How to Prevent Holes from Forming in Homemade Cheese

Happy Halloween!

Before we get to the meat of this article…or should I say the cheese?…we thought we’d share a little Halloween trivia with you!

cheese_fingersFun Fact #1

Halloween is thought to have originated around 4000 B.C., which means it has been around for over 6,000 years.  

Fun Fact #2

Halloween was influenced by the ancient Roman festival Pomona, which celebrated the harvest goddess of the same name. Many Halloween customs and games that feature apples (such as bobbing for apples) and nuts date from this time.

mac_and_cheeseFun Fact #3

According to tradition, if a person wears his or her clothes inside out and walks backwards on Halloween, he or she will see a witch at midnight.

Fun Fact #4

Scottish girls believed they could see images of their future husband if they hung wet sheets in front of the fire on Halloween. Other girls believed they would see their boyfriend’s faces if they looked into mirrors while walking down stairs at midnight on Halloween.

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Pumpkin Carving Contest – Win a $50 Gift Certificate!

Calling all artisans, aspiring artists, and pumpkin lovers everywhere!

Enter our Pumpkin Carving Contest for your chance to win
a $50 Homesteader’s Supply gift certificate!

pumpkin contest

Contest Rules

  • Post your entry photo (or video) as a comment to the Pumpkin Carving Contest post on our Facebook page. The post will be pinned to the top of our page, and will appear as the first post on our Timeline for the duration of the contest. By the way, now’s the perfect time to Like our page, if you haven’t already done so!
  • Even though we’re officially calling this a pumpkin CARVING contest, your pumpkin may carved, etched, or decorated however you like.
  • You may submit as many entries as you like, but please post them individually, one pumpkin per comment.
  • You must submit only your own work.
  • Contestants must be at least 18 years old to win. However, children’s artwork is acceptable if submitted by an adult.
  • Promotional entries are not acceptable for this contest.
  • This contest ends November 15, 2015.

How the Winner Will Be Decided

The winner of the $50 Homesteader’s Supply gift certificate will be chosen by Homesteader’s Supply staff. The number of Facebook “Likes” an entry receives will greatly influence our final decision.

Copyright Ownership

When an entry has been posted on our Facebook page, the copyright belongs to Homesteader’s Supply. Do not submit entries that have already been submitted elsewhere unless you own (or have regained) the full copyright and you have the permission of any third parties involved.

We reserve the right to publish the winning entry, as well as the prize winner’s first name and last initial, in our Newsletter.

Need Help?

For professional pumpkin carving tips, see our Weekly Newsletter for 10-17-2015.

After you’ve reviewed the rules, submit your entry here.

——————-
Anna Paige, HS Social Media Marketing Manager

 

 

 

 

Preserving Your Food Like a Caveman

People have been dehydrating food since cavemen started spreading pieces of meat, nuts, and berries out on rocks to dry in the sun. Dehydrating might just be the oldest method of preserving known to man, but it is still one of the best. Thankfully, we no longer have to wait for a sunny day to dry our food so we can store it until we need it.

Dehydrating Produce

If you live on a homestead or are fortunate enough to have a large garden, then dehydrating veggies and fruits is probably on your to-do list for fall. You can dry bulk produce, or make healthy and delicious snacks like crunchy “cheezy” kale chips in your dehydrator.
Cheesy Kale
Dehydrated veggie chips add extra nutrition and crunch to salads, and are a healthy topping for soups. When dried until brittle, veggies can be crushed into a powder and then used to flavor foods like burgers and smoothies. Similarly, dehydrated fruit can be made into fruit leathers, or added to cereal or smoothies. Or, it can be eaten out of hand as a snack.

Did you know it’s important to not to dehydrate produce at temperatures higher than 105 degrees Fahrenheit?

Gentle, dry heat preserves living foods like veggies and fruits without killing them. Temperatures above 105 start cooking the food, which destroys important enzymes and results in some loss of nutrients.

Dehydrating Meats

You might even want to try your hand at making jerky or pemmican. For the uninitiated, pemmican is a high-energy food that hikers often take on long treks, especially in cold weather. It’s a wonderful food for preppers to keep on hand because it keeps practically forever. Pemmican consists of powdered dried meat mixed with rendered fat, with maybe a few berries added. The Inuit people have been known to live on nothing but pemmican and melted snow for weeks at a time. If you’d like to try making pemmican, Mark’s Daily Apple has a great recipe, complete with photos.

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What the Heck Is a SCOBY?

Once you try your first bottle of store-bought kombucha, you’ll probably become a fan for life. No, wait…scratch that. If you’re anything like me, you’ll get hooked and become a die-hard kombucha addict! At $4 (or more) for a 16-ounce bottle, your habit is going to become more expensive than a latte fixation. And then, before long, you’re going to find yourself Googling “how to make your own kombucha at home,” just like I did.
booch

For the uninitiated, kombucha is a fermented beverage made from sugar, tea, and a living kombucha culture. Unflavored kombucha is both slightly acidic and slightly sweet. The longer you brew it, the less sweet it becomes because the kombucha culture continues to feed on the sugar in the tea and uses it up.

When brewing is complete, you can add ingredients like ginger, herbs, dried fruits, dried flowers, or extracts to flavor the drink to suit your personal preference. Fizzy and refreshing, kombucha makes a terrific substitute for commercial carbonated sodas.

Kombucha Is a Health Tonic*

Kombucha detoxifies the liver and dramatically boots immune function. Like all fermented foods, it’s alkalizing and makes the body more resistant to degenerative diseases and cancers.

Kombucha drinkers report a wide variety of health benefits, including improved digestion, weight loss, improved energy, and reduced stress. Many claim that itcures constipation, skin problems, and hangovers. Some people even notice that kombucha restores hair color and strengthens the hair.

The wide variety of complaints relieved by Kombucha is almost not comprehensible. But it is explainable on the basis that Kombucha does not target a specific body organ but, rather, influences the entire organism positively by effecting a stabilization of the metabolic situation and the detoxifying effect of its glucuronic acid. In many, this leads to a heightened endogenic defense capacity against those toxic influences and environmental stresses which inundate us from many sides. The result is the invigoration of a damaged cellular metabolism, and the restoration and firming up of one’s well-being. 

~ Gunther W. Frank, leading authority on kombucha tea and author of Kombucha: Healthy Beverage and Natural Remedy from the Far East

It All Starts with a SCOBY

One of the first things you’ll discover is that the kombucha brewing process begins with a weird, slimy thing called a SCOBY. Remarkably, the SCOBY — which looks like a flat rubbery mushroom — is what gives kombucha its famous, health-promoting benefits.SCOBY stands for Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast, and it’s the secret ingredient that turns sugar-sweetened tea into kombucha.

All over the internet, you see kombucha brewers obsessing about their SCOBY. Is it healthy? Does it float? Does it sink? Does it stink? Does it have black spots? The list of things people worry about is practically endless. But, truthfully, there’s no need to worry if you start out with a top-notch SCOBY and follow the directions carefully.

shroom
Our kombucha making supplies are of the highest quality, and we think our SCOBY is the best on the market. We get our freshly grown, organic SCOBYs from Kombucha Dave, and when you buy your kombucha products from us, you get a discount, plus all the instructions, videos, and support you need to brew your own kombucha for life.

SCOBY
About the Brewing Process

Simply stated, to make kombucha, you add your SCOBY to a gallon jar containing sweetened tea that has been allowed to cool. It starts out looking like this:
jar

Then cover it, and let it sit in a clean, warm place like on your kitchen counter. In a few days, it’ll be ready to drink. Best of all, you’ll have an unlimited supply of kombucha for just pennies a bottle.

Bottoms up! bottles

By the way…

Our good friend Kombucha Dave has a fascinating article on his blog where he talks about why a SCOBY is sometimes mistakenly called a mushroom. He has kindly given us his permission to republish it here. Enjoy!

Is Kombucha Really a Mushroom?

One of the most frequently asked about Kombucha is, “Is kombucha really a mushroom?” It’s because most people call it Kombucha mushroom. Some people call it Kombucha SCOBY. But kombucha mushroom is the most common. So, is it really a mushroom?

kombucha mushroom

No it is not, maybe at most it could be called fungie, or a type of fungi. I’m a type of fun guy, but again you can call it a Kombucha mushroom, we refer to it sometimes on our site as mushroom tea, mainly because that’s how other people refer to it. So if you’re at a party and someone says, “oh this kombucha mushroom tea is awesome”. Don’t take the bottle and spill it on them and say it’s not really a mushroom, but let’s talk about how it got it’s name then.

How did Kombucha turn into mushroom? Well the theory is, the story goes like this, in Japan, they were brewing something with seaweed and ‘Kombu’ actually means seaweed in Japan and ‘cha’ means tea. So it was originally called seaweed tea, and they were using seaweed, it wasn’t Kombucha, but a culture came about. Something to keep in mind, there’s lots of things to ferment that will form a culture, but not necessarily makes it Kombucha, make sense?

A mother vinegar forms a culture, you have sour dough starters, wine uses cultures and things like that, so eventually what happened kombucha mushroomis that at the same time, people were also doing Kombucha tea. They saw the culture, so I’m looking at the seaweed culture we called Kombucha and I’m looking at this Kombucha culture and I’m just going to label it Kombucha, so there you go. In addition to that, to make things even more confusing, if you ever look at a Kombucha SCOBY or a Kombucha culture, I kind of think it does look like a cap of let’s say a portobello mushroom, so again hopefully that answers your question, is Kombucha a mushroom.

Also, I’d like to think that it is called kombucha mushroom because it looks like a mushroom and the texture is similar to a mushroom’s texture.

* Per FDA regulations, we can’t tell you about the health benefits of kombucha without also disclosing the following:

Legal Disclaimer  Information about the health benefits of kombucha is for educational purposes only. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This information is not medical advice, nor is it intended to replace the advice or attention of a qualified health-care professional.

Guest Post: Things Are Sprouting Up

This week, we have a special guest post from our friend Ida Walker of The Enabling Cook. Ida recently tried out our Speedy Sprouts, and here’s what she had to say:

Things Are Sprouting Up

I’ve blogged about growing sprouts before, especially wheat and rye berries. I’ve wanted to sprout barley for bread for a long time, but I’ve not been able to find grains that will sprout. And I’ve also blogged about the great service and products I’ve gotten from Homesteader’s Supply. This post combines both.

A while ago, Homesteader’s Supply’s Jerri told me they were now offering a line of sprouting seeds called Speedy Sprouts. She asked if I’d like to test drive some, so to speak. I jumped at the opportunity to do so, and she sent me some barley seeds and wheat berries.

I had some questions before starting “Bob Barley,” of course. These are organic, non-GMO and high-germinating seeds. Good to know. Then she told me they were hulled, which immediately sent up “Danger, Will Robinson,” signals. (Okay, “danger” is probably too strong a word, but I wanted to use the Will Robinson quote. I have no shame.) As I researched barley, one of the most common admonitions I found was that hulled barley will not sprout; it’s too damaged in the process of removing the hulls. Hulless barley will sprout, but sprouting rates are not as good as when you use barley with its hull intact. I asked Jerri about these seeds, and she confirmed they sprouted.

I confess I was really confused. I looked at the seeds, and they certainly looked like the hulls were intact. So why did the grower/supplier say they were hulled?

hulled
I did more research and was schooled in word choice. Some refer to hull-intact barley as being hulled. This doesn’t make total sense to me. After all, we don’t call oranges peeled if they still have their peels. Oh well. My advice? If you are contemplating ordering or buying barley seeds from anywhere, ask if they will sprout. If possible, read reviews and find out the sprouting experiences of others.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. These seeds do sprout. And they were quick about it. Granted, it was warmer in here than when I usually sprout; it was probably in the low 70s. Still, their sprouts started to show in about a day and a half. They were ready to dehydrate and grind in three!

sprouted

Some are a little longer than I usually allow, but they were fine. Of all the seeds I started sprouting, all of them sprouted!

I only use these for flour, so I can’t say how they’d be for eating out of hand. But if you’re looking for sprouting barley for bread, these are a good choice. Check out these and other sprouting seeds and supplies available through Homesteaders’ Supply.

© Copyright 2015 Ida Walker, All rights Reserved. Written For: The Enabling Cook

 

How to Buy the Best Produce without Blowing Your Budget

Unless you’re a hard core proponent of the local food movement and never eat anything that was grown outside your immediate area, you’ll find yourself cruising the produce aisle at the supermarket from time to time, especially now that gardening season is winding down. If you grow your own food, you will probably be looking for products that were produced using sustainable and organic practices.

14961829054_25677820ef_z

Unfortunately, depending on the time of year and where you live, the selection of organic fruits and vegetables can sometimes be downright pitiful or prohibitively expensive. What do you do when you can’t find what you’re looking for, or when the item you want costs more than you can afford to pay?

Do you know how to choose the highest quality foods from the available selection? Or do you get frustrated, grab just “whatever,” and then pray it doesn’t harm your health?

If you’re discerning about the quality of the fruits and vegetables your family eats, you need to become a savvy produce shopper.

Navigating Supermarket Produce Aisles

organic_apple_label

You’ve undoubtedly noticed the little stickers with four- or five-digit numbers on them that supermarkets put on individual pieces of produce. These stickers sometimes also identify the variety; for example, an apple might be marked “Gala” or “Fuji.” (Bins containing bulk items, such as granola and nuts, are often similarly labeled.)

The numbers on those stickers are PLU (Price Look Up) codes randomly assigned by the International Federation for Produce Standards (IFPS). When cashiers ring up your order, they key in these codes to identify the item being weighed or measured.

If you know what these codes mean, you can tell how (and sometimes even where) the food was raised. For instance, a PLU code can tell you if that head of lettuce you’re holding is organic or conventionally grown.

Deciphering the PLU Codes on Produce Stickers

PLU codes can have four or five digits and start with the numeral 3, 4, 5, 8, or 9.

8425394118_1b757e0504_o

Four-digit PLU codes beginning with 3 or 4 denote conventionally grown produce. For instance, conventionally grown Fuji apples like the one in the photo above are assigned the PLU code 4131.

PLU codes beginning with 5 identify transitionally grown produce. This means the food was grown under conditions that meet organic standards, but for which the certification process has not yet been completed. A 5000 series PLU code can also mean the produce was grown on land that has not been free of chemical usage for the required length of time (36 months) before it can be classified as organic.

Both 8 and 9 are used as leading digits in five-digit PLU codes. In other words, 8 and 9 are prefixes to standard four-digit PLU codes and have special meanings that provide additional information about the item.

5189399089_c6ee3e62ec_oA standard four-digit PLU code prefixed by an 8 indicates the item is a Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) containing genetic information from an entirely different species. Very little is known about the possible long-term effects of eating GMO foods. For this and other reasons, many people choose to avoid GMO foods altogether.
3759753230_1e8f9174d9_o

A five-digit PLU code that begins with a 9 indicates the item is organic. 

They Don’t Want Us to Know It’s GMO

Okay, let’s assume you know how read PLU codes. Can you now feel confident you’re making the safest choices for your family and not drive yourself crazy worrying if the product you’re buying might be loaded with pesticides or if it’s a Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) food engineered in a laboratory? Well, maybe. Read on!

Although this labeling system seems straightforward on the surface, herein lies the rub:

Because PLU codes aren’t mandatory, companies can label GMO foods as conventional.

The truth is, unless it’s labeled as certified organic, most of the corn, soybeans, canola, cotton, papaya, and squash being sold today is genetically modified.

According to Consumer Reports, an estimated 60 to 70 percent of foods, including packaged goods, contain genetically modified ingredients. Dreadful, isn’t it?

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Even worse, you will rarely see a PLU code that begins with an 8 because GMO awareness is rapidly gaining traction and manufacturers are afraid that labeling GMO foods will impact their profits. And they can get away with it because the FDA has determined that GMO’s are substantially equivalent to their conventional counterparts. According to our government, there’s no difference between conventional and GMO foods, despite the fact that plenty of studies show otherwise.

How to Be Confident about What You’re Buying

Even though PLU codes can’t be trusted entirely, there are a few ways to ensure the produce you’re buying isn’t genetically modified. You can choose

  • Items labeled 100% organic or certified organic
  • Items labeled GMO-free
  • Items with PLU codes that begin with a 9

But what can you do when the selection of organic produce is slim to non-existent?

Fortunately, the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) “Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce” is a terrific resource that can help simplify decisions at the grocery store.

ewg

EWG singled out the produce with the highest pesticide loads for its Dirty Dozen™ list. These are the foods you want to AVOID at all costs.

Similarly, EWG’s Clean Fifteen™ lists the produce that’s least likely to hold pesticide residue. You’ll notice a lot of these items have thick or layered skin, like onions, avocados, and pineapple. These are foods you can feel good about buying when their organic counterparts aren’t available.

Clean Fifteen foods are also a safe bet when you want to shave some money off your grocery bill or need to stay within a tight budget.

So, as you can see, labeling laws are sneaky and interpreting the PLU codes on fruits and veggies is a bit trickier than reading the labels on canned and boxed products found on supermarket shelves. But, as a savvy shopper, you can feel confident you’re buying the very best quality produce available without breaking the bank.

By the way, if you sign-up on the EWG website, they’ll send you a PDF version of their Guide for free. If it’s more convenient, you can access the Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen using these resources too:

Authored by Anna Paige.