DIY yogurt all-purpose product

Now that you've made 4 quarts of yogurt, and have 3 cups of yogurt in the freezer for future batches, use 1 quart to make "yogurt cheese."
You need a 2 quart saucepan
a strainer that fits mostly into it
a package of cheesecloth
1 TBSP onion powder
1 TBSP garlic powder
1 tsp black pepper

Mix the yogurt and seasonings.
Unroll the cheesecloth until you have enough to fit all over the bottom of the strainer in two layers.
Cut it off and put it in the strainer.
Set the strainer in the saucepan.
Scoop the seasoned yogurt into the cheesecloth.
Cover with the lid of the pan.
Put in the refrigerator.
In 24 hours, take the saucepan out, hold over the sink, lift out the strainer, and pour the liquid in the bottom into the sink.
The liquid is whey.
Put the strainer back in the pan and put the whole contraption back in the fridge for at least 12 hours.

You can use the yogurt cheese for a dip for potato chips or veggies. 
It has almost the consistency of sour cream so you can substitute it for that.  I've done this with potatoes: cook the potatoes, add some broccoli just before the potatoes are done, then serve and slather with the yogurt cheese.
It's like soft cream cheese so you can spread it on toast, English muffins and bagels.

You spent $1.50 on this quart of yogurt and you got about 3/4 cup yogurt cheese from it.  That's about half the price of sour cream or a pre-made chip dip.  How is that not a good thing?
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Outdoors -- eavesdropping

I was party Wednesday night to a bedtime disagreement between two robins.
Normally I think the sound of a robin clucking himself to roost is soothing.
That night maybe they were disputing who would use the roost. 
They love euonymus bushes, which are thick even in winter and, if taken care of, produce berries in winter.
There's plenty of euonymus around, but maybe we have a lot of robins in my vicinity.
Attracted, no doubt, by a chance at taking control of the chokeberries I put out in the winter.
Anyway I don't think it came to blows, just words.
I ran out of chokeberries and once when my robin flew toward the house in hopes, I put out some finely diced dried mango.
It disappeared but I'm pretty sure it was a squirrel who ate it.  No more of that.
Anyway the birds are making up for lost time now that it has finally gotten warm.  Lots of doves courting, finches calling, two woodpeckers yesterday as well as a white-throated sparrow, and our spectacular new mockingbird.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

garden -- YAY

I get started on the garden today.
Friday I bought compost and paid a guy to haul it to my place.
Today I put in peas, snow peas, leafy greens (except lettuce) and root vegetables.
I will be sore tomorrow.
I'll work that off by doing laundry, getting some lubricating oil and making sure my manual mower works.
Tuesday I'll put out cornmeal gluten for the lawn.
My garden guru helped me figure out that I should use about half of the cornmeal gluten, split between the front and the back.
If I put more on, I'll violate the new Maryland law designed to protect the Maryland blue crab population and yummy summer eats, by limiting the nitrogen that goes into the bay.
Also my town has a law against chemicals on lawns.
The cornmeal gluten will prevent crabgrass seed from germinating and also fertilize the warm-weather grass that I WANT to survive.
Having half a bag left means I don't have to spend any more money this year on the lawn.
In September I'll put the rest of it down on the lawn to smother crabgrass seed that lands there during the summer.
Without killing the birds and other wildlife, or making pets and kids sick.
I'm up for that.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Stealing

We’re turning to a verse we skipped around, sort of, Exodus 21:16: “Whoever steals a man to sell him and he is found in his hand mot yumat”.

 

You were also supposed to read Exodus 20:13, Deuteronomy 5:17, and Deuteronomy 24:7.  We already looked at “thou shalt not murder.”  Now look at the words right after that.

The urban legend is that these two of the Big Ten mean that property theft is illegal.  So they ought to go with the discussion last week about the thief caught in the house at night.

Not in Jewish law.

Remember Jewish forensic argument looks at the entire context and decides what it means based on that.

The words “thou shalt not steal” come after “thou shalt not commit murder” and also after “thou shalt not commit adultery.”  Both murder and adultery are crimes that carry the death penalty.

Property theft is not; verses for that include Exodus 21:37 and 22:3.

After “thou shalt not steal” comes “thou shalt not torment your neighbor with false testimony.”  I already said that false witnesses can be flogged and that can be deadly. 

Jewish law looks at the verses in Exodus and Deuteronomy and says, they have something in common, what is it?  The answer the rabbis came up with is “death.”  So “thou shalt not steal” doesn’t mean property.  It means what Exodus 21:16 means, and also Deuteronomy 24:7.

Exodus 21:16 – “whoever kidnaps a man to sell him and he is found in his hands, mot yumat.”

Deuteronomy 24:7 – “when a man is found kidnapping…that kidnapper shall die.”

Slaving is a capital crime in Jewish law.  Other legal systems never did catch up with this and unfortunately we get news stories every year about people being found enslaved by force.

These verses show that the Bible absolutely does not support what happened to Africans who were brought to America.  Not only were they kidnapped, their masters could injure or even kill them with impunity.  There are other problems with this part of American culture which I will demonstrate next week. 

But the masters pretended to use the Bible to justify what they did.  This is a constant theme in history.  People claim to be acting according to the Bible, and the Bible is condemned for what they do, but the fact is they do not obey Jewish law.  They just pick and choose what they want to do and then claim it comes from the Bible.

The other part of the urban legend is what the word eved really means in Jewish law.  Read Leviticus 25:39-40, Exodus 21:1-11, andDeuteronomy 15:12-18 for next week.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Bit at a time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 1:12

Genesis 1:12

 

יב וַתּוֹצֵא הָאָרֶץ דֶּשֶׁא עֵשֶׂב מַזְרִיעַ זֶרַע לְמִינֵהוּ וְעֵץ עֹשֶׂה־פְּרִי אֲשֶׁר זַרְעוֹ־בוֹ לְמִינֵהוּ וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים כִּי־טוֹב:

 

Transliteration: Va-totse ha-arets deshe esev mazria zera l’minehu v’ets oseh-pri asher zaro-vo l’minehu vayar elohim ki-tov.

Translation:    The earth brought out grass, herbs seeding seed of its kind and tree making fruit that has its seed in it of its kind and Gd saw that it was good.

Letters in this lesson:

Vocabulary in this lesson:

תּוֹצֵא	brought forth (v)
עֹשֶׂה	make (v)

 

Here’s an important verb you need to learn the parts of.  We’ve had the aorist in Genesis 1:7, יַּעַשׂ, and now we have the present tense.

 

Plural	Singular	Gender
עֹשִים	עֹשֶׂה	Masculine
עֹשוֹת	עֹשָה	Feminine

 

You must learn the plural endings.  They are the same as for nouns and adjectives.  In fact, “make” in this verse functions as a noun, “making fruit”.  “Making” in English is a gerund which is a verbal noun. 

 

Also notice that the vowel in the first syllable of both words is “o” but they are spelled differently.  The vav with the “o” mark over it is called “writing a word out plene”, that is, in full.  In the other word, there is only the “o” mark but not a vav.  This is called chaser, “lacking.”

 

The chaser version of oseh can also be read asah, which is the past tense.  You can see that if you tried to say asah-pri instead of oseh-pri, you create a completely different meaning.  A tree that made fruit in the past tense might not make fruit now.  The context shows that these trees constantly make fruit of their kind; the present tense has a connotation of a continuous process or repeated procedure, so it is only right to use the present tense pronunciation here.  This is a good example of why not using vowels does not allow free-form interpretation.

 

Some of the rabbis thought it was significant when a word was written out chaser instead of plene.  One of the first ones is Genesis 9:12.  Midrash Rabbah Breshit, a collection of folkloric or moralistic comments on Genesis, says that the word dorot, “generations”, is written without the two vavs it could have in it because some generations didn’t have rainbows as a sign that Gd was not going to wipe the world out in a flood again.  They didn’t need this sign because all the Jews in them werer completely righteous.  One was the generation of King Chizkiyah and another was the generation of R. Shimon bar Yochai.

 

© Patricia Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

DIY savings

It's almost Passover and as I use up old food and start buying for the DIY season ahead, I'm calculating the savings.
I have a list of DIY projects on my fridge and the money I save in 12 months by DIY instead of buying ready made.
This is totally separate from the fact that I do almost all my cooking from scratch, which also saves money compared to eating out even at a fast food restaurant.
So far I can price bread, hard cider, corned beef, pastrami, cured and smoked turkey, lox, yogurt, yogurt cheese (that's next week's recipe), cured and smoked beef (my bacon substitute since I keep kosher), and biltong instead of jerky.
This saves me $700 a year.
Later I will price out the savings in sides like sauerkraut, pickled beets, marinated artichoke hearts, dried tomatoes, chow chow, sweet potato "fries", and so on.
But right now I can tell you that I probably get a greater variety of food than you can get in restaurants, for something like $2000 less than you spend, because I cook from scratch and DIY.
Except for the roast beef wrap that I bought at my kosher store yesterday which made a really great lunch.  It was a present to myself for losing 25 pounds.
Which is another thing that's easier when you DIY and cook from scratch.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

DIY -- Yogurt

I love yogurt for two things but it's so popular that it's kind of expensive.  I got this recipe off the internet.  You can get 16 quarts of yogurt out of one quart of yogurt and 4 gallons of milk.
With 16 quarts of yogurt costing $48 and 4 gallons of milk costing $20, spending $23 for 16 quarts of yogurt is so economical you're crazy not to do it.
Buy two little boxes you can use in a freezer that hold a cup each.
Buy 4 one-quart jars with screw-on lids.
Buy 1 quart plain non-fat yogurt WITH ACTIVE CULTURES.  I use Dannon.  YMMV.
Buy 1 GALLON milk, fat content your choice.
Go home.
Measure out 1 cup yogurt and put it one of the little boxes.  Do that two more times.  Put them in the freezer.
Turn the oven on to 150 to 200 degrees.
Measure one quart milk into a saucepan.  Start it heating about level 4.
Take one quarter cup of yogurt out of the tub and put the tub in the fridge.
Put the gallon jug of milk in the fridge.
Go upstairs and find some old towels that are clean.
Bring them downstairs.
When the milk has just started to bubble, turn off the burner and pour one cup of milk into a cup measure.
Wait 5-10 minutes.  The milk you took out of the saucepan should be pretty warm but if it's too hot, it will kill the active cultures in the yogurt. 
Mix the yogurt into the cup of milk very thoroughly.  This is called inoculating the milk.
Pour the inoculated milk into the saucepan and then pour that into a quart jar.
Put the lid on the quart jar.
Wrap it in towels, two or three layers of them.  I sometimes use a beach blanket.
Turn off the oven.
Put the jar in the oven and close the door.
Leave in place up to 12 hours.
So obviously you can't do this if you have bread to bake or a chicken to roast.
The best thing is to leave it overnight.
In the morning put that jar of yogurt in the fridge -- if you don't eat it right away.
That night you can start making the next quart of yogurt.
Turn the gallon of milk into yogurt and next week I'll give you a recipe to use your yogurt on.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved