Category Archives: Recipes

Cream Cheese Recipe

Homemade Cream Cheese

There’s nothing like homemade cream cheese. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the difference, especially if you follow this homemade cream cheese recipe.

  • Place cream from milk into quart jar. If you’re using store bought cream you should use one pint.
  • Add 1/16 tsp Mesophilic culture and stir well.
  • Cover the jar and leave on the counter at room temperature for 12 to24 hrs, or until cream is thick just like sour cream, in fact when it is ready, this thicken cream IS sour cream!
  • Place cheesecloth over colander that is sitting inside large bowl or pot.
  • Remove the thick sour cream from the quart jar right into the cheesecloth. Wrap up the cheesecloth and either hang freely to drain the whey and butter milk from the sour cream.
  • The longer is drains the dryer the cheese will be. Allow approx 8 to 12 hours of drying time.
  • Remove cream cheese from the cheese cloth and add spices, herbs, natural sweeteners to your taste preference.

Farmhouse Cheddar Cheese Recipe

Farmhouse Cheddar Cheese Recipe

For convenience you may send this recipe to the printer and pick it up on your way to the kitchen. Download the recipe in a pdf file.

3 gallons whole milk

Mesophilic Culture (1/4 tsp Abiasa, 1/8 tsp Danisco, or 1/16 tsp Sacco)

2 teaspoons calcium chloride (only needed for store bought milk)
1.5 tablet rennet or 3/4 tsp liquid rennet
1/4 cup unchlorinated water
1 Tbsp salt

  • Combine milk, (calcium chloride) in 16 qt stock pot (double boiler to prevent scorching)
  • Slowly heat mixture to 86 degrees. Turn off heat and stir in lactic cheese culture. (Different types of culture create different flavors of cheese)  Stir gently throughout. Cover mixture and allow to rest undisturbed at 86 degrees for 45 minutes.
  • Dissolve rennet tablet or liquid rennet in 1/4 cup  water.
  • Keep the milk at 86 degrees.  Stir the rennet mixture into milk slowly but thoroughly. Allow milk to set undisturbed for 30 – 45 minutes or until curd shows a clean break.
  • Using long knife, cut the curds into 1/2 inch squares, then stir gently just to break the strips of curds into chunks. Let it sit to rest for 5 minutes.
  • Slowly heat the curds and whey to 102 degrees, raising the temperature 2 degrees every 5 minutes. Stir curd gently to prevent matting and reduce their size to half peanut size. A large whisk works well by placing it to bottom of pot and putting up right so curds break as they fall through the wisk. Hold curds for additional 30 minutes at this temperature
  • Place pre-warmed with hot water colander over a pot and pour the curds into it.
  • Reserve 1/3 of the whey and pour back into the cheese pot. Set colander of curds onto the cheese pot. Cover top with cheese cloth and lid to keep in warmth. Allow curds to drain for 45 to 60 minutes. This is called the cheddaring process.
  • Cut slab into pieces and press through french fry cutter or cut by hand.
  • Add 1 tablespoon course salt. Using your hands, gently mix the salt into curds. You can eat these curds now, or press into a wheel.
  • Place the curds into cheese press and follow the directions for dressing with cheese cloth for the next 12 hours.
  • Remove cheese from press, unwrap the cloth, place cheese on drying mat to air dry for 12 hours, creating a nice skin over the whole cheese.  Cheese is ready to slice and eat or you can wax and age for stronger cheddar flavor.
  • Mix 1 tablespoon of salt with 1/2 cup of water. Use a corner of the cheese cloth to lightly apply a saltwater wash to the cheese.

How to leave fast food behind and eat inexpensively at home

It’s sad that it is cheaper to feed your family at McDonalds than to provide a balanced meal for your family..

For example – if all they can afford is crap, and they don’t have the resources to grow their own they could be at a real disadvantage.

These are two of the comments made on Homesteader’s Supply Facebook page. Balanced meals don’t have to be expensive, or complicated. They can be much healthier than fast food. We can leave fast food behind and eat inexpensively.

It takes a bit of time to prepare and cook a good meal. The time can be spent teaching children to cook, a skill that’s being lost in a large portion of our youngsters. Food for thought: In the big picture of life, is it more important to have children in three after school and extra curricular programs that keep us too busy to cook and eat well than it is to teach our kids to cook? Let’s get off the road a little and into the kitchen more, where we can share some quality family time.

9

9″ stainless steel pie pan.

Here is a recipe for quiche to help us get started. Quiche is great for breakfast, lunch or dinner. For a grab-and-go breakfast use muffin tins instead of the pie plate, no crust needed. I browsed the online flyer a Hannaford, a grocery store chain, and the paper flyer from Food Mart to get prices.

Broccoli & Cheese Quiche

One dozen eggs
1/2 pound chopped broccoli
1/2 pound grated cheese
One pie crust
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp Italian seasoning

Scramble the eggs and add seasonings. Use seasonings you like. A quarter-teaspoon of crushed red pepper adds zing without heat. Garlic powder is also good. If the broccoli is frozen you should thaw, drain and pat it dry. Mix everything together and pour into the crust-lined pie plate.

Serving sizes are out of proportion these days. One serving of meat is three to four ounces. That’s the size of a deck of play cards (not Uno or other large game cards). Keep the number of servings you need for the entire day in mind. You have three meals and possibly a snack to get all that you need to be healthy and fit.

Variations: spinach, onion, mushrooms, artichoke, dandelion greens. What’s available in the garden?

Bake at 350* for 45 minutes.

To cut down on costs:

  • use brick cheese that you grate yourself
  • chopped broccoli is less expensive than pieces when using frozen
  • use broccoli stems, not just the tops

Eight servings. $7.20 total.
Eggs – $3.00
1 pie crust – $1.15
Cheese – $2.20
Chopped broccoli – .60 cents
Seasoning – .25 cents

Serving cost: .90 cents.

Eating healthy, homemade meals probably means dietary changes if you’re used to swinging through the drive through on a regular basis. Change can be difficult and fun. Try to avoid overwhelming everyone. You might cause a revolt. Keep it fun.

Meals – Ready – Eat… just add water…

Good morning folks!

Homesteader’s are all about being prepared. We spend summer tending the garden so we can can and preserve food supplies for winter. We make cheese to preserve the milk in a form that better stores. We stock the freezer with beef, pork and / or chicken… rabbit, deer and elk too for that matter… so we have meat supplies to last year around. For those who don’t homestead or for those who do homestead and would also like something extra in the pantry for a “just in case” moment, we have found freeze dried food kits to carry on the site.

The meals are freeze dried for a long term shelf life and are available in different durations of shelf life. Some of the meals are designed for a long camping or back packing trip, while others are designed for long term shelf life in the event of a crisis situation where supplies would be scarce. We have divided the ‘Ready eat Food Kits‘ up into Long Term Food Kits, Grab and Go Food Kits and Outdoor Life Food Kits.

The long term pouches will store for 25 years! Those with meat in the pouch have a much shorter life of 7 years. I won’t go into the process so much with this blog. Instead, I’d like to cover reviews of the taste. Jerri had the vendor send her some samples and she had them for dinner for several evenings. (I haven’t had a chance to try them yet, but I’m hoping to very soon). According to Jerri, they actually taste quite good! She was very surprised at the flavor and how easy it was to just add boiling water, wait the appropriate time and then dinner was served.

All in all , in the event of a long term power outage, a snow storm that locks you in for several days or events similar to those of Hurricane Katrina… these handy little pouches will ensure you’re able to eat when there is no access to food supplies.

I sincerely hope none of us ever need these supplies, though I certainly understand the need to be prepared. If we were to lose power long term, I’d be inclined to keep the freezer closed and try to keep the meat frozen for as long as possible!

Happy Homesteading!

Making the Ultimate Cheese Press

We found an amazing wood worker who lives here in Chino Valley and owns a shop in Prescott, Arizona. They make beautiful furniture and cabinets. Jerri was on a mission to find someone to build cheese presses for Homesteader’s Supply. This gave us control over the wood type, control over the quality and consistency we expected from a cheese press.
We moved away from pine and into a hardwood in the Mahogany family. It’s naturally resistant to bacteria and washes up nicely with simple soap and water. We had it finished with 100% Tung Oil which is FDA approved for food contact.

So, what’s involved in making the cheese presses? This big plate of wood took six hours to cut. The grooves were added to the bar that holds the hoops in place to keep the hoops from slipping off to the side when tightening down the follower. The knobs were designed to be easy to grip and clean. The followers were given grooves for gripping when needing to pull it out of the follower. All of these designs were developed over time when testing prototypes. It was actually a very fun process!!! After six hours, the parts were ready to be sanded free from the small bit of wood that secured them to the slab. Once they are all free, they are sanded and oiled with three coats of Tung Oil. with plenty of drying time in between. Finally the stainless steel hardware is added and the hoops are cut and sanded until ultimately….. You have the Homesteader’s Supply Ultimate Cheese Press!!!!

Homesteader’s Supply Ultimate Cheese Press

Real Women eat EMU Quiche!!!

Having a breeding pair of emu offers not only a bit of livestock guardianship… but also the blessing of six to ten eggs per year. Each egg is equal to approximately ten to twelve chicken eggs. Our emu laid an egg yesterday, so today we had a ONE EGG QUICHE!! Yes, in a 13 x 9 pan we used only ONE EGG! To say it was amazing, wonderful, delicious… well.. that’s an understatement!
Flaky pie crust was the foundation… then sauteed spinach, mushroom and half of a sweet onion… the addition of pork sausage crumbled, fried and drained… finally, some shredded cheese and the emu egg whipped with approximately one and a half cups of fresh milk… WOW!!!! We cut into it and not a bit of drainage in the pan… it cooked solid and the flavor was amazing… if you have access to emu eggs.. this is a must DO!!

Happy Homesteading!