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Velveeta
Now that I have your attention…. here’s how to make a home made version of Velveeta, only from actual cheese! 1/4 ounce packet unflavoured gelatin 6 tablespoons powdered milk 1 cup (240ml) boiling water 1 pound (16oz/450g) shredded cheese Line a loaf pan with plastic wrap. Put gelatin and powdered milk into a blender. Add…
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Water icing
Water icing is simple and cheap to make. It’s also super flexible, suitable for many sweet treats! 1 cup powdered sugar 2 – 3 tbsp hot water a few drops vanilla (optional) lemon juice (optional) other flavourings as appropriate for your recipe Sift the sugar into a bowl. Decide what optional flavourings you are going…
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Does your recipe help or hinder?
I have been having a lot of fun deep diving into the history of pudding and making the recipes, but there is a group of recipes that are quite annoying. Pudding is supposed to meet 3 criteria: easy quick cheap I have lost track of how many contemporary recipes have ingredients such as “organic free…
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Substitutions
A note on some basic substitutions you can make to accommodate differences in what is available in stores. SUET Some stores in the US are now selling “beef tallow”. Beef tallow is rendered out suet. It also tends to be painfully expensive. Amazon.com is now selling Atora suet, which is cheaper than the tallow, but…
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Making breakfast
One of my weekend pleasures used to be having a sausage sandwich (bangers with brown sauce or ketchup) for brunch. One of the downsides of moving to another country is the lack of the stuff you are used to. Brown sauce, if it is available, tends to be ridiculously expensive. Bangers are eye wateringly expensive.…
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Tahini
I was mulling over my laughably cheap hummus recipe with peanut butter substituting for tahini. The biggest single cost for making home made hummus is most likely the tahini, hence substituting peanut butter. But what if you could make tahini at home, at a laughably cheap price? Is that possible? And how difficult is it…
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Seasonal vegan dessert or breakfast
OK, time to rock your socks with a seasonal, vegan, healthy (…. ish!) breakfast or dessert. It’s also dirt cheap! As I have some blackberries and blueberries left over from my recent U-Pick experience, I thought it was time to make something fun. So, black-and-blue-berry pancakes it is! PANCAKE BATTER 1 cup self-raising flour 1…
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What to do with canned foods?
The whole reason I make canned/preserved foods is to be able to eat them when they are out of season and thus expensive and shipped in over long distances. But once you’ve got them, what do you do with them? Last year I made a couple of different pie fillings while the fruits were in…
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Sweet potato and chickpea curry
Sweet Potato and Chickpea Curry 2 medium red onions, peeled 1 clove garlic, peeled 1 bird’s eye pepper, Thai chili or other very hot small pepper with its seeds 1 2 ½ to 3 inch piece of ginger, peeled and cut into chunks 3 tbsp vegetable oil ½ tsp hot red pepper flakes ½ tsp…
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Choosing produce for canning
The modern grocery store is a wonder. You have all sorts of produce available all the year round – strawberries in December and lemons in July. If you look carefully, you will notice that all of the produce is uniform – everything of one type is pretty much the same size, shape, and colour as…