musings of a bardic kitchen witch

I've been wanting to make labneh for a while now.  Labneh is strained yogurt, also known as yogurt cheese.  The title is a little misleading, because when most people think cheese, they think curds and chunks and crumbles.  My labneh came out about as thick as sour cream, which is hella exciting.  It still has the sourness of yogurt, so I might go as far as to say it's halfway between sour cream and cream cheese. That being said, I was thinking on what to do with it.  I added a little salt, but then I remembered that I had a packet of Hidden Valley Ranch seasoning in my cupboard that I was originally going to use for a crockpot recipe I didn't go through with.  So I stuck it in, gave it a stir, added some garlic juice, and omg .  So tasty! I did the math using a few sources on line, and I discovered that the calories per cup with the strain/reduce has 87% less calories.  That means my yogurt has gone from 120 calories per cup to 105 calories p...

I made the pie.  It was delicious. Still haven't made the tuna casserole.  But I did make my curry creamed spinach with a couple little adjustments, since I had heavy cream on hand.  I'm very pleased with it. And it turned out that my bread wasn't stale.  I just shouldn't have left that particular kind of bread in the fridge.  I typically keep my sandwich bread in the fridge because it doesn't turn green as quickly, but a rustic loaf bread gets hard.  Lesson learned. I just bought this amazing honey.  I've had it before, but I bought it again because I had been craving it.  It's Trader Joe's hickory honey.  I'm planning to make Chinese Honey Chicken in the future, once I pick up a spider skimmer.  There's no rush, obviously, because honey doesn't go bad so fast.  I might just cheat and make the sauce, then buy some fried wings and toss 'em or something.  I'm not very good at deep fat frying things T_T. I'm also very in...

I love it. I love to cook with it.  When I mention that I cook with bacon grease, I get reactions between brow raises and "eeeewww"s, but hear me out. Everything tastes better with bacon. Seriously.  I'm not saying replace your butter with bacon, but sometimes?  Replace your butter with bacon.  Or at least half of it.  Consider, if you will, pan fries or hash browns.  What do you cook 'em in?  Butter?  Oil?  Try bacon grease.  Now your pan fries/hash browns are 100% more awesome. Cooking onions?  Bacon grease. Making apple sauce to pour over your pork chops or your (non-kosher) potato pancakes?  Bacon grease. Mashed potatoes? Noodle dish that needs a little more oomph? Roasted veggies? Green beans? Corn Muffins? Bread crumb topping? Beschamel/White sauce? Sing it if you know the words. Here's some stats according to LoseIt.com, my calorie/exercise counter website. Each of these is one tablespoon measureme...