Polenta Fritta

Polenta is on the menu of just about every fancy schmancy restaurant I go to (I can be a fancy schmancy kind of girl), and if you order it as a side dish it might cost $8. That's a crazy markup since it costs like 10 cents to make. You can buy premade polenta in plastic tubes, but I can't :) So I make my own of course...and if you'd like to try, all you need is ground cornmeal, water or broth, and salt. Boil the water and add cornmeal while stirring until you get a thick batter. Reduce heat to medium, add salt to taste and cook, stirring fairly continuously, for about 30 minutes or until no longer grainy. Done! You can also add parmesan cheese or cream at the end to make it richer, or fresh herbs. If you would then like to have cute little fried cakes, spread the polenta on a cookie sheet and refrigerate until solid (a few hours). Slice into squares or triangles and fry them in a pan with olive oil.

Corn + asparagus + mushrooms = complete protein :)

Homemade yogurt and granola

Yogurt is one of the things that you can't really get without plastic packaging, so I decided to try making my own. I have to admit that the thought of growing my own bacteria scared me at first, but now I don't see why I was ever eating those disgusting cups of Yoplait! Its very easy; you just need to make sure you'll be around about 8 hours after you start :) Here's how to do it:

You'll need a tablespoon of plain yogurt per two cups of milk. Heat the milk until it just starts to boil, then remove it from the heat and let it cool to a temperature that you can stick your finger into without burning yourself (place the pot in ice water to speed up the process). Take the plain yogurt and stir in a few tablespoons of the warm milk. Stir that mixture into the rest of the milk and pour it all into a large thermos and put the lid on. If you don't have a thermos, you can turn your crockpot on low for a few minutes to heat it up, pour the mixture in, cover and wrap with a towel. Let it sit for 6-10 hours (the longer it cultures, the more tangy it will be). You can now use this yogurt as a starter to make your next batch. Cool huh?


I did recently buy a tub of plain yogurt because I let a batch go bad before making more. Luckily I don't have very many yogurt containers so I can still use it for bulk food shopping and for storing thing like...granola!

I attempted a recipe for granola that I found online, and found it easy to prepare, but difficult to bake. The problem is that it goes from uncooked to burnt faster than cookies, which aren't my strongest suite to begin with. Here is my first failed attempt:



Yikes! That poor pan has seen better days. But the ingredients were cheap so I made another batch and watched it more closely this time. This one came out more edible:




The result was tasty, but not the best granola I've ever had. My conclusion after all of this is that yogurt is worth making at home, but I should just buy granola from the bulk food isle. :)

Corn tortillas

I love tortillas, and since they are really only available in plastic bags, I decided to try making my own. Its almost disturbing how easy they are to make! Here's how:


First buy some "masa harina", or corn flour, which is available in the ethnic food section of most grocery stores. Add the appropriate amount of water and a dash of salt, and stir into a dough. Divide the dough into 2 inch balls.




Put one of the dough balls between two pieces of wax paper, and press it down into a 6 inch circle using something flat like the bottom of a pot. (In this picture I used one of those plastic cookie sheet liners, and pressed it with the rice cooker pot.)



Put a tiny bit of oil into a nonstick pan on medium heat, and cook the tortiallas for about a minute on each side. You can store them for about a week in the fridge, although they dry out a bit. I just sprinkled a bit of water on them and put them back on the stove for a minute to revive them, but I now think its just as easy to make a fresh batch. It literally takes 5 minutes to make a couple of fresh, hot tortillas. Love it...viva Mexico!