No Henry Makepeace today, because everything stinks of smoke and it is cold, so I am hiding under a blanket with Mr. Bell and periodically checking the news to make sure that nothing in close proximity to me is on fire. Have I mentioned that it is extremely creepy to walk outside, smell smoke, assume that someone has a woodstove going, and then realize that no, in fact, no one is running their woodstove today? Also, that brownish-grey pall in the street? It’s not fog.

Apparently, a shift in the weather has led to an inversion which is forcing the smoke to hang around, rather than dissipating. Last night it was actually starting to disappear, thanks to a brisk breeze, but…it’s back! Like the Terminator (who apparently formally requested federal assistance yesterday). As of yesterday, here in Mendo we were down to 85 fires from a high of 131, but they were getting bigger, and Cal Fire had very poor containment, because, uhm, we don’t have enough firefighters. Apparently when you declare a state of emergency, no one cares.

I love how the few mentions about the fires in the media focus on Big Sur, which is a popular tourist area, and Napa, which is wine country, totally ignoring the epic fires in the Northern part of the state. The Southern California wildfires last year got tons of press coverage, probably because they put more homes in danger, but it’s still kind of disheartening to note that we barely merit cursory AP coverage. And those poor people flooded out in the Midwest are getting even less attention, despite the fact that the flooding is still going on, and getting worse in some areas. Good to know that the American media has a short attention span; maybe if they realized a bunch of celebrity palaces are threatened by the fires, we’d be seeing some news crews.

NASA took this picture. Not me. Well, duh, I mean it’s not like I have satellite access.

Anyway, here’s a recipe for shrimp curry, because that is what I will be eating for lunch. Silly vegans can use tofu instead.

In a wok, mix a can of coconut milk and two cups of broth of choice.

Bring the heat to medium, and add several slices of ginger cut into slivers, along with a slivered onion (I had an awesome onion from the farmers’ market), and a couple of teaspoons of red curry paste. Let this stuff simmer while you prepare other ingredients.

Throw some sliced green onions (I used three, because that’s what I had) into a small bowl, and add a chopped hot pepper or two, along with two tablespoons of fish sauce, and a tablespoon of brown sugar. (Silly vegans, use tamarind paste mixed with a bit of hot water to make it runny.)

Chop up a couple of zucchini and a handful of mushrooms. You don’t have to use these veggies, and feel free to use replacements like carrots, broccoli, whatever; just don’t overload on the vegetables, because you want the focus to be on the shrimp.

Speaking of which, dejacket and devein the shrimp. I know that deveining is a pain in the butt, but please do it anyway. Unless you’re into cacophagy and you don’t mind a little bitterness in your curry, in which case, rock on with your bad self.

Toss the shrimp into the wok of simmering goodness, and stir briefly before throwing in the vegetables. You may need to add more broth to get full coverage. When the shrimp are pink and the veggies are starting to soften, add in the green onion mixture, and cook for another minute or so, just until the green onions are soft.

Serve over rice, with some chopped coriander and a spritz of lime.

Depending on how much liquid you use, you can make it more soupy, or more thick and currylike; it’s entirely up to you. I like mine soupy, personally.

One of my all time favourite Chinese dishes is baozi, the stuffed and steamed dumplings served at pretty much any respectable dim sum parlour. The best baozi, by far, are stuffed with vegetables, and then dipped in chili sauce, a dash of soy, a hint of rice vinegar, and some soy sauce. I know lots of people like the pork buns, but I just don’t dig on them all that much. Vegetables are where it’s at, for me.

Alas, not living in the city anymore, access to baozi is limited. Sometimes my Chinese mother brings them back from trips, and it fills me with excitement, but the other night, I decided to try my hand at making my own. I discovered that it’s not only really easy to make baozi, it’s immensely satisfying. I was going to take pictures of the process, but I kind of forgot, and then it got dark. So, the accompanying photos are actually of some leftovers when I reheated them the next day.

You need to start by making dough:

Mix one half cup warm water with one packet of active dry yeast, and add two tablespoons of sugar. Allow the yeast to proof for 15 minutes or so.

When the yeast is nice and foamy, add a half teaspoon of salt and another cup of warm water, then whisk vigorously.

Add four cups of flour, one cup at a time. Stop if the dough starts to get really stiff; flour measurements are pretty much always guesswork when making bread.

Turn the dough out onto a floured counter, and knead it until it is smooth; around 20 minutes or so.

Lightly oil the dough with sesame oil, and put it in a glass bowl, covered with a damp cloth, to rise until doubled in size, which will take one to one and a half hours.

While the dough is rising, mix your filling. You can pretty much throw whatever you want in there; the baozi I made had shittake mushrooms, garlic, and ginger. I would definitely recommend using garlic and ginger in whatever filling you devise. You can also throw in stuff like chopped bok choy, carrots, water chestnuts, tofu, whatever. Sprinkle some sweet chili sauce, salt, sesame oil, and soy sauce over your filling. You can mix it up with stuff like black bean sauce too, if you’re feeling frisky.

After the dough has risen, turn it out onto a lightly floured counter, compress it into a disc, and sprinkle one teaspoon of baking soda on top. Then, knead the dough until it pulls together in a cohesive ball again. Divide the ball into 12 chunks of dough, and turn each chunk into a disc with a puffy center. While you’re working, keep the dough covered with a damp cloth to keep it from drying out.

To make individual bao, cup a disc of dough in your hand and transfer a spoonful of filling. Use the fingers of your other hand to grip the edges and twist them around to make a neat little dough purse with a swirly top. As you finish each dumpling, set it on a small square of parchment paper. When all the dumplings are done, cover them and allow them to rise one hour.

(Obviously these have already been cooked, so they don’t look that doughy, but they look kind of neat, and you get the general idea. Also, note parchment paper, which keeps them from sticking to whatever surface you set them out to rise on.)

After the baozi have risen, steam them for 10-15 minutes, until done. Mine were pretty small, so they were done in more like 8 minutes, but cut one in the first batch open to test. You can eat the dumplings hot, or refrigerate and reheat them by steaming another day.

Here they are in the steamer before I stuck the lid on. The parchment paper is crucial, because it keeps them from sticking to the bottom, and each other, when they are crammed into the steamer. Do not leave out the parchment paper!

Now that I know how foolishly easy it is to make baozi, I’m so going to do it all the time.

I will also work on making them look a little prettier next time. But they tasted great.

I have a thing, with quiche. It’s not just that I think quiche is good, although it is, it’s that quiche happens to be one of my top comfort foods. I’m not really sure why, because I don’t think my father ever made quiche when I was a kid; he was more of a timbale kind of guy. But, at some point, quiche became equal to comfort, and I happened to make a quiche yesterday, and I’m eating a cold slice right now with a wedge of lemon and some Tabasco (the only way to eat quiche, really), so I decided to write about quiche.

I like the process of making quiche. It’s messy, by nature, and I’m a control freak, so I kind of enjoy forcing myself to just let go, let flour and eggs pile up on the counters, and make something awesome. Of course, as soon as the quiche goes into the oven, I make the mess go away, but it’s strangely exhilarating when the kitchen is all messy with quicheness. Sort of like crossing the street when the light is red (I did that yesterday too), living dangerously, you know?

Anyway, one of the cool things about quiche is that you can put pretty much anything in there. The quiche I made yesterday happened to be mushroom and potato, but it could have just as easily been purple cauliflower and sweet onion, or beet greens and bacon, or zucchini and squid. I mean, you never know, is what I am trying to say. Quiche is a world of possibilities.

I also appreciate that it can be eaten hot or cold. I actually made this particular quiche with the explicit plan of eating cold quiche over the weekend, since it’s supposed to warm up, but, as always, I ate a big chunk of it, hot and steaming, before I could stop myself. Once, I ate half a quiche at one sitting, and then rolled around on the floor groaning for half an hour before I could move again.

It was awesome.

Quiche is also a superb vehicle for eggs, a food I happen to not really enjoy in a pure state. Yet, somehow, quiche performs some sort of alchemy, allowing me to consume something with eggs in it without feeling violently disgusted. When I was vegan, I used to make quiche with tofu, and it was pretty damn good, too.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with all this quiche musing, so I’ll cut to the chase: here’s my quiche recipe. Go forth and bake!

Crust:

3/4 cup flour

5 1/2 tablespoons butter

1/6 cup cold water, blended with a dash of salt and a dash of sugar

Cream the butter into the flour, add the water, and mash around so that the ingredients pull together into a dough. Don’t overwork the dough. In fact, why don’t you put it in the fridge, so that you won’t be tempted to mess with it? Pie dough doesn’t like to be messed with. Just…let it chill, ok?

In a large pan, saute:

Something which will go into your quiche

I generally use a whole yellow onion in all my quiches, and then add whatever sliced/diced ingredients I’m using. I don’t really measure stuff, it’s more of a sensation by feel kind of thing. I should have measured yesterday. Oh well. Throw in some spices if you feel like it, or not, whatever. Then set the stuff aside to cool.

Roll out your pie dough and get it set up in an oiled and floured pie pan while you mix the filling, so you can dump and bake. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (177 for my Celsius cousins, 450 kelvin for the physicists among us).

In a large bowl, beat together four eggs, and then add a cup of milk. Sprinkle in some salt, pepper, and nutmeg (don’t ask, and yes, it is important. Trust me.) Then add 2/3 cup of delicious, delicious bread crumbs, and beat again. Add in another half cup of cheese of choice (I actually just grate right over the bowl until it looks good, but a half cup sounds right). Then mix in your veggies, pour the mess into the pie pan, and let her rip.

It usually takes around 40 minutes, or until an inserted knife/toothpick/cake tester comes out clean. If you can possibly bear to wait, let the quiche cool for awhile on a rack before slicing. Once completely cooled, said quiche can be refrigerated, covered. (By the way, if anyone wants to get me one of those bad-ass lock together pie plate things, let me know. Do those even exist? Because they should. Pie and quiche need protecting from the forces of evil in the world.)

I am often overheard making the comment that I would kill for Indian food in this town.

Until October, at least, it looks like I won’t have to make good on my hyperbole, because there’s Indian food at the farmers’ market! And it’s vegan! And it’s pretty good!

I really don’t think that this day can get any better.

British authorities claim that there is no health benefit to eating organic fruits and vegetables, according to an article in the Guardian I read this morning. The crux of the article is that it is more important to eat fruits and vegetables than to worry about whether or not they are organic, with the argument being that organic food is more costly, so for people in the lower classes, it might be prohibitive. This following hard on the heels of a story about reviving the victory garden to get more Britons involved in the production of their food.

There are a couple of problems with the Guardian article. For one thing, although it briefly references the nutritional differences between organic and conventionally produced food, it didn’t delve into them, instead treating them very dismissively. In fact, there are substantial nutritional differences between organic and conventional food, with all evidence pointing towards organic food as a substantially better choice, healthwise. It contains a number of useful vitamins and minerals which are not present in conventionally produced food, thanks to the fact that organic food is produced in healthy soil. I think this shoots a pretty big hole in the claim that organic food has no benefit to health.

Furthermore, organic produce is not contaminated with pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides. Despite claims that washing conventional produce will eliminate this problem, it seems clear that at least some produce absorbs these substances, causing the people who eat the produce to ingest these substances as well. I’m pretty sure that most people agree that ingesting the -cides is not good for people.

I would also argue that organically produced food also has a tangible environmental benefit, which can translate into a health benefit, especially if the food is produced locally. By buying organic produce, consumers are voting for clean waterways, healthy field workers, and a more sustainable mode of food production. It’s not that “green” is trendy, it’s that by eating green, people are making a conscious choice to protect the environment, and that, my friends, is a good thing. And a good thing which has direct health benefits, not just for you, but for other people.

I understand the crux of the article, I really do. In a situation where the choice is conventional tomatoes or no tomatoes, I vote for conventionally produced tomatoes, because the tomatoes are the important thing in the equation. But when the choice is organic, locally produced tomatoes or potato chips, I vote for the tomatoes. One thing that the article did not address was the need to rethink food budgeting, devoting more money to food in general, and specifically more money to minimally processed ingredients. The junk food needs to go, and so does the packaged food, for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is simple cost: organic tomato sauce is expensive, but making your own tomato sauce with organic produce is not, and people need to learn to think beyond the box.

This was really illustrated for me the other day when I was talking with a friend about the cost differences between the local grocery stores. As locals know, there is a long-standing claim that Harvest is more expensive. In fact, as my father discovered through several sessions of comparison shopping, Safeway is more expensive. It’s just that Harvest has expensive packaged junk, so people who buy that stuff have the perception that Harvest is pricier. If you actually make your own food, rather than following the directions on a box, Harvest is substantially cheaper. Since I ignore whole aisles in grocery stores because they are filled with packaged food, my grocery bills are pretty low, considering how much food I make, and I think I eat better, because I am able to control what goes into my food. If you make the choice for ingredients over packaged food, eating organic starts to become a lot more doable.

I also note that the claim shied away from any discussion of organic vs. conventional meat and dairy products, perhaps because they knew it would be a losing battle. Hormone laced chicken, or free range? It doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot of argument there.

A great article appeared in the Guardian yesterday, talking about the ethical trap of “food miles.” I highly recommend reading the article, as I assume that most of my readers are interested in food politics and the ethical issues which surround food, and I promise that it is very interesting, and not all that long.

For those of you who didn’t read the article, the short story is that the concept of food miles is a bit more complex than people want you to think it is. At first glance, it makes sense to eat exclusively locally, right? Eating from the land, supporting your local economy, reducing your impact on the planet…but, in fact, there are a lot of factors which go into whether or not a food product is ethical, and it’s not as simple as how many miles the food has traveled.

From an environmental standpoint, one of the things the article highlighted was that food grown with chemical fertilizers and pest management materials, on a farm with petroleum powered tractors (or in a greenhouse) may not be as ethical as food which is grown naturally and air-freighted with large shipments of goods. In terms of carbon footprint, food which comes from further away might, oddly enough, be more ethical.

However, not all locally produced food is made with chemicals, and if local food is produced with the assistance of animals, rather than machines, I would argue that it would,in fact, have a far smaller carbon footprint than freighted food. I was somewhat disappointed that this was not really addressed in the article, which seemed to assume that conventional mechanized agriculture is the only way to produce food. This interesting omission reminded me of a somewhat disingenuous New York Times article on the same topic which was published not long ago, trying to discredit the food mileage idea with simplistic arguments. (Note that I do not necessarily think alternative fuels are more ethical, given the fact that biodiesel is turning out to be a huge disaster.)

I think that the article really illustrated the fallacy of the carbon footprint, which seems to be turning into the new gold standard for ethical living. In fact, the carbon footprint only scratches the surface of ethical living. Tristan and I were talking about this recently. I was arguing that the carbon footprint is too simplistic, and that by accepting it, people are missing out on the opportunity to delve more deeply into environmental issues. He was arguing that the carbon footprint is better than nothing, and that complex discussions of environmental issues alienate people, so we should be promoting the carbon footprint concept. What do you think? I’m not a fan of doing things by half measures, but I can see his logic.

And, the article argues, growing food for the North is a valuable source of money for people in the Southern hemisphere. So, by passing on those Chilean asparagus bundles and buying some local Brussels sprouts grown organically and without the use of heavy farm equipment, you are depriving some poor Chilean of the means of sustenance. Oh, but wait, if people in the Southern hemisphere weren’t dedicating their farmland to producing food for us, they could eat their produce, rather than selling it.

I was very pleased to note a plug for veganism at the end of the article, because it’s true that in most regions of the world, veganism is the most ethical and logical choice. It kind of surprises me, really, that the locavore movement isn’t more into veganism; I think they want to have their environmental self righteousness and eat meat too.

I think that the article really highlighted the fact that food politics is extremely complex, and that there are no easy solutions. It also reminded me of my personal goal in life, which is to take care of a large stretch of land somewhere, growing things on it and becoming self sufficient. As tangled in the industrial food complex as I am, it’s frustrating to feel forced to rely on a system I don’t like for the food I eat.

There’s a fascinating discussion going on over at the Guardian about doggy bags. Or to go boxes, if you will. I wasn’t aware that this was such an incendiary cultural issue, as I had assumed that the desire to take leftovers home is pretty universal, but apparently I’m wrong. It would appear that some UK citizens would rather waste food than be embarrassed by asking for leftovers? British readers, please educate me on this.

The article on the topic isn’t that interesting, except when the author expresses shock and surprise at the thought of being able to get food to go from a good restaurant, as though he’d asked for a unicorn and a brace of dodos and gotten it. What’s fascinating is the comments, where people say that all Americans are fat because of our huge portions, and that only Americans would be as gauche as to have the audacity to request leftovers to go, while others retort that it “must be an age thing” as they “go for an Indian” and get leftovers all the time.

I wouldn’t mind going for an Indian myself, but that’s a separate issue.

What I’m wondering is…why wouldn’t you ask to have your leftovers boxed up? I mean, you did pay for the food, after all, and if the restaurant served more than you could eat, why not take it home? Or why not deliberately over-order for the joy of leftovers in the morning? I don’t see how that would be awkward; I think it’s far worse to leave food behind, knowing that it will be thrown out. And I’ll about roaming into the kitchen in the depths of the night and nibbling on leftovers, personally.

The only time when I won’t ask for food to go is when I didn’t finish it because I thought it was bad. I’m loathe to complain in restaurants unless there’s a serious problem, because usually my dislike is related to a lack of full comprehension of a menu description and therefore it’s my fault, so I’ll just say I “wasn’t feeling very hungry” and leave it at that. But I still feel horribly guilty about leaving perfectly edible food behind.

One commenter in the thread raised the issue of food safety, which conjured up the image of a horrible spectre: a ban on to go boxes in our lawsuit happy culture, where restaurateurs might become mortally afraid of being sued by people who aren’t bright enough to put leftovers in the fridge and heat them thoroughly when they want to eat them. Given our penchant for banning things to protect people from lack of common sense, I fear this may not be very far in our future. Will a doggy bagging black market arise, with brave citizens smuggling tupperware into their favourite restaurants?

The comments also bring up another interesting issue, which is fear of waiters. People really do seem to be terrified of waitstaff. They don’t want to “inconvenience” their waiters, or look stupid, so they don’t ask questions, or they seethe silently about a perceived slight. (And then of course go rant about it somewhere instead of just talking to the manager about it at the time.) It’s funny, because people simultaneously look down on waiters as members of the “service class,” while also fearing their authority, as though asking what a “remoulade” is will cause the waiter to sigh heavily, take out a pistol, and shoot you.

This seems to be the crux of the doggy bag debate. Some people “don’t want to make trouble,” so they will abandon their food on their plates to be thrown out. (Or composted, depending on where you live, and in rare cases sent to a pig farmer who has a deal with the restaurant.) Others, apparently, have no difficulties at all when it comes to making trouble, and we gleefully ask for boxes and pester our waiters in every conceivable way possible, as our God-given right.

The question is…will I ever muster the balls to ask to have someone else’s abandoned food boxed up?

Meredith wins the prize. I was, in fact, “making cheese or yoghurt,” more specifically cheese. I’m not exactly sure how to unite Meredith and her brownie, since she’s not local, and my brownies don’t ship well. I’ll see if I can figure something out. Anyway, the photo above is a closeup of some freshly salted Neufchatel.

Disclaimer:

Certain purists attacked me for my post on making yoghurt at home, arguing that it wasn’t “from scratch,” because I used a commercial yoghurt as a starter. So, in the interests of full disclosure, let it be known that the milk used in the following post was harvested from Purity’s well stocked dairy section, as was the buttermilk, as I do not have access to a cow, or to raw milk to culture into buttermilk. I left the dirty work of rennet processing to the Junket company, which kindly sells rennet in blisterpacked tabs. If you know how rennet is made, you should appreciate this, since if I processed it myself, I would post lots of revolting photos. So this cheese is not, technically, “from scratch,” but I’ll bet it’s more from scratch than any cheese you’ve eaten this week (unless you live on a farm).

Moving on.

For those of you who have never made cheese before, cheesemaking is an awesome and complicated process which is also tons of fun. I decided to make a very simple soft cheese, like the French Neufchatel (which is treated like cream cheese here, but it’s so much more). Basically, cheesemaking involves a couple of steps. First you need to culture some milk to get some happy bacteria going on (this isn’t always done). Then, you need to curdle it, coagulating the milk by raising the acid level, causing curds to form. Then, the cheese needs to be drained, to get rid of the whey. If you’re eating soft cheese, it’s pretty much done at this point, but it can also be packed and handled in a variety of way for hard cheeses, from cheddar to Parmesan. (Cheddaring is really fun; I may make cheddar sometime in the next year or so.)

So I started with a half gallon of milk, which I heated to room temperature and mixed with two tablespoons of buttermilk. The goal was to add some delicious tang and to start raising the acidity. Then I dissolved 1/8 of a rennet tablet in two tablespoons of water, and mixed it into the milk. Rennet, for those of you who refused to follow the link above, is an enzyme found in the stomachs of young mammals. It helps them to break down milk so that they can digest it. (There are ways to make vegetarian and vegan cheeses, and I may work on those later this year too, but since I haven’t made cheese in a long time, I wanted to stick with what I know.)

Next, the cheese has to hang out to coagulate at room temperature. Depending on the freshness of all of the ingredients, this can take only a few hours, but I was prepared for it to take overnight, as in fact it did. In the morning I tested for a clean break (photos didn’t come out, alas), and it was ready to roll, so I cut the curds, making the cheese easier to drain:

That watery liquid is whey. Whey is what we do not want, so:

I poured the curds into a colander lined with cheesecloth to drain. They sat like this for a few hours, to get the bulk of the whey out, and I was astounded by how much whey there was. If I’d known there would be this much, I would have saved it and made ricotta. Next time.

Next, the ends of the cheesecloth get pulled together to make a little baggie, and squeezed to press the whey out. In Greece, we used to hang the baggie in the kitchen, the coolest room in the house, but in the interests of food safety* I hung it in the fridge:

More whey was generated. It fell into the glass bowl you can see at the bottom of the image. Note how plump and happy the bag looks. Over around 20 hours, it shrunk to this:

I opened it up to check out the cheese inside:

Mmm. Cheese. At this point, the cheese is perfectly edible, soft and creamy and perhaps a bit sweet. However, to enhance the flavor and help it keep, it’s a good idea to salt your soft cheeses. So I turned it into a bowl, sprinkled a teaspoon of salt on it, and worked it for a few minutes to get the salt in before packing it into a tupperware for refrigeration.

And that, my friends, is cheese. I am really pleased with how it turned out. The result is a very soft, creamy cheese which can be used in cheesecakes and frostings, or just eaten on bagels (assuming you have access to bagels that don’t taste like ass). Or plain in spoonfuls out of the dish. Whatever. I think I’ll be making this basic soft cheese a few more times, and then maybe experimenting with harder cured cheeses.

I certainly won’t be trying to make all my cheese at home, since I can’t make Parmesan and Brie and other fabulous cheeses at home. But this soft cheese is far superior to the stuff you can get in the supermarket, and a lot cheaper to make. And it’s fun. I highly enourage you to venture into the wide world of cheesemaking.
*A note on food safety. Cheese can be dangerous if it is not handled properly. I used pasteurized milk, which reduced the risk, and I also handled it carefully, using sterilized containers and so forth to avoid introducing bacteria. Cheese hangs out at room temperature a lot during the manufacturing process, and that’s a good temp for bacteria to grow. That’s why you want to get acid levels up quickly. However, there’s always a risk that your cheese will attract some visitors. If you make your own cheese and it smells/looks/feels/tastes funny, throw it away. It is always better to be safe than sorry, as you don’t want listeriosis and other unattractive diseases. You should also keep yourself/your kitchen/your cheese making tools as clean as possible. I bear no responsibility for repetitions of this recipe that go awry!

Listening to the news yesterday afternoon, I was tickled pink to hear JPR talk about a food dear to my own heart: the tater tot. (Which apparently is known as the “tot” by hip young things?) The tater tot and I have a long and conflicted history, as is often the case with people and trashy food, and it was a pleasure to hear this Idaho native discussed with gravity and seriousness on the radio.

I remember one night, a friend of mine and I were hanging out, and feeling kind of down in the dumps, and we went to go wander around Harvest.

“Let’s get some tater tots,” I said.

She looked askance at me, being a health food kind of girl.

“Come on,” I said. “I haven’t had tater tots in years. It’s nostalgia food. Let’s get the biggest package of tater tots possible, and a big thing of ketchup, and go crazy.”

She still looked a bit hesitant, but there in the frozen foods aisle, she started remembering all of her happy moments with the tater tot, and she reached into the case and grabbed a bag. Organic, of course. And we went home and heated them in my oven and piled them on a plate and it was delicious, with ketchup and salt and oily fingers.

I’ve never really eaten much packaged food, because it wasn’t around the house when I was a kid, so I never learned to be into it. I’m not sure where my tater tot fetish comes from. I mean, I do love potatoes, and that I will not deny. But the tater tots associated with school lunch were limp, sad looking things with little resemblance to the potato. Wherever I acquired my deep and abiding love of the tater tot, I doubt it’s going to go away any time soon, and really there are more harmful things to be into.

It’s funny, because I ignore whole aisles in the grocery store, since they are bedecked with packaged foods, and I really don’t eat packaged food. It’s not a holier than thou thing, I just…don’t. But I do have a few guilty pleasures, like tater tots, which I shyly confess to, only to learn that other people love them too.

These weak points include Geneva Cookies from Pepperidge Farm, which I have tried to replicate without success. I like the thin, crispy, almost spicy cookie, the rich chocolate, and the pecans. I dip them in my oolong tea. I just can’t get the cookie right at home, try as I might.

I also really like jalapeno poppers. I can’t explain it. It’s that gush of hot oily cream cheese, the light fluffy outer layer, the barely recognizable pepper. Is it my deep fried food fetish coming out? I’m not sure. Speaking of which, I also adore doughnuts. Which one can make at home, but it’s such a pain. Only I may be forced to make my own doughnuts if I want them, since no one up here makes decent ones. And Tings. Yes! Crunchy corn sticks!

It’s a comfort thing, I think. At some point something linked these foods with happiness in my mind, and when I’m feeling nostalgic, somehow they find their way to my plate, almost by magic. I also, of course, enjoy the upscale interpretations, like sweet potato tater tots I had once, and I really ought to experiment more to create my own versions.

Every now and then, I indulge my trashy fetishes, andI’m curious, gentle readers…what trashy/packaged foods do you secretly adore?

My big project over the last few days has been making yoghurt, thanks in part to some heated yoghurt related discussions on CUSS and Other Rants. I was going to make cheese this weekend too, but I don’t really need cheese just yet, so maybe next weekend. Unless I can come up with some amazing uses for cheese. Anyway, prepare for cheese, is the point I am trying to make.

Anyway, people seem to think that yoghurt is hard to make, filled with mystique and difficulty. It’s not, and I made it even more easy by borrowing my father’s yoghurt maker, because while I like being a bad-ass and making stuff at home, I am also lazy. And it’s cold, making it hard to maintain proper temperatures for incubating yoghurt.

So, here’s how you make yoghurt:

Step one: heat a quart of milk to around 180 degrees Fahrenheit (82 Celsius), to sterilize it. I used pasteurized but not homogenized milk, which is what I would recommend if you cannot obtain raw milk. You can use any kind of milk; I of course advocate for organic full-fat cow, sheep, or goat, but you can use camel, mare, human, whatever you can get your hands on, at any fat percentage. Heat it in a stainless steel pot, if you can, and use a metal spoon to stir it as it heats. If you don’t have a thermometer, you can heat the milk until it starts to foam.

Step two: allow the milk to cool to between 105-110 degrees (41-43 degrees Celsius). If you lack a thermometer, splash a little on your wrist to check the temperature like you do when heating milk in a bottle for infants or checking the temperature of bath water, if you lack children as a frame of reference.

Step three: add two tablespoons of a plain yoghurt with live cultures. I use Nancy’s, but you don’t have to. The important thing is the “live cultures” on the label. You can also buy plain old yoghurt cultures in some health food stores. Whisk well. Some people like to make a slurry of a little bit milk and yoghurt in a separate bowl and then pour the slurry into the big pot. I don’t.

Step four: incubate! If you have a yoghurt maker, pour the mixture into the cups, close the yoghurt maker, turn it on, and forget about it. If you don’t, you can incubate the yoghurt in the oven, using the pilot light for warmth or periodically turning the oven on (with the yoghurt out!), allowing it to warm. Try not to jostle the yoghurt.  You’re going for105-122 degrees (41-49 Celsius, incidentally).

Incubation can take 8-14 hours. As the yoghurt incubates, it will thicken. The longer you allow it to incubate, the thicker and more tangy it will get. I like me some tangy yoghurt. After it’s incubated, the yoghurt is ready to eat, and it should be refrigerated.

Here’s where the optional step comes in: straining. I really like Greek-style yoghurt, which is traditionally strained. To strain yoghurt, you need to place a colander over a bowl or pot or something, and then line the colander with cheesecloth which has been folded over. Or a clean lightweight cotton rag. Whatever. Pour the yoghurt into the colander and allow it to hang out for a few hours. An amazing amount of liquid will collect below while your yoghurt gets thick, creamy, and fucking delicious.

See, making yoghurt isn’t so hard! You can re-use yoghurt from this batch a couple of times for starter, although you should periodically buy new yoghurt for fresh, happy cultures. As always when making cultured dairy products, if your yoghurt looks funny, smells weird, or just doesn’t feel right, toss it. Better safe than sorry.