Bold choice in my quest for jelly

So I "have to" deal with these delicious looking muskadines and scuppoernongs. It is time to make jelly. All I need are the berries, jars, pectin and sweetener. So my grocery envelope has 55 cents left and I have no pectin to make the jelly "gel."

What I do have is beef gelatin from my marshmallow experiment (part one, part two and part three). aside: I do believe I will be trying those again with honey this winter. Unfortunately I read online that animal based products lead to spoiling. Alas - but then I remembered... I bought agar powder! Agar is a red algae vegetarian substitute for gelatin. Now technically I need pectin, not gelatin. But I figure if the only reason not to use gelatin is the meat content - then I should be safe to use agar. Does my logic make sense?

So since there is no other website that I can find that has documented this much less gives the quantities - this will be an experiment in the highest degree. So I'm going to take you along the journey and see what happens....

12:15 p.m. Put Faith to nap and them wash all the berries.
12:20 p.m. Realize kitchen is in no shape to produce food - decide to clean kitchen first ;-)














12:40 p.m. Much better. Twenty minutes to clean and I even fielded a phone call about the caterer for our fundraiser dinner. Here's my Gracie washing the berries and removing (many of) the stems. :-)















1:45 p.m. Muskadines and Scuppernongs are lightly boiling, started cracking the peels and smelling quite lovely. Discovered that okra in fridge was getting desperate too - so cut and frying that right now as well.


1:50 p.m. Looked over some writing work and cranked up Explode the Code online for Gracie. Strained the juice through a colander, then through a lightweight cloth (from my cheese experiments). Set the juice to simmer for about half an hour. Feeling weak, realized I fed children and never ate. Well, looks like the okra will make a fine lunch ;-)


2:30 p.m. Added agar power, 2ish cups of grape juice and a half a cup of honey to sweeten. I kept adding agar power until I put a spoon in the fridge and it jelled! I have no idea how much I put in. Probably a couple of tablespoons? Stirred it in with a whisk (one of my favorite kitchen tools).




3:00 p.m. Boiled water in my stock pot to sterilize and proof the jelly.





3:30 p.m. Realized that full quart jars cannot fit with an inch of water boiling over the top of them. Perhaps should have bought pint jars, but I'm low on funds til Friday and couldn't go out anyway - Faith sleeping.










3:40 p.m. Water boiling - barely meeting the top of the lid. Hoping for the best. Realize I do not have a jar lifter. Called our neighbors to see if they had one, but they weren't home. Sterilizing the jars was already a little tricky using towels and hot mitts.

Catching you up - after they lightly boiled for 15 minutes, I removed them from the heat and very carefully lifted them out onto a towel. Babysitter arrived and we left for a staff social. When we arrived home I checked the jars.

They gelled and they sealed! If they actually taste good I will have reached the pinnacle goal of my afternoon (including finding a great price for food for our fundraiser dinner LOL). I'm going to save the taste test for tomorrow morning on my toast. I am pretty sure it tastes good though - I did some sampling to adjust for the desired sweetness. Thanks for joining me on the journey!

New Challenge for Natural Sweeteners

This week at the market, I was so excited that my "bag of CSA goodies" included both muskadines (right) and scuppernongs (left). If you not from the deep south, you may have no clue of the deliciousness of these wood grown wild grapes.

So here's the challenge - my favorite way to consume them is in the form of JELLY! But we gave up sugar - agh! So I am on a search to try to discover if it is possible (and etible) to make either unsweetened jelly or honey-sweetened jelly. I know I have some beef gelatin from my marshmallow experiments (saga part one, part two and part three). So join me (advise me ;-)) as I pursue another hilarious experiment in food preparation. BTW yogurt making with photos coming soon!

Off the fence - agave, friend or foe?

Okay, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it does seem to be that agave is not the super sweetener that it claims to be. It is super though - super concentrated fructose. Agave contains a much higher percentage of fructose even than the evil High Fructose Corn Syrup (boo, hiss)...."junk."

So although it does taste great, it is a not something you really want to consume in quantity. Dr. Mercola and the Weston Price Foundation have weighed in. The low glycemic index (which I thought was good) is apparently something we want triggered to tell us that we are consuming enough food.

Aside ; you'll never guess - bees are being forced to make honey year round and fed high fructose corn syrup. So that's another reason to buy your honey from a local source (nice amish folks have bees and sell honey at the Greensboro Curb Farmers Market). Oh bother (yes that was a reference made to Winnie the Pooh within the discussion of honey :-)

So in light of the research - what will our little family be doing?

Continuing to limit sweeteners. It's amazing how much less sweetener (honey this week) that it takes to make a blueberry muffin taste good. We're not throwing away the bit of agave we still have, we'll use it along with honey in recipes. Don't think we'll be buying more in quantity (i.e. by the gallon - ack!). The truth is I need to eat less sugar. This is hard because sugar - be it agave, honey, maple syrup or a big chocolate bar - is delicious. Personal discipline with sugars - another opportunity to rely on God for strength - I certainly can"t make it on my own. Have a great day!

Sabbatical from Agave

How long have I loved thee - agaveee?

I suppose it was too good to be true - a sweetener that has no strong taste or aftertaste - that dissolves immediately in liquid. I've heard rumors, caught a little article here and there saying that agave is more processed than we first expected. But I chose to ignore. This stuff is great - there are always nay-sayers.

Alas - two sources whom I trust - Dr. Mercola and the Weston Price Foundation (article by Dr. Ben Kim) both came out recently about the delicious liquid. Unfortunately not only regarding it's degree of "natural" but unfortunately its danger as well. I need to read more carefully and get all the facts straight. (I have been distracted by the other things happening in my life right now).

After I do some more research, I'll share a more put together blog about it. But to be cautious - we are taking a sabbatical from agave. We're now all about maple syrup and honey. I made honey chocolate cake and some honey brownies that were quite good. The cake is from another site, but the brownies are my own adaptation. Here's the recipe:

Brownies Sweetened with Honey
* Between 1.5 & 2 cups honey (depending how sweet you like it)
* 1 cup oil (usually I use 1/2 sunflower, 1/2 olive - all olive is a bit too much of the taste)
* 4 eggs
* 1.5 tsp vanilla
Mix all this together and then grab another bowl for the dry ingredients.
* 1.5 cups flour (it can handle all whole wheat, but for lighter brownies, try half naturally white flour)
* 1 tsp salt
* 1/2 cup of cocoa

Mix this well especially the cocoa chucks. If you are inclined you can sift it and it turns out better. I should, but I usually don't. Kitchen confessions ;-) Mix everything together and bake in a greased 13 x 9 pan in a 350 degree oven (if your oven runs hot - turn down to 325 or they won't taste as moist or sweet). Bake for about 20 minutes. Take out when the middle is firm, but not 100% completely done on top. This takes a little experimenting to see how to get them cooked just right. Happy Honey Cooking!

Success in Marshmallows

WARNING: Please read this post on the use of agave nectar before pursuing this recipe. I'm planning to attempt honey-sweetened marshmallows in the near future - so in the mean time - try organic cane juice.

Over the Christmas and New Years holidays, I finally had the opportunity to attempt the marshmallows. I followed the video and instructions from volcanic nectar website. I took a few pictures to share the process. After we left them to set overnight, we all enjoyed a cup of hot chocolate with a marshmallow on top. They were indeed the agave-sweetened kosher homemade marshmallows of my dreams.

Moving toward the Marshmallows

WARNING: Please read this post on the use of agave nectar before pursuing this recipe. I'm planning to attempt honey-sweetened marshmallows in the near future - so in the mean time - try organic cane juice.

Okay, I did participate in Black Friday. What an awesome, hilarious, adventurous day. I was up around 3:30 a.m. and found some excellent sweaters at J.C. Penny shortly after 4:00 a.m. I hit K-mart, Walgreens, Walmart and of course - Denny's for breakfast. I really didn't buy that much and spent very little (compared to previous years). This year I was about 90% done with Christmas shopping before Friday and now I'm around 95%. So what does this have to do with marshmallows? I bought a stand mixer for $15! It was about a $50 to $70 mixer so it is not a "top of the line." But I've never had a stand mixer before and I didn't want to invest an amount close to $200 on a try-it-out kitchen appliance. The instructions for marshmallows call for mixing for 15 minutes straight and that is a long time. I get tired from making whipping cream. That just reminds me - how cool will it be next time my mother-in-law visits and I don't have to stand there and whip the cream. Cool. So I just ordered beef gelatin powder from Lucky Vitamin (good prices). Agave marshmallows here we come. Watch for news!

Searching for Marshmallows

WARNING: Please read this post on the use of agave nectar before pursuing this recipe. I'm planning to attempt honey-sweetened marshmallows in the near future - so in the mean time - try organic cane juice.

The picture here (from www.cookingforengineers.com) shows an amazing plateful of homemade marshmallows that my heart's desire is to replicate.

It saddens me to say that after days of research (off and on of course) I think I am running out of options. As you know we have gone refined-sugar free and so my most versatile of sweeteners is the yummy agave nectar. Well, we also eat more or less an Old Testament diet which takes out all pork products. So I have been mousing and clicking away for a recipe that uses or can adapt agave nectar with non-pork gelatin for homemade marshmallows.

The research has been hopeful but ultimately discouraging. Most of the comments of using vegetarian gelatin in exchange for the regular Knox gelatin is that is down not "froth up" correctly. One person described their result as sweet, syrupy jello. Not what I am looking for. So my last hope is for finding gelatin that is from beef or chicken (without the pork) and giving that a shot with the agave nectar. Since the preparation requires mixing the ingredients for 15 minutes straight, (and I do not have a stand mixer) - I want to do all I can to make sure the end result is a success. I may be discouraged, but not defeated. Stay tuned for the ongoing marshmallow saga.

Bye Bye Sugar!

It's our family birthday! It has now been over a year since Pete and I gave up all refined sugars (white, powdered, corn syrup, anything that makes up most of our food choices).

Why? We get this question a lot. Some people are very good at "moderation." For years we tried all kinds of strategies to lower our sugar intake. We tried making sugar a weekend thing, having one serving a day, three a week, etc. They all failed because we are basically gluttonous people. :-)

So last October/November Pete was up late one night feeling shell-shocked from the pan of brownies that we had just consumed and made a discovery. He ended up on a website about drug and alcohol addiction. It was scary how similar the feelings we had about sugar were to drugs and alcohol. This was not a AA site. It was more intense. It suggested we just stop and never go back.

What?!?!?

Pete was pretty excited about his discovery and tried to share it with me the next day. I was less than enthused. After a couple of days (with Pete praying) I finally looked at the website (actually, Pete took me to the website and showed it to me). I thought - "Crap, we're really going to have to do this."

So we made a commitment and it was hard. What made it especially hard was trying to find substitutes for the things we used to enjoy that used natural sugars (honey, maple syrup, etc.). I made some "not so delicious almond butter and carob bars with honey for coaches training. We choked these down while sitting at table with bowls of M&M's right in front of us.

Fast forward a year...
It's great. I've learned to make brownies, cakes, blondies, pancakes, frosting and most recently cookies out of natural sugars that taste incredibly good. Next blog, I'll share a recipe for a natural dessert.