The Tilsons

Yogurt is the first step we’ve taken in learning how to make cheese.  Eventually, we plan on making all of our own cheese and butter products to eliminate some more of our garbage, and to be a little more self sustaining.  Yogurt is easy, and it tastes wonderful. Making your own yogurt is a lot cheaper than buying it, and more satisfying too!

Plain Yogurt Ingredients:

4 C Organic whole milk
2 heaping table spoons organic yogurt (at room temperature) Use organic yogurt that is as non-homogenized as you can.

Directions:

1. We usually make a double batch.  In a pot on medium heat, heat milk until it foams up (the milk sugars will stick to the bottom)
2. Turn off heat and allow it to cool.
3. Test with your finger, when it feels lukewarm (about 100 degrees F) then pour milk into a very clean or sterilized bowl.
4. Wisk in the yogurt.
5. Cover bowl and let sit in a warm place where there is no draft (we use our oven with the light on) for 8 -12 hours.
6. They don’t tell you in the book, but pour off the whey for a thick yogurt, leave the whey for a thin yogurt (save some of this yogurt to make the next batch)  A thick yogurt will be almost the same as the yogurt you bought.

**Recipe “Homemade Yogurt” from The Modern Ayurvedic Cookbook p 266.

To make a wonderful lemon desert, add lemon and maple syrup to taste.  Or, for a parfait, try adding fresh, cooked berries alternately with a yogurt and maple syrup mixture, top with nuts and serve.

This banana bread recipe is another delicious way to use your freshly made yogurt. Yogurt makes baking moist and tasty. We love this recipe in particular because there is no white flour, no oil, and no sugar added. Let us know what you think. (modified from the canadian food network recipe)

Ingredients:

1 C (2 or 3) very ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup honey
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup plain yogurt
2 T apple sauce
1 1/2 C whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Freshly grated nutmeg, cinnamon to taste
1/4 C of chocolate chips (optional)
1/4 C of walnuts (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Oil 2 bread pan (because we changed the sugar to honey from the original recipe, 2 shallower loaves will rise and cook better than making a single full size loaf.)
2. In a large bowl, mash bananas and add liquid ingredients. Mix well.
3. On top of wet mixture add flour, baking soda (try not to let this touch the wet mixture until you stir it in), salt, nutmeg and cinnamon. Gently fold until just combined.
4. Optional: Add the nuts and chips and fold again.
5. Pour batter into baking pans. Bake 40 to 50 minutes, until golden and toothpick comes out clean. Remove from pan.

Over the years I have tried to come up with a good recipe for chili. I like it to be thick, without a lot of visible vegetables, but not completely devoid of them. My chilis in the past have been everything but, so I did my research and came up with this wonderful homemade chili recipe. The funny thing about researching Texas Chili, is that all the recipes are a secret. They tend to stay in the family and are never spoken out loud. (For example, I don’t think they use bay leaves in Texas). I digress.

Some tips for a great Texas Chili:

• The secret ingredient is coffee, it adds a smoky flavour and doesn’t dilute the taste.
• Apparently tomatoes ruin chili (funny because that was my main ingredient when working with recipe books) Tomato paste is okay, but definitely no tomato chunks. Resist the urge if it comes up - the recipe is built to be tomato free.
• The corn flour is better than white because it supports the flavour of corn bread - an essential for eating chili (or use tortilla chips instead of a spoon)
• If you want a more authentic heat experience, get those hot red chilis from the store and cook them in a cast iron skillet till they are blackened. (Remove the seeds for medium) Add them to the chili and then pick them out as you eat them (SLIGHTLY LESS HOT), or chop em up and leave them in there (HOT)

Read the complete Post.

The legend of my mother’s turkey soup pervaded conversation in our house every time we had turkey.  A jeering comment from my dad - “I even tried Ketchup - nothing could make that soup edible.”  He said it in a loving way, like he really was trying to do anything to make his new wifes soup edible. After years of this, my brother or I would even chime in “You aren’t going to make Turkey soup are you?”

The story was that in the first years of their marriage, my mom found a turkey soup recipe, but neglected to follow the recipe entirely.  She made the whole thing, including simmering the carcass, adding all the vegetables and spices in two hours.  Apparently she also forgot to taste it.  She and my dad sat down to eat and nothing could bring it to life - not even ketchup.  Needless to say, she never, ever tried again.

For some reason, I have always felt the same fear of making turkey soup, it was like a curse.  I suppose it came down to the fact my mother couldn’t make it taste good, and I felt that if she couldn’t, then I wouldn’t be able to either!

Turkey is an interesting broth.  It is much lighter than chicken, but has its own special flavour.  There is a certain savoryness about it, less fatty than chicken I think.  This does make it harder to make a good tasting soup, I have found.  One year, during the first months of my engagement to Justin, my mom and I decided to through the carcass in some water for later soup making projects.  Then, a couple of months later, Justin was sick and all I had was the turkey broth to make him a soup.  (Can you hear the foreboding music?)  Read the complete Post.

I have a small fear of canning tomatoes.  It comes from last year’s exploding midnight tomatoes. Recall how I called this experience a canning marathon!  Hah!  HAHAHA! Naive child, so young, so sheltered.  Anyway - to make a short story longer, the tomatoes were the final leg of a canning spree, I was tired, it was midnight, and I was following the book.  Suddenly, BAAM its midnight and there are tomates in the hood of my stove, on my wall and shattered glass and tomato gunk all over the inside of my canner. This is where I procured the fear of canning crushed tomatoes. Read the complete Post.

You know that wretched feeling you get when someone mentions stewed prunes? or Prune juice?  Or Prunes even?  The terrible thought of what we fondly call “plum bum”? Well - forget it all.  (Except maybe the plum bum)  Why?  Because not only are plums the easiest things to can, but they are the most amazing tasting canned fruit, next to canned cherries of course.

My recommendation is to buy them at their peak, but everyone knows that if you canned only at a fruits peak, you would have to get them in jars during their 10 minutes of peak glory, which would inevitably happen in the middle of the night, while you were letting the cat out on a trip to the bathroom, parched and groping for a glass in the cupboard. Read the complete Post.

Last night we made one of our creative, do it yourself, try something new suppers. This time, we invited our friend Matt, who is about to make himself our new roomy, to share in the experience and get a taste of doing it like a Tilson! On the menu was fresh, homemade pasta with pesto and cherry tomatoes from the garden, a beautiful salad, made by my beloved with kale, lettuce, radishes and beans from the garden, a homemade Italian salad dressing and a homemade blackberry pie with blackberries picked fresh the day before! We were all pretty excited.

My brother gave us an uber Marcato Pasta Maker for our wedding (that we received about a month ago - Thanks Lar!) Who knew it would be so difficult to find a pasta maker that doesn’t use electricity? (In case you are looking, we give this one five stars for quality and usability!) Read the complete Post.

It was our first anniversary last night so we decided to celebrate with the first dinner I ever cooked for Lisa. This was by far the best batch of Phai Thai we have ever made so I thought I would post the recipe. It’s not from any particular book. Numerous years of practice and experimentation have finally paid off! All ingredients are approximate values. Buy organic! Sorry locavores, this recipe relies on ingredients from farther away than we usually indulge in.

Ingredients

• 1 package medium rice noodles
• 3 cloves crushed garlic
• 1/2 block medium or firm tofu cut into small cubes or your favourite shape
• dash or two of Braggs
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 - 1/2 lb small shrimp
• handful of match-stick carrots
• 1/2 - 2/3 cup thinly sliced celery
• 1 - 2 shallots
• 1 - 2 handfuls of green onion stems
• fresh cilantro
• dry roasted, unsalted, ground (not too fine) peanuts

Sauce Ingredients

• 2 cups water
• 3 - 4 tbsp tamarind paste (or a sizable chunk)
• 2 - 3 tbsp canola or other cooking oil
• 2 cloves crushed garlic
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tsp sambal olek (red chilli sauce)
• juice from 1/2 lime
• salt and pepper

Directions

Preparation

1. Soak egg noodles in cold water prior to cooking (30+ minutes).
2. Place tamarind paste in a pot with water (2 cups) and simmer. Mash with a fork over time break up the super viscous paste.
3. Scramble eggs in a dish and set aside
4. Brown up tofu in a frying pan with a bit of oil, crushed garlic, Braggs, salt and pepper & set aside
5. If peanuts are raw, dry roast them in a toaster oven at 300F for 20 minutes (ish). Watch them so they don’t burn. Once cooled, either chop up or run through a mini prep blender/chopper. Set aside for garnish.
6. Chop up enough cilantro and set aside for garnish

Sauce

1. In a 2 cup measuring glass mix:
2. Oil, fish sauce, lime, paprika, sugar, crushed garlic, sambal olek, salt & pepper
3. Add approx 1 3/4 tamarind water with mashed up tamarind

Cooking

1. In a medium-high heat pan with a bit of oil, add egg noodles. Because, they will be dripping with water and will make a lot of noise as the cold water drips into the hot oil. Do this part quickly.
2. Turn heat down to medium.
3. Add carrots, celery, shallots, tofu, shrimp.
4. Pour scrambled eggs over everything.
5. Add approximately 1/3 sauce and gently mix sauce, noodles and other ingredients.
6. Cover. The noodles will absorb moisture quickly and much will evaporate.
7. Let cook for a couple minutes making sure it’s not sticking or burning to the bottom of the pan.
8. Add another 1/3 sauce and stir.
9. Cover for a couple more minutes.
10. At this point you are getting close. It’s done when the noodles are el dante (cooked through but not mushy) and the veggies are the same. You want to take it off the heat when the noodles look a little too saucy because they will continue to absorb moisture and can actually be dry by the time you get to eating them in a few minutes.
11. Add green onion stems and stir once more.
12. Use the last 1/3 of the sauce if you need to. The noodles may dry out a bit in the pan while juggling everything.
13. Add Phad Thai to large plates and cover with a thin layer of cilantro and crushed peanuts
14. Enjoy!

This recipe is a bit of work and takes a little practice to get the coordination and timing right but is well worth the effort. When it turns out perfect, its unforgettable.

Here is a recipe I invented in our endless quest to live without creating any form of waste that can’t be composted or recycled. Since we don’t throw anything that rots in our garbage and animal remains aren’t really supposed to go into residential compost bins I had to figure out what to do with the remains of the occasional organic chicken carcass that we buy. Having roasted the bird in our sunoven and spread the meat through several meals, I was left with a skeleton, some skin, a neck, fat and a bit of meat. I simmered the lot for several hours on low to create a great broth that went into the freezer for a later day. After simmering for so long, the bones have softened to a point where the blender can chew them up. Add enough water to bring the water line up to about 2/3s full. Don’t try this if you blender is wimpy and use pulse! Occasionally a larger bone will jam the blades and you want to be able to stop blending quickly to prevent burning out the motor. Continue blending for a couple minutes until all the bones are ground up and you have thick soup. This calcium rich slurry will disappear within days in an active compost vs. years if tossed in whole. Happy composting!

1. Strain soup
2. Add remains to blender
3. Fill blender 2/3s full of water
4. Blend carefully until smooth
5. Feed to compost!

With the dandelions sprouting up joyously everywhere this time of year, I was pondering if I could do something useful with them. Capers sells dandelion greens for a pretty substantial price and I’ve heard of dandelion wine but what else could there be? It seems others are pondering the same question as looked in my inbox and saw a thread from the Vancouver Permaculture Network discussing what they can be used for. For the curious, follow
the links links below.

I tried out the dandelion fritter recipe. It was interesting. If I do it again, I would make the batter a little more exciting that they do in the recipe below. I think a pancake batter recipe with a little salt, ghee or oil, plus a bit of vanilla or cinnamon would make them a little more exciting. I would stick to their suggestion to cook them in a cm of oil so the bottoms brown evenly. I didn’t. The flower side browned up no problem but the stem side can’t all touch the pan at once, only browning a part and leaving the rest a little raw.

They were somewhat bland on their own so I covered with a bit of maple syrup and they became a fun pancake replacement.

References

• Dandelion Fritters
• Fun with Dandelions

We purchased the sun oven on the left a couple of months ago but haven’t had a cloud-free enough weekend to warrant pulling it out of the closet. We both had some skepticism if it would get hot enough in our northern latitude but were willing to risk the $300 in case it lived up to the claims on Sun Oven’s website. We set a goal to reduce our home electricity consumption by 15% this year and the sun oven seemed like it could be an effective way to contribute to realizing the goal.

We purchased a small, Bradner Farms organic chicken which Lisa dressed with freshly harvested herbs, potatoes and carrots from the garden. The oven heated up to 300°F rather quickly under the 1PM sun. After opening the glass door and putting the black pot containing our dinner, the temperature gauge dropped to 250 °F. A few minutes and a minor adjustment later, lining the oven up with the sun’s location in the sky, the temperature rose back up towards but not quite reaching 300°F.

The roast chicken recipe from Sun Oven’s website suggests 3 - 4 hours for cooking time. As the temperature was holding steady between 280°F & 290°F, I erred on the side of caution and left the bird in for a full four hours even though it was quite small. To keep the oven aligned with the sun and the temperature inside the oven steady, I had to make a minor adjustment every half an hour.

Numerous people stopped by to see what the strange looking contraption was sitting atop of the garden compost bin. Most were pleasantly surprised to learn there was a whole chicken roasting away inside. Part of the fun of being in the garden is connecting with people who are passing through. It is always uplifting to be able to send folks away with a few fresh strawberries or some new ideas to try out. Around 5PM, I opened the oven and checked the chicken’s internal temperature which was 181°F, indicating that it was time to eat! Lisa tugged on a leg which fell off effortlessly. It was done!

This was the moistest chicken either of us have ever tried! It was simmering in an inch of its own juices and was perfectly cooked all the way through. The potatoes, only a few days out of the ground were heavenly and our wee carrots, tender and sweet! The meal was a resounding success and we both have renewed optimism for passive cooking under the sun.