Not so hard, if you follow a few steps

Today’s post will be short, and spicy! I am going to show you how to make your own dried chilies, and once you are done, you will have some dried chilies that will KILL those other shitty dried out husks you can buy.

Sure, they are a bit more expensive than the can of crushed chilies you can buy, but hey, the flavor is better, the quality is better, and you know how they were grown.

Buy them from a farmer that doesn’t use slave labor to harvest them. Better yet, you could get some if you belong to a CSA, or grow some in your own Liberty Garden.

It won’t take a couple of minutes; rather it will take around 8 hours. Don’t sweat it, I do it before I go to bed. This is yet another case of letting my oven work for me while I sleep.

Enough! It’s not like I’m not trying to entice you into the sack, so let’s get to business.

4 Simple Steps to Drying Chilies

1. Wash your chilies, and pick out any that are not up to par. Remember, if you wouldn’t use it right now fresh, it won’t be good dried.
2. Spread your chilies out on a baking sheet with a layer of parchment. Make sure there is space in between the individual chilies so the drying air can reach all areas.
3. Heat your oven to 175°F, and set the baking sheet into the oven. (I have a “Warm” button, and that is what I use.) If you can’t go that low, or don’t have the button, set your oven to 200°F.
4. Go to bed, and when you wake up 6 to 8 hours later, your chilies will be ready. Pull them out, cool them, and package them in an air-tight container.

That’s it folks! Let me know how it goes!

I recently posted an attempt to make an ice cream suitable for a diabetic. Here is another popular flavor, strawberry.

There were some pitfalls in the last batch, namely the graininess after the ice cream was spun. There were a few great comments to how to avoid that scenario, and it got me to thinking.

What if I used a natural thickener to set my ice cream? One could use stabilizers, algae, or gelatin to set up the ice cream. The idea is to replace the structure of the sugar in the ice cream so it does not freeze into a solid block.

Today I thought I would try my hand at using yogurt. The milk is naturally thickened by the bacteria in the yogurt, and it would also have a creamier profile.

I make yogurt regularly, and I have a great post on how to do that. There is a little fore planning for this recipe, unless you replace it with commercially prepared yogurt. Be careful to use a Balkan style though, as you don’t want a yogurt that is thickened with gums and gelatin. Look for something around 6 to 10% milk fat.

The other key to this recipe is using local fruit. If you just buy those disgusting huge strawberries that are pure white when you cut into the center, you need to add more sugar to coax the flavor out of them. I prefer to eat my sugar naturally, thank you.

I am lucky enough to live in Quebec, and I have a bit of strawberries growing in my back yard. I supplemented the amount by going to the local market. This year is a bit expensive for strawberries, as it has rained like crazy. In the end though, I ended up paying less than half than for the fake strawberries you see at the grocery store.

Blend strawberries, eggs, cream, yogurt, and Sugar Twin together with a hand-blender

Since I was going to use a hand blender today, I made this into a 1 bowl affair. It worked out pretty good, and my other half was not as vexed with the amount of dishes.

No graininess, and a couple of spoonfulls missing.

The mixture spun up really good, and there was no sign of the graininess like before. My son could not wait, so I had to give him a few spoonfuls to tide him over. That was a good sign.

Here's a trick: cover the top of your ice cream to prevent a skin from forming.

The ice cream held its own, and was a sucess. I was not so sure of the Sugar Twin, but in the end it turned out great. If you knew it was in there, you could tell. My wife and son ate it without complaint, so speaks volumes.

Wow, good enough for a Diabetic!

The next ice cream I am going to try out will have Stevia leaves for sweetening. For that, I will be making the most popular flavor of all, Vanilla!

Quebec Strawberry Ice Cream

Inspired by Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book pg 54

Serves: 8

Calories per serving: (4 ounces): 123.99

Carbohydrates: 7.26 grams

Ingredients:

• 1 pint fresh Quebec strawberries, hulled, chopped (you can use your own local strawberries, just please… local only!)
• 1 cup Sugar Twin
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 2 cups whipping cream
• 1 cup yogurt (preferably homemade or at least 6% milkfat)
• 2 free-range organic eggs

Method:

1. Combine strawberries, Sugar Twin, and lemon juice together in a large bowl. Toss together, and place into the fridge to macerate for at least an hour, (or overnight.)
2. Take out the bowl, add the cream, yogurt, and eggs. Grab your hand blender and blend the works until it is smooth. Some people prefer to have chunks in their ice cream. If that is you, go ahead and take out half first the strawberries at first, then add them back  in the next step.
3. Add your ice cream to your maker according to the manufacturer;s instructions. When the ice cream is ready, taste a few spoonfulls, then place it into a container, covering the top with plastic wrap before putting on the lid.

Why can’t a Diabetic enjoy ice cream?

Something that bothered me about my Diabetes diagnosis was the things I had to give up. Ice cream is one of those things. Nothing says summer like a nice bowl of ice cream. Today’s post will attempt to bring back what Diabetics are forbidden to have: Ice Cream!

I recently had the displeasure of eating what passed as “ice cream” for diabetics at an ice cream stand. Trouble was, it tasted like plastic. The experience wasn’t all that great, but it got me to thinking:

What is ice cream?

Basically: air, cream (or milk for those misguided fat-free crowd), sweetener, and eggs.

Of course, it goes without saying that sugar as a sweetener is what gives us Diabetics the most trouble.

What if we used another sweetening agent instead? There are so many different products to sweeten with that I decided to make a Facebook Page just for Diabetic Ice Cream experiments.

What follows is today’s experiment, using an awesome ice cream machine, the Cuisinart ICE 50-BC (link goes to my Amazon store page). Of course, you don’t need a fancy machine to make this ice cream, but it sure helps.

Here is the experiment:

Today I will experiment with Splenda. The results will be at the end, with the recipe.

Start with 2 free range eggs

Here you see an action shot! Whisk those eggs until they are frothy!

Wait! You mean you are not going to cook them? Before you balk at not cooking the eggs, remember that if your eggs are fresh, it’s okay to eat them raw. For example, you would eat raw eggs when you eat mayonnaise.

Why not cook them like all those other recipes say? The reason is the mixture would thicken like a custard, and have a cooked flavor. There is enough fat in this mixture that we can enjoy the fresh taste of the cream and milk. Besides, I don’t like to heat Splenda from the packets. In coffee it is fine, but I have never had success with other heating applications with the packets. Perhaps the bulk Splenda is different.

In another bowl, 1 Cup of half-and-half

Some recipes will call for milk. I replaced it with half-and-half to up the fat content. Understand this people – the fat in ice cream is not what makes you gain the weight. It’s the sugar!

Add 2 cups heavy cream to the half-and-half in the bowl.

A quick aside here… I love Martha Stewart! Seriously, I love her magazines. I recently took a quiz on her site to see if I was a “master chef or a novice cook?” I got 9 out of 10! One of the questions was on how you measure liquids. You can see I did not really measure this at eye level. I will tell you a secret though – we don’t use liquid measurements in a professional kitchen. We use a scale. But I digress… back to the ice cream at hand!

Add 2 tablespoons of Premium freeze-dried coffee to the cream mixtures. Yes, that is bacon in the background! I was eating my breakfast while preparing for this post!

Yes, it’s a shortcut. Thing is, I could probably make some double strength espresso, incorporate it into the mix. Truth though, this way isn’t so bad. Sometimes you can make a compromise and not affect the flavor. In this case, the flavor is superior to the espresso.

Add in 4 tablespoons of cocoa powder to the bowl.

My favorite cacao powder is Barry Extra Brut. You can get it by clicking on that link that goes to my Amazon store. I like to put it into a plastic container so it will keep almost indefinitely.

Add in 18 packets of Splenda to the bowl.

Wow! You’re asking yourself, “Why doesn’t he just add in the baking Splenda?” Good question. I didn’t feel like buying a whole box of the stuff, and I had some leftover for my morning coffee before I discovered Stevia, so why not use them up? Find out how that turned out later…

Whisk everything together to blend ... sort of.

Don’t get too carried away about blending the mixture. The eggs are coming next, you’ll get another chance. The main problem is incorporating the cacao powder with the liquids…

Pour and whisk the eggs into to the chocolate mixture.

Pour the eggs into the chocolate mixture. Why use another bowl to whip the eggs WDC?

I think it is only to annoy my wife. See, she hates it when I have so many different dishes for one recipe. I really can’t think of another reason.

Whisk for all your might!

Here’s your second chance to mix the works up. Once the mixture is homogenized, you can stop. (I just had to slip that big word in there!)

This is why I am fat - I can't resist the tasting of food!

Taste the mixture. Keep in mind that it might be a little sweeter than you are used to cold. The sweet sensation will dissipate with the cold, so keep that in mind. You may have to adjust the sweetness with another packet or two of Splenda. Of course, I always use that as an excuse to “test” things out. See if it works for you!

The Monster Ice Cream Machine!

Worth every penny folks! This machine will pay for itself in, uhh, 2 or so years. The best part? You don’t have to freeze the bowl to make ice cream. It has it’s own refrigeration unit inside. The downside? It weighs a tonne, and can’t exactly go on your counter.

Another bad point is your significant other might curse it when they trip over it in the kitchen floor. But… back to this post!

Turn the motor on, then add the ice cream mixture in a thread through the hole.

The machine is loud, but if your significant other just turns up the T.V., all will be well in the household. Alternately, you could put the machine in the bathroom with the door closed. Excessive, but if it avoids an argument? Why not!

Spin the ice cream mixture for 30 to 60 minutes.

The number 1 ingredient in ice cream is air. The reason it tastes so light and fluffy is because of the air that is worked into it. If you don’t have a machine, the ice cream won’t be as nice because the ice cream mixture will freeze into crystals. The paddles on the machine break the crystals as they freeze, and incorporate more air into the mixture as they swoop through the mix.

The amount of air added into the ice cream is called “overrun”, and is the main reason you see gums and thickening agents added to commercial ice creams. Enough theory!

Of course, if you don't have that huge monster machine, you could just put it into a bowl for the freezer

If you don’t have a fancy machine, you can opt for the freezer method. Put the bowl into the freezer, and set a timer for every 5 minutes. When it goes off, pull out your bowl and whisk the ingredients together. Repeat those steps until the mixture resembles a slightly melted ice cream. It will not be as nice, and it will be a major pain in the ass. (Especially if your significant other is trying to catch up on their PVR shows and the alarm goes off every 5 minutes!)

Put the ice cream into a container with a piece of plastic touching the ice cream's top. Then place a lid over it.

No, your ice cream is not ready yet! It will need some curing time in the freezer first. If you must, you could give out a few tablespoons here and there as a taste, but avoid eating too much. It will be too soft!

After a couple of hours, your ice cream will be hard enough to scoop, and you will have this deliciousness to eat!

The results:

The ice cream turned out a little bit grainy. I think it was due to the Splenda. The cream base just did not lend well to the smoothness that I usually like with ice cream. It could be that I left the mixture too long in the bowl as well. Overall, the ice cream was not bad, certainly better than plastic! I think I will try with some Sweet n’ Low next time and see what happens.

The recipe:

Diabetic Mocha Ice Cream

Inspired by Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book pg 72

Serves: 8

Calories per serving (4 oz): 275

Carbohydrates per serving: 6.37 grams

Ingredients:

• 2 free-range chicken eggs
• 1 cup half-and-half cream
• 2 cups whipping cream
• 2 tablespoons Barry Extra-Brut cacao powder
• 4 tablespoons freeze dried coffee
• 18 packages Splenda

Method:

1. Whisk eggs together until frothy. In a separate bowl, combine half-and-half cream, whipping cream, cacao powder, instant coffee and Splenda together. Whisk the mixture until incorporated, then add in whisked eggs. Whip the mixture together until the mixture is homogeneous.
2. Set up ice cream maker according to instructions; add the ice cream mixture to the bowl while it is spinning. Process according to your ice cream makers instructions. (It should take almost 30 minutes to an hour.)
3. Alternately, if you do not have an ice cream maker, you can put the bowl into the freezer with a whisk inside. Set a timer for 5 minutes, whisk the mixture, and replace it into the freezer, resetting the timer for 5 minutes. Repeat as necessary until the ice cream mixture is soft.
4. Remove the ice cream from the maker, and place it into a container with a tight-fitting lid. Make sure to put a layer of plastic on top of the surface of the ice cream to avoid ice crystals from forming. Freeze for a couple of hours to let the ice cream set.

Definitely make it!

Make it or buy it?

By the end of this post, I will have you making yogurt. Not because it is the right thing to do, or it is cheaper. I will have you making yogurt because it is stupidly easy to do it.

I came across this funky site the other day while trawling through my RSS news items. A woman cooked her meals in a crock pot for an entire year. Then my eye caught a post about making your own yogurt.

I have failed with yogurt before. Epic fail. Not as bad as the last post here, but failure nonetheless.

The post promised I could do it in a crock pot. I was going to the Mother-in-law’s anyway. A quick phone call confirmed she had a crock pot. Like me, she is always willing to try something new.

Trip to the store:

• 5.95$ for milk (3.25%)
• 3.95 for yogurt starter
• 9.90$ to start

I bought this lovely starter

The result?

• I used 2 bags of the milk. (2.666L) = 3.47$
• I used 15 grams of the culture = 1.98$
• Total cost = 5.45$

Total yield: 3 liters – price per liter = 1.82$

Keep in mind that yogurt is sold right now in 750g (or less) containers (which is 750 mL)

I bought the flavored stuff for 2 for 5$

Price per liter = 3.33$

The flavor of the yogurt was out of this world. Nothing can compare to it. It was naturally thick, with no gelatin or stabilizers. It was not sour, just the right amount of acidity. If I want fruit with it, I can mix in whatever I want.

In the end, this is definitely Make It.