package (1.75 oz) powdered pectin
4 cups of sugar
5 1-pint jars

In a large saucepan, crush the strawberries with a potato masher, then mix in the port, zest, nutmeg and pectin.

Heat the mixture to a full, rapid boil and cook for about 1 minute. Add sugar, stirring constantly until incorporated. Return mixture to a full boil and boil for 1 additional minute. Remove from heat, skim off the foam and fill jars as directed.

It's a Recession: Homemade Strawberry Jam, Part 1

Like pretty maids all in a row.

Apologies for the lack of posts. There was not much cooking in Kitchen Stadium last week. To make up for it, though, I bring you a three-parter.

I know it's a little old-school, but I like to make my own jam. Usually my mom and I take a weekend and make a ton of jam -- generally either strawberry or peach. We can it, and then it lasts the whole year. Except last year, we never got around to making any and for the first time in probably my life I actually had to buy jam at the store. I felt like a failure. As soon as the strawberries showed up at the market this year, I made an appointment with the mother to make some jam. We had these grandiose plans to go to the farm and pick the berries ourselves -- in spite of my severe allergy to bees mind you -- but then we could never find a decently priced place. So my mom bought a bunch of berries at Costco. She went a little overboard and bought 20 pounds, which is how I ended up making three different flavors of strawberry jam (You've got to keep it interesting if you're going to stand over a hot pot all day, you know?).

A couple notes on homemade jam before I give you the first recipe.

1) To can or not to can? When you make homemade jam, you could either make it and refrigerate or you could can it. Canning is more intense, but it keeps for up to a year. If you just refrigerate, the jam will only last about 2-3 weeks. For my part, I always can. But if you don't want to go out and get jars, you can skip that part. I'll put some instructions here on this first recipe about how to can for those who are interested. If you do want to can, you need glass jars. They sell these at Target, Walmart and places like Michael's Crafts. Each jar has three parts: the glass container, the metal lid and the metal band. If you are reusing old jars, you can use the glass part and the band, but make sure to buy new lids. You can either use pint size or half-pint size depending on your preference.

2) Pectin or no pectin. This is actually the first year I have ever cooked with pectin and it was at CCO's behest. Pectin is a natural enzyme found in fruits like apples and lemons. When added to jams and jellies, it acts as a natural thickening agent to help the fruit gell. Back in the day when you made jam, you would cook it until the fruit broke down and counteracted with the sugar to form a gell. Now you can just use pectin and it will thicken much more quickly. You can find at the store in packets of dried powder or as a gel (called Certo), usually on the same aisle as gelatin. There's also some strange way you can make your own pectin at home if you're really crunchy, but I decided that was way beyond me. There are two advantages to pectin. First, because the pectin is causing the thickening, you don't have to cook the fruit as long. When I was a kid, it seemed like we would stand over the stove for hours (it's really more like 20-30 minutes). With pectin, it's faster, more like 10. The second advantage is that pectin is a soluable dietary fiber. This was CCO's appeal. For whatever chemical reason, your stomach doesn't break down the pectin and it goes through your system pretty much in tact. Somewhat gross to visualize, but this helps reduce the amount of cholesterol in your blood. So even though he was essentially asking me to relearn how to cook jam, I decided to be a sport and make some with pectin. The first recipe, plain strawberry jam, is made without pectin. The second, strawberry with port wine, has powdered pectin, and the third, strawberry-balsamic, is no pectin.

Eat Rating: Awesome. Seriously, you may reconsider buying your jam at the store...
Difficulty: Medium to hard. You need several pots and canning jars. It also helps if you have one of these jar lifters.

Strawberry Jam

From the Ball Blue Book of Preserving

2 quarts of strawberries
6 cups of sugar
5 1-pint canning jars

Place the strawberries in a colander and wash thoroughly, making sure to remove any strawberries with visible dirt or mold. With a knife, remove the tops of the berries and coursely chop. Once you have chopped all the berries, you should have 8 cups.

Add the berries to a large saucepan and crush with a potato masher. Add the sugar, stir until thoroughly coated and then set aside for about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, remove the lids from the canning jars and thoroughly wash each jar, either by hand using soap and hot water or by running through the dish washer.

Take a big pot, the largest one you've got and fill about halfway with water. This is your jar pot. After the jars are washed, place each jar in the water. Heat up the water to boiling to further sterilize the jars, then reduce heat to low. In a separate smaller saucepan, heat water and place all the jar rims inside. It doesn't need to be boiling, just hot.

At this point, take your berry/sugar mixture and heat it over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil. The sugar should be dissolved and you'll start to get a foam on top. That's ok, just be careful that the foam doesn't overflow the pan or you'll get to experience what burning sugar smells like. Stir frequently as the mixture cooks until it reaches the gelling, or sheeting point. This will take awhile, as much as 40 minutes. To test whether it's ready, take a metal spoon and lift it above the pan about a foot. Allow to cool for a second, then turn the spoon so the jelly falls back into the pan. If the mixture falls off in drops, it needs more time. But if the jelly falls off the spoon more like a mass, as though the drops have coalesced together, it's finished. (Here's a good example of what sheeting looks like).

Remove from heat. At this point you want to remove the foam from the jam. With a small spoon, skim any foam off the top of the jam. You can either discard the skim or keep it to eat later. Once the foam is removed, you'll want to fill the jars.

Carefully remove one jar from the jar pot. Fill the jar with jam, leaving about 1/4 of an inch at the top. Using a paper towel or cloth, clean the rim of the jar. You want to make sure there is no jam on the jar's rim or the lid may not seal properly. Using tongs, briefly place the lid in the hot water to heat up, then place on top of the jar. Remove a ring from the ring bath, and use a towel to twist the lid until it is completely secured. Place the filled jar back in the water bath. Fill all the remaining jars until you run out of jam.

Return the jar pot to the heat and boil for about 5-10 minutes. Carefully remove the hot jars from the pot, and set aside. The reason you reboil the jam is to pressurize the jars. As they cool to room temperature, you should hear a small metallic popping sound as the lid of each jar pops inward. That's how you know the canning was successful and will keep for a long period. After about 30 minutes, inspect the jars to insure they have all popped inward. If any did not pop, check the band to make sure it is twisted on firmly, then reboil.

Sealed jars of jam will keep for at least a year. Once you open a jar, use within 3 weeks.

It's a Recession!: Egg Drop Soup

Egg Drop Soup

After a rockin' good time at our friend Chris' wedding in Northwest Arkansas, CCO has come down with a gross cold. He asked for soup and rejected my first two suggestions because he secretly wanted to order pho from the place down the street. We compromised on Egg Drop, since after all, it is Meatless Monday. Normally I would order from a Chinese restaurant up the street, but it is a recession and we did just come back from a four-day weekend extravaganza (or as extravagant as you can get in Northwest Arkansas...).

I'll link to the recipe below as I found it on a fellow food blog (Simply Recipes). It's also awesome because, with the exception of the mushrooms, I had all the ingredients in my cupboard. The recipe calls for green onions. Since I missed the farmer's market this weekend, I didn't have any and instead subbed some minced shallot. I think it would be better with the green onions, though, so if you have to go to the store, pick up some. The recipe also calls for chicken stock as the base. You can sub veggie broth to make it totally vegetarian.

Eat Rating: Awesome. Actually better than I've had at most Chinese restaurants.
Difficulty: Easy. Requirements: Pot, fork, bowl. Voila!

"Egg Drop Soup" at Simply Recipes

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Two bowls full.

It's a Recession!: Homemade Energy Bars

Not much of a looker, but damn is she good.

Today we debut a new weekly feature, It's a Recession!, where I attempt to make foods at home that I would normally buy at the store. I will freely admit this idea was inspired by this article in Slate where another food blogger attempted to figure out which pantry staples (bagels, cream cheese, etc.) you could make at home more cheaply. The article also led me to her food blog, which is also pretty cool.

Anyway, I thought this was a great idea. My first attempt at yogurt failed. Miserably. More on that in a few weeks once I've gotten it right. Because of that failure, I moved on to something I thought would be a little easier: snack bars. I found a seemingly simple recipe in the "Tate's Bake Shop Cookbook," which I got for my birthday. This attempt was also a miserable failure. I took one to work in my lunch and sent another with CCO. Around lunchtime I was forced to send him this message: "Subject: DON'T EAT IT. Message: Unless it's already too late." His slightly more generous reply: "Yeah. Not so good."

So we'll save that one for another time. Perhaps it is also salvageable.

Feeling horrible about myself for being a failure, I will give you a cool recipe I tried a couple weeks back that has been making its way around some other food blogs. Larabars are made out of all raw ingredients -- mostly nuts and fruits -- with a base of dates. They are tasty, with no-sugar added because of the sweetness of the date, and only about 200 calories each (I knew you'd wonder that part, Annie.) I found the basis for this recipe on Chocolate and Zucchini. This other food blog by Camilla Saulsbury also has a bunch of other variations, but I have not had a chance to try those yet.

Anyway, I played with Clothilde's recipe a little since I couldn't actually find date paste. You can buy Medjool dates in the bulk food aisle at Whole Foods. If you go to Whole Foods, make sure to buy them in the bulk food section where they are $6.99/lb. If you buy them in the pre-made plastic cartons in the produce section, they cost $7.99/lb. Sneaky Whole Foods. You can also find them in the produce section at some Trader Joes stores.

Eat Rating: Awesome. I ate them all within a day and had to make a second batch because I forgot to take a photo.
Difficulty: Easy. Just requires a food processor and a rubber scraper.

Adapted from Chocolate and Zucchini, "Homemade Larabars"

8 Medjool dates, pits removed and roughly chopped
3-4 tsp water
1/2 cup roasted almonds (LN: Try to get ones that aren't salted. If you have salted, you can rinse them in a colander to remove the salt.)
1/2 cup walnuts
1/8 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1 heaping tbsp cocoa nibs (LN: Not the chocolate covered ones)

Spray the bottom of a loaf pan with Pam or olive oil. Also tear a sheet of saran wrap or wax paper long enough to cover the pan. Set both aside.

Place the dates in the bowl of a food processor and pulse several times. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add 1-2 tsp of water. Pulse again, then scrape, repeating until the dates are broken down into a paste consistency. It will be a thick, chunky paste, more like a course meal than something like tomato paste. Add the nuts and pulse several times to chop them up. Add the cinnamon, cocoa and nibs, pulsing again until just combined. At this point, my mixture had started to ball in the bowl of the food processor.

Scrape the content of the bowl into the loaf pan. Using the wrap or wax paper, press the mixture into the pan until it is roughly level. Once the pan is filled, place the wax paper or wrap directly onto the bars and refridgerate for at least 4 hours. After the bars are solid, you can cut them in to bars and wrap in wax paper until ready to eat.

My variations:
Chocolate Cherry - Omit the 1/2 cup of walnuts and increase the almonds to 1 cup. Add 1/2 cup of dried cherries when you add the spices and chocolate.

Choco-coconut - Omit the 1/2 cup of walnuts and increase the almonds to 1 cup. Add in 1/2 to 3/4 cup of unsweetened shredded coconut.

Chocolate cranberry - Omit the 1/2 cup of almonds and increase the walnuts to 1 cup. Add in 1/2 cup of dried cranberries.