Caramel Sauce

It has been a long time since I've posted any delicious recipes so I felt I'd share this one. The only bummer is that I don't have any pics right now. I promise I will take some as soon as I can.

I've noticed that many processed foods are hurting my throat muscles. I think I may have a strong sensitivity to the dyes or a chemical they put into the caramel that they sell in the stores, even the Hersheys caramel..... and anyone who knows me knows how much I love Hershey brand anything. So I'm glad that I came up with this several months ago.

Ingredients:
3 cups sugar(cane or white, both work but you will need to melt longer for the cane)
2 1/4 cup light or heavy cream
1 stick of butter
salt to taste

Method:
Melting sugar into caramel can be sooooo stressful but I promise it does not have to be. What got me at first was I was throwing melted sugar that had crystallized away. Don't! I can help!!!

1. Get a large non-stick or stainless steal pan. Put it under your tap and spray the whole inside of the pan, sides and bottom, leaving just a 1/2 an inch layer on the bottom. Put it on a cold burner.

2. Dump 3 cups of sugar into the bottom and carefully mix it while it is cold. Do not get it up the sides. Turn on burner to high.

3. Turn on your burner and let it boil but dont touch it. WATCH IT. Sugar burns ridiculously fast. Eventually the mixture will turn a caramel color. It may be darker in some places then others. Gently swirl pot around to try and get it to cook more evenly.

*****************See Problems below if you are having problems :-) ***************

4. Turn off your burner and very slowly add your cream while stirring. You literally want to add drips, less than a tablespoon, at a time- so stir til completely smooth, add more cream, stir til completely smooth. If you have been cooking a while you can probably do it at the same time but make sure you do this super slow. If you do it too fast it will seize up and this is frustrating to try and smooth out. Adding cream slowly will make your caramel not cool quickly to rock hard in places and watery in others- instead it will be thick and creamy. If you like thinner caramel and do not plan on heating it up before you use it, add another 1/2 cup of cream.

5. Add the butter. Butter is awesome. I love butter. If I know a recipe calls for butter, I know its good. The more butter, the better the recipe will taste :-). So bad, I know. So cut up your stick of butter into tablespoons and add it to the caramel sauce. It will melt in with some stirring. If it doesn't, turn the heat on medium and stir. WATCH IT, do not let it burn!!!

6. Add salt to taste. I find that I like about 3 teaspoons but I know some people like more. I suggest rock salt as opposed to table salt.

7. Put it into your mason jar and stick it in the fridge. I use this in my caramel iced coffee. You can also use it for ice cream or to dip your pancakes in. It has tons of more uses I'm sure! Experiment!!!

That's it!!! Ill be posting my caramel iced coffee recipe in the spring. Pics of this recipe coming this week!!!
ENJOY!!!!

Problems:
     1. There are HARD ROCKS of sugar in my caramel!
         Solution: turn the heat down to medium low. Using the tip edge of your wooden spoon break those apart(it will be difficult to break them!!!) while gently stirring in between breaking them. Warning, if you dont stir while breaking them apart your sugar may burn. Keep the heat on medium low or low(you know your stove) and break and stir, break and stir.
      2. My sugar is not turning deep caramel color, its white, hard, and crystal looking.
Solution: your sugar is crystallizing, returning to dried up sugar. It sucks but do not throw it out. Continue to stir and heat on medium high. It will take a WHILE but it will eventually smooth out again. Make sure you keep stirring at this point bc it will get super hot and burn fast if you dont stir the whole time.
      3. My sugar is black and doesnt smell too hot!
Solution: ok, so you burnt your sugar :-(. Throw it out and start again. Good news: its only sugar, at
least you havent added the butter yet!!!!
      4. My burned sugar or melted sugar hardened to my pan and I cannot. get. it. off.
 Solution: add enough water to cover all the hardened sugar and return it to the stove. Turn the heat on high and let the water get to a boil. Immediately take the pan to the stove and rinse it out, all
 the caramel will be gone :-)

Summer field trips

The end of school has come and with it a huge sigh of relief. Another school year past and now I am full time mom, not evening and weekend mom. I love homeschooling but it is a job. I take my teaching role very seriously, I want my kids to succeed. We've made some mistakes this year but our accomplishments have outweighed our losses and we have learned from them.

Fran and Cosette took their standardized tests for the first time. Cosette is learning alongside Fran so she took the test a year early. I was hesitant to do this and for good reason. It was a competition between them as usual so I will be testing separately next time. Both did well but Cosette has a natural ability to catch on fast to everything academic and did a bit better than Fran. One of the reasons I hate testing. Fran is brilliant in fields that Cosette is not. But since academics is all we test in that is all they see. We will be switching curriculum's around a little next year.

Since we concentrate our schooling in the cool months, shut ourselves in and get our work done, we finish early and when the sun shines and the temperatures rise we are outside, doing field trips, outings, park play dates, or just in our own back yard, enjoying the nice spring and summer months.

We have several field trips planned for this spring, summer and fall!!! If anyone feels they would like to join us we would love it!!! Here are the things we have planned. Tell us what you want to do and we can tell you when we are doing it!

Canal Days
Niagara Falls
Lollipop Farm
Mt Hope Cemetery Murder and Mayhem
Jurassic World
Webster fireman memorial splash pad
NYC(Sorry, that one is just for Fran and Cosette and I :-)
Powdermill Fish Hatchery
Sonnenburg Gardens
Redwings Baseball
Coldstone Creamery
Adirondack Animal Land
Memorial Art Gallery Glass Art and concert
North Ponds Park
Letchworth State Park
Buffalo Zoo

This will take us through July. Again, please let me know if you would like to join us!!!

Enjoy the gorgeous weather!!!
Bethany

Busy times

To all of my thousands of readers, haha, sorry I have been away for so long.

After my hernia surgery recovery, which was 8 weeks instead of the 3-4 days like promised by my surgeon, I am finally getting back to a normal routine. School has started back up in a very relaxed way. The kids have finished their "formal" schooling for the year and now we are busy doing nature walks, arts and crafts, sign language, Chinese on youtube, and netflix history. We are still doing bible in the AM, my favorite part of the day. Christian is learning his multiplication facts and has now moved on to second grade reading. I am so proud of him. We will start piano back up this week.

Our adoption has come to a halt for now. We are waiting on funds and plan on selling our awesome shirts and doing a couple other fundraising this month. We were surprised by the money that is needed within the next two months but we are confident that God will provide!!!

Sorry to keep this so short!!! The kiddoes need some lunch and I have a house to clean. Please continue to pray for our adoption journey.

Love to you all in Christ.

Homeschooling Praises

I love homeschooling. I love that if the Lord leads we can read an extra chapter of the Bible or another lesson in our study. I love that at the beginning of the day the kids all sit down together, thank the Lord for our meal and eat a healthy breakfast after getting their chores done, there's no rushing or looking at clocks to make sure we are ready for school. I love that when a child realizes he is sick in the middle of the day and wants his mom I'm right there and can put him under a blanket in the living room.... instead of him lying in a school nurses office waiting for me to come get him. I love that if you come to my house in the morning you will find the babies playing and arguing over trucks on the floor, my oldest boy snuggling with me on the couch, doing his reading out loud while I crochet, and the two "best sisters" sitting at the dining room table doing their school together, the table covered in paper, glue and folders to do yet another lapbook. I love that if you come in the afternoon you will find us doing sign language, history on netflix, on a nature walk(or right now, a walk to see them build houses!) down our road, or, if the weather is warm and dry, in the backyard gardening, playing baseball, running around playing house, or reading. I love that no matter what time of day it is we are always together.

Never Buy It Again- sour milk

Never Buy It Again- sour milk

I use this recipe for everything. I also use it as a substitute for things like buttermilk and, depending on the recipe, sour cream. You could also substitute yogurt for sour cream in some recipes, greek works good for this purpose.

This will be a short post, haha. I will add pictures as I get them.

Ingredients:
any kind of milk
lemon juice or vinegar(I'm sure other people have some other things they use, these are my main 2 cuz I always have them on hand)

Method:

Your recipe will tell you how much sour milk, buttermilk, or sour cream you need for their recipe. So to substitute those you take the measuring cup you need(so if they want 1 cup of sour milk, etc, you get the 1 cup out), fill it 3/4 of the way with any kind of milk. Grab your "sour-er": your vinegar or lemon juice, and fill the rest of the measuring cup up with that. So if the recipe calls for 1 cup of sour milk, etc, I would use 3/4 cup milk and 1/4 cup vinegar or lemon juice.
Simple! Leave them to curdle for about 5 minutes or so. If I'm doing this to substitute sour cream Ill do 1/2 milk, 1/2 vinegar or lemon juice. This usually makes it thicker. I can only do this with certain recipes. Don't try this on your tacos :-).
And there it is!!! I will post pictures when I get to it!!!

Simple Food- Chocolate Hazelnut Almond Butter

                   Chocolate Hazelnut Almond Butter

One of the best things that we have discovered on our road to simple eating is nut butter. Peanut butter has an amazing amount of fat and salt in it. We are trying to limit our nuts to only healthy ones.

When making nut butters try to keep all the ingredients as natural and un-processed as possible. We go with raw nuts and organic coconut oil. We try to use rock salt but right now we have tons of salt because of Jeremy's couponing so we are letting that slide for now. 

I have tried many butters but I always come back to almond butter....until I made homemade "nutella". 

Oh. My. Goodness.

I am in love with almonds so I did so half and half. Plus have you seen the price of hazles? Yuh.

This is the recipe I have tweaked from an amazing pinner. Like I said, I like to try and keep things as healthy as possible so I had to change some things up.

                                                  Ingredients

                                                          1 cup hazelnuts

                                                          1 cup almonds

                                                          1/3 cup almond milk

                                                          1/4 cup cocoa powder

                                                          1/2 cup honey

                                                          1 1/2 T coconut oil

                                                          salt to taste

You can use all hazelnuts but like I said, I love almonds, they are very good for you, and this recipe was awesome with them. You can do this with all almonds as I have done before. Your choice!!! Try another kind of nut if you wish!!!! 

                                                 Method

Measure out the nuts you choose and put them in a tough blender or processor. Blend until clumpy, stop, scrape down sides, blend until smooth. 

Add coconut oil, blend, scrap down sides. This can take a very long time, use as small a blender as you have. It can take 10 minutes to get it creamy and looking like a "butter". Add all the rest of the ingredients except the salt and blend until smooth. Add a little salt, blend taste and continue until you have the right amount of salt. 

You could probably also substitute the honey for fresh maple syrup. The original recipe called for 1/2 cup of sugar and I wasn't about the go there. The honey tasted great.

I could eat this stuff with a spoon but tastes amazing on some fresh white, sourdough and soft oatmeal toast!!! 

Enjoy!!!!

(Not So) Simple Food- Eastern Yogurt

                 Vietnamese Yogurt
                                           another recipe from my mom

I'm going to step away from my normal simple eating posts to bring you a recipe that not many people over in the western world know about. This is a recipe that is common in Vietnam(where my mother was a missionary), China and other countries that don't have the access to fresh milk like we do. In those countries its common to see canned milk used in recipes and soy milk to be drunk regularly(and apparently is tastes delish! Fran and I will find out soon when we take our trip to China!!!). Coffee is flavored with canned sweetened milk and is adored. So to keep with this tradition, we are going to use canned sweetened milk and a small amount of yogurt and water.....and get a large amount of yogurt that you will LOVE. I promise.

In Vietnam and China yogurt is served by street vendors....and you are given a straw. This yogurt can be made thicker with more time and patience but, unlike a lot of my recipes, I am not going to tweak this one because....why mess with perfection????

This recipe can be difficult in the way that sour dough can be difficult, or even yeast breads. You have to baby-handle the ingredients. Your temperature has to be right and the amount of everything that you put into the recipe has to be right.

Normally I would switch from canned milk to fresh. I have a recipe of sweetened condensed milk that I use for my coffee creamer, cakes, and other things. But since this recipe is from another culture that I respect and love I will not be changing it. If you would like to try, I do understand and go for it!!! Let me know how it goes!!!

And the best part: you get to use jars.....I will always be excited about it. Sorry.

IMPORTANT: Read everything before you start.

                                              Ingredients

                                            1 can sweetened condensed milk
                                            1 8 oz yogurt, plain or vanilla. I have tried greek, I dont
                                                   like the flavor, but go for it!!! It will be thicker.
                                            2 milk cans boiling water
                                            1 milk cans cold water

Note: These are the brands I use, you do not have to use whole milk. I would definitely try to use organic everything when making a starter of any kind. I am unable to find organic sweetened condensed milk. If you can definitely use that.

                                                                                                                 Directions

Get your jars cleaned and ready.
Get a large cake pan or something as deep. This is for the water bath.
Get a large bowl. Boil water in a kettle. Open a can of sweetened condensed milk, empty it into the bowl. Whisk in 2 cans of hot water and 1 can of cold water. Whisk very well, make sure there are no clumps.

IMPORTANT: wait until the mixture has cooled to room temperature.
Add your yogurt, mix well, getting rid of all lumps.

Put that YUMMY mixture into your jars, leaving about 1/2 inch from the top. Lick the bowl clean or feed spoonfulls to the waiting open mouths standing behind you.

Turn your stove onto the lowest temperature, mine is 170 degrees. Place your jars of yogurt into your cake pan/pans. They should have space in between them. Place the pans with the yogurt jars in them into the oven(do not fill them with water until you put them on the rack in the oven).

Take your tea kettle and fill the cake pans about an inch full of boiling water. This way you won't burn yourself trying to lift a heavy glass cake pan full of boiling water and glass jars. See what I did there? Guess how I learned? By burning myself trying to lift a heavy glass cake pan full of boiling water and glass jars.

Let's move on.

Close oven and wait.

And wait.

Aaaaaand wait.

You can let your yogurt sit in a hot oven for 2 hours. Then turn off the oven and let them sit for another 3-4 hours. Your yogurt will get more sour and thicker the longer it sits in the heated and then warm oven. I prefer to eat thinner and less sour yogurt, thick yogurt makes me gag, sorry. I usually let my yogurt sit for 2 hours in the oven and then, once it reaches the thickness of a very thick milkshake, I take it out. This is usually about an additional hour, so 3 hours total.

IMPORTANT: Be careful removing your yogurt from the oven. The spilled water will get on your mitt and shoot through to your hand FAST(guess how I learned?). I usually use a turkey baster(....now) and empty most of the water before I remove it from the oven. If it has been sitting there for 3 hours after you turn off the oven you may be ok. But please dont burn yourself.

Once they have cooled off to room temperature place the lids on the jars and put them in the fridge.

ENJOY!!!!

If you enjoyed this post wait a couple weeks and I will be putting up my Flan recipe!!!! This recipes awesome but it is nothing compared to that one :-).

Note: Technically you have created a starter. So technically you should never have to buy yogurt again. I have not tried this but I would love to hear if it worked for you!!!!

Simple Life meal planning- our family style!

Simple meal planning for us, a family of 8, means eating frugally without sacrificing our health. We have 6 kids that have been entrusted to us to feed and nurture. Feeding them chemicals and processed sugar and starches on a regular basis are just not something we can do. But we also can't spend above our means. We don't believe in credit so we have to be careful with the provisions God has given us.

To start off I will tell you that my husband is an extreme couponer. This is NOT for everyone. Couponing is generally thought to be only foods that are bad for you and packed full of sugar. This does not have to be the case. Since we have begun simple living foods we have used couponing for fruits and veggies, paper and bath products, dairy, oatmeal, etc. This takes more effort to find and there are not as many savings but we are not sacrificing health. And never paying for gas or shampoo saves us oodles. So we will continue doing it.

On an average week we spend approximately $200 on food. If you break it down that is $30 a day. Split it down to the 8 of us eating, taking into account that I make all my hubbys lunches and we dont eat out at all, that is about $1.30 per person, per meal. Ive read a lot of blogs about the cost of grocery bills for large families...but most of them are from the southern states. We are in NY, we only have a short growing season. But we have Wegmans, the only place I will buy produce in the winter months(December through April/May) because their produce is the only place I can stand during the cold months. The other grocery stores have almost rotting produce, no variety and no choice for organic. We have discovered that doing a fruit/veggie co-op is DEFINITELY the way to save money so we will be purchasing our full share a week plan at Sunscape Farms this summer!!!

I know that some moms out there will be amazed at how much I spend. I can hear them now, "My kids eat $.30 meals". That is fine and that is your family. Like  I said above, I am very concerned with healthy foods and meals and we buy locally and eat organic as much as we can. So here is our average grocery list:

Fresh fruits and veggies: this varies by season. We prefer to eat locally so we do a CSA during the summer/fall months. Like I said above, we buy from Wegmans when its off season and we try and buy organic there. We get bags of potatoes from our local farm. We buy in bulk when we can and during the summer purchase a bushel of apples at a time. An apple a day.....

Meats: We only buy chicken breasts and sometimes stew meat if its on sale and in the family packs. Sometimes we buy premade hamburgers for fun :-)

Dairy: Lite cream, organic lactose free milk, butter, organic yogurt(for smoothies). Our raw milk(strained only) for those who are not lactose intolerant and for our baking comes from a farm family friend down the road. We also get our 3 dozen eggs there. Because we make everything from scratch those eggs do not go to waste and both the milk and the eggs taste SO much better.

Baking: this is our biggest area. We make everything from scratch: breads and snacks, breakfasts, breakfast casseroles, etc etc. It is a lot cheaper to make rather than buy and it is much better for you. We buy almond and white flour, raw and white sugar, baking soda, baking powder, molasses, lots of spices, salt, and powdered sugar. We make our own brown sugar, taco seasoning, ranch dressing, ketchup, etc.

Grocery: spaghetti or noodles, rice, certified organic mac and cheese when we have a coupon(a treat for the kiddoes), canned tomato paste or sauce(we make our own ketchup and spaghetti sauce), anything else that I need for recipes. 

frozen: frozen fruit- organic, wegmans brand(for smoothies).

So that is our family. Again, not for everyone but this is how we save money and protect our bodies from the crap the food companies put in everything. A good way to check to see if what you are eating is healthy is 1- check if it is certified organic, then you wont have to worry about pesticides and a lot of junk that goes into our foods. 2- make sure that what you buy has less than 4-5 ingredients in it(3 is my magic #!!! If I can do 3 or less Im very happy). If you cant pronounce most of the words in the ingredients stay away from it. Fresh and organic is best. Your plate should be 1/2 veggies, 1/4 lean meat and 1/4 or less of starch. 3- remember that EVERYTHING can be made from scratch. Make a pinterest page for just home made stuff- cleaners, sides for your meals, condiments like ketchup or ranch dressing, even combined spices like taco seasoning!

Enjoy!!!!  














  

Simple food- loving bread sourdough starter

Really....is there anything better than fresh bread? 

You can probably tell from the limited posts that I have, that next to my beloved glass jars I also love to make everything from scratch....and bread is my absolute favorite! With us being a family of 8 and our desire to live and eat simply, we make lots of it. We go through a LOT of flour, yeast and salt week. Sometimes the only thing I buy at the store are baking items, fruits, veggies, and lean meats. Really, what else do you need?

I try to always have 2 kinds of homemade fresh bread on hand. Again, with a family of 8, that usually means Fran or I will bake a loaf a day. A couple staples are white, sourdough and challah. 

The recipes we use for the many, many different kinds of breads we make are from many, many different sources including pinterest, Williams Sonoma, The Amish Cooks Baking Book, and many others.

While Challah is my absolute favorite(the recipe taken from Williams Sonoma) and Jeremy's is our white bread(taken from the Amish Cooks Baking Book), Sourdough is Fran's. And today I'm here to tell you that the cheapest and the most simple bread we make is Sourdough. 

By cheap I mean cheap. You need flour, salt, water, sugar, and a bowl. It raises beautifully and people who love sourdough will love it. My favorite way to eat sourdough is toasted with almond butter(you can find my recipe on a Never Buy It Again post), and locally harvested honey. Fran loves it with just honey. 

There are tons of recipes for your bread, this is the basic starter that will get you going! The starter is what you use to grow your leaven, what will make your bread rise and look purdy. Our favorite recipes for the bread in which you use your leaven is the Williams Sonoma recipe and we also enjoy a more complex recipe that is found on allrecipes.com called San Francisco Sourdough Bread Recipe.

So lets start our starter!!!! I promise, this will not be hard. Grab one of those beautiful jars!

Ingredients:

2 cups flour(we use almond meal/flour but white would work, too)

2 cups water

patience

See? Cheap-o!!!! This is the basic recipe. You can use 1 cup water, 1 cup flour. You can try different flours for your families allergies, etc. This is our flour. We mix white, organic almond meal and sometimes organic coconut together. While I dont go completely gluten free because of the cost of it all, I do try and stick with a 3 to 1 mixture. 

Pretty :-)

Some people replace the water with milk. I like just using water because I know that water is better for us. Plus it is pennies as opposed to dollars. Plus I like the way it tastes now and see no reason to switch :-)

Method:

Clean your jar very well and wash your hands. You don't want any bad bacteria in your starter or it will grow mold. Ew.

Put 2 cups of lukewarm water in the jar.

Carefully put the flour in the jar. Try not the make a mess :-).

Mix up the flour and water til smooth. Again, try not to make a mess. I have been in a rush before and gotten flour all up the sides. This makes me think, later on when I go to use my starter, that I have mold until I realize its just flour. So save yourself a panic attack :-). No huge mixing or it will get everywhere.

Put a breathable towel, plastic wrap, paper towel, etc on the top. You can't put a lid on or the gasses can't escape. 

Let the jar sit on a counter. It should bubble and grow after a day or two of sitting out. Sometimes liquid will form on the top. Some people will tell you that you should get rid of the liquid. I have not found this to be a good thing. It makes the starter sticky and impossible to use in my opinion. I stir the liquid back in and wait another day. So with this starter- and every starter will be different because temperature, moisture in the air, in my case the percentage of almond flour vs white flour, etc, is different from day to day- I had to stir my starter on day two(making sure to smell and see if it is still healthy and it smelled perfect, not quite sour enough, still doughy smelling) and wait another day. On day three it was growing and smelling sour and delish!!! Here is a picture of what your starter should look like on the 2-4th day:

Sorry this is so dark, it is actually not brown, the picture below is the accurate color, keeping in mind I use almost all almond flour. 

Here is the starter before and after rising so you can see how it has grown and bubbled. 

 

You can see how it has risen and bubbled.

After 4-5 days you should see definite rising and bubbles. If there is liquid on any day before the rising stir it in and keep going, even if you have to stir 2-3 days in the row. If after 6 days there is no rising, even though you have stirred, I would toss it and start fresh. Keep in mind that this is 2 cups of flour and 2 cups of water. It is pennies and worth trying again, because once you have your starter it lasts forever. I have never had a starter not rise so you should be ok. Fran and I will get it wrong if its easy to get wrong and we haven't yet. 

 IMPORTANT: If the water that gathers on the top is pinkish or green or the mixture smells ugly then throw it out and try it again. This has never happened to us so I can't imagine it happens very often. Like I said, Fran and I have learned that if there is a chance of screwing up a recipe we will screw it up :-).....live and learn....but we have not screwed up our sour dough yet! 

After 3-5 days stick your nose into the jar and give it a sniff. It should smell pleasantly sour and yeasty. You can leave it on the counter for a couple more days if you want to, the longer it sits out without being fed the more sour it will become. 

You will know if your starter has gone bad, it will smell awful. If it's a sour smell it is still good. Unless there is mold. Say no to mold. 

And there is your starter! Stick it in the fridge loosely covered(you can use a lid but don't screw it down all the way) and feed it every 4 days or so. 

To feed your starter: Remove, and use it in whatever recipe you are making, all but 8 oz of your starter. Then add 1 cup water and 1 cup flour to your jar. If you are keeping your jar in the fridge like I do, feed it once a week. If you are keeping it on the counter you will need to feed it 2 times a week. Don't forget to mix the liquid in before you use any of your starter or you will end up with less and less and it will be sticky.

Good luck!!!! Let me know how it goes!!!!