PoorMusician

Surely I could go ahead and add the rosemary or other spices to the cooking water, right? The broth would be the problem, not the spices. Would vegetable broth be safer? I've never stored grains before, but it's on this years list to do.

A jar with a scoop?!? What a novel idea! I've been doing this for my husbands breakfast for over a year and it honestly never occurred to me to do that! LOL I'm due for another batch soon and I think there might be a big change coming!

Has anyone used beer as bread leavening before? I'm really excited to try the Gallic recipe in this book.

There's some good suggestions here, but I thought I'd share what my husband and I figured out. Yes, if you're not using instant, grind oats to powder and add dry milk. It cooks much faster. My husband said this method didn't "stick to his ribs" as well, though. Dry milk does go bad, but get all the air you can out of your baggies and it'll make 60 days easy. We make individual bags of quick cook oatmeal (no grinding) with whatever seasonings he wanted. Then I freeze individual bags of reconstituted dry milk (with a bit of vanilla extract). I reuse the bags every batch (I do clean them :-) ) and all he does is throw a few in the fridge every few evenings. I do a month at a time, more when I get a good deal on dry milk. For the rare morning he doesn't have thawed milk (because I stole one, shhhh!), he just uses boiling water instead. I will say my husband likes his oats more savory and less sugary. One of his favorite flavors is a sausage seasoning blend that he adds apples/pears to. I can't comment on the coffee creamer cause I'm allergic, but my husband refuses to use it and he eats everything!

I'm going to try this today. I was given a container of oatmeal, but we don't like it for breakfast. I bet hubby loves this!

So I tried a batch of mozzarella today and it failed spectacularly! It's almost all whey - very little curd at all. I don't have any more rennet to try again, but I don't want to waste all this milk. What can I do? It's got the citric acid mixed in, is that gonna keep me from using it for something else. P.S. I don't want to just drink it.

I've scrubbed and scrubbed and feel really proud of getting through all that rust. But it won't fit into my oven facedown. Should I go ahead and build my firepit and dry over that? Plus, since I'll be making gumbo (which shouldn't stick) do I really need to season? I always start my roux by melting fat, so won't I be seasoning just by making roux?

I have just been given what I think is the most awesome gift ever - my great grandmothers gumbo pot. It's obviously designed to hang over flame, but has spent the last 30 years+ sitting in a shed. There's rust and a few spots of discoloration. Can I still cook with it? How do you tell if cast iron is ruined? Was there anything about the way they made cast iron back then that would be dangerous? We're thinking this was made 1912ish

I didn't realize the packets were reusable. I feel positively wasteful now! I guess I'll just give it a shot for a couple months and see what happens. Thanks!

Hi all, I've had a brain storm and I need some knowledgeable feedback. I keep a few different mixes on hand that last me about 12 weeks. I've been hunting for a cheap way to store the individual recipe amounts so I don't have to keep the entire mix buckets in my pantry. My eyes alighted on my stash of empty beer bottles - they look like they'd be just the right size and easy to store. Could I seal them with reusable silicone caps and oxygen absorbers? Would this be safe? They're all your basic ingredients: flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, dry milk and shortening. Link to the silicone caps in case: http://www.amazon.com/Beer-Saver-Reusable-Silicone-Bottle/dp/B00467QN54

I buy the Sunday paper and always have more uses for the black and white pages than I do pages. I've been told not to use the glossy color pages in the garden (where a lot of the paper ends up). So what can I use the glossy pages for? We don't have kids or pets. I'm not particularly crafty, but if there's something useful I can create, I'm ready to learn. Normally I put them with our recycling, but there's gotta be something I can do with all this paper. I feel like I miss an opportunity every week. Thanks!