Quite a few of our Frugal-Families forum members make their own vanilla extract.  I kept thinking I would try making my own vanilla extract but I was honestly in love with my purchased vanilla and the fact that it can take months for a good batch of homemade vanilla extract to come to fruition kept me from going for it.  I’m also not a big online shopper when it comes to some things like vanilla beans and I kept forgetting to buy vanilla beans at my local food co-op, where I am a member.  Then there was the vodka.  We enjoy beer and wines (usually purchased from local wineries when we’re camping all around) but I don’t think about buying large bottles of vodka when I visit a package store.

Well, that has all changed.  I just put together my second batch of homemade vanilla and I still chuckle when I think about the money I spent buying vanilla extract from my other company AND how “hard” it seemed to pull two ingredients together to get my first batch going.

You only need two things to make homemade vanilla extract:  vanilla BEANS and plain vodka (although one of my forum members swears that rum tastes great, too).  First, vanilla extract (and most extracts) are almost all alcohol.  The alcohol is used to draw the flavor infusing oils out of the vanilla beans (or whatever extract you’re making) and when you cook or bake with the extract, most of the alcohol evaporates out.  Vodka works nicely for making extract because legally, vodka is suppose to be void of flavor and thus lends itself to being ‘flavored’.  I buy the LEAST EXPENSIVE vodka I can find in the package store.  My first bottle came with a rebate slip if I bought the larger bottle, so I did.  This last bottle was on sale and again, the least expensive.

Now, vanilla beans aren’t as easy as vodka.  Don’t buy those skimpy, dried out beans in little jars in the grocery store that have quite possibly been there for months, and months and months.  You should buy vanilla beans that are aromatic and flexible.  Old beans are dry and brittle, with little of that aromatic vanilla smell.  Several of my forum members have bought their vanilla beans from this eBay supplier with great success and product satisfaction:  http://myworld.ebay.com/vanillaproducts/     I buy my Madagascar vanilla beans from my food co-op.

All I do to make my vanilla is place the bean on a cutting board and carefully slice down the full length of the bean to gently open it up and expose the vanilla seeds inside to alcohol and then just drop the bean into the bottle.  I use two beans for the large bottle of vodka.  Then, put it in a cool area to sit and mellow.  You can give it a gentle agitation every week.  You’ll see a gorgeous caramel color develop over six weeks or so.  Some will tell you that if it smells like vanilla than it will taste like vanilla and you can use it.  It definitely improves with time!  I didn’t use my first batch of vanilla extract for almost eight weeks and I’ve noticed it’s grown even darker in the past four months since I first started using it.  The aroma when I open the bottle to refill my smaller bottle is incredible!

Honestly, it took me all of two minutes to slice open two beans and drop them in the bottle of vodka.  It might have taken me only one minute.  I’ll generously say two.  My bottle  sits in my pantry and it gets the gentle agitation when I’m in the pantry getting other supplies.  It’s so easy!  The results are gourmet quality BUT the cost is a frugal gourmet’s dream.  I researched PURE vanilla extract (remember, some of that cheap stuff is only vanilla FLAVORING!) and found that pure extract made from Madagascar and/or Tahitian vanilla beans ranges from $15-20 for an 8 oz bottle!  I bought my 1.75 liter bottle of vodka for about $25 and two vanilla beans were $2.50.  My 1.75 liter bottle is about seven-8 ounce bottles which would cost me $108 to $140 if I bought the extract in 8 oz. bottles.  By doing the “work” myself, I bring my cost down to about $3.93 for an 8 oz bottle of pure Madagascar vanilla extract!

Yep, really hard work.

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Last year I found a fantastic book at the bookstore at Sturbridge Village (OSV.org) entitled, “The Joy of Rhubarb” by Theresa Millang. She has recipes from sweet to savory, sauces to beverages and muffins, breads, tortes and main dishes, condiments and jams all prepared with rhubarb. Can I just tell you that chocolate rhubarb cake is delectable! Pork tenderloin with rhubarb sauce was fantastic! I haven’t tried the rhubarb wine yet, though.

If you’ve got rhubarb, you know how quickly you can run out of things to do with it. This little recipe book has truly become one of my favorite books simply because it utilizes one of the most productive plants in my garden.

This is really a great book! It’s straight forward and dispels some of the myths about bread baking. They are also very honest in comparing the results of various ingredients (for example, pricey gourmet salt vs regular kosher salt) in the end products. It doesn’t take costly, gourmet ingredients to create beautiful, artisan-style breads! It also doesn’t require years of professional training at a culinary school!

Here is one of my loaves:

The most difficult thing has been learning to work with the slack, moist dough and learning how to slide the uncooked loaf off my preparation pan (I don’t have a pizza peel yet) onto the hot baking stone. It gets easier with each loaf. The only other hard thing is keeping the kids from eating the bread while it’s still hot as this bread is better when it’s cooled down.

It really is as easy as Artisan Bread in five minutes a day. It takes MAYBE 15 minutes to mix the initial batch of dough and then there is rising time which really isn’t counted because you don’t have to tend the dough while it rises. After that, you can store the dough in the refrigerator for up to 14 days (it will develop a sour dough flavor) and it literally takes about 5 total hands-on minutes to make a loaf. I’ve pulled off a chunk of dough, prepared it and placed it to rest on my preparation pan while my stone heated up in the oven. I’ve done other things while the dough rested about 20 minutes and then slid it into the oven to bake off about 30 minutes and gone off and done more things. Once it’s out of the oven, you can just leave it and walk away. Truthfully, you could make and bake a loaf of bread before work and have it nicely cooled when you got home. The fact that it’s already prepped in the fridge makes the daily chore of making the bread very easy!

I’m still getting used to the basic recipe but the book includes similar no-knead recipes for rye, wheat, and other artisan-style breads. The book will tell you how to create a crisp, chewy crust OR a traditional softer crust. The loaf I showed above is that caramelized, chewy type crust. Truly fantastic with soup and salad and learning to make your own is considerably cheaper than buying it. Artisan bread is also divine as toast with butter and jam. The large holes and moist texture make for a crisp toast that holds the melting butter. I can just taste it now! I also enjoyed slices with brie cheese (very French and delicious).

It was nice being able to borrow the book from the library for my first try at this technique but I know I’ll end up buying it simply because I really want to enjoy all of the recipes the book offers. Some books just belong in your cooking library and if you love bread, this is one of them!

Turkey Tacos

Just take diced/shredded turkey and use it in place of hamburger.  You can use store bought taco seasoning or make your own with the homemade taco seasoning recipe we have here at Frugal Families (I make the large size of this and use this).  I just bring the cold turkey to temperature in some water (a bit more than you need to make the taco recipe as you’ll lose some to steam) in a skillet.  It warms up and breaks up a bit more as you warm and stir the turkey and then just put in my seasoning.  Then I serve it in tacos just like normal.

Turkey Pot Pie

If you have lots of leftover vegetables from a vegetable platter, you CAN use these up to make your turkey pot pie.  Generally, I’m a bit lazier.  I made this today by putting my leftover gravy, chopped up turkey and a bag of frozen mixed vegetables into a saucepan.  I didn’t have enough gravy so I added a bit of broth and brought it all to a simmer.  I had a leftover pie crust (one of those roll and bake varieties) so while the filling warmed up, I rolled out the dough and cut strips.

I sprayed a 9 x 9″ baking pan and poured the filling right into the pan and then created a woven design on top of the filling.  I baked it off at 350f degrees until the dough was cooked. Here is what it looked like before baking:

Butternut Soup

I LOVE butternut soup!  It’s more of a bisque-thick and creamy.  This used up my leftover roasted butternut squash and honestly, you kind of have to wing it as far as amounts because how much you have leftover will vary the other ingredients.

I began by melting butter in a sauce pan and then adding diced onion and celery.  Saute until tender.  While those are getting soft, scoop out the squash from the skin if this is how you cooked it and cut or mash it up.  Once the onion and celery were tender, I added about 1 cup of leftover chicken stock from when I made the Thanksgiving stuffing.  You can use vegetable stock, too.  I put in the leftover squash.  If you have a lot of squash (more than 2 cups or so) you’ll need to add more liquid BUT don’t add to much because you’ll be adding milk near the end.  I simmered the squash for a few minutes to heat it through.  I also added salt, pepper, sage and some brown sugar to the soup.

Once it’s all simmered for a bit, you can pour it into a blender and LOOSELY cover and blend or use an immersion blender to smooth out the soup.  If it’s too thick, add a bit more broth.  You’ll be adding a bit of milk/cream at the end to add to the creaminess of the bisque, so again, don’t add too much.  If you’re using a blender, now is a good time to add a bit of milk or cream to the bisque and smooth a bit more before returning to the saucepan to heat (do not boil).

I LOVE serving this bisque with a sprinkle of Asiago cheese on top or a handful of croutons.

Our PTA has an annual Election Day bake sale to raise funds.  These funds are used for a variety of things:  reduce the cost of field trips for students,  bring in special guests for the students like authors, provide money to a special fund that helps struggling families provide things like glasses for their kids.  Anyways, it’s a big deal and raises a decent sum of money not to mention that our town folk look forward to all the goodies provided each year at the sale.

Last year, I baked 14 loaves of bread and made 6 fruit-filled streusals  for the sale.  This year, I decided to focus strictly on breads which got me wondering, “How much bread will a bread-baker bake if a bread baker baked all day?”

Here is just about half of my completed loaves all labeled and bagged for the sale:

The final tally?

28 loaves of bread

I’ve noticed that there are many variations and some involved raisins but all have anise seed. I wish I could give proper credit to the site which had this particular recipe. We printed it up but it didn’t print up the site it came from and it’s been several years since we found this great recipe.

Pan De Muerto, “Bread of the Dead”

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
5-5 1/2 cups of flour
4 tsp of instant yeast
1 tsp of salt
1 TBS of whole anise seed (I only use about 1.5 tsp)
1/2 cup sugar
4 eggs

In a microwave or saucepan, heat the butter, milk and water to warm but not boil.

In your mixing bowl, place warmed liquids and then add 1.5 cups of flour, salt, anise seed, sugar and yeast. Mix to combine. Then add the eggs and another cup of flour. Mix/knead and continue to add more flour until the dough is soft but not sticky. Knead for another few minutes.

Lightly grease a bowl and place dough in it, cover and let rise until doubled. Punch down the dough and shape into loaves. I generally divide it in half and then create two round, free-form loaves. Traditionally, the loaves were made to resemble skulls and smaller pieces of dough were shaped as “bones” and placed on top.

I allow the loaves to rise again (about double) and then bake them at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 35 minutes. Remove from oven and paint on the glaze.

Glaze

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup orange juice

2 TBS of grated orange zest

Bring to a boil for 2 minutes and then apply to the bread with a brush.

Here are two of my finished loaves:

-3 packets of dry yeast (I used 4 tsp of instant yeast)

-1.5 cups of warm water

1 TBS of sugar

2.5 cups of all purpose flour

I mixed it all in the bowl and it said to cover loosely to allow the gasses to escape so I threw a cloth napkin over the top.  It’s suppose to sit in a warm spot in your kitchen for 2-3 days and get sour smelling and begin to bubble.  At this point you can store the starter in the fridge or leave it in a cool, dark part of your kitchen (nothing cool and dark in my kitchen so I’ll probably put it in the fridge).

I suspect the instant yeast is the reason that my sour dough attempted a take over of the kitchen counter within hours of meeting up with sugar and warm water.   It bubbled out, wildly!, all over the kitchen counter!!!! I managed to lasso most of it into the bowl again and this time I  moved it to a 1/2 gallon canning jar.  I’m hoping that the narrow space will force the dough up and back onto itself before it can manage another escape attempt!

I’ll update in a few days with a sourdough recipe.  If you don’t hear from me, send help.  Hopefully, someone with experience taming wild sourdough. 

Anyways, I digress.  My oldest boys helped me can up our peaches.  The assembly line approach helped us speed things along but it was still a learning experience trying to pack the peaches correctly.  In the end, our jars of peaches looked so beautiful but I wasn’t sure I wasn’t better off just buying them at Aldis.

Well,  my husband is adding more shelving to our pantry and I had to pull out all of my canned goods.  We decided that we had waited long enough and opened up a jar of the peaches.  Oh my gosh!  FANTASTIC!  The boys and I devoured the quart jar in a matter of seconds.   I thought I’d use the light syrup that now tastes of the peaches for smoothies but truthfully, it’s gone, too.  I was just like that juice that runs down your chin in the summer.  The boys and I decided that the time and labor was totally worth the enjoyment we got out of just that one jar!  Granted, we have more to use up but it’s going to be hard rationing them out until this summer’s harvest.

I feel like I’ve tasted summer.

BUT if you really want to stretch that core and peel, then consider apple jelly and apple cider vinegar!

Even if you only eat a few apples a week, you can try these great tasting and frugal culinary delights.  Simply save your cores and peels in a single container in the freezer.  I had a small bag of cores and peels in the freezer and just finished peels and coring some more apples for an apple streusel and decided that I would make a batch of apple juice.  All I’ve done is put all of the peels and cores into a large soup pot with water to cover them.  Set it to gently simmer so that the cores and peels breakdown and you can extract all the goodness from them.  I then strain all of the cores, peels and juice through layered cheesecloth.  The peels and cores have given up all their goodness by then, so once I’ve strained them off, the remnants go into my compost pile. I’ll wash out the layered cheesecloth and look at the juice and decide if I want to filter it again.  Many times there is still a fair amount of sediment that I don’t want clouding my finished apple jelly.

To make apple jelly:

Simple buy a package of pectin from the grocer (Ball and Kerr both make pectin).  Follow the directions for apple jelly, using your filtered apple juice from your peels and cores as the liquid to make the jelly.  Follow the directions to seal the jars.  You just stretched your apple to their absolute limit!

To make apple cider vinegar:

You can read up here at the Vinegar Man.

One of my homesteading books says to do the following:

Using a very clean glass jar (like a canning jar), crock, wooden or stainless steel container.  NEVER use aluminum or chipped enamel containers to ferment in.  Fill your container with the apple juice, leaving about 1/4 to 1/2 of the container empty for further additions of any other apple juice over the next few weeks or so and for bubbling fermentation.  Cover the container with a clean cloth and tie it firmly to keep bugs and such out.  Wash and replace the cloth once a week.  Your container will be sitting for a while, you must keep it clean.  Place it in a warm place.  80 degrees Fahrenheit is good but cooler is okay, it will just take longer to work.

During the first stage of vinegar making, fermentation will make it bubbles.  If it doesn’t bubble or you want to speed up the process, add 1 tsp of yeast to the jar to get it going.  While it’s bubbling, it’s working.  When it’s done bubbling, it’s ready for the second step.

Stage 2 means that the alcohol produced during the first stage will now be converted to acid.  When the bubbling is done, siphon, dip or strain the liquid from your container to a dark colored glass, enamel, wood, stainless steel or potter container LEAVING BEHIND THE SEDIMENT.  A wide-topped container is good because the bacteria need oxygen to work.  Fill the container no more than 3/4 full.  Use a cloth cover like before and this time put in in a warm but more dark area.  Sunlight will hold back the reaction.

Hopefully, good acetic acid making bacteria will take hold and convert your alcohol to vinegar.  Watch your container to make sure it doesn’t get smelly and disgusting in which case, bad bacteria or mold has taken hold and you’ll  have to throw away your experiment.  BUT if there is good bacteria, you’ll start to see a gray film floating on top.  This is ‘mother’ and you want this!  Don’t disturb it!  The bacteria you want are living in there and it can be the quick start to further vinegar efforts!  The mother generally stays on top to work and when it’s done, will settle to the bottom.

This second stage can take anywhere from a few weeks to as long as six months.  Hopefully, you’ll get a nice mother as well as a nice vinegar from your efforts.  Save your mother by straining it off and putting it in a clean jar with a NON -METAL cover and covering it with a bit of vinegar.  You can add a piece of the mother into a new batch at the beginning of the second stage to insure good vinegar next time as well.

I’ve put up a fair amount of apple jelly already this year.  I’ve decided to try my hand at making cider vinegar.  I have made red wine vinegar in the past and got some great mother but was not vinegar-wise so to speak and didn’t take off my mother.  My vinegar got too sour so I threw the entire thing away.  Now I’m wishing for the mother but I suspect that if I caught good bacteria before that they’re probably still hanging around the kitchen.  I’ll have to update you guys in the future to let you know how my cider vinegar turned out.

By the way, you can accomplish the same things with all sorts of fruits like pears, peaches, nectarines, plums, grape hulls and whole cherries.  All of these can create the juice for jellies and vinegars.  It’s a wonderful way to stretch what you have and to use up every last bit of goodness your harvests can give you.

All you need is 3 vanilla beans.  Score them with a pairing knife, and cut each vanilla bean in half.  Place them in a mason jar and pour 1 cup of vodka over them.  Make sure to screw the lid on tight on the mason jar.  Shake this mixture once in a while and it will be ready in 30 days.

It is fun to watch it change color!  And just think of the possibilites….

Vanilla icecream

Vanilla syrup

Vanilla Fudge

I could go on and on!  Enjoy!