Tammy's Recipes

From Coleen:

I've never frozen cheese. Can you freeze all types of cheeses? Is the texture the same? Do you leave it in the original wrapper? Any and all info would be VERY helpful.

Hi, Coleen!

I have frozen blocks of cheese like cheddar, mozzarella, pepperjack, colby, swiss, etc. I do freeze the blocks in their original wrappers.

The main difference I have noticed is that cheese that has been frozen tends to crumble when sliced or shredded. Different brands vary slightly, but in general the cheddar and mozzarella cheese seems quite crumbly after freezing.

For casseroles, pizza, or anything else requiring shredded cheese, the crumbles work great! For slicing or cubes, it doesn't work as well. :)

I'd love some more reader input on this one! What types of cheese have you frozen, and what were the results? :)

To participate in Kitchen Tip Tuesdays: Post a kitchen tip in your blog, with a link to this post. Then come here and add your name, tip subject, and URL to this post! Links must be family friendly, as always. If you don't have a blog but would still like to share a tip, just leave a comment here with your tip! Everyone's ideas are appreciated. :) Note: Please link to your individual post, not your blog's main/front page! Thanks for participating! :)

Our lawn mower is finally about done for. We were given a small push mower when we moved here 4 years ago, and one of my brothers fixed the problem it had. A couple years ago, the handle broke off of the deck and my dad was able to weld it back on, and he said the deck was so thin it wouldn't take any more welding in the future. Now, one of the back wheels plus part of the deck has broken off. I finished mowing backwards last week. ;)

For a replacement, we're thinking about a manual reel lawn mower. The kind that don't take gasoline. The kind that are quiet enough and safe enough to use with children playing outside in the yard. ;) The kind that, when you use them, they count as exercise. ;)

Have any of you had any experience with a reel lawn mower? What brand/kind is best? And is it really practical for me to plan on mowing our lawn with one?

Currently it takes me about 45-60 minutes to mow our lawn with the small push mower. If I really hurry and the grass isn't too long, I might be able to do it in 35 minutes. The lawn is pretty flat, but does have weeds in with the grass.

I do enjoy mowing the lawn. I've always thought it was fun! And I love the combination of endorphins from exercise along with a beautiful green lawn.

I really enjoy Julie's Recipe Box. Check out her great photo tutorial about making and canning strawberry jam! Absolutely beautiful.

Loretta at Vegan Footprints also has a great post (with lots of photos!) about making tofu in her African village. So fascinating!!

This Mexican lasagna recipe from Rebecca at Kitchen Riches looks delicious. Rebecca always has such yummy-looking recipes and photos! :)

Do I even need to blog anymore?! Seriously, there are so many great blogs out there. I greatly appreciate all of you who take the time to visit here. :)

(Italian beef and beans over pasta)

Joy wrote to me with this question:

I was wondering how you defrost something if you do not have a microwave. Ours just recently kicked the bucket after many years and we aren't in a hurry to get another one just yet. I only have one problem though: reheating leftovers (we eat quiet a few of them) and defrosting leftovers that I have frozen.

I defrost most things in the fridge, including leftovers. That method does involve planning ahead, but like anything, it's something a person adjusts to doing. :)

In a pinch, we thaw things in the sink or in a bowl of cold water. That method is not recommended for things that spoil easily -- like meats -- but it's safe for cheese or other things that can be at room temperature for several hours without harm. (The outside of the food will be warm while the inside finishes thawing.)

We do thaw chicken breast in a bowl of cold water sometimes, and it does not get too warm since on those occasions we are watching it and as soon as it is fully thawed (or even almost fully thawed!) we are using it. :) But, again, it is not recommended and therefore I cannot recommend that you do it. :)

For heating leftovers, we use either a small pan on the stove or the oven. With pans, I've learned from experimenting with which foods need lids, or a little water in the bottom, etc. Usually a lower heat and a slightly longer heating time is better than a hotter and fast heating time. :)

The oven is useful for things that were baked the first time around, like lasagna. I just put the leftover lasagna into a smaller oven dish and it's ready to be warmed back up! Usually 350 degrees, covered (so the food doesn't dry out) for about 30 minutes works for me.

We warm leftover pizza by placing the slices on a pizza pan, putting it in the oven, and then turning the oven on to 375 degrees. In 10 minutes, the pizza is perfect. At least, that's what works with our oven. :) I've also heard that you can warm leftover pizza in a non-stick skillet with a lid.

Does anyone else have any defrosting and reheating tips for Joy? Please share! :)

Juicy and tender oven-roasted chicken, served with veggies and mashed potatoes!

Speaking of oven-roasted chicken, Amy wrote to me:

I was just reading your oven-roasted chicken recipe. Looks really good! Is there a way you can do that in a crock pot? I love my crock pot and would love to be able to roast chicken in it!

I still haven't tried doing it in the crock pot, but I know some of you have. Can anyone tell Amy and me what temperature you used and how many hours you did? :)

The mashed potatoes had some freshly chopped chives from our garden. We were kinda clueless about how to harvest chives without killing our plants, but I guess it's pretty simple: snip chives two inches above the ground. They grow back fast, too!

The aroma of fresh chives is so wonderful!! Makes me want a homemade bagel with cream cheese and chives spread on it. :)

(I used my kitchen scissors to cut the chives)

Ruth and I had fun playing with my sister Bonnie's webcam (in her laptop) last evening. :)

It was 9pm, and the boys were asleep... but little Ruth (6 months) thought it was playtime!

Taking pictures was fun! Posing was tricky though. I had never used a webcam before. :)

Roxanne asked:

I really expected to see a freezer in one of your pictures. You always post about having pizza crusts, meat, muffins, and all sorts of things in your freezer. I wonder how you have room for all that if you don't have a stand alone freezer?

Hi, Roxanne!

First, remember that we are a small family (2 adults and 2 children eating!) so a "month's supply" of meatballs, pepperoni, etc. is less for our family than for a larger family, or a family with more adult eaters. :)

My freezer (on top of the fridge) is usually quite full. I keep it well-organized and stocked with things we will actually use/eat, so no space is wasted. :)

Our beef is all cooked and vacuum sealed (like taco meat, meatballs, meat for casseroles, etc.) which saves a lot of space. :) I also have cooked cubed chicken meat which is vacuum sealed (leftover meat from roasted chickens).

I can't usually fit more than 1 or 2 whole chickens in the freezer, so when I buy a new one, I take one out and put it in the fridge to thaw. :)

I do like to have some baked goods like cookies, muffins or banana bread in the freezer for Joshua's lunches. I stack the food neatly into bags and suck out the extra air. I still don't usually have more than a 2-week supply of that sort of thing in the freezer though. :)

The pizza crusts -- well, a couple of years ago we used this pizza recipe that involved a pre-baked crust, and I would keep 1 or 2 of those in the freezer. Then, we discovered this easy pizza method, and have been doing that ever since! It's still pretty quick, and we like the crust better. :)

Frozen pie dough, chicken broth, cooked (from dried) beans, and things like that are not regular staples of my freezer, but when I have extras of those things, I freeze them until I need them -- they don't all take up space in there simultaneously though. :)

In my freezer I also keep some nuts, 1 small tray of ice (we don't use much ice at all, as we almost always drink plain water that is at room temperature!), some dry yeast, and blocks of cheese from recent sales (blocks of cheese stack better than bags of shredded!). I also fit in as many frozen peas and other vegetables as possible.

When I said my freezer was well-organized and packed, I meant it... when taken out, the food is a huge pile on our kitchen table!! I have learned how to make the most of every inch.

And yes... at the grocery store we do sometimes choose to buy chicken or veggies and not the ice cream since we wouldn't have room for it. I think having a relatively small amount of freezer space makes me prioritize (veggies over ice cream) and think creatively (I try to dehydrate or can things when possible rather than freezing), and so far, it's been great. :) Perhaps someday with a huge garden and lots of mouths to feed, I will need a larger freezer -- but until it will save me money, I'll wait. :)

I store my cheese in the door of the freezer. I have quite a stockpile right now from the last time Kroger's had a sale. We bought a Kroger gift card because they were running a special promotion -- we paid $300 for the card, and it had $330 put on it to use. That very same day, we bought about $100 of beef that was on sale (to put in the freezer).

Here's a good kitchen tip: Don't buy Teflon/non-stick bakeware. It's not healthy and it wears out quickly! Okay, so some of you might disagree with me about that...

When we got married, I followed all of the directions regarding my non-stick bakeware, but it still wore out within 2 years' time. I vowed to replace my bakeware with stainless steel or glass as each piece wore out -- and if we couldn't afford stainless steel or glass at the time, I'd make do until we could!

I have, however, saved a couple of the worn-out baking sheets. They make a great drip pan in the oven... under roasted chickens, under pies, under a cake that's overflowing into a disastrous mess... you get the idea. :)

To participate in Kitchen Tip Tuesdays: Post a kitchen tip in your blog, with a link to this post. Then come here and add your name, tip subject, and URL to this post! Links must be family friendly, as always. If you don't have a blog but would still like to share a tip, just leave a comment here with your tip! Everyone's ideas are appreciated. :) Note: Please link to your individual post, not your blog's main/front page! Thanks for participating! :)

Hot fresh loaves of bread on my kitchen table at 8:25 this evening... so very very delicious!! Homemade bread is one of my favorite foods.

Unfortunately, something called "portion control" means I can't eat 4 or 5 or more slices... especially at 8:30 at night. One thin slice for me... but I savored every bite!!

A quick and delicious lunch last week -- scrambled eggs, mixed veggies, and homemade bread. :)

Tomorrow starts a new schedule of sorts for me... including a 5:30am rise time instead of "whenever the children wake up" which was usually between 6:30 and 7am. I really am a "morning person"... if I can get myself awake first. I am hoping to be more disciplined about going to bed on time, which would allow me to be more productive during my waking hours. :)

Compared to my last garden picture -- two weeks makes an incredible difference when it comes to growing vegetables! Our garden is thriving, and we're enjoying it so much! Every day we walk out to pull a few weeds, inspect the plants, and exclaim over the green tomatoes and peppers that are starting to form. :)

I just can't believe that this is our 5th summer here at our rental house and the first time we've grown any food. What were we thinking?! This gardening stuff is addicting.

Our tomatoes are looking great -- although they are so huge that it may be difficult to get back in there and pick. We'll see. Good thing we re-planted them and didn't leave the as close together as I originally planted them!! We haven't had any horn worms yet this year -- yay! :)

The onions aren't doing so well... most likely due to the fact that it was June before we planted them.

The peppers are looking great. I'm hoping to use some of our pimento peppers for Bethany's jalapeno poppers recipe. Yum... :)

Our yellow squash plants and cucumbers are currently under attack. Small yellow and black striped bugs have been eating the leaves of the plants! We've been going out several times each day and killing as many of the little bugs as we can. Left to their own devices, the bugs could easily wipe out our chances of having a squash or cucumber crop this year... :P

I seem to have dozens of things I would like to do each day, but limited time to devote to personal endeavors. Thanks for your understanding and patience! My inbox is overflowing, I have about a gig of photos that have been taken for various recipes and blog posts, and my dishes need done. :)

One of the things that I've been "behind" in is posting new recipes here! Sure, we still make our old standbys like pizza... but we've tried new things and I have some great recipes just waiting to be typed up. :)

My parents' mulberry trees are loaded with huge, juicy mulberries this year. The berries are the size of blackberries! Joshua and I have been over there a few times and picked several gallons of berries! My mom has been making pies, too.

My mom gave me the recipe she follows for mulberry pie, and my sister took a picture of it for us. As you can see, we do eat the stems of our mulberries! :)

This mulberry pie recipe uses lemon to balance the sweetness of the berries. Each pie has only 1/3 cup sugar, since we use the really ripe black mulberries. :)

Besides pies, what are your favorite uses for mulberries? :)

(homemade wheat bread)

Sheila wrote with a question about slicing fresh bread:

Whenever I have made fresh bread, which has been a while, I have never been able to slice it well. It always comes out crooked or in big chunks.

My husband is going to install our old Chambers stove out on the back deck so I can cook/bake without heating up the house. (We live in Texas where it can hit 100 degrees by mid morning!)

I would like to start baking bread again, but was wondering how you slice your bread. Is there a special trick to it?

Hi, Sheila!

I have an electric knife, which is the easiest way for me to slice loaves of bread. The knife was a wedding gift, but I think they are fairly inexpensive ($10 perhaps?).

If I'm just slicing a fresh loaf for with dinner, any sharp, thin serrated knife works pretty well, also. If I have two or more loaves (or a huge loaf of garlic bread!) I get out the electric knife and use that. With practice, the electric knife can produce picture-perfect thick or thin slices of bread -- and it's faster, too.

When the bread is really fresh (cooled or slightly cooled, but not yet bagged) the crust tends to produce more crumbs during slicing.

If you don't need the loaf immediately, you can put the (cool) loaf into a bag, tie it shut, and slice it later. This will mean fewer crumbs since the crust will have softened up.

Here is my current fresh-out-of-the-oven routine:

1. Remove pans of bread from the oven and place pans on cooling racks.

2. Immediately grease or butter the tops of the bread (still in pans).

3. Cover bread with a clean towel (or two).

4. After about 5-7 minutes, remove loaves from the pans (Waiting makes the crust softer, a tip I learned from Tanya's blog!).

5. Cover loaves with the towels until completely cool.

6. Slice bread and place loaves into bags and tie shut.

If you're not using any dough conditioners and you made several loaves of bread, you can put loaves into the freezer as soon as they're cool and sliced. Thaw loaves in the bag (sealed, to keep out condensation) on the counter several hours before using.

What's your fresh-from-the-oven bread routine? I'd love to hear! :)

For anyone interested: I posted an update to my blog entry about making homemade deodorant.

The short story: Even though I wasn't that impressed after 3 weeks of using my homemade deodorant, I decided to keep using it since it was healthy and I had already mixed it up.

Now, several months later, I really like the deodorant! Check out the original post for more details. :) 

Linda wrote to me with this question:

I would like to ask you about your compost bin. I followed your idea in making one also, but I was wondering if you have problems with maggots in your compost? I feel like I am raising flies!

We do sometimes have maggots in our compost bin. I think they're pretty gross, but they're just a normal part of life. :) This article has more information about maggots in compost bins/piles.

From my understanding, there are two types of fly larvae that can be found in compost piles. If you don't compost meat, dairy, or oil, then the fly larvae you find would be from the soldier fly.

"Adults [of the soldier fly] feed and lay eggs on food waste (such as in a composter or uncovered compost pile), especially where conditions are moist.

"The adults will emerge, mate and die in two days. The adult flies are black and often are mistaken for black wasps, said Wise. They do not bite or carry disease, as they have no hair on their legs." (see article)

Birds and chickens love maggots, so if you find some in your compost, you can always leave the lid off for a bit and let some birds have a snack! :)

To avoid maggots in the compost, bury any nitrogen-rich materials (like kitchen scraps) under several inches of carbon (brown) materials in your pile or bin. Another suggestion I read was to cover your compost with a fine screen to keep flies from laying eggs on it.

I was told by the health department here that a properly done compost pile would have absolutely no insects on or near it, ever. I'm guessing that if I only used leaves and grass clippings in our pile, that might be the case. But putting banana peels (even under a pile of leaves!) out in the warm summer air is going to attract flies or gnats. 

I was also reading this interesting note about composting chicken bones:

"I compost chicken bones too, they get progressively weaker/thinner each time I screen out a batch of new compost. Usually I'll snap them in half a couple times before they disappear." (from this page)

Composting information usually tells us not to try to compost bones, but what are the alternatives? Burning them, or putting them in the landfill? Bones naturally break down over time (a long time, yes, but still!).

When we first started our compost pile (3+ years ago now) I put some chicken bones in, as well as some beef rib bones. When we re-worked our compost pile, taking the top off and mixing the remaining compost into our garden plot, we did find the beef rib bones (those things are huge and I just stuck them into our bin to see what happens) but no chicken bones.

I love Bethany's go for it attitude!

I have always wanted to learn how to can stuff, but never thought I'd learn how. With all of the bounty of the fruits this year, I figured I HAD to learn how to do it, so that I can preserve all of this stuff. I would hate for it to all go to waste...

I spent hours reading articles on the internet about canning, then bought myself a pressure canner, read the booklet that came with it, till I was confident enough to start, and got stuff ready to can.

Read the rest of her post and see her beautiful food photos!

If you're not already a regular reader of Bethany's blog, I highly recommend it! Whether it's pictures of the newest recipe she's tried, the progression of her murals, cute things her children have said or done, or thoughtful ponderings about pregnancy loss, Bethany has the sweetest spirit! Her blog is truly one that brightens my day. :)

It seems like I've been on the topic of pantries and food storage for weeks now, and I guess I really have. I've got one last post on the topic: pictures of my "pantry", as requested by a reader(s?).

My "pantry" is our enclosed porch, and it's nothing extra special... but it's SPACE... wonderful space which I didn't have when we lived in a 600-sq.ft. apartment. :)

(Click here to see the photos... they're rather large)

To participate in Kitchen Tip Tuesdays: Post a kitchen tip in your blog, with a link to this post. Then come here and add your name, tip subject, and URL to this post! Links must be family friendly, as always. If you don't have a blog but would still like to share a tip, just leave a comment here with your tip! Everyone's ideas are appreciated. :) Note: Please link to your individual post, not your blog's main/front page! Thanks for participating! :)

(Joshua's Grilled Chicken Pizza,
which we served to guests on Friday)

No matter how much I try to prepare in advance, there always seems to be some last-minute chaos when we're expecting company. I already know better than to plan a bunch of foods that require last-minute care, since I can't visit with folks while I cook without forgetting something important.

But somehow, usually a number of things conspire together to ensure that the floor isn't too clean, the dishes aren't all caught up, my clothes sport a few stains, and my humility level remains intact.

Friday was one such day. Guests were scheduled for 11:30am lunch.

Thursday evening about 9 o'clock, our neighbor knocked on our door and handed me several gallons of dark red sour cherries. She asked me if we could make her two pies with part of them. I appreciated the food, but was already envisioning the many hours of labor required to wash cherries, pit cherries, make pie filling, make pie crust, and assemble the pies.

I got the children off to bed (our summer hours are shorter on sleep than our winter ones!), washed dishes, and cleaned up the kitchen. I was feeling a little overwhelmed knowing that we had to be ready for company the next morning, along with doing up all the cherries (which looked like they wouldn't keep for more than a couple of days... and the next day was Sabbath!).

I went to bed about 1am, leaving a note for Joshua about the cherries and the next day's menu (pizza, fresh bread, cherry pie!).

My AMAZING husband got up early and started on my work. When I awoke at 7am, Joshua had ground flour and made two loaves of bread, made pie crust, and washed the cherries. We pitted the cherries (we both worked for about 1 1/2 hours to pit them all!), finished the pies (recipe coming soon), and then started on the grilled chicken pizza for lunch. My pies were filled too full and ran over in the oven, so I had to clean that before we could bake pizza.

Joshua and I worked as fast as we could all morning and at 11am we were starting to wipe down the table, take out the trash/compost, sweep the floor, etc. I was still in my cherry-spotted shirt and my hair hadn't been touched. As I stepped out the back door with the trash, our guests arrived.

Oh, well, I guess it's not like we're the only people who make a mess of the kitchen when there's work that needs done.

And it's a good thing we have company regularly... it gives me a sort of "deadline" and keeps me on my toes! :) Also: see Meredith's related thoughts here. :)

A number of months ago, I came across this free sample offer from Skin Md Naturals: a bottle of lotion in exchange for writing an honest review here on my blog. (For those of you with blogs, it looks like this offer is still open, by the way!)

Well, I can write an honest review of something -- and a bottle of lotion sounded like fun, especially since it was winter at the time and my hands were very dry.

First the good: Skin MD Naturals has an informative website with lots of info about every single ingredient in their lotion. If only every company that made skin care products would be so open about what they put in them!

Now, the not-so-good: Although the lotion doesn't contain fragrance, it does have a distinct smell which I found rather annoying after the first couple of uses.

At $18 for 4 ounces, Skin MD Naturals lotion is rather pricey. If it truly produced amazing results, the price night be acceptable (depends how desperate you are). Unfortunately, my hands didn't like their lotion.

I wanted to use the lotion for at least a couple of weeks before giving my opinion on it, and after about a week, I started having eczema issues with my hands. I stopped using the lotion and within another week, my eczema was cleared up. To be sure it was caused by something in the lotion, I used it for a couple more days, during which time the eczema returned. I stopped using the lotion once again, and again the eczema disappeared.

My guess is that my skin is sensitive to something in the lotion, and I plan to give away the rest of what's in my bottle (I'd pass it on to Joshua, but the smell aggravates his allergies and his hands are never dry anyway!).

When there's fresh food from the garden, it's easy to plan the menu!

Joshua: What's for dinner, Hon?

Me: I thought we'd have salad... and asparagus... and strawberry shortcake. Hey, will you grill some chicken for the salad?

Joshua (thinking): I guess that's the only way I'm getting any meat with this meal... ;)

Yes, I read his mind. Well, not really... but I could see him visibly wilt when I said "asparagus" since we'd already had asparagus once a day for the past 2 weeks.

The word "salad" elicits the same sort of reaction (I'm not creative enough when it comes to salads... that or else I'm just lazy!) but suggesting some grilled chicken did the trick.

(Read more for a photo tour of our meal "from the garden"!)