Old-Fashioned Marshmallows, Take One

Marshmallows, much like soda, used to have medicinal value. They were recommended to soothe a sore throat and treat coughs and heartburn.  And that's because they had marshmallow root in them.

Today's marshmallows, not only are missing their namesake ingredient, but additionally contain corn syrup, modified corn starch, and artificial flavors and colors (Blue 1, yum yum).

Even the vegan marshmallows like Dandies and Sweet & Sara contain corn syrup and don't appear to contain any marshmallow root. Is wanting a marshmallow with actual marshmallow in it asking for too much?

Unable to find authentic marshmallows for purchase, I have thought often about making my own, but I had no idea what besides marshmallow root and presumably sugar would go into an old-fashioned marshmallow. Well, lucky me, I stumbled across New Life On A Homstead's page which has two recipes for old-fashioned marshmallows. Today I attempted to make the second of the two recipes, because I have no idea what tragacanth is (sounds like the name of a Tolkein character)  and it was 13 bucks on Amazon.

The second recipe required: egg whites, vanilla extract, sugar, and ground marshmallow root. my marshmallow root was not already ground, so I ground some up the best I could with the coffee grinder.  

As far as taste, the batter was pretty pleasant tasting. I was a bit worried because if you have ever smelled marshmallow root, it is not the most appeasing of herbs, but the sugar,vanilla and egg whites managed to mellow the mallow.  I think this might make good marshmallow fluff, maybe it could be used in Rice Krispie treats.

Once I started baking, is when the trouble began. First off, the hour of cooking time is definitely over kill.  I think they should probably be pulled out at 20 minutes. I didn't follow the instructions to place the batter by the tsp onto a baking sheet. I just made one gigantic marshmallow because I had seen other marshmallow recipes which baked it as one piece and cut it up afterwards. I also stuck it in a bread pan instead of an actual baking dish because the amount of batter looked rather small and I was worried about my marshmallows being too thin. Next time, I would do an 8x8 baking pan because it seems like it does puff up in the oven. At 20 minutes mine looked like a nice soufflé and smelled amazing, but I was convinced that it had to go longer because the recipe gave a 1 hour cooking time. I pulled mine out after 35 minutes because it smelled like it were burning and it had collapsed on itself.

So they were not bad tasting (Lord Rat even ate some willingly), but they were not like any marshmallow I ever had. We did eat most of it before I could take a picture though. They were thin, a little burnt on top with a bottom layer that was a little gooey. I think the recipe has the potential to be tweaked though. 

Water Kefir

My Water Kefir grains finally arrived March 19th. I was very excited, but after reading the instructions, I realized that they needed to rehydrate in sugar water for 3-5 days. Bummer.

Making water kefir soda is about a four day process. The kefir grains need to sit in sugar water for one to two days. Then the kefir grains are strained from the sugar water solution. At this point whatever flavorings you are using (juice, tea, etc) are added to the sugar water solution. This mixture is bottled and left to sit at room temperature for one to two days. After that it is refrigerated and can be drunk at your leisure. The strained kefir grains are put immediately into a new batch of sugar water, so once you get the process started you will have new kefir soda every one to two days.

I have been constantly making kefir since my kefir grains arrived.  I went with the low end of the rehydration range, only waiting three days before I started making water kefir with them.  In retrospect perhaps I should have waited longer.  I was very disappointed with the initial carbonation results in my first four batches, which were basically no carbonation at all.  Finally in the fifth batch I started having nice carbonation, when I opened the flip top bottles there was an audible pop and the kefir soda foamed up and shot out the top.  From what I have read, it appears kefir grains need to "rebalance" sometimes when they are getting used to a new water supply.

Another thing I noticed is that the first few batches of water kefir had a stronger taste and smell than subsequent batches. I experienced the same phenomenon with my Matsoni yogurt; it tasted a little funky until the fourth batch.  I am wondering if this is always a side effect of reviving dehydrated cultures. 

I have experimented with different flavors. So far the best has been adding Concord Grape juice in a ratio of 1 part juice to 2 parts kefir. The grape flavor covers up the weird kefir taste, and diluting the grape juice mellows the intense sweetness of the grape juice.  I also experimented with "kefir lemonade", by adding the juice of one lemon after the first ferment.  I was not a big fan of this concoction, the lemon did not cover up enough of the kefir taste, but this was one of my earlier batches, so I might try it again now that my kefir grains seem to have mellowed. I read somewhere that prune juice makes a Dr. Pepper like concoction. While pleasant tasting enough, the prune juice kefir in no way tasted like Dr. Pepper to me.  I also tried Grapefruit juice kefir, even though I read that citrus juices in kefir tend to produce weird stringy things. My grapefruit juice kefir did indeed have weird stringy things in it, and I also found that the grapefruit juice did not cover up that kefir taste well either.  I am thinking that cherry juice might work out pretty well, and now that I am getting carbonation I will try ginger ale and root beer soon. Currently I have hibiscus kefir going; it will be ready tomorrow. What is your favorite flavor of kefir?

Whey: Lacto-fermentation Fail

Unfortunately, my ginger bug passed away due to neglect: I forgot to feed it a few times and sometimes just fed it sugar because I didn't feel like cutting up ginger root.  

So, I decided to try making lacto-fermented soda the easy whey (pun intended).  I drained off half a cup of whey from the most recent batch of my Matsoni yogurt (I LOVE Mesophilic yogurt cultures), and added it to some sweetened ginger tea and waited for it to become fizzy.

Five days passed and it did not become fizzy, but it did become moldy. Perhaps I should have sterilized my jars directly before (they were run through the dishwasher, so I thought that was good enough). I had poured the mixture into four different jars and three ended up growing mold in them, which leads me to believe it was a problem with the whey.  Maybe I need to use whey from Bulgarian yogurt?

I did sample some of my concoction on day three even though it was not fizzy, it had a weird milky taste, not just the slight fermented taste that I had ended up with when making soda with my ginger bug.

I may try this experiment again in the future either using different whey or sterilizing the jars directly before.  Anyone have any success with making soda using whey?

I ordered some water kefir grains finally after reading about all the crazy health benefits of kefir, so I will be attempting kefir soda in the next few weeks. Wish me luck!

Fix That Creaky Cabinet

I had a Duh moment today as I was searching for WD40 on Google Shopping Express.  

For months the top pantry cabinet has had an awful creak. During the day, it doesn't bother me that much. However, at night it turns into a loud-mouthed tattle tale, informing everyone in the house if you are doing any late night snacking. 

Creaky hinge. I knew what I needed: WD40. It was a hard-coded response. I didn't even consider anything else. So, I kept on making mental notes (usually during a midnight cookie forage) to pick up some WD40, but somehow it never made it on to my actual to-do list.

I came this close to ordering some today. Then I started reading over the description, "...harmful or fatal if swallowed..." I shuddered at bringing another dangerous item that I would have to stoway far from the baby. I've had to move all my cleaning supplies from under the sink to the top cabinets. I use mostly natural cleaning products, but I still think it's not good if you chug down a bottle of Mrs. Meyers.

Anyway, I thought about it, and I'm like it's just a fine mist of oil.... I have oil...in fact, I have a Misto! So I got the Misto out of the cabinet and gave it a few pumps and sprayed away at the cabinet hinge. I swung the door open, the creak had notably decreased. A few more sprays and it was gone! Excellent, for a few cents worth of safflower oil, I had saved four bucks and had avoided bringing toxic substances into the home. I felt very accomplished. 

It's interesting to think how many "product needs" are just brainwashed into us. I wonder what else I don't need.

Ginger Snaps Back: A Girl and her Gingerbug

I'm sure your first question is, What on earth is a ginger bug?  It's just a culture of beneficial bacteria, similar to a sourdough starter, except instead of using it to make bread, you use it to make lacto-fermented soda (so much better than what it sounds). 

For a long time, I have dreamed of making my own rootbeer.  I love soda, that is real soda without high fructose corn syrup, or aspartame, or artificial flavoring.  I want the real McCoy. One particular pet peeve of mine is root beer marketed as"Old Fashioned" that contains HFC or artificial flavors.

True old fashioned root beer was lacto fermented.  There appears to be several ways to do this, using whey (that liquid leftover when you strain yogurt), a kefir culture, or using a ginger bug.  

I decided against the kefir as it seemed to require a significant initial investment (spending  $27 plus shipping) on the kefir starter packets.  Why I didn't try the whey method first, I don't know.  Maybe I wanted someone to keep Captain Trips (my sourdough starter) company on the counter.  Of the three methods, creating a Ginger Bug requires the highest level of patience and initial time investment.

I've seen numerous recipes for how to make a ginger bug with varying instructions on the amount of ginger, sugar, and water to add.  I don't think the amount of water matters very much.  What I decided on was 1 tablespoon each water, sugar, and finely chopped ginger added each day.

After 1 day it smells like ginger and sugar.

After 2 days still smells mostly like ginger, but starting to get a faint alcoholic smell with a sort of lemony undertone.

After 3 days the alcoholic smell has intensified a bit.

After 4 days smells like lemony ginger hooch.  No bubbles.  No sound.

By the end of day 5 the smell is the same, but if I look closely, I see some small bubbles.  Still don't hear anything though.

Day 6.   Still smells like ginger hooch, there are a lot of bubbles and the ginger bug snaps and hisses at me.  I think it is ready for soda making.

I'm pretty certain I have a successful ginger bug starter.  So I should have some posts pretty soon on my experimentations with lacto-fermented beverages.  I plan on making a stab at Ginger Beer first to make sure ginger bug actually works, as Root Beer requires finding and buying a bunch of obscure herbs.

Matsoni - A Mesophilic Yogurt

Inspired by some delicious homemade yogurt at a friend's house warming and my New Year's resolution to consume less processed foods and more natural ones, I set off on a mission to make my own yogurt again.

I have made yogurt in the past a few times, but have never kept with it because my end product has always been a little disappointing.  A major problem has been that I have frequently ended up with a grainy texture.  So this time I wanted to do a little research before starting.  That's when I learned about Mesophilic yogurts.

Unlike the thermophilic yogurts that you buy at the store, Mesophilic yogurts do not require an elevated temperature to culture milk.  Instead, they culture at room temperature or between 70 and 78 degrees Fahrenheit.  Also they do not require you to heat your milk first.  Making Mesophilic yogurt is as easy as dumping milk in a jar adding in some yogurt starter and letting it sit on the counter for 12-48 hours.  Nice!  Why had no one told me about Mesophilic yogurt before?

I selected Matsoni as the Mesophilic yogurt that I would try.  I ordered from Cultures for Health, which I highly recommend.  My order came a day early and their customer support has been truly awesome.

I was so excited, I filled a quart mason jar with some organic whole milk and stirred in my freeze dried yogurt packet and even stuck the jar in an insulated cooler with a hot water bottle incase the nightime temperatures fell into the 60s.  After a day, nothing had happened.  I took comfort that at least it still smelled like milk and not rotten.  After 34 hours it looked like it might actually be starting to change into yogurt, but it was still pretty sloppy.  It most certainly was not pulling neatly away from the edge of the jar when tilted like in the video.  It was also starting to smell like a pungent sheep cheese.  I was a little alarmed.  I contacted customer support through their live chat option and described the situation.  

The chat representative said that the Matsoni culture could smell a little strong at first.  She then asked me what milk I used.  I told her whole organic, and she asked whether it was ultra-pasturized.  I checked, and sure enough it was ultra-pasturized. She explained that ultra-pasturized milk was so "dead" that one would not be able to make yogurt with it, and if it actually did make yogurt that I should switch to just pasturized milk right away.

I hoped against hope that my yogurt would turn out.  It did look kind of "yogurty".  Maybe this would be a rare instance where it worked.  I waited until it had been out 48 hours.  It hadn't firmed up much in the 14 ensuing hours.  I tasted it.  It tasted like a mixture between strong sheep cheese and an old shoe.  I put it in the fridge.  The directions had recommended cooling in the fridge for 6 hours once the yogurt had set.  I had no idea how it would work, but somehow I was hoping cooling in the fridge would improve the taste.  I tried it again after it had been in the fridge a while.  It still tasted like strong cheese and an old shoe and the texture was very clumpy.  I decided I would strain it, now it was thick clumpy cheesy shoe yogurt - still not edible though.   I stashed it in the fridge,  just in case I  could use it to culture new milk.

Luckily, they provide two packets of freeze-dried yogurt culture in each order, so I didn't have to resort to trying to use the cheesy shoe yogurt yet, but I was down to my last packet.  I had to get things right this time, so I was back to customer support running my game plan by them.  I would use organic whole pasturized milk, heat the milk to 165 degrees first, after it cooled to room temperature
I would add my starter packet and hope for the best.  I also only used 2 cups of milk this time, in case things didn't work out.

This time, after 22.5 hours, I had yogurt.  It pulled neatly away from the sides and didn't taste or smell at all like a shoe.  This mother batch was still a bit cheesy tasting to me, and if you are expecting it to be exactly like the store bought yogurt, you will be disappointed.  It is more mild tasting, lacking that characteristic sourness, and the texture is more loose and watery.

The Gen 1 batches which I made from my first batch tasted less cheesy, perhaps due to the shorter
culturing time.  They only took 15 hours to set.  Next, I am experimenting with using half whole milk and half cream.  I also want to experiment with heating the milk for the future batches and see if this will affect the thickness.

I don't think this will be a good substitute for the yogurt we use in Indian recipes, but I have been making 2 cups of Matsoni daily and am enjoying the very simple process of filling my pint mason jar with milk, stirring in a couple tablespoons of yogurt, setting the jar on top of the refrigerator, and letting the magic happen.

I Actually Read a Book

***spoiler alert***

Reading is one of my favorite ways to relax and unwind.  However, since the birth of my daughter, I have not actually finished reading anything.  I did start the Steve Jobs biography, but I only made it half way through.

Well, as of yesterday that finally changed: I finished Chivalry is Undead (Just Another Zombie Love Story). It was far from great writing, but it was a somewhat entertaining and quick read.  I don't feel it's deserving of its five star review on Amazon,  but I would give it a solid three.

I used Amazon Prime's lending service, so it was actually free, which is good, as I would not deem it buying worthy.  The characters were pretty flat and uninteresting.  There wasn't much plot and very little conflict.  I know, the Zombie Survival genre isn't known for it's compelling plots - it's pretty much avoid getting eaten.  The protagonist, Stephen, saves a local bar maid, Jessica, and then they both go on a trip from San Antonio to Houston to pick up his friend Paul, his wife and two kids.  Along the way he saves a few other people and they all decide to shack up in this farm house.  Jessica, Stephen's love interest just about falls into the his lap and there is tons of cheesy "I am yours" dialogue.

This novel landed on my radar due to the advertisements on my podcast: "We're Alive: A Story of Survival", which is actually a really awesome radio drama.  I was hoping "Chivalry is Undead" would surprise me like "We're Alive" had, but it was amusing and it gave me the thrill of actually finishing reading something.