Is there anything else OS I can be doing?

PennyGSD

I've only recently been brave enough to start posting, but have been reading this board for a good couple of years now so have picked up a huge number of tips.

I'm in the really lovely position of working part-time (only 3 days a week, from home and really flexible hours), and with no children (1 high maintenance dog though) and an OH who logs into work from home although does do a number of customer visits a week, I have quite a lot of spare time.

Don't get me wrong, we're not rolling in it, but having previously worked full-time, I can only justify (to myself of course) working part-time by seriously cutting down our expenditure. I like to think that we live well, but frugally. For instance, animal welfare is hugely important to us but we are still meat-eaters, so all my meat comes from farmer's markets. Being regulars now we often get good deals on bulk buys. More expensive than the cheapest supermarkets, but I think much better quality, and it satisfies my conscience without costing too much more. Oh, and having recently started to experiment with vegetarian cooking we now have at least 2 or 3 nights a week trying out new veggie recipes (picked up on here of course)

So, is there anything else food-wise I can make myself?

I have an allotment, so the majority of fruit and veg is home grown (and either frozen or processed into jams/chutneys etc so gluts are never wasted).

I make all our bread products with the assistance of a Kenwood Chef.

I batch cook. We now have 3 freezers to store surplus fruit & veg, mass baked loaves, and all my home made ready meals.

All our cakes and biscuits are home baked.

We drink quite a bit of wine (blush, blush), but I make it all myself - some from free fruit, with admittedly interesting results, but most from grape juice kits - works out approx £1.50 a bottle for genuinely decent tasting wine.

And I've very recently ventured into making yoghurt using a wide-mouthed flask.

The reason I'm asking this question is that up until a week or so ago, I didn't realise I could make yoghurt, so wondered if there was anything else I'd missed that I could incorporate into my daily routine without any special equipment and just some investment of time. I'm getting so much enjoyment from discovering all these skills, although if I add much more to my daily/weekly routine I may not have enough time left to read this board and still work. And of course I've had to join Weight Watchers...

EstherH

Hi Penny,
I'm sure there will be some of the committed OSers along soon to let you know what else you could be doing. I am just learning and would be very interested to know about the yoghurt. How do you make it, how good is it? You sound like you are doing plenty already. We only have room for one freezer, no allotment and not a lot of success with growing veg in the garden, although loads of blackberries. Hope you get some answers.

rosy

Have you tried making your own butter from double cream? ( Kenwood Chef brilliant for this). Other things I've made that are either cheaper and / or (if they come out about the same cost) much better quality than shop bought are:
peanut butter
granola
mayonnaise

I've never tried wine making though I wouldn't mind giving it a go - which grape juice kits do you use?

PennyGSD

Hi Esther

My yoghurt making method was picked up on here - there's a huge thread and I think it had Easiyo in the title if that helps. Whilst I don't have a yoghurt maker there's plenty of tips on there for making without if you've got time to trawl through, but here's my method, perfected(?) over the last week or so, so I'm not an expert yet, but my results have all been edible and the last 3 batches have been consistently good. And yes, we've all been eating a lot of yoghurt recently.

INGREDIENTS
1 pint milk
1 rounded teaspoon of fresh plain, live yoghurt.

Ref the milk, for me UHT, fresh, skimmed or sem-skimmed hasn't seemed to make much difference to the quality. Maybe there's a slightly creamier flavour to semi-skimmed, but I think that might be all in my mind.
If you use UHT, you don't need to heat it to boiling point. If you use fresh you need to bring it up to bubbling point to kill off the bacteria which might cause the yoghurt to spoil. I heat it in my microwave until I can see bubbles just about to spill over the top.

Any live yoghurt will work apparently. I initially used Rachel's Greek Style as I particularly like it.

METHOD
If using fresh milk, pre-boil it, but then cool it down to between
40-43°C. Make sure it's no higher. If you haven't got a thermometer, then the threads here suggest blood temperature, but it feels just slightly warmer than that to me, although not much. My early, hotter yoghurt curdled and separated and I'm convinced it was due to the heat. Remove any skin that forms as it cools. If using UHT then simply heat it to this temperature without boiling first.
Fill a wide-mouthed flask with boiling water, empty it and allow to cool so that it feels warm, but doesn't burn - it should maintain the heat of the milk when added, not increase it.
Whisk yoghurt into warmed milk and pour into flask.
Leave flask undisturbed for a number of hours.
My best results have been where I've left it overnight from about 9pm to 8am. My thinnest results have been where I've made it during the day and peeked after 6 hours and then every hour or so afterwards. I think I let too much of the heat out.
If you want greek style yoghurt, then strain it through muslin (or a J cloth apparently) for an hour or so to remove some of the whey (the clear liquid), but keep the whey for bread or scone making as it's full of protein.
My best results have also appeared to be from 2nd generation starters - I froze individual portions of one of my early batches of yoghurt, and am now using this as the initial teaspoon. I've also frozen some of the original Rachel's dairy, so will use this to make new batches of starters in the future. Apparently the fresher it is the better it is likely to work. From what I've read on here, saving starters will only work for about 5 or 6 generations before it can become a little sour, but as I freeze 16 individual portions at a time, and each will make another 16, and each of them another 16 I reckon I should be OK for a while...
Good luck.

Seakay

Penny GSD
Congratulations on your achievements so far! (would it be terribly cheeky to ask what job it is that you do from home which has such flexible hours?)
If you check under cleaning on the indexed thread you could get yourself into the happy world of cleaning with vinegar and bicarbonate of soda, and maybe some soda crystals and Stardrops, and possibly even making your own laundry gloop.
Depending on which route you take this could result in money saving and putting fewer nasties into the drains - fits in with your stance on animal husbandry.
There is a thread on keeping chickens if you fancy that - rescue chickens are probably the cheapest way in although they will not lay well at first and may well have short lives. However, you should be able to get enough eggs for 2 from 2 or 3 hens.
Somewhere (sorry, bit brain dead today and can't remember poster's name) there are recipes for bath bombs and other cosmetics and beauty aids.

PennyGSD

Hi Rosy

Thanks for the ideas.

I've had brief goes at butter (how come using the Chef for kneading bread seems perfectly acceptable, but seems like cheating when making butter?) and mayo and although fun and satisfying, on top of all my home baking I think they would contribute to staying on a diet for rather too long.

I'm intrigued by peanut butter and I'm off to do a search now, but which method do you use? I buy Sainsbury's Basics peanuts for 23p a bag, so can you use salted for this or do they need to be raw?

Same for granola - I vaguely remember reading about that so I'm not sure why I haven't given it a go. But it sounds like it would go perfectly as a small topping for my newly adopted breakfast of fruit and yoghurt.

The best grape juice kits have been Beaverdale. I started off making the single gallon and soon progressed onto the 5 gallon kits. 1 gallon demijohns can normally be found on freecycle (or if you're lucky, on Ebay) and although wine-making experts swear by glass 5-gallon carboys (sp?) these would be far too heavy for me to move around so I invested in a couple of 5-gallon plastic Better Bottles - a couple of places on the internet sell these and they've done me proud for the last 3 years. At £12 each, I reckon I recouped my initial investment with the first 30 bottle kit. 1 gallon (6 bottle) kits are about £11. I don't know what style of wine you like, but we've tried quite a few of the Beaverdale kits and haven't found a bad 'un yet and best of all they're drinkable in just 4-6 weeks, although do improve with age.

Penelope_Penguin

PennyGSD wrote: »

so wondered if there was anything else I'd missed that I could incorporate into my daily routine without any special equipment and just some investment of time. I'm getting so much enjoyment from discovering all these skills, although if I add much more to my daily/weekly routine I may not have enough time left to read this board and still work.

Welcome to Old Style :beer: You seem to have most things covered Have you thought about keeping chooks, or a pig? That way you can be sure that your meat and eggs are well cared for, and you learn more skills.

Take a look at this thread on starting out Old Style - there are several links that might give you more ideas :T

Seakay

Adele Davis has the original and best granola recipe (I think)
5 parts oats
7 parts other dry ingredients (other rolled or flaked grains, nuts, seeds, dried fruits (add after cooking), dried milk, whatever)
1 part oil
1 part honey

Mix dry ingredients.
Combine wet ingredients.
Add wet to dry ingredients and combine thoroughly.
Oven to 200C
line baking trays with parchment or grease them.
Shallow layers of granola on the trays, 15 minutes in the oven, stirring halfway through, until golden and fragrant.
Add dried fruit (if using) when cool and store in airtight container.

rosy

PennyGSD wrote: »

I'm intrigued by peanut butter and I'm off to do a search now, but which method do you use? I buy Sainsbury's Basics peanuts for 23p a bag, so can you use salted for this or do they need to be raw?

Same for granola - I vaguely remember reading about that so I'm not sure why I haven't given it a go. But it sounds like it would go perfectly as a small topping for my newly adopted breakfast of fruit and yoghurt.

Thanks for the wine making info - I am seriously going to consider giving this a go!

Peanut butter is very easy ( I use Tesco value salted nuts so Sainsbury's will probably be OK ) - I put two 200g packs in food processor, blitz, then add a couple of tablespoons of honey or golden syrup and enough sunflower oil to get the right consistency (I add it gradually through the tube at the top to make it easy to gauge when I've added enough - I'd guess it's around three or four tablespoons worth). Store in fridge - ours gets eaten very fast so I couldn't say how long it would keep for.

Granola recipe I got from Thriftlady's website - easy and yummy recipe here http://thequincetree65.blogspot.com/2010/01/granola.html ( I hope Sue won't mind me posting the link!) It is lovely on yoghurt & fruit, OH eats it like that at all times of the day, also I have it neat with milk as a breakfast cereal.

EstherH

Thanks Penny, I shall put a wide necked flask on my shopping list and have a go at the yoghurt.

The_Thrilla

PennyGSD wrote:

...so wondered if there was anything else I'd missed that I could incorporate into my daily routine without any special equipment...

There certainly is - something you didn't mention: fuel. I don't know what your cooking, lighting and heating set-up is. But you can find ways of using less light, less heating. You can inspect the roast less often, and turn off the oven for the last fifteen minutes. Never boil anything without a lid. You can simmer by putting a lid on and turning off the heat. Have you got a pressure cooker, a microwave, a slow cooker? They all use less fuel than the "normal" ways of cooking. Have you got low energy light bulbs?

With electricity, as a general rule, one uses most of it for heating, whether it be heating food, water or people (or dogs).