The Savvy Housekeeper’s future salad

I’m blessed with a long growing season here in California and I take advantage of it. A couple of weeks ago I put in my fall crops in both my main garden bed and some containers. I planted:

• Lettuce and spinach in a container for easy access and protection from cold
• More spinach and lettuce in the main garden bed
• Garlic–two rows from sprouting garlic I didn’t use in the kitchen
• Fava beans
• Carrots
• Golden beets
• Walking onions–someone gave me some bulbs

So far, the lettuce in the container, garlic, and fava beans are coming up. In fact, the fava seedlings look great. If you have never had a fava bean, they taste like a combination between a lima bean and a potato. I’m looking forward to them.

I keep buying a gallon of fat-free milk at my local store because it’s cheaper than the other sizes. The problem is, I am the only one who drinks fat-free milk in my house and I never seem to get to the whole gallon before it goes bad.

This time, instead of allowing this to happen, I made my own cottage cheese. It was insanely easy. Here’s how:

Cottage Cheese

(Note: Although I made this with one-third of a gallon of fat-free milk, I adjusted the recipe for a full gallon.)

Ingredients:

1 gallon fat-free milk
.75 cup white vinegar

You’ll also need a:

Pot
Thermometer
Cheesecloth or any other porous towel (good to have in a kitchen anyway)
Colander

Directions:

Pour your milk into a pan

Using a thermometer, position it so that is it touching the milk but not the pan. Heat the milk up to 120 degrees.

When it reaches that temperature, turn off the heat. Add the vinegar. Let sit for a half hour.

Now a weird thing happens. The milk curdles and separates into curds and whey, a greenish gross liquid. You might think you are doing it wrong, but no, that’s what’s supposed to happen.

Put a cheesecloth across a colander and dump the mixture out into it. Let the green stuff drain away for about 3 minutes. Wrap the cottage cheese in the cheesecloth and run under cool tap water for about 3 more minutes. While you do this, knead the cheese with your fingers.

Finally, pour the cheese into a bowl. You have just made cottage cheese.

I made about a cup of cheese, so I’m guessing the above recipe makes about three cups. I ate it for breakfast this morning by mixing it with some honey, salt, and fresh figs. Let me tell you, it was awesome.

Another way to fix it is to mix it with some half-n-half and salt. Or you can use it to cook in lasagna or any other pasta dish that calls for ricotta.

Cost of Dish: Although I’m not convinced making cottage cheese saves you much compared to buying it in the store, it does save you money if you have extra skim milk around that would otherwise go bad. On top of that, homemade tastes better than store-bought, and that’s worth extra in my book.

Robot pumpkin

Monster pumpkins

Pumpkin Pi

Swirly pumpkin from Martha Stewart

Jack-o-Lantern

Pumpkin votives

Death Star Pumpkin

The Savvy Housekeeper has a bit of a headache this morning.

That’s because I couldn’t resist having one extra Pumpkin Pie Cocktail at my local bar last night. The bartender made the pumpkin liqueur himself, and it did indeed taste like pumpkin pie. The cellphone photo above does not do justice to how delicious this cocktail was.

I asked the bartender how he made the drink. Here’s an approximation of the recipe:

Pumpkin Pie Cocktail

Ingredients:

.5 oz vodka
2 oz vanilla vodka
.5 oz pureed pumpkin
dash cinnamon
dash nutmeg
Dr. Pepper
Whipped cream

Directions:

Muddle pumpkin, cinnamon, and nutmeg until spices are dissolved. Shake over ice with vodka and vanilla vodka. Pour into a glass and fill with Dr. Pepper. Add whip cream to garnish.

If this cocktail was in a martini glass, it would look pretty enough to compete with some of my other Halloween cocktails. And unlike those, I can vouch for the deliciousness in this case.

I’m remodeling my bathrooms. For the half-bath, I want a border of interesting tiles above a half wall of white tiles. After looking around a bit, I fell in love with Iznik tiles.

Iznik is a town in Turkey, an ancient city, surviving under the Greeks, Romans, and Byzantine empires. Iznik tiles started out in the 11th century as an imitation of Chinese pottery. Ottoman sultans loved the stuff and put it all over the place. Iznik pottery continued on for several centuries, reaching a zenith in the 17th century.

An antique Iznik tile from an Eyup Mosque, circa 1580. More about Iznik pottery here.

Luckily, Iznik tiles are still being made today.

Handpainted Turkish tile from Voodoo Kitchen, $12 (Australian) per tile.

Khayam Bleu Iznik Tiles (pictured at the top of the entry as well) from Luxe Tile. $19.80 per tile.

Palmyre Iznik Ceramic Tile $19.80 from the same store.

Turkish Iznik Ceramic Tile from Tile Wharehouse, $290 (Australian?) per square meter. Apparently, these are popular tiles in Australia.

Iznik tiles can be overwhelming in a small space. However, I’m thinking of surrounding them with white tiles, which would make them easier to take in a half-bath and also reduce their considerable price.

I am shopping for a brown leather sofa. It is surprisingly difficult. Here’s two couches I like:

Tate Modern. $2599. If I lived in Utah, where this is sold, I would go pick it up right now.

Stockholm Leather Sofa. $1959.

I recently found myself with six mesh bags from onions, garlic, etc.

Rather than throw them away, I decided to make a scrubby with them. I cut all the labels off, made sure they were free of onion skins, and stuffed them into one of the onion bags. Then I sewed up both ends. I had myself a brand new scrubby for dishes.

Okay, so it’s not the prettiest thing in the world. However, I have used it for several weeks now and it works great for cleaning the dishes.

Cost of scrubby in the store: $.60
Savings: $.60

At our house, we eat Mexican food at least twice a month. Rather than buying pre-mixed taco seasoning from the store, I make my own with spices in my pantry. I use the below mix in burritos, enchiladas, and tacos.

Savvy Housekeeper’s Taco Seasoning Mix

Ingredients:

6 tsp chili powder
4.5 tsp cumin
2.5 tsp garlic powder
2.5 tsp paprika
salt (to taste)
cayenne pepper (to taste–I like there to be a little kick, but not so much that I can’t use this spice mix when cooking for people who are afraid of spicy food.)(Yes, I said afraid.)

Directions:

Mix in a bowl. Taste it. If it doesn’t taste right, adjust spices as needed.

Cost of Dish: Spices: $.50 (estimate)
In the Store: $3.69 for a 2 oz bottle in the store.
Approximate Savings: $3.19

What’s your taco seasoning mix?

A couple of tips from Gardening by the Yard on keeping cut flowers fresh:

Cut the stems before putting them in water
Remove any leaves that would be in the water.
Keep them out of light and away from heat
When you change the water add:
• a pinch of sugar for nutrients
• a drop of bleach for disinfectant

Andy Warhol glass.

$.50